Stage designers is developing more and more into the most important element of stage productions. It is set designers or ?spatial artists? like Johannes Schütz, Muriel Gerstner, Stéphane Laimé and Olaf Altmann who are ?to blame? ? they are the ones who can turn an evening at the theatre into a total work of stationary art....
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Vanity Fair | Le Monde diplomatique | The Spectator | Le point | The New Republic | The New Yorker | Przekroj | The New Statesman | Outlook India | The Atlantic | L'Espresso
Vanity Fair 15.09.2008 (US)
Over a nine month period, Michael Wolff spent his Tuesdays with Rupert Murdoch. A ideal opportunity to get the inside story on the media mogul's latest plans – now that he has the Wall Street Journal under his belt - to get his hands on the New York Times. While others have interpreted this as a liberal-shift in the Murdoch image, Wolff knows better: "It's obviously irresistible to him. I've watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal's backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff's quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple. It would be sweet revenge - because the Times for so long has made him the bogeyman and vulgarian. And wonderful to own not just one of America's most important papers but both (he believes in monopolies)."
Further articles: Reporter and writer Sebastian Junger revisits a US unit in a remote outpost of Afghanistan which is fighting a losing battle against the Taliban despite having the upper hand, militarily. But the Americans are persisting with their small-base strategy, in order to better access local hearts and minds. Junger speculates: "This is not a war where soldiers are taken prisoner; if a position were to be overrun, virtually every American in it would be killed during the firefight. The wounded would probably be executed where they lay, or worse. The Taliban would take astronomic casualties, but they may have calculated that one or two such incidents would cause the American public to demand an end to the small-base strategy in Afghanistan."
Le Monde diplomatique 15.09.2008 (Germany/ France)
In a text from a posthumous collection of essays, Jaques Derrida thinks about rogue states – and finds echoes of Niccolo Machiavelli's descriptions of the animal in StratCom's (US Strategic Command) guidelines on how the USA should deal with them: "We should not show ourselves as too 'rational', the guidelines recommend, when it comes to defining what is most valuable to the enemy – and therefore how best to threaten him. In other words, one should not show that one is in full control of one's senses, one should make it understood that one can take leave of one's senses and act like an animal in setting targets, in order to create fear and make the other believe that one is willing to stop at nothing, that one will go beserk when vital interests are at stake. One has to give the impression that one can go crazy, irrational, in other words become animal. 'It hurts', says one of the Stratcom recommendations, "to present ourselves as too rational and controlled.' In fact it is even is 'beneficial for our strategy, to make certain elements seem out of control.'"
The Spectator 13.09.2008 (UK)
Tom Parfitt tells a story from Russia's war in Ingushetia: "Among the first-class passengers who flew into Ingushetia's Magas airport from Moscow on the afternoon of 31 August were two grey-haired men in suits. The pair avoided each other's gaze. One was Murat Zyazikov, 50, a former KGB officer and president of Ingushetia, the small Muslim republic which borders Chechnya in southern Russia. The other was Magomed Yevloyev, 36, an outspoken critic of Russia's brutal rule in Ingushetia, founder of the ingushetiya.ru website, and Zyazikov's great nemesis. The fates of the government bureaucrat and the government critic, which had been so closely bound up with each other, were about to diverge. Once the plane had touched down and the passengers offloaded, Zyazikov was ushered into a waiting Mercedes and swept away. Yevloyev meanwhile was met by a team of armed police. They bundled him, protesting, into their vehicle and drove off. Within 20 minutes Yevloyev had been shot in the temple. His near-lifeless body was dumped at a hospital where he died hours later. Officials in Moscow and Ingushetia's police say that Yevloyev’s death was the result of an accidental shot when he tried to grab an officer's weapon. But too many unarmed people have died in Ingushetia while 'putting up armed resistance' for this to be at all believable."
