Outlook India 12.03.2012 (India)

The overwhelming Oscar successes of "The Artist" prompted Naman Ramachandran to rootle through some Indian film history for some silent gems. He stumbled upon the '80s film "Pushpak", which despite having no aspirations towards classical silent film aesthetics, is entirely wordless. And it still holds up very well to today's standards, Ramachandran writes: "Yes, the message that money is the root of much evil and honesty is the best policy is laid on with a trowel but that's a minor complaint given how wonderful it is on repeat viewing. The collaboration between director Singeetham Srinivasa Rao and actor Kamalahaasan that sparked to life with 'Raaja Paarvai', and would result in many memorable films later, really flowered with 'Pushpak'."

Thanks to Youtube you may judge for yourself:



La regle du jeu  04.03.2012 (France)

In the question of whether genocide denial should be a punishable offence, Bernard-Henri Levy's blog La regle du jeu and historian Pierre Nora part ways dramatically. Ara Toranian takes Nora sharply to task in La regle du jeu: "In advocating the need for a historical commission, the group surrounding Pierre Nora is itself adopting the Turkish state's own rhetoric of denial. Like Ahmadinejad who has called for a commission to decide on the Shoah. This demand is the most dangerous strategy in Ankara's propagandist arsenal when it comes to the events of 1915. It is out to sow doubt by making believe that not all the facts are known about this act of annihilation. What's more, it is trampling on the work of hundreds of historians who have been writing about the subject for dozens of years."


Merkur 05.03.2012 (Germany)

Strolling through an amusement park in Tiflis, where he has been staying as a Goethe Institute guest since the autumn, author Stephan Wackwitz muses on the mix of poetry and absurdity that defines the Georgian capital: "The absurd, in amicable and productive coexistence with the poetic, is the form of thought and the central metaphor of Frederico Fellini's films from the early sixties - at a time when Italy was trapped somewhere between modernity and the Middle Ages, as Georgia is today. The sun, the cypresses, the vulgar and madonna-like women of Fellini's '8 1/2',  I am seeing them all again in Tbilissi, the nights, the neon signs, the nightly steps, the terraces and fountains of 'La Dolce Vita'. Cult of beauty and herds of sheep."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 02.03.2012 (Germany)

Author Navid Kermani was deeply impressed by the intensity of the Karachi Literature Festival and the urgent nature of the discussions there: "There are moments when you get the impression that the important thing is not which book, which author is being talked about, but simply the fact that in a public space people are discussing literature at all, and by inference also their own society. For the past decades everything that has ever constituted civic cultural life in Karachi and elsewhere has been destroyed, neglected or driven into the ground."


Le Monde 06.03.2012 (France)

The ritual slaughter of animals according to Islamic (or indeed Jewish) religious rites has become one of the more unsettling elections issues in France, ever since Martine Le Pen tried to co-opt the issue for her own ends. Le Monde has been doing its own research - and encountered some grey areas, one being that there is no clear definition of what actually constitutes halal slaughter. Also, according to Stephanie Le Bars, today "a number of abattoirs no longer have double slaughter chains and therefore release more ritually slaughtered meat onto the market than is needed (14 percent of French meat has been slaughtered ritually although only 10 percent of the population is Jewish or Muslim). The Ministry for Agriculture estimates that 50 percent of lamb's meat and 12 percent of beef is a product of ritual slaughter."


Salon.eu.sk (Slovakia)

Slovakian politics are corrupt to the core, writes Martin Simecka (here in English), with reference to the "Gorilla Files" that have just been opened to the public by Peter Holubek, a former employer of the Slovakian secret service, and Canadian journalist Tom Nicholson. Between November 2005 and August 2006 Holubke was wiretapping an apartment where government members would meet representatives of the Penta investment group. He transcribed the material and sent it to Nicholson, who spent years trying to interest the Slovakian media in it. To no avail! Now it has been published online, and a huge scandal has erupted: "The file reveals that one of the people who regularly met with the representative of the powerful Penta Group Jaroslav Hascak was the then newly-appointed Minister of Economy Jirko Malcharek. In their conversations Hascak plays the role of the teacher initiating the novice into the mysterious ways of the system… For example, Hascak informs the minister of the amount he is paying the latter's advisers, who also sit on committees deciding on the privatisation of energy companies: 'Three million [Slovak crowns, about 100,000 euros] to Sevcik, two million to Vlasaty, the rest later, once the deal has been closed,' we can read in the file.  Of course, Malcharek stands to gain much more, millions of euros altogether."


More stories from the Anglophone press:

Bloomberg Businessweek traces the "dot-clone" killing that is being made by the German Samwer Brothers. Wired engages in a wonderful if melancholy interview with historian and philosopher of science George Dyson about Alan Turing, proto-hacking and the birth of the computer. New York Magazine portrays legendary film director and producer Mike Nichols, who is now staging "Death of a Salesman" on Broadway. Prospect takes the mickey out of Mr. Putin.