Tuesday 2 Janary, 2007

Die Welt 02.01.2007

Leon de Winter (website) makes no secret of his satisfaction at Saddam's execution. "For this wonderful moment in history we have a hated cowboy called George Bush to thank. We have spineless Europeans politician to thank, such as Joschka Fischer, who essentially strengthened Saddam in his belief that he could continue his tyranny for more decades to come, passing his legacy on to his paranoid sons - because a number of western states, together with Russia and China, would prevent the USA invading Iraq. The current chaos in Iraq is not just the result of the disastrous influence of politics on warfare, but first and foremost, of the international game playing of faint-hearted politicians."


Die Tageszeitung 02.01.2007

What Europe needs, argues Helga Trüpel the Euro MP for the Greens, in the wake of the French and Dutch "no", is to sharpen its focus on culture and promote a European public sphere. "Why are we not giving Erasmus scholarships to all EU students? Why do we not have more resources for city partnerships, where European contacts and European identities can grow from the roots up? Why are we not getting together to show European cultural diversity to the world? The European Union has to finance investments in the future, if they want to lead Europe out of crisis." The politician suggests five key projects that fit the bill, one of them being signandsight.com.

Marius Babias sketches out the complex self-understanding of the new EU member, Romania. "The heavily Byzantine Romania has set aside two identities for itself since 1989, which are contradictory in theory, but in everyday life and politics live comfortably side by side. One is the pre-modern cultural identity of a Christian-Orthodox people, and the other is the post-communist identity of enlightened Europeans. Nationalism and Europeanism are at the core of the Romanian Way of Life: in domestic affairs Romanians are stalwartly anti-European-national-Orthodox, but when the talk turns to EU integration, they suddenly become pro-European-liberal-secular. And of course the communist past is always systematically blended out and self-critical dealing with the past avoided at all costs."


Frankfurter Rundschau 02.01.2007

For Mark Obert the only people justified in watching the video of Saddam Hussein's execution are his victims. "Saddam's execution is tyrannicide in the second degree, and watching it is not an undignified act per se. There are reasons for Saddam's victims to watch it closely. But someone who is not directly involved has no claim to these rights. Their voyeurism serves no other purpose than personal horror."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 02.01.2007

Teheran writer Amir Hassan Cheheltan relates the history of literary censorship in Iran, which appears to have reached its peak: "Independent publishers, with piles of books waiting for permission to be printed, are having to put up with one of the most paralyzing periods in their field. The examination of some works takes months, while it is not out of the question that publication will be denied with a negative decision by the authority in charge. As happened in the past, prose fiction is the most problematic."


Saturday 29 December, 2006

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 30.12.2006

Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic explains in a semi-fictional story in the literature and art supplement that nowadays she only visits museums virtually. "The Metropolitan and MoMA are my favourite addresses. I wander through the rooms, stand in front of the paintings, make them larger or smaller while listening to music of my choice, and best of all, there is no pushing, no people, no reason to panic. Afterwards I can go to the museum shop and buy a lamp by Isamu Noguchi or a Muji shelf made of recycled paper. And these days in the Vatican Museum, I can look as long as I like at Michelangelo's frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. No dizziness, no pounding heart… After visiting the museum, I treat myself to a cap with the slogan, 'Veni, vidi, vici' (we are in Rome after all?). The Tate, the Pompidou, the Uffizi, the Prado, the Hermitage, the British Museum – they are all right there at my finger tips – they are mine, all mine."


Die Tageszeitung 30.12.2006

Reading "The Century," the latest book by "one of the most important living left-wing philosophers," Alain Badious, Marco Stahlhut is scandalised by his approach to the communist mass-murder regimes of the 20th century: "Badiou describes Stalinism as a 'unique phenomenon' with its own 'greatness, even if this greatness, in its concept of reality, contained enormous violence on its flip side.' Badiou is even less critical of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which was accompanied by the bizarre growth of the cult of personality surrounding Mao. And where a climate grew in which anyone could be accused of being a counterrevolutionary, and where, for a radicalized youth, lynch justice was the rule of the day. On what does Badiou's indifference to power-hungry dictators feed? The philosopher dismisses the problem with the suggestion that power games are also the provenance of parliamentary politics."