Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 06.01.2006

Correction from January 19: We mistakenly called the authors of the following piece, Yossi Melman and Steven Hartov, "former Mossad agents". Melman and Hartov are distinguished writers who have never served in the Mossad. We apologise for this error, which has been corrected below.

The Israeli journalist Yossi Melman and his American colleague Steven Hartov claim that Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" is full of historic inaccuracies. On the one hand, they argue, the film purports to be based on actual facts, on the other hand, Spielberg based his story on the book of a proven fibber while refusing to interview those who were actually involved in the events. "This deadly game of cat and mouse has been going on for more than thirty years, and actors on both sides would have been willing to talk about it. But nobody got in touch with those who are in the know about the secret proceedings. The telephone never rang for Zvi Zamir, the former Mossad boss with whom one would have been able to pick the myth to pieces in less than an hour. The families of the eleven murdered athletes were likewise very disappointed that nobody contacted them. Even Mohammed Daoud, the former head of Black September, who is generally accepted to have been the main planner of the hostage-taking in Munich, was extremely surprised that nobody wanted to talk to him." (here an article by Melman that appeared in Ha'aretz and here further comments by the authors)


Die Tageszeitung, 06.01.2006

The documentary filmmaker Wilfried Huismann talks to the taz about his film "Rendezvous mit dem Tod – Kennedy and Castro", in which he suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald was hired by Cuba to kill John F Kennedy. All the cover-ups and conspiracy theories can be explained thus: "Kennedy's successor Johnson was very quick to reach the conclusion that Cubans stood behind it. He didn't make this public because the geo-political situation was out of control. And Robert Kennedy played along primarily because he feared that everything about the illegal activities of the Kennedys would come out in the process. So, many traces were eliminated.This cover-up led many people to believe that the CIA itself had a hand in it."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 06.01.2006

Aldo Keel paints a portrait of the flourishing Icelandic population, whose number will soon top the 300,000 mark. "Anyone without children comes under pressure to say why not. After all, the Icelanders see themselves as links in a chain that must not break. They are proud that they have survived for eleven centuries on the outskirts of the world and created a great body of literary works. And also, for example, that they are descended from Snorri the Priest, who was also such a powerful wrestler that for fifty years no other clergyman dared to challenge him at the synod."


Die Welt, 06.01.2006

Kirstin Wenk reports how China's dissidents are reacting to the new Mao biography by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, excerpts of which can be read on the Internet: "Unlike what many in the West had hoped, many in China are reacting to 'Mao, the Untold Story' with dismissal, rather than curious interest. 'Most Chinese have a very good knowledge of their own history,' writes Li Xianyuan on the Internet 'Discussion forum on the state of China'. 'We don't need to be taught by hate-filled extremists from the West.' Zhao Hong, a Beijing-based cultural journalist, also has problems with the work. 'The book was published outside China,' she says, 'so the view of Mao cannot be objective at all'."

Hanns-Georg Rodek talks with filmmaker Andreas Dresen and scriptwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase about their film "Sommer vorm Balkon" (Summer in Berlin). Discussing protagonist Nike (played by Nadja Uhl), Kohlhaase says: "Nike's a girl who's continually recreating herself. She started out way down at the bottom and has invented the type of girl she wants to be: full of eroticism and charm. And that's what interests me, too. I just wouldn't be interested in a lead figure who's got no charm, no matter how unhappy she is." Dresen adds: "At the end of the film, Nike comments that she grew up in an orphanage. That's important information about her character. Ten years ago I shot 'Kuckuckskinder', a documentary on kids that grew up in orphanages, and who're terrifically afraid of relationships. That's also Nike's problem. At the same time she wants to be a part of the petty-bourgeois world, and no longer on the outside. That desire is reflected in her cheap and trendy furniture, and her meticulous tidiness."