Le point 11.09.2008 (France)
In an interview with Elisabeth Levy and Franz-Olivier Giesbert, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel talks about his new novel "Le cas Sonderberg" (Grasset) about a New York journalist of Jewish origin who is searching for his identity. His story converges with the trial of a German student during which the Nazi past of his grandfather is dredged up and and who pleads "guilty but not guilty" to killing his uncle. In the novel, Wiesel reaches out a hand to the innocent "children of slaughterers" who feel themselves guilty nonetheless. It is also a reaction to his altered relationship to Germany. "It's true that I have always kept my distance from Germany. Not because I believed in the criminal character of an entire people or culture. That would be to banalise evil again. If everyone is evil then no one is evil. But this is how it was. I didn't understand Germany. (...) People didn't use to talk much about the past. Now it is taught everywhere, dealt with in books and films. Germany has retrieved its memory."
The New Republic 24.09.2008 (USA)
In a paradoxical way, the Bush administration is also to blame for the hard-hearted reactions of many so-called liberals to Russia's punitive action against Georgia, writes David Greenberg in the New Republic. When it came to taking sides in the Caucasus conflict, they defended the sort of crude realism that they once considered anathema. "After September 11 and during the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration hijacked the liberal vocabulary of democracy, liberty, and human rights. It then proceeded to make a mockery of this rhetoric by thumbing its nose at the United Nations, curbing civil liberties at home, and torturing suspected enemies. Ashamed of the deeds done in the name of their principles, liberals turned not just on Bush but on the very espousal of those principles. They ceded them to the neocons, and ran as far away from foreign policy idealism as they could."
The New Yorker 22.09.2008 (USA)
David Remnick describes the difficult situation of one of the last bastions of free media in Russia: the radio station Ekho Moskvy and its editor-in-chief Aleksei Venediktov. In 2001 Putin invited Venediktov to a meeting in the Kremlin library. By way of embracing him and warning him simultaneously, Putin spoke at length about the difference between enemies and traitors. "It's a crucial distinction for Putin,' Venediktov said. 'He said, >Enemies are right in front of you, you are at war with them, then you make an armistice with them, and all is clear. A traitor must be destroyed, crushed.< This is his philosophy of the world. And then he said, >You know, Aleksei, you are not a traitor. You are an enemy.> ' Foolishly, perhaps, I asked Venediktov if Putin smiled when he said this. 'Smile?' Venediktov said. 'Putin never smiles. He was just making it clear in what sense I existed for him.'"
Przekroj 11.09.2008 (Poland)
Adam Michnik was never one to endorse the Kaczynski brothers. But all of a sudden, he is saying not only that the Polish president did the right thing over the Georgian crisis, but that it filled him with pride. In a conversation with his former pupil Piotr Najsztub, he does, however, speak out against a confrontation with Russia. "It is dangerous and stupid to abandon the future project of democracy in Russia. And the same goes for speaking the Cold War language again. Perhaps Russia is going in this direction and will force this language on us, but we should not comply. Putin is not Stalin, he is a KGB sub-lieutenant whom many Russians believe is effective. We should know whom we are talking to, but we should keep talking."
The New Statesman 15.09.2008 (USA)
The new issue explores Iran. In one article Aseih Amini reports on the blogger scene which, over the last seven years, has spawned a number of citizens' and women's rights initiatives- such as "Change for Equality" - and provided a reliable source of independent journalism. But Amini and her fellow bloggers are increasingly preyed upon by full-scale state repression and censorship. President Ahmadinejad might have his own blog, but the pressure on the free bloggers increases by the day. "In July the government began to consider a bill against 'online crimes'. Parliament is yet to vote on the bill, but if it is approved, bloggers and webmasters found guilty of 'promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy' may find themselves facing the death sentence."
Further articles: In Tehran, Maziar Bahari collects impressions of his divided country and talks to Akbar Etemad, a long-term advisor to the Shah, who shows understanding for the Iranian nuclear programme. And Robert Tait explains that it's only the money bubbling up from the oil business that is staving off economic collapse in Iran.
Outlook India 22.09.2008 (India)
In an unusually patriotic tone, Outlook India celebrates the official recognition of India as the world's sixth nuclear power, in what it describes as an historic shift in global political power relations: "Those who gaze only at their own political navel do not appreciate how tectonic a shift it is in the calcified thinking of the status quo world where the already powerful rarely accept the newly emerging and advantaged rivals work hard to pretend, postulate and pontificate against the one outside the door ... Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, mysteriously patient and quietly firm, prevailed in the end, winning the confidence vote. He has earned his place in history as the leader who wears two crowns - unshackling India at home through economic reforms and liberating it abroad from nuclear apartheid."
