Link Salad, the Vergangenheitsbewältigung Edition
-- Blood Ties - Alex Mar, Oxford American, Mar. 8, 2016
"A teenager named Juan Ponce, from León, is among the two hundred “gentleman volunteers” who used a political or family hookup (read: a bribe) to make their way onto one of Colón’s ships that September in 1493. He had to: though he’s upper-class enough, Juan Ponce has no money of his own. At nineteen, he’s a recently unemployed soldier, desperate for opportunity. This is a salaried job, and there’s been a lot of talk of gold. To be a conquistador means you are on the make, a hustler, the most aggressive breed of young capitalist out to win your fortune-no matter how respected your family name. Ponce, pronounced PAWN-seh."
-- Are French prisons ‘finishing schools’ for terrorism? - Christopher de Bellaigue, The Guardian, Mar. 17, 2016
"For all Blin’s enthusiasm for understanding these menaces to society, the animating principle behind the new units is not philanthropic, but practical. The majority of the detainees housed within them have been incarcerated for “criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise” - a portmanteau charge that encompasses fighters who have travelled to Syria and the administrators of jihadi websites alike, and carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Before very long, the men behind the locked cell doors - men considered too dangerous for us to meet - will be out. Can the country’s prisons solve a problem that the wider society has utterly failed to repair? (see also, The Ultimate Terrorist Factory - Scott Sayare, Harper's Magazine, Jan. 2016)
-- The Tough Legacy of Ulrike Meinhof - Sean Williams, Latterly Magazine, Mar. 18, 2016
"Years later, when Meinhof and Röhl had split and the former’s life as a left-wing paramilitary was blossoming, she attempted to dump her daughters at a Palestinian orphanage. The plan was scuttled only when Stefan Aust, a former konkret colleague who would later pen Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex, the book which would become a hit 2008 movie, kidnapped the girls while en route in Sicily and returned them to their father. Both have since grown up to be writers and vocal opponents of their mother’s politics."
"A teenager named Juan Ponce, from León, is among the two hundred “gentleman volunteers” who used a political or family hookup (read: a bribe) to make their way onto one of Colón’s ships that September in 1493. He had to: though he’s upper-class enough, Juan Ponce has no money of his own. At nineteen, he’s a recently unemployed soldier, desperate for opportunity. This is a salaried job, and there’s been a lot of talk of gold. To be a conquistador means you are on the make, a hustler, the most aggressive breed of young capitalist out to win your fortune-no matter how respected your family name. Ponce, pronounced PAWN-seh."
-- Are French prisons ‘finishing schools’ for terrorism? - Christopher de Bellaigue, The Guardian, Mar. 17, 2016
"For all Blin’s enthusiasm for understanding these menaces to society, the animating principle behind the new units is not philanthropic, but practical. The majority of the detainees housed within them have been incarcerated for “criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise” - a portmanteau charge that encompasses fighters who have travelled to Syria and the administrators of jihadi websites alike, and carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Before very long, the men behind the locked cell doors - men considered too dangerous for us to meet - will be out. Can the country’s prisons solve a problem that the wider society has utterly failed to repair? (see also, The Ultimate Terrorist Factory - Scott Sayare, Harper's Magazine, Jan. 2016)
-- The Tough Legacy of Ulrike Meinhof - Sean Williams, Latterly Magazine, Mar. 18, 2016
"Years later, when Meinhof and Röhl had split and the former’s life as a left-wing paramilitary was blossoming, she attempted to dump her daughters at a Palestinian orphanage. The plan was scuttled only when Stefan Aust, a former konkret colleague who would later pen Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex, the book which would become a hit 2008 movie, kidnapped the girls while en route in Sicily and returned them to their father. Both have since grown up to be writers and vocal opponents of their mother’s politics."