Süddeutsche Zeitung, 19.10.2005

Iraqi author Najem Wali, who himself sat in Iraqi prisons and has lived in exile since 1980, comments on the trial of Saddam Hussein, which begins in Baghdad today. "When you've found refuge in a continent like Europe, you may think about the Enlightenment, about the dictators who've been vanquished here or, like me, about European humanistic literature. But then you realise in amazement that together with its ally the USA, this very Europe not only defended and supported Saddam in his wars, but also provided him with weapons and torture instruments. Later you forget, the torture fades into the past. I too proudly believed I had got it all under control. But then years later, the memory comes back in a flash. One evening while zapping through the channels, I saw the image of this man who'd robbed me of days, months, years of my existence, and everything came back to me. There he sat before the magistrate, seemingly invincible, as if he would outlast it all, holding forth with his Nazi-like harangues."


Der Tagesspiegel, 19.10.2005

Korean author Kim Young Ha tells how his father and other South Korean border troops prepared for Jimmy Carter's visit in 1979. "One day, one of the company asked out of the blue what we should do if Jimmy Carter suddenly had to go to the bathroom. There was only a provisional toilet for the soldiers watching the hills along the border. My father passed the question on to his superior, who listened with a concerned look on his face, then gave the order that a toilet corresponding to Western standards should immediately be built on Hill 191. After all, it was unthinkable that an American president should have to use a traditional Korean toilet. And time was pressing."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19.10.2005

Irene Hell reports on the success of the documentary film meeting "Discovery Campus" in Leipzig. "'Everyone who's anyone is there,' says Patrick Hörl. The BBC has come with four documentary bosses, Arte, ARD, ZDF, French, Norwegian, Russian and American broadcasters are all there at this international meeting of documentary filmmakers. Even producers from China and the Arab news broadcaster Al Jazeera were to be seen. The NDR Programme Director Arnold Seul knows why: 'You have to come, otherwise nobody comes,' says Claas Danielsen, Director of the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival and founder of the campus, to each individual person. 'Then suddenly the creme de la creme is there.'"


Die Tageszeitung, 19.10.2005

For yesterday's opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Dirk Knipphals wishes the culture nation Germany a little more fun. "What's problematic is not the mix of high and fun cultures. Problematic is the fact that they are regarded in Germany as enemies. This means on the one hand that serious culture is being reduced to an ever smaller canon – from Goethe to Thomas Mann. And on the other hand, many talented authors consider themselves too fine to write television series."


Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, 19.10.2005

Stefan Adam reports on the alarming spread of raccoons in Brandenburg: 50 specimens in 1994 are reported to have multiplied to 3,500 in 2004. The raccoon (Procyon lotor, in German "Waschbär" or wash bear), which is native to North America, was once raised by European farmers for their fur. "Their expansion in Germany can be attributed to their deftness. Between the wars, they escaped from farms in Hessen and Wolfhagen in Brandenburg. Now they make themselves at home in all of Germany." The Brandenburgers, who consider themselves the most adversely affected, are putting up resistance. While leghold traps have been forbidden and cage traps are cumbersome, the ring-tails prove to be make easy sitting targets. Reliable statistics on the hunt, however, are not available.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 19.10.2005

Matthias Messmer writes an obituary of Chinese author Ba Jin, who died on Monday in Shanghai at 101. "Like almost all leading authors of his era, Ba Jin honed his skills on the experience of China's past, on civil war, misery, poverty and revolution. And he was very taken by the socialist-Utopian ideas of French and Russian thinkers (Ba Jin lived in France from 1926 – 1928, where he wrote his first novel 'Destruction'). In line with his political convictions, the young man chose as a pseudonym a symbiosis of syllables from the names of two leading Russian anarchists: Bakunin and Kropotkin."