She produced her first film on tick in 1973 and straightaway it won her a German Film Prize. Now, in 2008, Regina Ziegler is considered Germany?s most successful film and television producer, and this year marks her production company?s 35th anniversary....
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Le Nouvel Observateur | The New Yorker | ResetDoc | Europa | Le point | The Economist | Elet es Irodalom | The New York Times | Nueva Sociedad
Le Nouvel Observateur 10.01.2008 (France)
"What he says is scary." With these words the magazine introduces its interview with Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, whose new novel "Le Village de l'Allemand ou le journal des freres Schiller" (Gallimard) relates how two Algerians living in the Parisian banlieues discover that their father, a hero of the Algerian liberation movement FLN, had formerly been an SS officer. For the Nouvel Obs, the novel "strikes at the heart of our illusions." Sansal has this to say about the situation in his country: "We live under a national-Islamic regime, in an environment heavily influenced by terrorism, and it's patently clear that only a very thin line separates Islamism from Nazism. For Algerian youths, their country is an 'open-air prison.' And for those gradually perishing in the cities, it's a 'concentration camp.' They feel imprisoned not only by walls and impenetrable borders, but also by a dark and violent regime that doesn't even leave them room to dream."
The New Yorker 21.01.2008 (USA)
Ryan Lizza analyses the New Hampshire primary, pointing to a dangerous trend emerging for Barack Obama: the impact of race: "Pollsters are trying to determine whether he experienced the so-called 'Bradley effect.' In 1982, when the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, ran for governor, the final polls showed him with an average lead of eight points over his white Republican rival, George Deukmejian. And yet Deukmejian won, by a point. A similar phenomenon occurred in Virginia in 1989, when L. Douglas Wilder ran for governor against a white opponent, Marshall Coleman. He appeared to be leading by ten points but won by less than one. In both cases, white voters were more willing to tell pollsters that they supported the black candidate than they were to actually vote for him."
Ken Auletta's portrait of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't find its way into our last Magazine Roundup. Auletta was allowed to attend a meeting where several engineers presented upgrades of an existing product: "Page said that the engineers were not ambitious enough. Brin agreed, and said that the proposals were 'muddled' and too cautious. 'We wanted something big,' Page added. 'Instead, you proposed something small. Why are you so resistant?'… In meetings such as this, Page and Brin are like a tag team, taking turns as they chide employees for devising something that is merely a 'cute' solution, not a fundamental one."
ResetDoc 14.01.2008 (Italy)
After its debate on the Left and Islam, ResetDoc has now kicked off a new debate on Western thinkers' concepts of democracy. This issue features contributions by Bolognese political scientist Carlo Galli, New York political scientist Andrew Arato and Cairo philosopher Hassan Hanafi. None of the three supports an idea of democracy based on the individual. While Gallo proposes a notion that would permit the coexistence of cultures, Arato criticises the misuse of the concept of democracy for imperialist purposes, naming the Iraq War as an example. Hanafi agrees: "Democrats and Republicans in the USA share the same ideology of hegemony to back the invasion of Iraq and support Israel. Democracy here is used as a tool to implement the liberal economy and not as a value in itself. It even serves as a camouflage, a cover-up to hide exploitation and hegemony."
Europa 12.01.2008 (Poland)
In an interview, historian Karl Schlögel identifies a major knowledge deficit in Germany's image of Eastern Europe. The once uniform "Eastern Bloc" is now seen as a group of individual countries, each with their own peculiarities. But what these consist of seems to be grasped only by the younger generations, who benefit from direct contact. "Today's residents of Warsaw and Berlin share common experiences, the tempo of life is the same, they use the same gadgets and appliances. This kind of cosmopolitanism is perhaps less spectacular than that of one hundred years ago, which has fascinated me for years. Nevertheless it is shared by huge masses of people. And through it, we are becoming immune to nationalistic temptations."
Le point 10.01.2008 (France)
Philosopher Frederic Worms recommends (re-)reading philosopher Henri Bergson as an "antidote to depression." Worms, publisher of a new critical edition of Bergson's works put out by PUF, believes Bergson's analysis of consciousness and creative life is still relevant – and useful – today. "The paradox of humans is that their intelligence is the greatest success of their lives, and yet at the same time it alienates them from life. Intelligence is by nature depressive, because it brings to mind risks and death… Humans are for that reason depressive animals. It's no accident that like Freudian neurosis, depression is the sickness of the century. Returning to life means reencountering life's necessities and uncertainties, but also its innovation, creativity and joy. It's this polarity of our life and thought that makes Bergson relevant today. You also see it in Freud. Freud allows us to understand our inner conflicts. Bergson, by contrast, helps us recover ourselves."
