Among contemporary German authors, one stands out who for years has been able to operate in various forms of expression and does not fit into any category: Thomas Kapielski....
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Merkur | Prospect | Die Weltwoche | The New Yorker | Literaturen | Dissent | Folio | Le Monde | De Groene Amsterdammer | Il Foglio | The Spectator | Gazeta Wyborcza | NRC Handelsblad
Merkur 01.04.2007 (Germany)
Political scientist Matthias Küntzel recalls the reactions in the West – from helplessness to admiration – to the Iranian revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini and wonders why European politicians are so slow to learn when it comes to Iran. "In June 2006, Javier Solana, emissary of the six powers, proposed to the regime 'a new relationship on the basis of mutual respect and trust' in almost the exact same words that Jimmy Carter, shortly after the hostage-taking, made the friendly but absurd offer of a 'new and mutually advantageous partnership.' Tehran responded to this fawning in its own particular way: one day before Solana arrived, it expanded its uranium enrichment programme."
Prospect 01.04.2007 (UK)
A discussion is going on in the UK about whether the goverment should make reparation payments to descendents of slaves. After all, the British profited enormously from teh slave trade. Historian James Walvin describes the dilemma (only online): "The history of slavery is not dead and gone. On both sides of the Atlantic, the sense of grievance and communal hurt among the descendants of slaves is profound—more than most white people realise. Although the reparations debate is sustained by that mood, it has more specific origins. The post-1948 settlements between Germany and Israel form an obvious starting point, but so too is the widespread awareness that in 1833 the British parliament compensated slave owners to the tune of a massive 20 million pounds for the loss of their slaves. Not a penny was paid to the enslaved."
Die Weltwoche 29.03.2007 (Switzerland)
Putin may not be a flawless democrat, but his government's track record is positive, writes Roger Köppel: "In retrospect it's perhaps a miracle that it never came to the development many people thought possible: that Russia could degenerate into a sort of Weimar Republic, with all the difficulties that entails. To understand Moscow's success, you have to bear in mind the example of Yugoslavia. And the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky is instructive as far as Putin bashing goes. The oligarch, who people in the West liked to cast as a dove, was in fact a cut-throat businessman who managed to buy up his oil empire thanks to official toleration and dubious rock-bottom prices, and who was not exactly pussy-footed in dealing with competitors. Above all, however, he trod on Putin's toes when he bribed Duma members to secure a position of power countervailing that of the president. Putin had to stop Khodorkovsky. What was wrong was the way he did it, the show trial and heavy-handed stripping of the corporate group."
The New Yorker 09.04.2007 (USA)
Adam Gopnik has been rummaging through novels and digging up the best descriptions of food and the best recipes – while trying a few himself. "These days, we have long cooking sequences in Ian McEwan; endless recipes in James Hamilton-Paterson; menus analyzed at length in John Lanchester; and detailed culinary scenes involving Robert B. Parker’s bruiser of a detective, Spenser. Cooking is to our literature what sex was to the writing of the sixties and seventies, the thing worth stopping the story for to share, so to speak, with the reader."
John Cassidy offers a portrait of former political advisor to George W. Bush, deputy foreign minister and neocon, who supported the Irak invasion: Paul Wolfowitz. Since 2005, he's been head of the World Bank and is very controversial there – particularly for his position that corrupt regimes should not be entitled to payments by the World Bank.
Literaturen 02.04.2007 (Germany)
Historian Gerd Koenen takes his review of the posthumously published diaries of the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya (more) as an opportunity to describe the current situation in Russia and the danger in which all regime critics find themselves. "The question of what those in power fear can be answered much as it was in the Soviet Union: not a couple of old men and women; not the few journalists and human rights activists whose influence is minimal and restricted to Internet publication; and not the handful of young men and women who sporadically charge the state organs with a crazy ideological mix of national bolshevism and anarchism, expressed in desperate banter. The gentlemen in the Kremlin are much more concerned that it will become clear to what extent their seemingly invulnerable power is built on social quicksand."
Dissent 01.04.2007 (USA)
Johann Hari reviews a series of books on Islam in Europe, from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "The Caged Virgin" to Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept," and points out a serious mistake in the thinking of multiculturalists. "Multiculturalism has worked on the assumption that there is one 'pure' Islam, represented by elderly mullahs. Now that Islam is splitting into liberal and literalist wings, this approach places European states closer to the reactionaries than to the feminists and liberals. We will have to ensure there are no more state-funded Muslim-only schools and youth clubs, no more privileged status for reactionary clerics. 'It must,' Bawer notes, 'become impossible for children growing up in Western Europe to be raised to see their religious affiliation as the be-all and end-all of their identity.'"
