The leader of the Green party in Austria Eva Glawischnig proclaimed in Austrian TV that the candidate for the presidential election Barbara Rosenkranz “is a disgrace for Austria.” Glawischnig confirmed that she thinks the resignation of her candidateship would be the best for all. Glawischnig also told whom she is going to vote for the Austrian [...]

Vorarlbergs Green politican Harald Walser was never happy with Barbara Rosenkranz being the candidate of the Freedom party for the next Federal President election. Now he even demands a cancellation of her candidateship. Walser explains his demand with following words: “Her contradictory statements about our prohibition law are embarrassing.” The man from Austrias Western province Vorarlberg [...]

Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-8-10)

A far-Right candidate for Austria's presidential election has brought the country's dark past to the surface again, by denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial.

Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional leader of the Freedom Party (FPOe), looks likely to be the only candidate to run against the incumbent, President Heinz Fischer, on April 25.

But her comments supporting the scrapping of the tough prohibition law have renewed the debate about a heritage with which the country, which was under Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, has never fully come to terms.

Read More...

Une candidate d'extrême droite à l'élection présidentielle en Autriche conteste la loi d'interdiction du parti nazi, renvoyant l'Autriche à ses vieux démons de pays en peine d'assumer les plus sombres heures de son histoire, sous le nazisme.Barbara Rosenkranz, 51 ans, mère de dix enfants,...

K-90 Virgin Mary Pilgrimage to Kevelaer, Heart-shaped Cast Bronze, 62.0mm X 69.7mm, 81.70g, RRRR, Gussfrisch (As Cast).

Obverse. Our Lady as sorrowful Mother and Consoler of the Afflicted, Front, the year “1642” above. Hovering directly above Mary are two angels supporting a radiating crown above Mary's head. A winged cherub looks forward from her feet. K-GoeTz incised punch at 4:00 o’clock. Support ring at top (never used).

Reverse: Legend: Steh auf/Wir wollen nach Kevelar/nim Buch und Rosenkranz/die Mutter Gottes heilt dir/dein krankes Herze/ganz (Get-up, Let’s go to Kevelar, bring your bible and your rosary, the Mother of God will completely heal your suffering heart.” Below, a robed woman with rosary and a man in cape with bible and walking cane, both ¾ left, begin their walking pilgrimage. A heart suspended by a nail is in the bottom left field. K-G in exergue.

This piece is very rare and my research shows it only being offered twice in German auctions over the last 30 years.

A little more info about the shrine.

Jugendliche sind von der FPÖ-Kandidatin Rosenkranz wenig begeistert. Das ergab eine KURIER-Umfrage in der Wiener Disco "Praterdome".

A few months ago, Czech President Václav Klaus decided to surrender and add his signature to the Treaty of Lisbon. But he managed to negotiate an opt-out for the Czech Republic from the Charter of Rights - the same opt-out that Poland and United Kingdom have previously negotiated.

There are lots of possible implications of this bad document but one of the specific ones for the Czech Republic was that the Beneš decrees - crucial post-WWII laws that have macroscopically compensated the evil that most of the German Nazis did to our country and that keep on preserving the stability of the ownership rights in the Sudetenland that used to have a German-speaking majority - could have been dismantled using this charter.

Needless to say, this was not the only problem that President Klaus saw in the charter. But it was the most comprehensible problem for the Czech public. Such cards are sometimes being used. President Klaus managed to gain the support of the public in his approach to the Treaty of Lisbon. It was perhaps not 100% clean but the Beneš decrees are just the currently valid laws and Klaus's goal was just to peacefully preserve the status quo.

The advocates of a federal Europe would tell him (and us) that there was no threat for the Beneš decrees. Klaus was only trying to ignite the fear that had no rational justification, they argued. Everyone who matters in the EU has accepted the decrees, we would hear. But unless such arrangements are guaranteed by some texts that can be efficiently enforced, they're always endangered. To see how sensible Klaus's attitude was, it was enough to wait for a few months.

In Austria, there will be presidential elections on April 25th, 2010. Mr Heinz Fischer, the current president, has to compete with Ms Barbara Rosenkranz of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (where Jörg Haider belonged until 2005).

