Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 23.08.2007

Biochemist Gottfried Schatz writes about the source of all life. "In the beginning there was light. The big bang, which created the universe roughly 14 billion years ago, was an explosion of radiating energy." Our "light-eating" bodies are thus a conglomeration of "stored light energy – a reflection of the atomic fire in our sun. Much about us and our world is perplexing and dark – and the darkness of our prejudices is more threatening than the deepest sea depths. Our ability to reason is the light in this darkness. Its illumination is weak – but it remains the most wonderful of all the sun's children."


Die Zeit 23.08.2007

Following historian and politician Michael Ignatieff's admission in the New York Times to having been wrong in supporting the Iraq war, Jens Jessen takes an unprecedented 3 pages to document the debate around the war, Islam and democracy. One of its main attributes has been the "fatal indifference to empiricism." And it hurts for one reason in particular. "The USA only appeared to, but did not, appeal to international law. Instead, it appealed to morals. That's not as reprehensible as some say; at least not when international law threatens to protect monsters and, worse, the highest authority of international law, the UN security council is itself full of monsters. Nonetheless, the American dismissal of international law certainly vexed the Europeans. The autocratic way in which the USA put morals above the law was provocative because it wouldn't have been possible without power. The powerless can do their damnedest to uphold morals but in the end must follow the ways of justice."


Die Tageszeitung 23.08.2007

Gabriele Lesser explains Poland's disgust with Tono Eitel, German's mediator for cultural goods. He called German art that has ended up in Poland since 1945 war booty. "The problem is that Russia and Ukraine are giving back the art that was confiscated by the Red Army in occupied Germany in 1945. But Poland never engaged in war looting in Germany. In that sense there is no 'looted art' in Poland – and the qualified jurist Eitel knows that. That he makes this accusation nonetheless has to do with the devastating failure of negotiations so far: in fifteen years, Germany has achieved absolutely nothing."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 23.08.2007

Gina Thomas has visited the newly opened International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and reports about a similar exhibition project in London. The two cities try to outdo each other in gestures of repentance and downplay the activities of white opponents to slavery. This approach draws harsh criticism from Thomas: "What is left unsaid is the participation of many African rulers who exchanged their prisoners of war for weapons and European goods. Instead, the exhibition implies that all of Africa's woes must all be attributed to the slave trade."


Die Welt 23.08.2007

Thomas Lindemann is fascinated by the ways computer games have inspired artists from all over the world. To him, the art exhibition at the Leipzig show for computer games GC (Games Convention) is a "serious children's museum for adults": "In this show, the traditional distance between viewer and work of art has been abolished. Wherever one looks at the Leipzig show one can do and try out things; guests are supposed to enter the works and watch shadow monsters grow out of their hands with the help of digital technology. In workshops they can learn how to produce elusory beauty out of grid models, or how to make a machinima film."