Folio 01.04.2007 (Switzerland)
Just in time for spring, Folio has gotten romantic: it's about marriage. Journalist Shobha De considers the good old arranged marriage to be the model for the future in an India that's uncertain about women's emancipation. "Men in Asian societies are not equipped for rejection. For centuries they've been told that the world – and women – belong to them. They needed only to snap their fingers and point: that's my bride. Bingo. And the chosen one would gush with thankfulness. 'Dream on, boys,' is what they're getting back today. 'You aren't the right one.' That's a massive cultural change that men are having to really chew on. And at this point, mummy comes into play. She's become the chief negotiator, she's the agent in relationship questions. And young men are totally relieved that she's there."
Luca Turin thinks that Guerlain wouldn't be offering the "probably best" perfume in the world had it not been obliged to adapt to new EU regulations. "Then some in-house people refused to mess with the formula and walked out, at which point Guerlain brought in the great Edouard Flechier to fix the problem. He appears to have worked on it for a couple of years. Two days ago I got the new stuff, and it gives me great pleasure to report that Flechier has done the impossible. The new Mitsouko conforms to all the rules and smells sensational, ever so slightly different, more bread-like up top, a touch less sweet below and with a slightly stronger iris note in the middle. If I had to choose between the old and the new, regardless of habit, I might pick the new. Bravo."
Le Monde 31.03.2007 (France)
Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe is up against a strong headwinds thanks to his traffic policy which has been subject to much attack since January, when Liberation ran an article on it with the headline "The destruction of Paris." Now Le Monde and filmmaker Claude Lanzmann are bewailing the situation in a wonderfully offended (and unwittingly funny) article on the "ecologisation" of Paris – in particular, the introduction of bus lanes. "If you drive along the Boulevard Saint-Germain towards Boulevard Saint-Michel and try to turn right in the Rue de Seine or the Odeon , you'll find yourself risking your life: aided by the gray lane next to the normal driving one, taxis fly by on green and prevent others from turning. If you try nonetheless, the chances are good that you'll be rammed into at high speed. Nor are pedestrians safe. I walked by mistake on the checker-painted cement, on the hopscotch, the latest foible of these ecological chubby cheeks and didn't know whether and whither I should go and who might protect me. I'm not the only one." We've always known: life in Saint-Germain des Pres is dangerous!
De Groene Amsterdammer 29.03.2007 (The Netherlands)
In an interview on the second part of his much-discussed Muhammad biography, Arabist Hans Jansen calls the cultural criticism of young Muslims "half-baked": "Recently I spoke with two Salafis, young Islam dogmatists, and they sounded very sensible. There's just one problem: they don't have a solution. I can only agree with their criticism of things related to sexuality, and the over-sexualisation of advertising. But stoning women and men doesn't help. They are also right in finding fault with the increasing commercialisation of our social welfare system. But doing away with pensions altogether won't get us any further. In this regard I see myself as a successor to Karel van het Reve. The communists were certainly right in criticising capitalist society, but they didn't have a solution. And it's the same with radical Muslims."
Il Foglio 31.03.2007 (Italy)
Gabriella Mecucci looks back on the Venice Biennale of 1977, which was dedicated to dissent and dissidents. With discussions on the reform of communism and an exhibition of samizdat literature, the Biennale became the most important cultural event of the 1970s, and grounds for considerable tension with the USSR. "Riccardo Manzini convened Biennale director Carlo Ripa di Meana and gave him a talking to: 'Honoured president, your decision has resulted in a serious worsening of relations with the USSR. Nikita Rijov (the Russian ambassador) has paid me a visit and informed me that his government interprets the 1977 programme as an act of deep animosity, an attack on the Soviet Union.' In this way, political countermeasures reached right to the heart of the Biennale, and Ripa di Meana handed in his resignation with a reference to 'unbearable interference on the part of foreign powers.' It seems that ambassador Rijov hit the bull's-eye. After that a good hundred or so questions were raised on the subject in the parliament and senate."
The Spectator 31.03.2007 (UK)
French-based author Theodor Dalrymple explains France and its presidential candidates to his countrymen: Sarkozy divides, Royal is like a sedative, and Bayrou? "Bayrou excites no emotions: his very absence of high profile may yet prove his greatest asset. I remember a Peruvian peasant's reply when asked why he had voted for Fujimori in the most important election in the country's history: I voted for him, he replied, because I don't know anything about him. This implies a rather pessimistic view of the moral qualities of politicians in parliamentary democracies, one that is now almost universal in countries where elections are held with any kind of regularity; but it makes Bayrou a distinctly possible future president. As for Le Pen, the word is virtually unmentionable, at least in decent company. I don't think I've ever met anyone who admitted to voting for him, and can therefore only conclude that the French electoral system in its counting is massively rigged in his favour."
Gazeta Wyborcza 31.03.2007 (Poland)
In a very readable interview, Norman Davies, the most Polish of British historians, explains how he imagines a common European history book. "We should start with a small handbook to get the facts straight, before discussing different interpretations. Historians are seldom successful at selling their histories to other nations. They know too much and think too little about how this knowledge could be received abroad. Someone once said to me that only a Chinese person could write a true history of Poland, because otherwise things inevitably get tangled up in disputes over honour. A Pole, on the other hand, could write the history of Portugal."
NRC Handelsblad 28.03.2007 (The Netherlands)
Maarten Huygen sees one reason for the new Dutch "culture of bans" (more on this phenomenon in Germany here) in the longer life expectancies in wealthy Western European countries. "Why are there so many smokers in poor countries? Because smoking is not as harmful there. In those countries most people don't die of the consequences of tobacco consumption, but much earlier, of infectious diseases that primarily attack the elderly." But too many bans can be counterproductive. "If bans become too widespread, people's behaviour can swing about in the opposite direction. Victorian London was the world's prostitution capital. And now chaste Tehran is top spot for heroin, prostitution and alcohol. You just have to know the rules - sometimes also the unwritten ones."
RSS
The Hungarian magazines are thrilled to be able to read Herta Müller's "Everything I Own I Carry With Me". In the Blätter, Jürgen Habermas calls for an extension of human rights into the social sphere. In La regle du jeu, big name European intellectuals defend their Croatian colleague Predrag Matvejevitch, who faces imprisonment for describing an ultra-nationalist Croatian poet as the "Catholic Taliban". Slate wants to know whether Nabokov's poem "Pale Fire" was meant seriously or not. The TLS meets radical feminists with fabulous names - like the anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre. Przekroj looks at the two types of Turkish cinema. And in the NYT, Jay Rosen explains why the Internet is eroding America's most beautiful ideal.
Mediapart decries the connivances of French politics and media. In the Nation, Colin Robinson picks a fight with Amazon. Osteuropa rolls out the red carpet for the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg. The London Review remembers the media feeding frenzy around Tolstoy's deathbed. In Opendemocracy, the poet Tatiana Shcherbina feels the evil creeping back into Russia.
The Swiss Magazin looks at the lawyers and doctors who are producing stewardesses and farmers. Caffe Europa shares Ulrich Beck's optimism about the religious mix of the future. The Boston Globe looks at the powerlessness of facts in the face of false convictions. In Le Monde, Michel Onfray trembles before the language of empire. The New Statesmen evaluates the new young supertaskers. The TLS reads a book about 19th anarchists. Outlook India and the NYT tackle terror in India, Pakistan and Yemen.
The New Yorker wonders which is better equipped to determine the authenticity of a Leonardo da Vinci: the connoisseur or the forensic scientist. Polityka picks through the remains of the Fourth Republic. In The Observer, Claire Denis talks about shame and humiliation. In La regle du jeu, Roberto Saviano does not like what he sees in the eyes of his admirers. MicroMega has witnessed the birth of a political monster: illiberal democracy. The London Review of Books is looking for aliens to take care of our nuclear waste.
The New Yorker profiles Saad Mohseni, Afghanistan's first media mogul. La vie des idees and the Guardian recommend Gilbert Achcar's book "The Arabs and the Holocaust". The children in Hungary are eating their revolution, fears Elet es Irodalom. Magyar Narancs and Rue89 fear for independence of the press. In Open Democracy, Lisbet Rausing worries about the future of the library. In the NYRB, Tim Parks warns non-English writing authors against liberal international readers.
The Walrus strolls through Johannesburg with the flaneurs. In Telerama, Olivier Bomsel defines the digital as script.The London Review is peeved that Christopher Hitchens is having so much fun. In Osteuropa, Hungarian writers and nihilists weave away at the deadly void. The New Statesman reads Vasili Grossman's "Everything Flows" and meets the great man's daughter. Al Ahram warns European Muslims about the perils of Salafism. Salon asks why Adrian Lamo turned in the alleged whistle-blower Bradley Manning and what Wired's Kevin Poulsen had to do with it.