So this particulate contest may require some special behavior from Heinz Fischer, right? Unfortunately, the Austrians still nurture lots of post-Nazi nostalgia. They like to think how powerful they could have been. After all, Adolf Hitler was born in Austria, too. Although their race is clearly less Nordic than that of the German nation (or even the Czech nation, for that matter), they were perhaps even more enthusistic about the ideology than the Germans. And they're more nationalistic than the Germans today.

So unfortunately, the political campaign before the elections seems to be becoming a contest between a full-fledged modern Nazi candidate and a moderate modern Nazi candidate. In his letter to the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, Heinz Fischer called the Beneš decrees a "severe injustice". He has also said that he will pay no attention to the opt-out from the Charter of Rights that the EU has promised to Klaus and the Czech Republic.

Needless to say, this is a deeply polarizing question. Almost all Austrians are happy about Fischer's revived national self-confidence. Almost all Czechs - and Czech politicians - disagree with it. It includes Heinz Fischer's self-described friend, social democratic ex-PM Mr Miloš Zeman. Everyone stresses that the decrees were a logical conclusion of the war that macroscopically ordered the most blatant injustices of the war period. It can't be separated from the history.

After all, the Czechoslovak authorities could have executed all the Germans and Austrians, too. But they were not animals so they carefully decided what was the most balanced, measured, sensitive, yet doable punishment of all the crimes that the German Nazis on our territory did against their former country and the Czechoslovak nation. And the Beneš decrees were a part of this carefully engineered solution. They were no mistake: they were the least bad solution that could have been chosen in those hard times.

Czech president Klaus is just visiting the U.S. - giving some talks about the climate change - but he reacted as follows:

Statement of the president of the republic, Václav Klaus, about the claims by Austrian president Heinz Fischer

President Václav Klaus who is just on his business trip to the U.S. has learned about some of the statements reported by the media that Austrian president Heinz Fischer expressed in his message to the Sudetendeutschenlandsmannschaft Ethnic Association in Austria which referred to the Beneš decrees.

Václav Klaus has expressed regrets that these painful historical topics are being abused in the Austrian political campaign once again. At the same moment, he reminded everyone how far-sighted it was for him to negotiate an opt-out from the EU Charter of Rights for the Czech Republic before he ratified the Treaty of Lisbon on behalf of his country. The incident shows that it is necessary for this opt-out to be legally codified as soon as possible.

Mr Radim Ochvat, March 4th, 2010

Well, I guess that Heinz Fischer's statements will remain just a P.R. game in the internal Austrian political struggles. But the point is that such a "localization" of a problem - and of political sentiments - can never be guaranteed.

It is always possible that such games and pledges will force the president to actually attack the existing laws on the international scene. And it is always conceivable that such a game will find some supporters who may actually help him to achieve this promised goal.

Such important things simply have to be written on the paper and one must be careful not to lose this paper when various laws (and countries) are being rearranged. One must be careful about these matters not despite the fact that the law is considered controversial by some people - but because it is considered controversial. Exactly because some people may have vastly different interpretations what is "right" and what is "wrong" when it comes to the ownership rights in the Sudetenland, it's important for the right answers to be written at a visible place.

And that's the memo.

Austrian far-right icon eyes presidency VIENNA ? A woman who has criticized anti-Nazi law and is married to an extreme rightist is running for president in Austria, and critics contend her candidacy could tarnish the reputation of a country still marred by its connection to the Holocaust. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, is not expected to win the April ... Read more »»».

Austrian far-right presidential candidate Barbara Rosenkranz drew sharp criticism from the country's Jewish organizations Tuesday - who highlighted her controversial stance on Holocaust deniers.

ADL Condemns Anti-Semitic Hate Crime Against Temple Beth El In Boca Raton Anti-Defamation League (press release) Andrew L. Rosenkranz, ADL Florida Regional Director issued the following statement: When a synagogue is vandalized and anti-Semitic slurs are scrawled on ... Boca Raton police: synagogue vandalism a hate crimeSun-Sentinel all 19 news articles »

