Vienna
The Ego and the Yid
A few years ago, Edward Said was invited to give a lecture at the Freud Society in Vienna, at Berggasse 19 no less, on the subject of "Freud and the Non-European." Then he chose to enact his vocation as an intellectual by gayly throwing a rock at an Israeli guardhouse across the Lebanese border, and the Freud Society withdrew its invitation. "Freud was hounded out of Vienna because he was a Jew," Said explained to The New York Times. "Now I'm hounded out because I'm a Palestinian." It was one of the more extreme expressions of Said's compassion for himself. It put me in mind of an autobiogr READ MORE >>
The Rescuer
A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust by David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff (The New Press, 269 pp., $26.95) READ MORE >>
Iran’s Nuclear Menace
The Speculator
I am acting out a fantasy and so is Eastern Europe. A psychiatrist once told me how dangerous it is to act out fantasies and I am beginning to see what he meant. --George Soros READ MORE >>
The Decline of the City Mahagonny
I. READ MORE >>
The Shot Heard Round The World
"Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world." —Hymn sung at the completion of the Battle Monument, Concord, July 4, 1837 READ MORE >>
Drawing The Line
Thou Shalt Not Raise Prices
On the same day last week, President Ford, Treasury Secretary Simon and Secretary of State Kissinger—powerful and well-briefed men—described the world as teetering on the brink of an economic war that may pull down the structure of Western wealth. Although no shots may be fired, they warned, the war through its indirect impact on food production and credit arrangements may cause the death of millions and devastate national economies as effectively as did the armed battalions of World War II. READ MORE >>
English Writing and Total War
This article was originally published July 14th, 1941. READ MORE >>
Austrian Communists and the Intellectuals
Of all the Communist parties, both in the East and West, none is in such a peculiar and paradoxical position as die Austrian. Though backed by Red guns and money, it has been unable to obtain more than a steady five percent of the total vote in a country whose unemployment problem among its youth is phenomenal, and whose living standard during the last twenty years has suffered one of the greatest declines of any nation in Europe. Indeed so inept have Communist Efforts become that during the last elections they could find no better campaign issue than increased pensions for the aged. READ MORE >>
