Word: fakeness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...1980s, when Allerleirauh was putting on spectacular events that had little to do with conventional fashion shows. Visitors to "Free Within Borders" can watch video footage of Allerleirauh's fashion extravaganzas, which - with music composed especially for the shows and special effects including fountains of fire, fake fog and giant human "birds" flying through the air on steel cables - are best described as a mixture of apocalyptic party, theater and performance art. "It was a comment on the downfall of the G.D.R. without really knowing that it was going to happen," Gericke says...
...focus of a dynastic cult of personality like no other. (Dead for 15 years, Kim Il Sung is still North Korea's "President for life.") Kim Jong Il has three sons from two wives. The eldest embarrassed his father in 2001 by trying to sneak into Japan on a fake passport. His father thinks the middle son, Kim Jong Chul, is "too feminine" for the job, according to Fujimoto. Hence the mantle of leadership will apparently someday be handed to Kim Jong Un. "A systematic succession plan is now under way, and has been since early this year," Cheong Seong...
...match for Art Williams, one of the most inventive and prolific counterfeiters of recent decades. After learning the craft at 16 from his mother's boyfriend, Williams, the product of a tough neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, went on to print an estimated $10 million in fake money by outmaneuvering the government's ever-tightening security measures. Color-changing ink was replicated by automotive paint; watermarks were painstakingly sketched by hand; a close copy of the secret paper came from leftover newsprint rolls made at local mills. Williams had a successful 10-year run before he was finally caught...
...counterfeiters you write about seem to have a certain reverence for the crime's long history. Art's mentor, a man nicknamed "Da Vinci," insisted on listening to Italian opera while making fake bills because the music itself was old. Is that romantic aura part of what drew Art into the crime? Well, I think initially what drew him in was the desire to make money. But it does take a certain sensibility to be a producer of counterfeit money; you have to have an artistic sense. You have to have a respect for the craft and a creative personality...
...striking detail of the story is how Art and his wife would travel around the country and unload their fake bills by buying random supplies and souvenirs, getting real money in change. Then they donated those supplies to charity. They'd have all this extra stuff, and they'd drop it off at Salvation Armies and churches. That became as important to them as the money itself, that feeling of charity. He wasn't a greedy counterfeiter...