Neue Zürcher Zeitung 22.11.2006

Today, elections are being held in the Netherlands. Writer Hans Maarten van den Brink gives a sense of the mood after a rather tired campaign and summarises the Dutch discussion of Ian Buruma's book on the murder of Theo van Gogh, which calls into question the country's renowned tolerance. "At first glance, the absence of formal rules of behaviour seems to facilitate access but behind it there lies an informal codex with which one is inevitably confronted after a while. Irony plays an exceptionally large role in both personal and public conversations. That's no coincidence; the ironist occupies by definition a superior position and anyone who feels wounded by him only demonstrates that he hasn't mastered the game. It's the newly arrived that suffer the most from the cattiness of these unwritten norms."

In his discussion of the new James Bond film, Andreas Maurer stands up for the lead actor, Daniel Craig, who has been viewed skeptically leading up to the film. "This officially sixth 007 is the first since Sir Sean Connery that one can buy as much as a martini-cold killer as a lady killer – although he cuts a better figure when naked and bound to a chair (in the notorious torture scene, where his 'crown jewels' are being whipped black and blue) than in his tailor-made tuxedo."


Die Tageszeitung 22.11.2006

Author Ilija Trojanow rails against a "well-known magazine journalist and best-selling author," who is stirring up fear of China in the news (we think he means Gabor Steingart - click here for an article of Steingart's on China). "But anyone who goes to China today won't recognise the country that is rising up behind our clichees. In the big cities you can feel a pioneering, fighting spirit. This overwhelms Western visitors, and perhaps also puts them to shame. When you get back, Germany seems painfully underpopulated, and as sedate as a cemetery. The Chinese are busy putting the small chances at their disposal to good use. They manifestly don't have time for mediocrity, or for whining and resignation."


Die Welt 22.11.2006

In an interview with Michael Tschernek, Tom Waits explains how he chose the songs for his most recent album "Orphans." "It's a bit like packing a suitcase for a trip. You know what you definitely need but you have to be prepared for any contingency. It's possible that you'll be away for longer than you planned and you need things for all weather. You need a nail file, a Luger pistol, your Glenlivet whiskey, your Gitanes, your encyclopaedia, your thesaurus and your bible."


Berliner Zeitung 22.11.2006

In an interview, Andrei Nekrasov, a friend of the poisoned former spy Alexander Litvinenko, demands help for the ever more hard-pressed Russian dissident. "It was much easier in the cold war. The Soviet Union was an ideological enemy. The Western democracies supported the dissidents, both materially and ideologically. Very clearly. Putin's team doesn't make it that easy for the West. It has no ideology... There is a civil society in Russia that is fighting to survive under the new laws governing NGOs. It needs support. Important is that the West speaks the truth more often. It mourns the loss of Anna Politkovskaya (more) but is afraid to repeat what she said: Chechnya is worse than Kosovo."


Frankfurter Rundschau 22.11.2006

Art is not having an easy time these days. Now after Bettina Röhl, author Marlene Streeruwitz has also taken the performance of Elfriede Jelinek's play "Ulrike Maria Stuart" at Hamburg's Thalia Theater in her sights, as Peter Michalzik reports. "In the performance, director Nicolas Stemann has staged passages from an interview given jointly by Jelinek and Streeruwitz to Emma magazine in May 1997. The interview is still freely accessible online. Stemann has staged the passages in the style of the 'Vagina Monologues' by Eve Ensler. Two women converse while peering out of a huge plush cleavage. Marlene Streeruwitz, who has not seen the performance, has taken offence. As she told dpa, she finds it 'undignified' and an 'objectification'. 'I don't want to be represented that way,' she says, finding that 'my person and my work as an author are represented as headless talk from a female sex organ.'" Streeruwitz has hired a lawyer. Prior to that, Bettina Röhl (homepage) had tried to have the performance stopped on the basis that it infringed on her personal rights. See our feature "Radical geriatric" on the performance.