* longtime Marvel editor Tom Breevort writes about emotional truth in mainstream comic books. I'm sure he means all comic books, and I'm sure that the lessons apply, but the fact that he's conceiving of it from a vantage point deep within that part of the comics industry makes it interesting to me. * the cartoonist Dash Shaw's excellent creator's perspective on the Angouleme Festival just past deserves its own shout-out separate from the site's collective memory. Plus he's the first person I know that went in and check on the One Piece exhibit. * speaking of Angouleme, the French-language comics news clearinghouse ActuaBD.com catches a jubilant Baru just after the formal announcement that he won the Grand Prix and will serve as the next festival's president. Baru promises a rock-and-roll 38th festival and makes a funny joke that the award will allow him to live one more year despite constant thoughts of suicide since Nicolas Sarkozy's election. * what my nightmares look like. * does anyone else think it's terribly funny that the ultimate danger in Robert Kirkman's Invincible universe is a bunch of super-powered dickweeds bearing mustaches? I mean, it's an obvious source of laughs, but something about it really rings true. * going against conventional wisdom yet again, the suddenly comics-championing Chicago Tribune is increasing the size of some of its comics. The bad news is that they're dumping six, including two I thought were generally popular: Get Fuzzy and Lio. * the cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley is one of many artists participating in an auction on behalf of Giant Robot. I don't know exactly what Giant Robot needs, but we should give it to them. Wait, here that is.* here's a nice process post on getting a cover design together for Sarah Glidden's new graphic novel. * here's an equally nice and quite massive process post about Todd Klein's new poster project with Mark Buckingham. * finally, a bit of not comics: via Patrick Rosenkranz comes word that that antique pool cue featuring S. Clay Wilson's art -- the cue I know I've heard about before but can't remember when or where -- is up for sale. To say that's a unique piece is understating things, even if it falls outside the standard purview of this site.

Your Above the Law editors spent Sunday afternoon watching a group of talented players in a high-stakes battle. A veteran of the field locked horns with a newcomer.

No, we're not talking about the Vikings-Saints game. We saw James Spader, David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington play lawyers in a matinee performance of David Mamet's Race, which opened on Broadway last month.

Spader and Grier play Jack Lawson and Henry Brown, the name partners of Lawson & Brown, a high-profile criminal defense firm. Kerry Washington plays Susan, a fresh-from-law-school associate who is new to the firm. A powerful and rich white man accused of raping a black woman drops by, hoping to have the firm take his case.

The short play -- it has two acts, but comes in at under two hours -- takes place in the firm's war room, a conference room lined with books that will look familiar to ATL readers. The Lawson & Brown attorneys discuss whether to take the case and what their strategy should be.

Obviously, we think the legal world is an exciting place, and we are always thrilled to see lawyers get dramatic treatment. Unless the treatment is terrible.

This treatment was impressive. Perhaps it helped to have two lawyers, Peggy Hill and Georgetown law professor Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz (Lat's law school classmate), as producers.

Check out our reviews, after the jump.

ELIE:

Sanchez ... has Braylon Edwards ... And they're not going to catch him, touchdown Jets!

Oh, wait sorry, about that Broadway show I saw during the AFC Conference Championship game ...

Mamet makes the case in favor of law firm diversity in about ten minutes. The rich white client originally sought representation by accomplished trial lawyer Nicky Greenstein (I supposed Mamet thought naming the guy Yitzhak Ben Judah would have been too obvious). But after that relationship falls through, the client turns to Lawson & Brown specifically because the firm has a black partner. When the point was made on stage, I wrote "eat it, ATL commenters" in my notebook.

If the first ten minutes make the case that diversity makes good business sense, the rest of the play explores how having a diverse team of lawyers can make for better legal representation. That's right, I said "better," because part of Mamet's point is that race plays a role in everything. And everybody has prejudices. In Mamet's world, Lawson and Brown are better positioned to understand how their client will play to a jury and the general public because the firm has a diverse set of voices contributing to the strategic discussions.

Needless to say, I enjoyed this portrayal. Mamet gets bonus points for having his two black characters disagree about certain racial issues. At one point early on, Henry Brown (Grier) tells Susan (Washington) that she "let her color jump on her intellect." It's a wonderful way of explaining what happens when color blinds you.

Having established that race plays a role in everything (if you've read my True/Slant column, you'll know that this is a point I already agree with), Mamet unfortunately fails to say anything particularly insightful or interesting about race. Race plays a role in everything? Welcome to the party, white man. Do you have anything else to add? No? Well okay, thanks for coming anyway, there's punch and pie on the table.