The Atlantic 01.10.2008 (USA)
Jed Perl bids farewell to Philippe de Montebello who is retiring at the age of 72 and whose formula for success as head of the New York Metropolitan Museum was not to underestimate the public: "This has in many respects been an unlikely golden age, unfolding as corporate and government support shrinks and the conviction grows among cultural arbiters that the public will invariably gravitate toward the latest pop sensation rather than the art of the past. De Montebello, however, isn't among the pessimists. Rejecting the idea that a museum lives or dies on the basis of a few heavily marketed blockbuster events, de Montebello operates, as he told me in May, under the assumption that 'the public is a lot smarter than anybody gives it credit for. The public as a whole has intellectual curiosity. These are people who know the difference between a serious show and pure sham.'"
Further articles: James Fallows travels through the Western China with two Taiwanese businessmen, who have taken it upon themselves to catapult this backwater and its 300 million inhabitants into the 21st century. Benjamin Schwarz rubs his hands together in anticipation of Christian Lander's blog, "Stuff White People Like", which tracks trends in the camp of progressive white middle-class liberals. And Eric Hanson collects great moments in the history of man, from Proust's first asthma attack to Hitler's first Lohengrin and Ronald Reagan's entry into the Republican party.
L'Espresso 12.09.2008 (Italy)
In the film of Roberto Saviano's reportage, "Gomorra", which hit German screens last week, one of the stories follows the Comorra's lucrative waste disposal business, where toxic waste is dumped in illegal landfills around Naples. Now the man who started this dirty business twenty years ago, Gaetano Vasallo, has revealed all. Gianluca Di Feo and Emiliano Fittipaldi cite from the confession dictated by the former Mafia boss-turned-penitent. "I fear for my life which is why I have decide to work together with the law and reveal everything I was involved in, including illegal activities. In particular, I want to go into the illegal disposal of special, toxic and health-damaging waste from 1987/88 to 2005. The waste was disposed of in caves and undeveloped areas of land and not in certified land fills."
RSS
Portfolio portrays the dark prince of Wall Street, who saw the storm coming, while the sun was still shining. In the Guardian, Jeanette Winterson explains why a tough life needs tough words. Polityka criticises the Catholic ideology officers monitoring Polish schools. Magyar Narancs is concerned about Hungary slipping back to the Stone Age. The New Republic eyes the collection of forceful characters on Obama's staff. And in Monde diplomatique, Juan Villoro describes a Mexico in the grip of a drug-induced here and now.
Who will be India's Obama? asks Outlook. The New Yorker looks at the tricky relationship between Obama and civil rights activism. The Guardian is stunned by the seething cauldron of neuroses that was the Wittgenstein family. Tygodnik Powszechny stares into the eyes of Polish Jews on film. Al Ahram introduces the ambitious online project of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on Egypt's history. In Radar Rodrigo Fresan puts bestsellers in the dock. Vanity Fair meets the top news provider of the future: Bloomberg.
Shortly before his death, Studs Terkel calls for more reg-u-lat-ion in the Huffington Post. The Spectator shines a light on the China Poly Group - an arm of the People's Liberation Army, with a strong interest in art. The Observator Cultural compiles a dossier on the writer Mircea Nedelciu. The New Statesman looks into Chinese-Muslim relations in Kashgar. Umberto Eco finds suicidal tendencies in Italian terrorism. The New York Times portrays Lauren Zalaznick, the creator of "layered" TV for savvy urbanites. And in the New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith sounds the death toll for lyrical realism.
The new Slovakian internet magazine Salon translates articles from Miroslav Kusy, Rudolf Chmel und Gaspar Miklos Tamas on the tension between Hungary and Slovakia. In Portfolio, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen tells newspapers to scrap their print editions. In Le Point Emmanuel Todd foresees the return of Marx and Bonaparte. The Polish papers report on the Kundera affair. The TLS introduces lit crit as practised by a militant pro-capitalist. In the Weltwoche Paul Scheffer talks about the boomerang effect of immigration.
