The Berlin International Film Festival — or “Berlinale” — came to a close last Sunday with the “Golden Bear” for best film going to the Turkish film Bal [Honey] and the “Silver Bear” for best director going to none other than Roman Polanski for his new political thriller The Ghost Writer. Writing in the German [...]
Please note that Trans-Int now features a newsletter service. The sign-up form is in the right sidebar. For those devoted and persistent readers who have somehow managed to find their way back here after the long barren periods, this might be a good option. The newsletter service is provided by FeedBlitz. As I have the system [...]
From an American perspective, it might be thought that European “leftists” brought down the SWIFT agreement, which would have permitted American investigators to continue inspecting selected European bank transfer data as part of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP). But a review of events leading up to last week’s European parliament vote shows that it [...]
“In Response to Iran’s Nuclear Program, German Firms Are Slowly Pulling Out” reads the headline in the February 2 edition of the New York Times. Out of Iran, one supposes. The basis for this vast generalization is the decision of a single German firm, the engineering giant Siemens, to forgo any new contracts with Iranian [...]
Last month, the Domestic Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag announced that it will hold inquiries into an alleged CIA plan to kill the Hamburg resident Mamoun Darkazanli. But as the German journalist Stefan Frank points out, the Bundestag might do better to hold hearings into the activities of the supposedly intended “victim” himself. For [...]
Der Rechtsstaat. The term is a favorite of German politicians and editorialists — especially when it comes to bashing the USA and measures taken by the USA in its war with Islamic terror organizations. Literally, it means the “state of law” or “legal state.” But the closest common English expression would be rather the “rule [...]
What is WWF? It is commonly assumed that the self-described “conservation organization” is a private advocacy group funded by donations from the public: in other words, a “non-governmental organization” or “NGO.” But closer inspection of WWF’s finances reveals that the “NGO” moniker is here — as indeed in so many cases — a misnomer. It would [...]
In December 2008, Berlin’s influential Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism came in for sharp criticism for holding a conference titled “Conceptions of the Muslim as Enemy — Conceptions of the Jew as Enemy.” Critics accused the center and its director, Wolfgang Benz, of equating contemporary “Islamophobia” with historical anti-Semitism. In response, Benz would insist [...]
