Oh boy, this was just what I was waiting for to see. :-/
For all those non-German speakers: It's a sort of pamphlet that proposes to replace words of English origin with their French counterparts because
Wer unrechtmaessig, z.T. sogar unmoralische Politik betreibt, kann [...] kein Vorbild sein.
("Those acting illegally, or partly even unethically cannnot be an archetype")
This article is, of course, referring to the war on Iraq that would mainly be carried out by English-speaking countries ("Der Krieg gegen den Irak wird in der Hauptsache von den englischsprachigen Laendern getragen").
The scary thing is: this initiative has been brought forth by an association in which a professor of my university is one of the four members. He happens to be working for the chair of German linguistics (the chair where I spent most of my academic time). Funnily, this chap (the second from the top) does not speak English himself.
I wonder what happened to the principle of a politically neutral science.
It got dropped when people noticed that Eco and a thousand lesser Frenchmen philosophes got in the media more.
Now every hack with tenure wants to be a conceptual artist!
I'm waiting for Lysenkoism to come back.
Re:Politically neutral science
ethan on 2003-04-12T22:04:13
That's a good way to put it. Some people seem to miss the fact that people like Eco are so widely heard not because they are merely political but rather because they have something to say. I am myself a big fan of him even though I seldom agree with his political views. But nonetheless what he says is sound and always full of insight.