Unfortunately, I've been to law school. That means that the part of my brain that would allow me to appreciate a play set at a law firm without worrying about it's portrayal of the law and justice has been destroyed. Luckily, Race generally gets it right. The few legal concepts in the play are handled well. The actors are convincing as prominent criminal defense attorneys.

But deep down, David Mamet clearly thinks that there are moral absolutes, and he is ultimately hopeful that the justice system can produce the "correct" outcomes. He seems to believe that lawyers, you know, care about the "right" outcomes. And that all sounds to me like the kind of crap you're likely to hear from a 1L. Mamet is cynical but hopeful, as opposed to cynical and beaten. It's a subtle difference, but people who have practiced will pick up on it.

Like I said, I enjoyed the show. All the bits worked together, and as an added bonus, Kerry Washington happens to be smoking hot. But at the end of the day, I'm not sure if Mamet's Race contributes anything particularly meaningful to the conversation about race in this country. Entertaining and not much else is by no means a criticism, though; by the end of the first act, I completely forgot about the football game.

KASHMIR:

If you haven't seen the Oscar-winning film Crash, then go see Race. If you've already seen Crash, Race's grappling with questions of prejudice and stereotypes isn't going to feel very fresh. So rather than expecting a delivery on the play's title, just go to enjoy the superb acting of Grier, Spader, and Washington.

After playing attorneys in Secretary, The Practice, and Boston Legal, Spader has nailed the lawyer portrayal, able to discuss ruthless trial strategies without coming across as a total douche. But warning: James Spader is difficult to recognize at first. He has pulled a Luke Wilson.

At points in the play, it felt like it would have been more accurately titled "Race and Gender." The use of the c-word and the partners asking Susan to don a red sequin dress to reenact a rape were major plot points. Critic Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote in the New York Post:

The show's nominally about race, but the elephant in the room is gender. The issue's on Mamet's mind, even if he claims to go after another target. If Hillary Clinton had been elected, would we be watching "Sex" instead?

Gender relations are on his mind. Mamet wrote a New York Times editorial about race and his play last year that likens our society's arguments about race to a marital fight.

Thankfully, though, Mamet's play is more entertaining than listening to a married couple bicker.

LAT:

Race is highly entertaining and well worth seeing. Mamet may not say anything particularly original about the subject of Race in America -- after having race at the center of our national consciousness for a century or two, it's a bit difficult to do that -- but the play is tremendously well-acted, especially by Spader, and Mamet's dialogue is as zesty as we've come to expect from him.

I was more intrigued by the play as a meditation on the legal profession and lawyering (as opposed to a meditation on race). Mamet turns out a few gems of generalization, especially in the first act. Here are a few:

• "The law is not an exercise in metaphysics, but an alley fight."
• "The legal process is about three things: hatred, fear, and envy. And you just hit the trifecta."
• "It's a complicated world, full of misunderstanding. That's why we have lawyers."
  "I thought it was to do justice."
  "You thought wrong."

The truth of these statements is debatable -- and that's the whole point. Whether you agree or disagree with these quips, they're all provocative and interesting. If you see the play with fellow lawyers, you'll be sure to have lots of fodder for a post-show discussion about what it means to be a lawyer. [FN1]

Another great line from the first act, essentially describing high-stakes litigation as something of a game, goes something like this: "There is no fact, only competing fictions."

Now that is an observation we suspect most seasoned litigators would agree with. If you're one of them, though, you might be disappointed by the ending. We don't want to include any spoilers, but suffice it to say that Mamet concludes the play in a way that suggests there are lots of hard facts out there (despite the attempts of lawyers to obscure them, as well as the smoke and mirrors of racial and gender politics).

[FN1] There's also a nice remark, uttered by Lawson (Spader), that many Biglaw partners might adopt as their own during the Great Recession. When Susan objects to what she perceives as unfair treatment, he responds: "What are you bitching about? I gave you a job." He then goes on to complain about the challenges of running a firm capable of supporting all its lawyers.

********************************
So that's what we thought of Race. Check out the play for yourself to form your own opinion. You can read more about it, and order tickets, via the links collected below.

Disclosure: We received complimentary tickets to the show (and they were very good seats).

