Die Welt, 17.06.2005

Iraqi author Hussain al-Mozany decries the rarely discussed abuse of the Koran within the Arab world. "The use of the Koran for base political and power objectives hasn't bothered a single Islamic scholar from Morocco to Indonesia, not even when Saddam commissioned an Iraqi calligrapher to write the entire text in Saddam's blood, thinned with glucose. It took the calligrapher Abbas Qudi two years to complete the 'Blood Koran' for the 'Museum for the Mother of all Battles'. No attention was paid to the famous verse in which blood is classified as one of the absolutely impure things, in second place after dead animals – not to mention the blood of a mass murderer such as Saddam Hussein." Should it be proven that American security personnel in the internment camp in Guantanamo "regulary defiled" the Koran, then these must be brought to justice. But al-Mozany asks, "Who is going to charge the indifference of the Arab governments and Islamic clerics?"


Berliner Zeitung, 17.06.2005

Christina Weiss, German Minister of State for Culture and Media, talks with Sebastian Preuss about cultural politics in the event the conservative CDU/CSU wins the upcoming federal elections in September. "It is entirely possible that conservative policies will lead to more cultural regionalism and provincialism. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that way, now that this office of Minister of State for Culture and Media exists. Anyone in my position will automatically think federally, over the boundaries of the individual states." Like Norbert Lammert of CDU, Weiss favours the establishment of a federal cultural ministry. "Germany has to have a clear international cultural profile. In Brussels it can only be represented by one person, and not 16 state ministers for culture and education. The federal republic is made up of the sum of the Bundesländer, or German states. It does not work against them."


Der Tagesspiegel, 17.06.2005

Barbara Wahlster speaks with Ko Un, Korea's most famous poet, who will read his works in Berlin on Saturday. Born in 1933, Ko Un entered a Zen monastery at 19. He left it after ten years to become a politically engaged writer. "It's like spring, summer, fall and winter. We call the seasons by different names, although they belong to one continual process. In the same way, I tend to see my writing as one whole." For Ko Un, Europe is less in tune with Korea than the US: "America became indispensable for us Koreans in the 20th century. We got to know the work of our American colleagues, who were versant with Asian philosophy and religion. For us the beat generation of the 60s was legendary. Common interests or values could also eventually develop in Europe. But here people are more interested in other European countries than in the Far East. That's only just beginning." While in a military prison in 1980, Ko Un decided to write in poetry the lives of everyone he has ever met. 4,000 of these now make up six volumes of his collected works.
Click here for a selection of Ko Un's poems in English.


Die Tageszeitung, 17.06.2005

Martin Reicher reports on an auction where the last state automobiles used by former East German communist party leader Erich Honecker will come under the hammer. The cars, Citroen CX sedans with hydropneumatic suspension, blue lights and standard bearers, could fetch 18,000 euros and more for their stretch versions. Reicher considers the social status of the luxury sedan. "In West Germany the CX, like the large Volvo and Saab models, was the preferred vehicle of Left-leaning high earners: as expensive as a Mercedes, but with built-in understatement instead of a star on the hood. School principals drove them to school, Lea Rosh (journalist, writer and long-standing SPD member) drove one to discussion rounds on environmental pollution, and on TV, Detective Schimanski hunted criminals with a CX turbodiesel. An exceptional car for exceptional people, like the avant-garde Grace Jones, who did an ad for it."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 17.06.2005

Urs Steiner is more or less impressed by an exhibition of "old familiar objects" made of "unusual material" by Droog Design in Zürich and Lausanne. But "of course, in addition to the many good ideas and caustic provocations, there are also design failures and banal gags. Who really needs a T-shirt with specially treated cherry pits that can be heated in a microwave? Why should one hammer a metal cube into a personalised seat? And is a cuckoo clock funnier when it operates digitally and is decorated like a bird's nest?"