From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V14 #117 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Saturday, May 7 2005 Volume 14 : Number 117 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Mini-Review [Jeff ] Re: privilege [Eb ] Re: Lucky I'm a family guy.... [Benjamin Lukoff ] Re: privilege [Benjamin Lukoff ] Re: privilege ["Jason R. Thornton" ] Re: Lucky I'm a family guy.... [Jeff ] Re: privilege [Jeff ] Re: privilege [Jeff ] Re: KEXP Alert ["Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus" ] Re: privilege [Benjamin Lukoff ] Re: The Forgotten Arm [Sebastian Hagedorn ] =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Surprisingly_good_essay_by_G=FCnter_Grass?= [Sebastian Hag] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 18:04:51 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: Re: Mini-Review On 5/6/05, Tom Clark wrote: > On May 5, 2005, at 3:51 PM, Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus wrote: > > > paul westerberg, *Folker*: this blows about fifty hundred different > > kinds > > of nougat. > > > > > > I could've told you that, and I didn't even know the album existed. > > Oh, and I would have used "creamy filling" instead Mechanic: "I think you blew a seal" Penguin: "Nah, that's just ice cream" - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 16:12:04 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: privilege > And speaking of subjects of ass-thumping importance, the assertion > that Tommy Lee Jones DID NOT watch Star Trek is bullshit: > >> College buddies at Harvard, Jones recalled an evening with Gore: "We >> shot pool and watched Star Trek, when maybe we should have been >> studying for exams." > > http://www.npr.org/news/national/election2000/demconvention/ > democrat.wed.eve.html > > HA HA! I fucking win. I never liked Star Trek much. Whenever I saw the show, I'd just grumble to myself about how all those officers wouldn't have achieved their success without advanced education. Distasteful portrayal of class-strata norms. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 16:19:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: Lucky I'm a family guy.... On Fri, 6 May 2005, Capuchin wrote: > On Fri, 6 May 2005, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > > Hence, if we allowed foreign-born people to become President, wouldn't > > it make sense that one of them would be elected first? > > Sure, it makes sense, but that doesn't mean it isn't fucked up. I'd say I don't care who the President is as long as he does a good job and is politically aligned with me, but that's not true. I wouldn't mind seeing, in particular, a Jew or Asian (who does a good job and is politically aligned with me) in the White House. > It makes sense that if ten thousand people moved into your house and > started pissing on the floor, you'd have to step in other people's piss. > That don't make it a good or right thing. No, it doesn't. But those ten thousand people aren't going anywhere, and they are rather unlikely to want to make the original inhabitant their leader. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 16:24:35 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: privilege On Fri, 6 May 2005, Jeff wrote: > Well, if there isn't a whole lot of privilege (i.e., unearned power > and status, the sort of thing that we as a nation in hte US supposedly > were formed to oppose, among other factors), then there's no > particular need to worry about such things, and therefore no need to > alter policy - except insofar as that policy is intended to correct > privilege since, if there ain't much such, such policy would be > counterproductive. The most direct policy currently in play is the > estate tax (incorrectly called the "death tax" by winger > propagandists: the dead person isn't taxed, the living person > receiving a benefit is), since one of its aims is to reduce the power > of inherited status. Neither is the case: the estate is taxed. I don't *use* "death tax" myself, but I don't see what's wrong with it: it's a tax triggered by death. (Didn't the Brits use to call it "death duty"?) I don't see how the estate tax really reduces the power of inherited status. Say someone has an estate of $2 billion, and the feds take $1 billion of that in estate tax. The heirs still have $1 billion, and honestly, at that point, they're not much worse off than they would have been had they inherited the whole $2 billion. The 50% tax is more of a hit, really, the smaller the estate is. I still think the estate should be able to pay an amount equivalent to the tax to the charities of its choice in lieu of paying the amount to the government, but that's because I've had to go through this myself. > But if there is lotsa privilege, then the imperatives of democracy > compel attempts to reduce it. But is it fair if those attempts to reduce it involve such insanely high tax rates? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 16:27:09 -0700 From: "Jason R. Thornton" Subject: Re: privilege At 04:12 PM 5/6/2005 -0700, Eb wrote: >I never liked Star Trek much. Whenever I saw the show, I'd just grumble >to myself about how all those officers wouldn't have achieved their >success without advanced education. Distasteful portrayal of >class-strata norms. True........ but all that, like all injustices in this world, was counteracted by the big rubber ears. - --Jason "Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples." - Sherwood Anderson ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 18:28:36 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: Re: Lucky I'm a family guy.... On 5/6/05, Capuchin wrote: > On Fri, 6 May 2005, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > > Hence, if we allowed foreign-born people to become President, wouldn't > > it make sense that one of them would be elected first? > > Sure, it makes sense, but that doesn't mean it isn't fucked up. > > It makes sense that if ten thousand people moved into your house and > started pissing on the floor, you'd have to step in other people's piss. > That don't make it a good or right thing. I have no idea what this comparison means. Anyway: Of course foreign-born people who've lived here for a significant amount of time should be eligible to be president. It's a stupid historical artifact, which was relevant when worries about a Hanoverian-type situation made sense, and when blatant prejudice against furriners was socially acceptable. Since we're solving all the world's problems here today, here's my proposal: Change the eligibility requirements so that any foreign-born citizen resident in the US for more than 15 years is eligible to become president. Starting in 2025, so that the change can't be read as being enacted primarily to benefit anyone currently on the political scene. Aaanold's dead meat anyway... I'm not going to go over Jason's rebuttal point by point - it's getting too complicated - but let's just say this: In order to successfully run for political office in this country, you need oodles of money. The higher the office, the more money. That's true even at the local level, except probably in very small locales. Even an alderman in a city like Milwaukee needs several thousand disposable dollars to run a successful campaign (and we're pretty clean and cheap here). Politics isn't the only route to fame and influence of course: the corporate world is as well. And certainly, one can make lots of money, and acquire a degree of influence, coming from very modest means. I'll concede that. However: the true players, the heads of major multinationals, etc., are mostly (there's that pesky majority again) from privileged backgrounds, I'd guess.* Someone like Sam Walton (and Wal-Mart has more influence than almost any politician, of course) is an exception...or rather, was, since he's dead - and now his heirs exemplify the inheritance of power and privilege. * Refer back to my F400 thing. I dont' agree with your reasoning, since it (peculiarly, given your earlier statement about either/or) disregards those who earn wealth. The point is this: if your father is a gazillionaire, you're better off than not. And if 40% of the F400 have gazillionaire fathers, that's a significant indicator of inherited privilege. What percentage of the F400 wouldn't be there solely due to their inheritance, but have inheritance as a significant chunk of their wealth? Logically, it'd be a high number...again, if only because they start off wealthier than other folks, and therefore have to earn less to have higher numbers than those who start off poorer. Ultimately, I'm not sure what you're denying here. I, at least, am not saying it's impossible for those not born wealthy or powerful to become such; I'm just saying that a lot of the power structure got there because their parents were there. The proof is in the presidential pudding: no matter what you think of Bush Jr., no way were his accomplishments and stature the sort of thing that were likely to have gotten him elected if he were named something else. Hell, he wouldn't even have gotten into Yale (legacy admissions of those who otherwise wouldn't get in to such schools are, of course, a perfect illustration of the point I'm making here). Or we could talk about Hank Williams Jr. - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 18:39:19 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: Re: privilege On 5/6/05, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > On Fri, 6 May 2005, Jeff wrote: > > > Well, if there isn't a whole lot of privilege (i.e., unearned power > > and status, the sort of thing that we as a nation in hte US supposedly > > were formed to oppose, among other factors), then there's no > > particular need to worry about such things, and therefore no need to > > alter policy - except insofar as that policy is intended to correct > > privilege since, if there ain't much such, such policy would be > > counterproductive. The most direct policy currently in play is the > > estate tax (incorrectly called the "death tax" by winger > > propagandists: the dead person isn't taxed, the living person > > receiving a benefit is), since one of its aims is to reduce the power > > of inherited status. > > Neither is the case: the estate is taxed. But "the estate" is an artificial entity, whose wealth would otherwise go the heirs - so indirectly the heirs are taxed, which is what I meant. > I don't see how the estate tax really reduces the power of inherited > status. Say someone