Die Tageszeitung 10.07.2007

Christa Wichterich doesn't want to see the Nobel Prize that was awarded to Muhammad Yunus for his introduction of micro-credit banks to the developing world revoked. But almost. "Countless studies have shown that the idea has a three-pronged effect: a third of those who take out credits manage to break free of poverty, a third can satisfy a few additional needs but still teeter on the poverty limit and a third fall into a new cycle of debt and remain poor. The poorer the women, the less likely the micro-credits will improve their economic situation. The very poorest are not being reached. It's hard to deny that the micro-credits improve the women's sense of self-worth, their confidence and status in the villages; but we shouldn't believe the myth that this micro-instrument enables people to escape poverty in the long term."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 10.07.2007

Axel Timo Purr visits Ghanaian writer Amma Darko in her native Accra, where she, who enjoys a large following in Germany, has to earn her living as a tax inspector. "The place has invaluable advantages, says Darko: people come and go, she goes to see people. Nobody wants to pay taxes so the people have to explain � their businesses, their backgrounds, their lives. These people's openness and their life stories, which always make their way into her work, are a result of Ghana's new political system, which took root in the democratic constitution of 1992.The decades before, with their coups and countercoups, with Jerry Rawlings and a dictatorship that didn't want to end, cast a large shadow over Darko. 'I was young, I was free and I was hungry, I wanted to be a writer. But I was suffocating, writing wasn't an option, I just wanted out!"


Süddeutsche Zeitung 10.07.2007

The spoilt kids of Munich are striking back. The band "Stehkrägen" (stand-up collars) raps about being rich; their label is called Aggro Grünwald (Aggravation Green forest). All a parody? Not really, according to Tobias Kniebe, one who knows his way around Munich's society scene. "Here we have representatives of the youngest generation of Wittelsbacher and Habsburger familes. Ludwig Heinrich, prince of Bavaria, 25, is the son of 'beer brewer' Prince Luitpold and a descendant of the Bavarian Kings. Severin Meister is a grandson of Otto von Habsburg and thus a member of the Austrian royal family. Together with Mauritz von Einem (an activist with the young Christian Democrats, Lower Saxony landed aristocrat) and a few bourgeois buddies, two legendary dynasties have merged to send the world a clear message: poverty makes us sick."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 10.07.2007

Speaking with Johanna Adorjan, Efraim Zuroff - the last Nazi-hunter of the Wiesenthal Centre - criticizes the role of Eastern European countries during the Holocaust and in confronting it afterwards: "The Holocaust was not Germans against Jews. It was Europe against the Jews. The Nazis found assistants in every European country. But in the western, southern and northern countries, the collaboration stopped at the train stations. Dutch police did not murder the Jews; they just put them on trains. It was in the east that one killed them... In Lithuania, 98 percent of the Jews were murdered in their own villages. There was only one transport from there to Auschwitz. In Estonia, Croatia or Ukraine, the Germans found a lot of people who were ready to murder. And of course no one in these countries wants to hear that any more."

Kerstin Holm reports on Putin's youth organizations, like "Nashi" (Ours) in Moscow and Petersburg. "To European-minded Russians and sociologists, 'Ours' is a proto-fascist association under an anti-fascist label," writes Holm. They beat up demonstrators, solve Russia's demographic problems and worship Putin. One tee-shirt from the "Nashi" line, available for 12 euros, bears the slogan: "To multiply is enjoyable and useful." Says Holm, "A chief goal of 'Nashi' is to bring about a demographic revolution, to reverse the dramatic decline in families since the 1990s."