There are people who deny that the Holocaust really happened,
and then there is someone who claims that Germany denies the historical facts of the Holocaust.
This is rather illogical because – for example – the Holocaust denier depicted above, Richard Williamson, has just been convicted by a German criminal court for denying the Holocaust. But anti-German election campaigns are en vogue in Italy this season.
I did not catch the actual liberation of Italy from the Nazis and Fascists in World War II on video, admittedly. But yesterday, on 25 April, the 69th anniversary of that event was commemorated.
Of course Italy was not liberated in one day. The allied troops landed on Sicily on 10 July 1943 and it took them almost two more years to complete their campaign to liberate the rest of Italy, moving northward slowly and under heavy losses. 25 April was chosen as a public holiday because the cities of Milan and Turin in northern Italy were liberated on 25 April 1945.
I attended the official ceremony in Bari, where a wreath was dedicated to the killed partisans. The more you read about the partisans, the more you realize that they would deserve much more creativity to be applied in their commemoration that the same wreath with a ribbon every year.
There were only a few dozen people, half of them soldiers and reporters, who probably didn’t have any other choice. A “Committee for the Defense and the Implementation of the Italian Constitution” handed out leaflets with complicated flow-charts about the reform of the election law.
But then it did turn solemn. Michele Emiliano, the mayor of Bari, intoned the partisans’ anthem Bella Ciao and the small crowd sang the melancholic but beautiful song.
Good thing to have a mayor who can sing. The soldiers however were less inclined to take part in the singing of a song that appreciates partisans fighting outside of a regular military force. Walking home, I was wondering once more why there were fighting resistance groups against the Nazis almost everywhere in Europe, but none in Germany.
In April 2014 the Indian Supreme Court ruled that transgender people have to be recognized as a “third gender”, declaring inter alia that
Transgender persons’ right to decide their self-identified gender is also upheld and the Centre and State Governments are directed to grant legal recognition of their gender identity such as male, female or as third gender.
Only in December 2013 the same court had re-criminalized sexual activities between persons of the same sex.
“The three lions are a symbol of our own confused gender identity.”
So, apparently it’s absolutely OK to have a “gender identity”, but not to live according to it. Or if you want to live out your personal life according to your and your partner’s wishes, then one of you has to register as a “third gender” person first. But what if you don’t want to cut off your ****? Either there will be some kind of test before you can register for “third gender”, making it invasive, or you can change every day, turning it into a farce.
Lesson 1: Courts, states, governments, parliaments shouldn’t get involved in people’s private lives if it can be avoided.
Lesson 2: Maybe it would be best if there was no official gender designation at all. Why is it important for the state to have a record of my gender? At least in most of the countries where I have lived, the state doesn’t have a record of my religious affiliation or of my ethnicity. And it doesn’t need to. If gender became less of a factor in public policy (and I think it shouldn’t be a factor at all, in the interest of equality), then the state wouldn’t need to know what I have in my pants.
Some may admire the church. Some may derive joy from watching the playing children. I was most taken with the sky.
The church is Matrice Nuova in Castelbuono, a beautiful little town in the hills in Sicily.
We keep reading horror stories from the southern European countries about how badly they are affected by the economic crisis. Factories are closing, civil servants are made redundant, the provision of medical services suffers, people emigrate, everything is going downhill.
The state of Spanish infrastructure offers a particularly strong example. This is what hiking trails in Spain look like:
Allegedly this is Germany’s fault, although nobody has been able to convincingly explain the connection. To me, it rather seems like debt-financed houses of cards are collapsing, as they were prone to do one day. Even if Portugal, Spain and Greece have less money than before, it is still up to them to decide whether to spend that money on hiking trails or on submarines, on hospitals or on the Royal court.
You can tell whether an area is good for hiking or not by the availability of water. Either from natural sources (creeks, waterfalls) or from wells.
A few handfuls of cold water are enough to continue walking for many miles, even in the summer heat.
The photo was taken at Zingaro, a nature reserve on the north coast of Sicily.
The island of Vulcano, situated off the north coast of Sicily, has an active crater which you can hike up to. It is possible to circumvent the crater on a narrow rim, walking through the smoke and the fumes at times, but you have to watch every step to avoid stepping into one of the hot crevices or to slip and slide down into the center of the crater.
None of this kept this courageous teenager from circumventing the volcano on a bicycle.
(Photo by Günter Moser. – Hier geht es zur deutschen Fassung.)
There is probably no better time than now to read a novel about two NSA employees who have absconded to the Soviet Union and about the US government’s attempts to get them back. Yes, I wrote Soviet Union instead of Russia, because the book is from 1966. It is The Cold War Swap, the first spy novel by Ross Thomas who went on to write another 20 of them or so.
It’s a typical spy story at the height of the Cold War. The meetings between the different agents take place in Berlin of course, on both sides of the wall, connected through tunnels and Checkpoint Charlie. Bonn is still important, people still smoke on airplanes and people still wait for Der Spiegel to come out on Monday to learn about the latest developments in the German government.
The story follows the owner of a bar who is drawn into the mess caused by the US government, the Soviet government, West and East German spies, the Chinese and plenty of freelancers against his own will. Typical Eric Ambler stuff. It’s a fast-paced story with a few twists and turns, as you would expect from a spy thriller. But, unlike Eric Ambler, it is not more than a thriller. The language shows no deeper literary quality. Ross Thomas seems to have thought that it adds authenticity if he mentions what each spy drinks, how much of it they drink and what cigarettes they smoke whenever they get together. I find such details tiresome and superfluous. Still, the story moves quite fast across the 214 pages and it’s never a boring read. At the very end, it even becomes melancholic, but in a good way, which might help to leave a lasting impression.
One thing that put me off was the portrayal of the two NSA defectors. They defected because they were gay, as if being gay in the Soviet Union was such a wonderful thing in 1966. They are portrayed in a very stereotypical manner, crying and holding hands when in danger. That is annoying.
Another thing that put me off, but which most readers might be able to ignore, are the misspelled German words and place names. When I come across words like Bahnhoff or Shönefeld or hochaus, I wonder why neither the author nor anyone at the publishing company bothered to either consult a dictionary or simply ask a German speaker to read through the manuscript. I am available.
In the book, the US offer up one of their own spies in exchange for the Soviet Union to return the NSA defectors. The defectors don’t want to return, of course, so they need to be forced. The US spy who is supposed to be presented to the KGB doesn’t want to do that either, so he escapes, trying to snatch the NSA defectors himself and return them to West Germany to buy his freedom. Far-fetched, but then stuff as crazy as this did happen during the Cold War. Still, not an option for Edward Snowden, I assume. He would better go along with this plan.
Man can erect the most beautiful buildings, which last for 2,500 years and still impress with their shape and size, but the surrounding nature is the true source of beauty.
The photos show the temple of Segesta, one of the oldest settlements on Sicily. The Elymians, one of the ancient people of Sicily, built the temple around 430/420 BC, but never finished it. It is still in surprisingly good shape, though.
(Photos by Günter Moser. – Zur deutschsprachigen Fassung.)
When I press the 1 button on my phone three times while writing a text message, my phone always tries to suggest that I want to write :-( instead of :-).
I wonder why my phone has such a negative attitude towards life. I might have to get rid of it. After all, I hardly answer any phone calls anyway.
The Happy Hermit 