has an estate of $2 billion, and the feds take $1 > billion of that in estate tax. The heirs still have $1 billion, and > honestly, at that point, they're not much worse off than they would have > been had they inherited the whole $2 billion Uh, they're half again "worse" off. Because it's a separate issue, I wasn't arguing what *should* happen re estate taxes. I was just saying that one implication of my argument is that, certainly, we shouldn't get rid of it. I'm inclined to think that some maximum level of inheritance, per person (with no funny business re trusts etc.), ought to be the case, to honor the principle that people get where they get by dint of their own work - not that of their parents. How to do that in practice...well, that would be very complex, trying to take account of strategies that would evolve to evade it, and not make the whole thing more counterproductive than it is. > I still think the estate should be able to pay an amount equivalent to the > tax to the charities of its choice in lieu of paying the amount to the > government, but that's because I've had to go through this myself. That sounds good - until you realize that it's still privatizing money out of the tax base. Some would argue that's a good thing, of course. But I'm generally opposed to the ongoing erosion of the concept of the public good - and that would contribute to it. Plenty of charities are rather narrowly focused, and really benefit exactly the folks that would benefit anyway. Still, I have some sympathy for that position. > > But if there is lotsa privilege, then the imperatives of democracy > > compel attempts to reduce it. > > But is it fair if those attempts to reduce it involve such insanely high > tax rates? The rest of the world will now enjoy an enormous giggle over the notion that American tax rates are "insanely high." Relatively, they're quite low, by Western European (and similar, comparable cultural) standards. - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 18:41:09 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: Re: privilege On 5/6/05, Jason R. Thornton wrote: > At 04:12 PM 5/6/2005 -0700, Eb wrote: > > >I never liked Star Trek much. Whenever I saw the show, I'd just grumble > >to myself about how all those officers wouldn't have achieved their > >success without advanced education. Distasteful portrayal of > >class-strata norms. > > True........ but all that, like all injustices in this world, was > counteracted by the big rubber ears. No - appearances to the contrary, those are W.'s actual ears. - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 16:53:08 -0700 From: "Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus" Subject: Re: KEXP Alert oh, shit! can't believe i forgot about that one. i once read somewhere (i guess it must've been the band's website's FAQ) that the conversation went on for quite a while longer, but the rest of it wasn't related to the band, and was "way too freaky to put on a record" (or words to that effect). i recall reading about damien jurado having made an album from the recordings of answering machine tapes he'd got out of answering machines at the goodwill. have never heard it, though. he doesn't like to say it anymore? or, it's no longer the case? all i can say is that my mileage varies. but to make matters worse, i can't hear where rush has done anything of real merit since *Permanent Waves*. we are aware of this problem, and are making attempts to rectumfy it. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 17:41:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: privilege On Fri, 6 May 2005, Jeff wrote: > > > But if there is lotsa privilege, then the imperatives of democracy > > > compel attempts to reduce it. > > > > But is it fair if those attempts to reduce it involve such insanely high > > tax rates? > > The rest of the world will now enjoy an enormous giggle over the > notion that American tax rates are "insanely high." Relatively, > they're quite low, by Western European (and similar, comparable > cultural) standards. I wasn't referring to all American tax rates, but to the estate tax rate, which hovers around the 50% mark. Western Europeans will sigh in recognition. "There's one for you, nineteen for me" - --George Harrison, "Taxman" ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 07 May 2005 16:10:07 +0200 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: The Forgotten Arm - -- "Lauren Elizabeth (gmail)" is rumored to have mumbled on 2. Mai 2005 21:25:48 -0400 regarding The Forgotten Arm: > I received the new Aimee Mann album to-day :) I got mine on Wednesday, but it took me some time to really listen to it. > She has a bit more bounce in her compared to her previous album > (personally, I think 'Lost in Space' is her best work so far, I agree. It always takes me a little time to get sued to her CDs. Even "Lost In Space" sounded boring to me initially - I wonder why that is. > but it's > nice to hear her songs take on more of an upbeat style.) Well, the lyrics are everything but upbeat. > Aimee's uniqueness for me is her ability to say so much in so few > words. Her lyrics seem almost ridiculously simple, but as I continue > to listen to her songs, I'm amazed at how very much she manages to > say. Right, although I have to admit that I don't get everything. I don't think it's because I'm no native speaker, but rather because I have difficulties with poetry in general. I'm rather a prosaic person ;-) For instance, what does the title "The Forgotten Arm" mean? Some friends of mine thought "arm" was used in the meaning of weapon, but I don't believe that. I can't even figure out from whose perpective some of the songs are sung. > Word has it she's taken up boxing. That would explain her choice of sujet ... > P.S. I don't know how this happened, but I think Aimee is second to > Robyn in my personal show count. I seem to see her every time she > comes around, Same here, but I haven't known (of) her for more than 5 years and she's only around about every two years. So on July, 4 I will go to only my third show. > She always puts on a great show (although my boyfriend complains that > her band is 'too tight', Actually that's what I like about it. It's a nice change from the bands whose shows I usually go to. I was surprised how much of her personnel seems to have changed in between albums. Other new CDs: The Go-Betweens / Oceans Apart: better than expected, perhaps the best CD after their reunion. Yo La Tengo / Prisoners Of Love, 3 CD-version: haven't really listened to it yet. I've got all the individual CDs, but the mixes seem to be a bit better than some of the earlier releases. The track list is, hmm, unusual. I would probably have picked an entirely different set of tracks. - -- Sebastian Hagedorn Ehrenfeldg|rtel 156, 50823 Kvln, Germany http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/~hgd/ "Being just contaminates the void" - Robyn Hitchcock ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 07 May 2005 17:12:15 +0200 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Surprisingly_good_essay_by_G=FCnter_Grass?= Hi, I'm not particularly fond of G|nter Grass. I really liked "The Tin Drum" when I read it ages ago, but everything after that struck me as too "German": heavy and lacking humor. So I was surprised to see that in today's New York Times there's an op-ed piece that I agree with almost completely: Since registration is required I'll copy the text below and ask you forgiveness: OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR The Gravest Generation By G\NTER GRASS Published: May 7, 2005 L|beck, Germany TOMORROW, it will be 60 years to the day since the German Reich's unconditional surrender. That is equivalent to a working life with a pension to look forward to. It goes so far back that memory, that wide-meshed sieve, is in danger of forgetting it. Sixty years ago, after being wounded in the chaotic retreat in Lausitz, I lay in a hospital with a flesh wound in my right thigh and a bean-sized shell splinter in my right shoulder. The hospital was in Marienbad, a military hospital town that had been occupied by American soldiers a few days earlier, at the same time as Soviet forces were occupying the neighboring town of Karlsbad. In Marienbad, on May 8, I was a naove 17-year-old who had believed in the ultimate victory right to the end. Those who had survived the mass murder in the German concentration camps could regard themselves as liberated, although they were in no physical condition to enjoy their freedom. But for me it was not the hour of liberation; rather, I was beset by the empty feeling of humiliation following total defeat. When May 8 comes round again and is celebrated in complacent official speeches as liberation day, this can only be in hindsight, especially as we Germans did little if anything for our liberation. In the initial postwar years our lives were determined by hunger and cold, the misery of refugees, the displaced and bombed-out. In all four zones occupied by the wartime allies - Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States - the only way to manage the ever increasing crush of the more than 12 million Germans who had fled from, or been driven out of, East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia and the Sudetenland, was to force them into our own cramped living rooms. Whenever the question is posed, "What can we Germans be proud of?", the first thing we should mention is this essential achievement - even though it was forced on us. We had hardly become used to freedom when compulsion had to be applied. As a result, in both German states, huge long-term camps for refugees and displaced persons were avoided. The risk of building up feelings of hate was thereby diverted, as was the desire for revenge engendered by years of camp life, which, as today's world shows, can result in terrorism and counterterrorism. Even then there were spokesmen for the rhetoric of liberation. So many self-appointed anti-fascists suddenly set the tone, so much so that one was entitled to ask: how had Hitler been able to make headway against such strong resistance? Dirty linen was quickly washed clean, with people being absolved of all responsibility. Counterfeiters were busy coining new expressions and putting them into circulation. "Unconditional surrender" was changed to "collapse." Although in business, law and in the rapidly re-emerging schools and universities, even the diplomatic service, many former National Socialists