In Nouvel Obs, Oliver Roy explains what fundamentalists of every stripe have against culture. In Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan celebrates the golden age of journalism (we're in it). In ADN cultura, Paolo Coelho says we should look at Britain's history to worrying about internet piracy. For Commentary, the financial crisis is the fault of the state. For the Economist, the Milan Kundera case is just a drop in a toxic cloud.
The Observator Cultural introduces Stelian Tanase, a world champion of storytelling. In ResetDoc, the Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas recites his credo. In Lettre International, a Russian woman describes her childhood in a labour camp. In Esquire Mikhail Khordokovsky describes the Russian nomenklatura as the result of a process of natural annihilation. In Dissent, Carlos Fraenkel talks about teaching philosophy in Indonesia. In the Guardian Margaret Atwood sings the praises of Alice Munro. The Walrus visits Josef Skvorecky. Przekroj introduces Jacek Duka, the new Stanislaw Lem. And the Economist answers the call of nature. 
Protect investors from themselves, cries the New York Review of Books, in tune with George Soros. Teach the Roma how to work, calls Nepszabadsag. In La vie des idees, Historian Roger Chartier shows how the digital age has returned the book to its medieval state. The Economist thinks it has seen the light for the music industry. In Standpoint, tenor Ian Bostridge pops a rock 'n' roll bubble. Jonathan Littell goes to Georgia for Le Monde. Bollywood is to India what Dante was to Italy, says Outlook India. And the New York Times visits a rosy-cheeked Kleiner Perkins. 
In the Nation, Joseph Stiglitz is not buying anything the Bush administration is selling. L'Express introduces the "black book of publishing". The Times Literary Supplement warms to the unlikely Ukraine defender, Archduke Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen. Literaturen travels to Kamering with Austrian author Josef Winkler and his pepper spray. HGV has the end of lonely thinking in sight. And The Economist is keeping a beady eye on Total Information Awareness.
Portfolio portrays the billionaire Raymond Harbert who is knocking ever louder on the New York Times's door. In Espresso, Umberto Eco has a good old chuckle about downgrading. In the Gazeta Wyborcza historian 
The New Yorker tells the tale of a hero, police officer James Zadroga. In El Pais author Javier Cercas seaches for happiness, boring as that might be. Le Figaro explains the difference between a snob and a dandy. Nepzsabadsag is amazed at how Serbian nationalism is moving with the times. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, political scientist Ivan Krastev admires the power of the paper tiger. Przekroj harbours the secret of the Westerplatte. The London Review of Books examines the malaise of party politics. And in L'Espresso, Umberto Eco calls for a new law on naming streets.
The New York Review of Books explains how Russia sent a message to the Ukrainians and the Balts. In Le Point, Bernard-Henri Levy awards Monsieur Putin a gold medal for his cynicism. Prospect meets the world's best and fairest society. Rue 89 asks whether France was waging a revolutionary war in Rwanda. Elet es Irodalom prescribes an "Operation Paprika" for Hungary. Gazeta Wyborczy remembers the Polish Danzigers. Folio goes on a dream holiday. And the Nation describes how New Orleans came close to reinstating segregation.
The Hudson Review tells the story of the boxing film "The Set Up" which was based on an epic poem from 1928. Wired plugs into the future of electric cars in Israel. In The New Republic, Joseph Stiglitz looks at the impact made by the Great Depression 2008. Tygodnik Powszechny tells the Catholic Church to wake up and smell the environment. In Babelia, novelist-turned-publisher Javier Marias explains how he ended up working for the afterlife. In openDemocracy, Ivan Krasten looks at the fatal consequences of the war in Georgia for Russia. And in the New Yorker, John Updike follows Max Factor on his journey from wigs to bee-stung lips.
The Atlantic holds up the termite as a paradigm of bio-efficiency. The New York Times investigates wine classification in Bordeaux. In Tygodnik Powszechny, writer Marek Nowakowski outlines his strategy for accommodating communism. Letras Libras misses the hawkishness of Roberto Bolano. Outlook India portrays the new Bollywood star Aksay Kumar. In Rue 89 Michel Wieviorka warns about burgeoning racism in France. And in L'Espresso Umberto Eco smells fear and regression in Italy.
In Die Welt, Victor Erofeyev collects his thoughts 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.