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In a 16. August Die Presse review, Anneliese Rohrer pretty much pans Hillary Rodham-Clinton’s book, Living History. Rohrer echoes a complaint that many American critics have made: that Rodham-Clinton views all criticisms of the Clinton White House as somehow evidence of danger to America’s democratic system, and that she portrays the members of the administration as victims. (We would call it Hillary’s obsession with the “Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.”)

The ultra-left Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorized West Germany during the late 1970s, particularly in 1977. Of course in post-communist Europe they are now seen as murderers and as pathetic adherents to a discredited political system, correct? Incorrect. The group, which disbanded only eight years ago, is instead achieving cult-status, as is the entirety of East Germany itself.

In Die Presse of Saturday 12. Aug. 2003, an opinion piece by Barbara Petsch criticizes an exhibition currently underway in Berlin. The exhibition is titled “Mythos RAF”. Petsch points out that the exhibition received a 100,000 euro grant from the “Berliner-Haupstadt Kulturfonds”, which I assume is a governmental or quasi-governmental entity. She also points out that it is often artists who begin this rehabilitation of demons from the past. Specifically, she mentions the new opera about the two most infamous people associated with the RAF, Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader. (You might also see the RAF referred to as the Baader-Meinhof Gang.)

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) online English edition has an article concerning the controversy over this “Mythos RAF” exhibition. The article is from 2000, and points out one of the other sensitive aspects of revisiting RAF history: the current German Interior Minister, Otto Schily (a Social Democrat), represented two of the RAF defendants. According to the FAZ article, Schily now has a “well-established reputation as a hard-liner on law-and-order issues.” And at the time of the article (2000) he vehemently opposed the exhibition and wrote letters to the families of RAF victims, telling them “that their ‘worries are very justified.’”

Interested in more about the RAF/Baader-Meinhof? The following site dedicated to the topic is apparently run by the son of a U.S. Army bomb disposal technician who diffused several of the group’s bombs.

… replaced this week by “Downsize This!” — by Michael Moore! “Stupid White Men” sits at number two. This according to the Kleine Zeitung. Both books are in German.

Also, today I visited a nearby Amadeus (large bookstore akin to Barnes and Noble in America). They have one prominent display table full of nothing but Moore’s “Downsize This!”, stacks of them, and then in the current events section the same book also has a complete shelf to itself — I could find no other book that had a complete shelf or table to itself. The books on the display table sit atop a scrunched-up United States flag. Wonderful.

Saturday headlines:

Die Presse: P.1: “‘Black Thursday’ in the USA: Vulnerability Shocks the Superpower.” P.2: “Blackout in New York: Chaos, but no Panic.” Also P.2: “Electricity collapse: The power stations failed through the domino effect, but the morale of the people remained intact.”

Kleine Zeitung: “Black Friday for 50 million.” (P.2: “The Superpower sits in darkness”)

A short front page editorial in Die Presse, by Christine Domforth, makes the point that privatization of the electrical grid is not necessarily in itself a bad thing, and that those who view the US’s problem as a argument to completely do away with privatization are throwing out the baby with the bath water (giesst allerdings das Kind mit dem Bad aus.) A page 4 article, on the other hand, is titled “The Dark Side of Privatization,” though in fact the article itself doesn’t seem to say a whole lot about privatization.

Also on page 4 of Die Presse is an article that highlights the cross-border blame game between Canada and the U.S.

Both Die Presse and the Kleine Zeitung showed large photos of the Manhattan Skyline in darkness.

Page 4 of the Kleine Zeitung has a small article about Austrians who were there in N.Y. when the blackout (Mega-Stromausfall) happened. One Austrian woman’s husband works in a hospital in N.Y. and told her he would spend the night there, and that the hospital maintains ten days of reserve water and electricity; the patients were not in danger. A woman working at the Austrian consulate reported walking from Manhattan to Queens. “Some passers-by tried to regulate the traffic, but that was hopeless.” She added that the atmosphere was fantastic and that everybody was very helpful. “My neighbor lit up the staircase with candles, and used his mobile phone display to illuminate the lock to my front door for me.”

Multiple stories in multiple newspapers wonder if there will be a baby boom in the region in nine months.

The Kleine Zeitung quotes President Bush’s comments, and those of President Clinton’s energy secretary Bill Richardson. The Richardson quote: “We are a superpower with the electricity network of the third world.” (I’m translating from the German, so I’m not sure if the quote matches the English.)

On later pages, the Kleine Zeitung includes articles on electrical capacity, including the possibility of such a failure in Austria and Europe. The conclusion is that it’s barely possible. “In comparison to Europe, the U.S. grid network is linear and susceptible to the domino effect.”

Today’s Kurier’s front page editorial blurb makes it a point to mention — in an editorial ostensibly conerning the power blackout in the U.S. — the American love of SUVs “whose tires have never touched anything other than the city streets.”