"So what now?", inquires Bronwen Maddox concerning differing reactions of EU Member States. "Germany and Italy, in particular, have taken the view that more talks would be preferable to sanctions, even at the cost of blurring the force of the UN Security Council demand. That has played into the hands of Russia and China, who never much wanted sanctions. It has left the US, Britain, and France, who favoured an immediate move to sanctions, frustrated on the sidelines. Why the change since the aggressive brinksmanship of early this summer? Lebanon, in a word. In the strained attempts to muster a UN force to keep the peace between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, few want to pick a new fight with Tehran. Iran has accurately gauged the limited appetite for confrontation among its adversaries and divided them." (01/09/2006)

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The daily considers "the Iranians are taking advantage of the conjuncture, as they know the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon is in their favour with the U.S dependant on their collaboration. The ex-Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez's trip to Teheran [Wednesday August 30th] was intended to preserve European diplomacy. ... And it might also help to rectify the United States' initial error, wanting to forcibly impose two things which are difficult to conciliate: changing the Iranian regime and cancelling the nuclear program. Iran is pursuing its plans while, for the moment, the permanent members of the Security Council and Germany remain united -and hopefully they will not be divided - around the idea of following this double lane that combines sanctions with diplomacy". (01/09/2006)

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More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Europe, » Iran

"In its quarrel with the West about its nuclear programme, Iran is currently showing how to move figures on the chessboard of international politics. It is showing how to drive a wedge into the world community and its key organisation – at least on paper – the UN Security Council, that can seriously paralyse the Council,” writes Wolfgang Greber. "In fact, the Security Council is like the image of a splintered international community. The world may shudder at the thought of Iran building nuclear weapons, but on Thursday an ultimatum that the Security Council had set for Iran stopping uranium enrichment ran out. The ultimatum threatened sanctions, but we can safely guess that Iran need have no fear of decisive reactions in the coming months. Its friends, the veto powers Russia and China, will prevent that. This means that after lots of arguing to and fro, the Security Council will end up imposing soft, toothless penalties like travel bans for Iranian politicians or credit limitations.” (01/09/2006)

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All available articles from » Wolfgang Greber

Roland Heine is worried about an escalation in the conflict with Iran over nuclear power: "What happened this summer in Lebanon was a preliminary war for the planned offensive against Iran... But now a western-dominated international force, including German soldiers, is to be stationed in Lebanon or on its borders as a buffer between Israel and the Hizbullah. If the USA goes to war against Iran and the Hizbullah reacts accordingly, the units from the German Armed Forces will inevitably be used to protect Israel – which means they will be drawn into the war. It takes very little imagination to work out the likely consequences. Given the way the war would escalate, it would probably be almost impossible to withdraw the German troops, especially if the conflict comes to a head... The way the German government is ignoring the obvious connection between the Lebanon crisis and the Iran crisis is distinctly odd.” (01/09/2006)

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All available articles from » Roland Heine

Columnist Thomas Ferenczi takes another look at the Günter Grass case. "The shattering of the monument is a shock for Germany, but also for the rest of Europe. For almost half a century, Günter Grass has not only embodied, among others, his country's conscience regarding the Nazi era, as it is frequently stated. He is also one of the symbols of European conscience, set against the barbarism that Europe did not previously know how to stymie, called upon to perpetrate painful memory in order to prevent possible repetition. ... European identity is a dual entity: it has its light side and its dark side, it is woven with good and bad, with honour and shame. ... Günter Grass is among those who invite, not just the German population, but all European populations, to take on the double face of their past in order to build their future." (01/09/2006)

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Jens Bisky uses the German debate on dealing with the Nazi past – including the discussion about Günter Grass – as an opportunity to write about scandals that have no consequences. For Bisky, "agitated discussions about the right way of dealing with the past no longer lead to any new insights… Anyway, scandal is a dominant form of discourse that is not really conducive to learning anything. Its logic feeds the suspicion that behind what we can see, something monstrous is being hidden or planned. The function of scandal is to confirm norms, give public opinion the upper hand and suppress opinions that are different. This explains the tone of the debate, which is often hostile toward freedom, as well as the almost knee-jerk demands for resignation, expulsion and contemptuousness that have little to do with an open society. In the case of contemporary history, the recent past, people are often too ready to forget that we cannot have truth without the freedom to make mistakes, without a variety of different perspectives and without the arguments of opposing sides.” (01/09/2006)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » History, » Germany
All available articles from » Jens Bisky