Race on Broadway [official website]
We Can't Stop Talking About Race in America [New York Times]
In Mametland, a Skirmish in Black and White [New York Times]
No Winner in 'Race' [New York Post]

David Mamet - Kerry Washington - Law - Theatre - James Spader

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:39, January 9, 2010
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-	[[Category:Un-answered questions]]	+	The most important inventions are:
 		+	*1950: Credit card: Frank X. McNamara
 		+	*1951: Combined oral contraceptive pill: Djerassi, Miramontes, and Rosenkranz [88]
 		+	*1951: Nuclear power reactor: Walter Zinn
 		+	*1952: Optical fiber: Narinder Singh Kapany[89][90]
 		+	*1952: Hovercraft: Christopher Cockerell
 		+	*1958: Integrated circuit: Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor
 		+	*1958: Communications satellite: Kenneth Masterman-Smith
 		+
 		+	[[Category:Inventions]]
 		+	[[Category:Answered questions]]

London blends porn and politics, Miroslaw Balka brings the Holocaust to Oxford, and Liverpool bids a stylish goodbye to analogue TV

Lisson Presents 7, London

A few years back, New Yorker Cory Arcangel made his name manipulating creations of the computer age. By hacking into Super Mario Bros and erasing everything but the floating clouds, he turned a game into a meditative video work; via a similar trick, he pared down Space Invaders to a lone, existential rocket. This month, London's Lisson Gallery has invited Arcangel to show his own work alongside that of an older generation. This includes artists such as conceptual art pioneer Stephen Willats, whose multimedia works employed computers as early the 1970s. And Rodney Graham's photographic fictions are paralleled in Arcangel's experiments with Photoshop.

Hyperborean Manners, 1 Sutton Lane, London

The title of this energetic group show is lifted from Conrad's The Secret Agent, in which an anarchist bookseller intent on blowing up civilisation describes his co-conspirator as having "Hyperborean manners" – those of a mythical Greek people who inhabited a land where everything was perfect. Works by 20 artists take their cue from the anarchist's shop window in the book, where a clutter of porn and politics make strangely suitable bedfellows. Included are such disparate names as concrete poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, British pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, eminent collagist John Stezaker, as well as young artists such as conceptual photographer Walead Beshty and cataloguer of protest songs Ruth Ewan. There's also the erotic comic-strip art of Conrad Frost and Josep Gual, and poster art by the radical 1960s British situationist group King Mob.

Miroslaw Balka, Modern Art Oxford

The long shadow of the Holocaust casts its pall over Polish artist Miroslaw Balka's sobering work. At the same time as his cavernous industrial container eats up the light in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, Modern Art Oxford is staging Topography, an exhibition of his lesser-known video art. Though Balka's project is undeniably memorial, he isn't interested in fixing the past in stone. A series of works chronicle the changing landscapes of Nazi concentration camps. Wild deer are seen grazing in Auschwitz's winter wasteland, oblivious to the horror that once took place there; while silence haunts a frozen lake at Birkenau. In another work, Balka's camera spins round and round, as if unable to focus on the trauma.

Unresolved, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

The Manchester-based Pavel Büchler – artist, essayist and university professor – has chosen work for a group show at the city's Castlefield Gallery according to impressively straightforward criteria: he has chosen work he likes. There is no grand theme to this show, or links forced between the artists' works. Büchler's selection includes Kris Fierens's blurry, washed-out paintings, monochrome photography by Pamela Rosenkranz, Ian Rawlinson's ad hoc-looking sculpture, Gregor Hylla's geometric abstract painting, and a video work by Maeve Rendle depicting an appropriately unsynchronised piano rehearsal. It makes for a palate-cleansing presentation of art for art's sake.

Janek Schaefer, the Bluecoat, Liverpool

Sound art can seem a marginal affair, but a new show by Janek Schaefer proves that even personal stories can have immense resonance. The Blue Coat retrospective, spanning 20 years, includes such masterworks as Extended Play, the piece that won him British Composer of the Year in 2008. It mingled family history with political intrigue in a tribute to the child survivors of war, with musical codes, transmitted during the second world war between London and Warsaw on the day his Polish mother was born, realised as a haunting string recording. His latest work, National Portrait, is a unique sound collage of TV broadcasts taken from the last day of analogue transmissions in Liverpool, created just a week ago.