maintained their hereditary wealth, stayed in office, continued to hold onto their university chairs and eventually continued their careers in politics, it was claimed that we were starting from "zero hour" or square one. A particularly infamous distortion of facts can be seen even today in speeches and publications, with the crimes perpetrated by Germans described as "misdeeds perpetrated in the name of the German people." In addition, language was used in two different ways to herald the future division of the country. In the Soviet-occupied zone, the Red Army had liberated Germany from the fascist terror all by itself; in the Western occupied zones, the honor of having freed not only Germany but the whole of Europe from Nazi domination was shared exclusively by the Americans, the British and the French. In the cold war that quickly followed, German states that had existed since 1949 consistently fell to one or other power bloc, whereupon the governments of both national entities sought to present themselves as model pupils of their respective dominating powers. Forty years later, during the glasnost period, it was in fact the Soviet Union that broke up the Democratic Republic, which had by that point become a burden. The Federal Republic's almost unconditional subservience to the United States was broken for the first time when the Social Democratic-Green ruling coalition decided to make use of the freedom given to us in sovereign terms 60 years ago, by refusing to allow German soldiers to participate in the Iraq war. THE question today, then, is have we dealt carefully with the freedom that we did not win, but was given to us? Have the citizens of West Germany properly compensated the citizens of the former Democratic Republic, who, after all, had to bear the main burden of the war begun and lost by all Germans? And a further question: is our parliamentary democracy still sufficiently sovereign as a guarantor of freedom of action to act on the problems facing us in the 21st century? Fifteen years after signing the treaty on unification, we can no longer conceal that despite the financial achievements, German unity has essentially been a failure. Petty calculation prevented the government of the time from submitting to the citizens of both states a new constitution relevant to the endeavors of Germany as a whole. It is therefore hardly surprising that people in the former East Germany should regard themselves as second-class Germans. The jobless rate is twice as high as in the former West Germany. West German arrogance had no respect for people with East German risumis. The mass migration, feared from the beginning, is happening now, daily. Whole areas of the country, its cities and its villages, are being emptied. After the Treuhandanstalt, the entity responsible for privatizing East Germany, had completed its bargain sales, West German industry and banks withheld the necessary investment and loans and, consequently, no jobs were created. Here, fine exhortations have been of little use. To right this skewed situation, only Parliament, the lawmakers, can help. Which brings us back to the question of whether parliamentary democracy is able to act. Now, I believe that our freely elected members of Parliament are no longer free to decide. The customary party pressures are not particularly present in Germany; it is, rather, the ring of lobbyists with their multifarious interests that constricts and influences the Federal Parliament and its democratically elected members, placing them under pressure and forcing them into disharmony, even when framing and deciding the content of laws. Consequently, Parliament is no longer sovereign in its decisions. It is steered by the banks and multinational corporations - which are not subject to any democratic control. What's needed is a democratic desire to protect Parliament against the pressures of the lobbyists by making it inviolable. But are our parliamentarians still sufficiently free to make a decision that would bring radical democratic constraint? Or is our freedom now no more than a stock market profit? We all are witnesses to the fact that production is being demolished worldwide, that so-called hostile and friendly takeovers are destroying thousands of jobs, that the mere announcement of measures like the dismissal of workers and employees makes share prices rise, and this is regarded unthinkingly as the price to be paid for "living in freedom." The consequences of this development disguised as globalization are clearly coming to light and can be read from the statistics. With the consistently high number of jobless, which in Germany has now reached five million, and the equally constant refusal of industry to create jobs, despite demonstrably higher earnings, especially from exports, the hope of full employment has evaporated. Older employees, who still had years of work left in them, are pushed into early retirement. Young people are denied the skills for entering the world of work. Even worse, with complaints that an aging population is a threat and simultaneous demands, repeated parrot-fashion, to do more for young people and education, the Federal Republic - still a rich country - is permitting, to a shameful extent, the growth of what is