The Economist 11.01.2008 (UK)
Superficially it looks as if there were cause to fear Islamic radicalisation in Indonesia. Groups of Islamists stage violent attacks and want to ban bikinis being worn – not only by local women. But at second glance things are less drastic than they seem, the magazine assures us: "Indonesia is a huge, varied and complex place, and the radicals - even though some have a semi-official platform - are a small and not very influential minority. Contrary evidence abounds: liberals as well as radicals are making inroads. They have won a big battle over a 'pornography' law that Islamists proposed in 2006. It would have banned bikinis and short skirts, for non-Muslim women too, and prohibited the Hindu minority's traditional dances."
Elet es Irodalom 11.01.2008 (Hungary)
Theologian Tamas Majsai is crestfallen by the passive reaction of the churches to the rally of the Hungarian Guard for more action against so-called "Gypsy crime" (more here). Majsai would have liked to have seen Hungarians following the example of the Prague Archbishop Miloslav Vlk who in a recent Nazi march in the Czech capital personally stood in front of the Jewish graveyard to protect it. "Ombudsmen have called on the president, public dignitaries and the political elite to make a clear statements regarding the Hungarian Guard. But they did not think about our churches. But if these would only come together one time to declare this racist travesty a sin, I very much doubt that anyone would continue to applaud this devilish promulgation. And membership in the Guard would also become shameful. But the churches are doing nothing."
The New York Times 14.01.2008 (USA)
"Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch," explains psychologist Steven Pinker in an entertaining and enlightening article on the workings of the moral instinct. "But whether an activity flips our mental switches to the 'moral' setting isn't just a matter of how much harm it does. We don't show contempt to the man who fails to change the batteries in his smoke alarms or takes his family on a driving vacation, both of which multiply the risk they will die in an accident. Driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is reprehensible, but driving a gas-guzzling old Volvo is not; eating a Big Mac is unconscionable, but not imported cheese or creme brulee. The reason for these double standards is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles."
Nueva Sociedad 13.01.2008 (Argentina)
Latin America is the most heavily urbanised part of the Third World," it says in the Nueva Sociedad editorial. Which is why the current edition of the magazine is all about megacities. Juan Villoro's article (pdf) on his home town Mexico City is particularly well worth reading. "Walter Benjamin's recommendation 'to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest' was not so easy to accomplish in his day because the urban landscape still had all its points of reference which prevented a complete loss of orientation. In a metropolis like the Mexican capital however the flaneur who goes walking to lose himself has been long been replaced by the deportee who goes out in fear of not finding his way home. The odyssey is our daily bread, the greatest challenge we face is getting back to the point we left off in one piece. On the way you might bump into a washing machine crammed with dolls heads which you might think was a piece of conceptual art if you saw it at the documenta or the Venice biennial. But here it has another meaning, for one thing because it so closely resembles the city as a whole."
Alejandro Encinas Rodriguez, the long-serving president of the region around the capital, writes, among other things, that Mexico City's fleet of almost four million cars spews out 24 million litres of burned gas into the air every day.
RSS
In Die Welt, Victor Erofeyev collects his thought on Solzhenitsyn's life and work. The New Republic laments the Europeanisation of American cities. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, theatre directors Monika Strzepka and Pawel Demirski are pining for the equality that neoliberalism has abolished. Prospect magazine covers the re-emergence of character in Britain. Przekroj magazine covers both Sarkozy and heavy metal, albeit in separate articles. And Roberto Saviano tells us in L'Espresso why Italy's boxers will be packing a punch with Southern gusto.
The London Review of Books finds one point on which to agree with General Franco. Rue89 asks: How anti-Semitic is the cartoonist Sine? The Wall Street Journal reports on a Dutch cartoonist who landed in jail for making anti-Muslim jokes. In the New York Times Thomas Schweich looks at myopia, corruption and poppies in Afghanistan. Al-Ahram watched the Egyptian remake of 'Cabaret'. In Espresso, Umberto Eco uses taxi drivers to justify the rise in global security. And political scientist Seyla Benhabib tells ResetDoc why we need blogs.
In the Hungarian Quarterly, Magda Szabo remembers how her first manuscript was smuggled out of Hungary and into the hands of a German publisher's reader by the name of Hermann Hesse. Portfolio portrays the new publisher of the Washington Post, Katherine Weymouth. The Financial Times portrays the editor of the New Yorker, David Remmick. In Espresso, Robert Saviano meet actors who would never join the Mafia. The Economist is amazed to see that the music industry is starting to wise up at last. And in the New Yorker, Chinese students ask why they need democracy.
"Hands off Lech Walesa!" demands Adam Michnik in the Gazeta Wyborcza. Polityka also defends the Solidarnosc leader against the hatred of the Kaczynski brothers. La vie des idees introduces a resistance programme against the dominance of English. In The Nation, Naomi Klein explains the neat rationale for pillaging Iraqi oil. Suketu Mehta encourages slum tourism in Espressso. Martina Navratilova lobs and smashes her way into the art world in the Spectator. And Elet es Irodalom can't get over the Dutch in Hungary.