The big stories of our time are being told in reportage rather than fiction, says novelist Geoff Dyer in the Guardian. Lettre International meets the marginalised in Rome and Rotterdam. In Espresso, Umberto Eco fantasises about 6 billion encyclopaedias. The Nation finds many ways to erase Israel from the map without being anti-Semitic. The Spectator speculates about the counter-cultural concentration camp that Glastonbury has become. The Atlantic waves farewell to men.
Prospect chucks contemporary art into the dustbin of history. Where it will join Polish book culture, if Res Publica Nowa is to be believed. And iTunes to boot, according to the New Yorker. In El Pais Semanal, the physicist Michio Kaku sees the internet everywhere. Young people however, claims the LRB, are proving remarkably resilient to its influences. In the NYRB, Timothy Snyder reviews Christopher R. Browning's new book "Remembering Survival" about the ghetto in Wierzbnik. Le Monde puts three Chinese dissidents on a pedestal.
The New Yorker escorts us into the extraordinary paranoid world of Wikileak founder Julian Assange. In Merkur, Udo di Fabio praises the egalitarian properties of money. The Economist discusses the latest mass import in Africa: homophobia. In Micromega, Paolo Flores d'Arcais cannot understand why Saviano needs defrocking. Paris is partying in celebration of the collapse of the Anglo-American system, das Magazin reports. n+1 delves into the Berlin Roman. The New York Times charts the success of Dutch politician Job Cohen.
The NYRB takes on the privatisation of the net by Steven P. Jobs. The NYT is already bored of life in the suburban Applecrest Estates. In Eurozine, Sven Egil Omdal delivers a comprehensive report on the crisis in the Norwegian newspaper industry. The Walrus learns how to become an expert from the unrepentant whore Jamie Lee Hamilton. In Elet and Irodalom, we learn how Hungarian nationalism foments Slovak nationalism, And Umberto Eco explains in Espresso, why he would never boycott Gianni Vattimo.
The Nation reads Jonathan Israel's history of radical Enlightenment. In Elet es Irodalom, György Konrad tells the Hungarians to stand up for freedom or kiss it goodbye. English is a Dalit goddess, standing on a computer, Tehelka says, and there's nothing you can do about it. In the Atlantic, Google's Eric Schmidt loses himself in his creepily colourful vision of the future. In Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg gives publishers the answer one would have expected from Google. Slate asks why Paul Berman is not being discussed by Arab intellectuals. Tygodnik Powszechny thinks about Polish-Russian reconcilation. Prospect explains why, in the future, you will be arrested for over-frequent visits to the toilet when flying.
The NYRB solves the Cuba dilemma. In Eurozine, Martina Simecka and Laszlo Rajk talk about their fathers, prominent communists who were persecuted by communists. Julian Barnes reads Eugene Delacroix's diary for the TLS. Odra asks why Bogdan Wojdowski has been forgotten. In Le point, BHL explains why he supports JCall's "Call for Reason". The New Yorker portrays Andrei Ternowski, the 17-year-old Chatroulette inventor. Wired calls on programmers to create a new Facebook, where privacy is respected.
The New York Times dives into the data streams of the self-trackers. N+1 assesses "The Intellectual Situation". In the Onfray vs. Freud debate, BHL defends the psychoanalyst against fatuous platitudes. Peter Nadas tells Magyar Narancs that capitalism will be to blame if Hungary goes to the dogs. For Tony Judt, re-education is the only way to combat authoritarianism. And in Salon, Miroslav Kusy explains that, in Slovakia, "the people" have been replaced by "human beings", but "citizens" have yet to be invited into the political arena.
In Eurozine, Kenan Malik asks what makes a real Muslim. For Osteuropa, Serhij Zadan travels though Ukraine's death valley. Wired visits old hackers. The most pig-headed of them, Richard Stallman, explains in the Boston Review, why cloud computing means thinking like a sucker. Frontline crosses the digital divide to where linux has transformed the lives of children in rural Bengal. The NYRB looks at why, after receiving 26 billion dollars in aid, Ethiopians are still hungry. In Magazin, the psychoanalyst Jürg Atlin warns about over-enthusiasm for cleansing in the wake of the paedophile scandals. Magyar Naracs observes a sacralisation of the state in Poland.