Tuesday December 27, 2005

Die Tageszeitung, 27.12.2005

Gabriele Goettle describes her visit to the cultural historian Anna Bergmann, who is strongly opposed to using brain-dead individuals as organ donors. "The law dictates that two brain-death diagnosticians should, independently of one another, diagnose whether they are dealing with irreversible brain-death or just temporary loss of consciousness. And another thing I find ethically problematic is the diagnostic method. The body of the coma patient is subjected to highly aggressive methods in the search for reactions – in other words 'signs of death': an extremely long needle is inserted into the trigeminal nerve (more) in the wall of the nose; the ears are washed out with ice-cold water, and a tube is shoved back and forth in the throat. This procedure is carried out twice. A total of eight signatures are needed for the brain-death protocol and the final signature announces 'the incidence of death' as a bureaucratic act."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 27.12.2005

"This could be just the art museum that Berlin needs to showcase its immense wealth of contemporary art." According to Elke Buhr, the "36 x 27 x 10" exhibition, the final art show in the Palast der Republik, shows how ideally suited this building - which is about to be torn down - is as an experimental field for modern art. "The exhibition is a colourful smorgasbord of objects, as befits the nature of the event: Rirkrit Tiravanija shows a worn towel behind glass, which he has used the entire time he has been in Berlin; John Bock presents a wonderful sculpture with a guitar as a belly and a teabag as a stomach titled 'Babyshambles', presumably after the music he's listening to at the moment; Angela Bulloch has written a giant comic scream AAARGGH on the wall; Corinne Wasmuth, Anselm Reyle, Andre Butzer and Thomas Zipp demonstrate the quality and variety of contemporary painting and Olafur Eliasson has hung a giant 'upside-down mirror-lamp' in the room."
See our feature "The last lamp" for more.


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27.12.2005

Najem Wali, an Iraqi author now living in Cologne, writes on Iranian ambitions vis-a-vis its weakened rival Iraq. "Iran has almost succeeded in cleansing southern Iraq of professors and intellectuals, either through murder or intimidation. Thanks to the policies of Great Britain and the United States, southern Iraq has proved easy game. Many politicians in the Iraqi government are among the staunchest supporters of Iran. Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has lived in exile in Iran, and so has the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Hussein al-Shahristani. The old Iranian utopia of regional hegemony is resurfacing under Islamic guise. From the Iranian point of view, everything is just a question of time: Whether it's al-Ihsa in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or southern Iraq, sooner or later all Shiites will join a Greater-Iran, whose throne will stand firmly on petroleum."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27.12.2005

Jordan Mejias has seen Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" about the hostage taking and murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games and their aftermath, and defends Spielberg against accusations of setting terror on a par with the Israeli reaction: "What you could rightly accuse a politician of doing can go to an artist's credit. It's enough if a film director can give a candid and vivid depiction of the havoc, the terror and the violence wrought on human souls. Spielberg doesn't always do that in 'Munich', but he does it often enough. And at the same time he is anything but naive."


Die Welt, 27.12.2005

On the paper's Forum Page, Ralf Dahrendorf pleads for a liberal praxis of freedom of opinion, arguing that even denying the Holocaust should not be subject to punishment: "In all cases, what is needed is active and astute citizens who will react against things that they find unacceptable, and not a state that enacts harsher and harsher measures. A direct incitement to violence will be seen – and rightly so – as an unacceptable abuse of the freedom of opinion. But many of the offensive things expressed by British Holocaust denier David Irving and other hate mongers do not fall into this category. Their tirades should be answered by arguments, not by the police."


Saturday December 24, 2005

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24.12.2005

The Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo where war dead - among them war criminals - are honoured, continues to be the source of controversy between Japan and the countries it once occupied. Now Taiwanese and Korean families whose fathers were recruited by force are protesting against their family members being included in the veneration, as Hoo Nam Seelmann reports: "It is estimated that 60,000 non-Japanese are among the dead honoured at the shrine. Of these 21,000 are Korean and 28,000 Taiwanese. The Korean and Taiwanese plaintiffs find it unacceptable that their relatives should be venerated in this symbol-laden shrine, where the perpetrators and the victims are so to speak all under one roof. The plaintiffs feel their dead relatives continue to be victims of Japanese militarism even after their death, as the Yasukuni shrine continues to be the place where Japanese history is exalted."