called "child poverty." All this is now accepted as if divinely ordained, accompanied at most by the customary national grumbles. Worse, those who point to this state of affairs and to the people forced into social oblivion are at best ridiculed by slick young journalists as "social romantics," but usually vilified as "do-gooders." Questions about the reasons for the growing gap between rich and poor are dismissed as "the politics of envy." The desire for justice is ridiculed as utopian. The concept of "solidarity" is relegated to the dictionary's list of foreign words. THOUGH we initially did not know what to do with our freedom when we were given it 60 years ago, we gradually made use of this gift. We learned democracy and in doing so proved star pupils, because after all we were incontrovertibly German. With the benefit of hindsight, what was crammed into us through lectures was enough to get us a reasonable end-of-term report. We learned the interplay between government and opposition, whereupon long periods of government ultimately proved arid. The much lauded and reviled generation of '68 produced a different kind of political leaders and ultimately also tolerance. We had to acknowledge that our burdens could not be cast aside, they are passed by parents to children and that our German past, however much we travel and export, comes back to haunt us. Neo-Nazis repeatedly brought us into disrepute. Even so, we felt that democracy was here to stay. It had to withstand several challenges. After the debris had been cleared and disposed of in both German states, reconstruction in the East proceeded under the constraints of the Stalinist system; but in the West, it took place under favorable conditions. What retrospectively is called the "economic miracle" was not, however, the result of any individual achievement but was won by many. Included in that number are displaced persons and refugees, those who had in fact to start at square one in terms of material possessions. We must not forget the contribution of foreign workers, initially politely called "guest workers." In the rebuilding phase businessmen were exemplary in investing every penny of profit into job creation. The trade unions and businesses were clearly aware of the decay of the Weimar Republic, so they were forced to compromise and ensure social equality. With so much toil and profit-chasing, however, the past was in danger of being forgotten. Only in the 60's did we meet the second challenge, when writers and then the student protest movement began to ask questions about everything that the war generation would sooner forget. The protest movement strove for revolution but was paid off with reform; without it, we would still be living in the claustrophobic fog of the postwar years under Adenauer. The third challenge arose when the Berlin Wall fell. The two German states had existed for four decades more against than beside each other. As there was no willingness on the Western side to offer equal rights to the East, the unity of the country has so far existed only on paper. It was all done too hastily and without an understanding of what far-reaching consequences this haste would have. Since then, the expanded country has stagnated. Neither the Kohl government nor the Schrvder government succeeded in correcting the initial errors. Lately, perhaps too late, we have come to recognize that the threat to the state, or what should be regarded as Public Enemy No. 1, comes not from right-wing radicalism but rather, from the impotence of politics, which leaves citizens exposed and unprotected from the dictates of the economy. What is being destroyed, then, is not the state, which survives, but democracy. When the German Reich unconditionally surrendered 60 years ago, a system of power and terror was thereby defeated. This system, which had caused fear throughout Europe for 12 years, still casts its shadow today. We Germans have repeatedly faced up to this inherited shame and have been forced to do so if we hesitated. The memory of the suffering that we caused others and ourselves has been kept alive through the generations. Compared with other nations which have to live with shame acquired elsewhere - I'm thinking of Japan, Turkey, the former European colonial powers - we have not shaken off the burden of our past. It will remain part of our history as a challenge. We can only hope we will be able to cope with today's risk of a new totalitarianism, backed as it is by the world's last remaining ideology. As conscious democrats, we should freely resist the power of capital, which sees mankind as nothing more than something which consumes and produces. Those who treat their donated freedom as a stock market profit have failed to understand what May 8 teaches us every year. G|nter Grass, the author of "The Tin Drum" and, most recently, "Crabwalk," won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. This article was translated from the German by UPS Translations. - -- Sebastian Hagedorn Ehrenfeldg|rtel 156, 50823 Kvln, Germany http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/~hgd/ "Being just contaminates the void" - Robyn Hitchcock ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V14 #117 ********************************