Dutch-American Writer, "Resist"

Co-Founder Hans Koning Dies

Radical writer and "Resist" co-founder Hans Koning died April 13, 2007 at the age of 85 at his home in Easton, Connecticut after a short illness. The author of over 40 fiction and non-fiction books, he was also a prolific journalist, contributing for almost 60 years to many periodicals including the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Harpers and The New Yorker.

Born in Amsterdam on July 12th 1921 to Elisabeth van Collem and Daniel Koningsberger, he was educated at the University of Amsterdam 1939-41, The University of Zurich 1941-43, and the Sorbonne in 1946. He was the grandson of the well-known Dutch poet Abraham van Collem.

Escaping occupied Holland with the Resistance (he was a wearer of the Dutch Resistance Cross), he was one of the youngest sergeants in the British Liberation Army, 7 Troop, 4 Commando, working as an interpreter during the allied occupation of Germany at the end of the war. His Major wrote of him, “The problems of occupation have been made much easier with the help of this NCO who not only knows the character and customs of the German people but has studied the academic approach to international affairs. Sgt ‘Hans’ as he is known to everyone in the battery has been a loyal and trustworthy member of the unit…his quiet sense of humor and his fundamentally serious mien have won him the friendship of officers and men alike”.

French Philosopher and Social Theorist Jean Baudrillard Dies

Elaine Ganley, Canadian Press

PARIS (AP) — Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and social theorist known for his provocative commentaries on consumerism, excess and what he said was the disappearance of reality, died Tuesday, his publishing house said. He was 77.

Baudrillard died at his home in Paris after a long illness, said Michel Delorme, of the Galilee publishing house.

Francis Wheen: Show Me the Kapital to make "Karl Marx the Movie"
Oliver Duff

Francis Wheen's 1999 biography of Karl Marx portrayed an endearing, cigar-chomping Victorian hellraiser prone to intellectual bullying, drunken pub crawls and organising his daughter's suitors; penniless and largely ignored in his lifetime. Fans of the book included the militia leaders of Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

Now Wheen, columnist, historian and deputy editor of Private Eye, is in talks to turn his opus into a film. On Friday, he met in Paris with the Haitian director Raoul Peck, a former cab driver who became the Haitian Culture minister during a brief democratic hiatus, soon to work with Martin Scorsese.

"It's early days, but quite exciting," Wheen tells Pandora. "Raoul Peck seems very nice. We're putting together a treatment and finding funds from somewhere."

Wheen has been here before - in 1999, with movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, then boss of Miramax. Weinstein sent his emissary Tina Brown to London to tell Wheen that he loved the book, wanted Tom Stoppard to write a screenplay and planned to cast Ralph Fiennes as Marx and Gwyneth Paltrow as the aristocratic wife, Jenny von Westphalen.

Weinstein and Brown's interest evaporated. A subsequent BBC dramatisation was pulled when Greg Dyke "suddenly said he was fed up with 19th-century dramas with bonnets". Says Wheen: "I explained, unsuccessfully, that there aren't many bonnets in the Marx story."

Wheen's ideal casting? "Johnny Depp and [his wife] Vanessa Paradis."