In American Scholar, Yale professor William Deresiewicz sees the downside of his elite education while standing opposite his plumber. Wired welcomes in the Petabyte Age. Tygodnik Powszechny visits the "Sacroexpo" to look at camouflaged chalices. In the New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith analyses the supra-Kafka. In L'Espresso, Umberto Eco explains the vocative to Italian ministerial officials. Merkur recommends that art critics take a leaf out of Theocritus' Fifteenth Idyll. And the New York Times goes out in search of children in Europe.
The New Republic portrays the last hero of Tiananmen, the surgeon Jiang Yanyong. In Tygodnik Powszechny, historian Jochen Staadt explains why Polish lustration is anything, but not a witch hunt. Polityka says Poles just wanna have fun. The Spectator fears that the Catholic Church is on the brink of civil war. Espresso portrays Italy's two most famous fugitives. The TLS reads Prokofiev's diaries. And the best English-language books of the moment, Outlook India claims, all come from Pakistan.
In Lettre International, philosopher Michail Ryklin explains how power functions. In Le Point, historian Patrice Gueniffey explains the revolutionary passion of the French. In the London Review, psychogeographer Iain Sinclair watches on as Olympic preparations destroy London's East End. In Polityka Adam Krzeminski is irritated by the Polish neo-National Democrats and the German Left. Atlantic hears the music in Rupert Murdoch's plans for the Wall Street Journal. The New Statesman remembers Austrian football hero Matthias Sindelar. Elet es Irodalom asks why we need literature?
The Economist watches the evolution of the book market. Theatre director Pawel Demirski tells Tygodnik Powszechny that Lech Walesa is a dead symbol for Polish youth. The TLS tells us why we're all geeks now. Espresso looks into the female face of India's future labour market. The New York Review of Books has the latest on the love affair between dopamine and the human brain. In Nouvel Obs anti-globalisation network Attac explains the effects of globalisation. In ResetDoc Zygmunt Bauman tells us what to do about it. And the New York Times takes us down to PigCity.
The London Review wishes Elfriede Jelinek's novel "Gier" had never been translated. Polityka provides a history of Polish anti-Semitism - in German too. In Clarin, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava is confident that our cities will soon become pleasant places to live. In Gazeta Wyborcza, political scientist Ivan Krastev assuages ex-Yugoslavian fears that the end of the EU is nigh. In the Guardian, Ian McEwan pours cold water on apocalyptic belief. Al Ahram looks back at the history of the Jews in Egypt. And the New York Times admires Pakistan's strongest democratic weapon: men in black.
The New Humanist observes the rise of Muslim Creationism. Nepszabadsag wonders how democracy should deal with covert racism. The New Yorker introduces Dr. Fadl, a reformed terrorist and one of al-Qaeda's fiercest critics. In the New York Review of Books, the head of the Harvard library explains why the news is only a story. Caffe Europa describes the xenophobia of Italian politicians. Die Weltwoche warily watches the vicious hoodies in the new Justice video.
In the London Review of Books, Kevin Kopelson spills the beans about his plagiarism-littered path to professorship. Elet es Irodalom is green with envy over the independence of the Polish press. The Christians had it better under Nasser and Saddam Hussein, claims Coptic priest Giuseppe Scattolin in Resetdoc. In Le point, Bernard-Henri Levy spits out a colourful array of adjectives to describe the regime in Burma. And in L'Espresso, Umberto Eco analyses how the Mafia is murdering with the times.
In Eurozine the 69-year-old Catalan philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventos admits to his growing radicality. In Nepszabadsag the 75-year-old writer György Konrad declares: remembering is rebellion. In Artforum the 84-year-old philosopher Artur C. Danto thinks about art and revolution. In The New Republic Anne Applebaum takes a hammer to Nicholson Baker's pacifist polemic "Human Smoke". In Folio Christian Demand sends out a distress signal for art criticism. And the Spectator portrays the Anglican Church's only openly gay Bishop.
In the TLS, tenor Ian Bostridge writes about music under totalitarianism. The New Yorker introduces the millionaire-nerd-led group "Intellectual Ventures". Caffe Europe describes Aldo Moro's attempt to reconcile Church and communism. Nepszabadsag and Elet es Irodalom analyse the frequently misundertood concept of "competition" in Hungary. The London Review of Books explains Thabo Mbeki's motivations for backing Mugabe. And in the Weltwoche, violinist Julia Fischer demonstrates how to put up a wall.
Literaturen searches in the giant haystack of literature on '68 for a book on equal rights. The TLS rediscovers the man who sexed the English language. In Outlook India, political scientist Kishore Mahbubani closes the lid on Western cultural dominance. The New York Review of Books looks at the dominance of the national conservatives in Putin's Russia. Le Monde des livres reports on a clash of historians over the role of Islam in the Middle Ages. The Economist fears for freedom of the press in Eastern Europe. And the New York Times portrays Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswan.