German Moments

Hey all - on SBS at the moment is a German period piece, all lederhosen and Prussian military uniforms for the boys, and flowing dresses and tiaras for the girls. Hmm, fifties colouring in German about Austro Hungarian royalty, something quite kitch about it all LOL, sorry you devotees of fifties German cinema :)

And on a less savoury part of Austro-German history, good article in the Guardian today about the last survivor of Hitler's inner circle, a young (at the time) aide de camp who is 91 currently. He recently released a book through a French publisher (due to the taboo in Germany about all things Nazi) about the last days in the bunker - the aide de camp left on 29 April, a day before Hitler shot himself - and he also served in Stalingrad. Anthony Beevor did a good book about that campaign, and my copy of it is currently languishing in Canada. The greatest battle of all time, I remember when I was first reading about World War 2, when I was eight or nine, that picture of the statue of the children dancing with the fighting going on behind it...

Hmm, that last paragraph was supposed to be a last days of the Reich one rather than about Stalingrad. Am currently what iffing in my head, what if Hitler hadn't overridden his competent generals on strategy, what if he had been killed in 1944, what if what if...

Oh, my parents totally do not get Dr Strangelove. Watched it tonight, black comedy about nuclear war and all that - remember, there are seventeen THOUSAND nukes in the world today, they didn't all go away at the end of the cold war - and when it ended, my mother said what a load of crap. Some of it is, but most of it is just as valid today as ever, and hmm, I get it, even if my parents don't. And the surprising thing is, they LOVED the Kill Bill marathon yesterday LOL.

Oh, two angles on the war on terror that I wanted to put down before I forget about the links. The first is the trouble that American army recruiters are having to keep their quotas up in wartime - the Pentagon wants over a hundred thousand new recruits this year, from seven and a half thousand recruiters. They aren't getting the numbers, what with two concurrent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, surprising that eh. But the brass isn't taking any excuses, and there is a bit of burnout in the ranks... good article, a home front angle on the issues of the US military...

Second on the war on terror, is this one from the Washington Post. A German national got arrested in Pakistan in 2001, alleged to be going to Afghanistan to fight against the US, but both the US and German intelligence agencies said there was no Al Qaeda link. However, in the military tribunal at Guantanamo, that evidence was disregarded and one piece of paper saying that he was Al Qaeda, with no supporting back up, has led him to be kept at Gitmo for the past three years. And now that the file has been leaked the military is saying it should be disregarded as it is classified, and no review of the German's case should go through.

Some good news on the whole American war on everyone else thing, I say that since Iraq and the war on terror weren't specifically linked, despite Veep Cheney's allusions to the contrary, the Iraqi resistance is said to be splintering between the Iraqi nationalists, who might just want to get in on the power grabbing, and the nihilistic jihadists. I know it has been said before, but with the elections, it may have actually been a real turning point. Which would be a good thing. On the political side of things, does anyone REALLY see the Kurds wanting to give up ANY of their autonomy anytime in the next ten years?

No news on the Schiavo front, that hasn't been said and said and said before.

Later peeps
Pauly