The Spanish journalist Antonio Papell deplores Brussels' management of clandestine immigration. "It is clear that there is no desire to turn the problem of leaky borders into a community issue. Shared perspectives in Europe are so feeble that North Europeans are incapable of seeing that immigrant saturation of Spain concerns them too. In fact, what is happening stresses the fact that the crisis in Europe, that has not stopped growing since the failure of the European constitution, is much more serious than initially thought. We are not facing a dead end in European construction, we are experiencing a regressive phase before the final foundering. ... The European political class and intelligentsia are obliged to activate and guide the European spirit once again so that the 'big idea' can regain its scope and its future." (01/09/2006)

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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Migration, » Europe
All available articles from » Antonio Papell

Money isn't everything, writes the paper, referring to the donor conference for Lebanon in Stockholm. "Money is useful, but the attempt to get the crisis region working again is doomed to fail if basic security can't be guaranteed. Military and civilian operations have to go hand in hand. In Lebanon there is agreement about troops, and the first soldiers are arriving there right now. France has taken over the command. Italy is sending the biggest military contingent. Sweden has contented itself with a maritime operation. In fact so many countries have done this that cynical commentators have started asking whether Lebanon is an island. Yet responsible governments have to be involved on the spot and accept the risk that their soldiers will be killed.” (01/09/2006)

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The British government's proposal of a Children's Index, a central register of all children and their parents in order to detect child abuse, provokes a violent reaction from Andrew Gimson. "The state cannot regard every parent as a suspect. It is grossly unjust to do this, and completely at variance with our traditional understanding of justice, under which each of us is innocent until proved guilty. To erect a system of surveillance over all households, because terrible things have happened in a few, is an affront to the great majority of parents and carers. The British idea of liberty includes a deep respect for privacy, conveyed in the expression 'An Englishman's home is his castle', and a deep abhorrence of unwarranted intrusions into that privacy by agents of the state. The people who dreamt up this index seem to have no conception of the arrogant act of trespass that they are committing on the ancient rights of a freeborn people." (01/09/2006)

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All available articles from » Andrew Gimson

The Greek daily comments on Turkey's new chief of staff, General Yasar Buyukanit. "For Buyukanit, Turkey is faced with two main threats, namely Islamic radicalism and Kurdish separatism. ... At the same time, Buyukanit has stressed that the army will have the final say on the Cyprus issue, saying that as a military man he will 'keep a close eye on developments'. ... Buyukanit is reinjecting clarity into Turkey's political discourse, an element that had been lacking in recent years. Either because of his Islamic roots or because of Ankara's EU-related obligations, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has often seemed to stumble into the zone of the politically obscure.The new military chief takes his place next to President Ahmet Necdet Sezer as the main voices of Turkey's traditional establishment. ... Greece's policy of placing hope in the EU as a transformative power to turn Turkey into a Western-type democracy seems bankrupt." (01/09/2006)

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More from the press review on the subject » EU enlargement, » Domestic Policy, » Turkey
All available articles from » Costa Lordanis

The Irish daily comments on dismaying level of illteracy in one of the wealthiest countries of Europe. "A total of 22.6 % of the Irish population were identified as functionally illiterate. ... That shameful figure is connected to another: 19.4 % of the population is at risk of poverty. These conditions invariably go hand-in-hand. They are just two of the depressing figures contained in Developing a Fairer Ireland, the very aptly entitled review produced by the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI) this week. ... It is difficult to comprehend that in a country considered to be very wealthy, there are increasing levels of poverty. The high incidence of illiteracy and early school leaving are major factors. One of the very few things the Government is excellent at is producing reports, strategies and action plans on how to reduce poverty, but it does very little to actually implement them". (01/09/2006)

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Use of the Internet is known to be widespread in Estonia, because of the country's strategic support for new technologies. Ivar Tallo, head of the "e-Governance Academy" in Estonia, recommends that Poland too should develop Internet technology, instead of investing EU funds in agriculture. "Internet access is guaranteed as a legal right in Estonia. Using my passport I can log into the government's website at any time and see what data on me are stored there. I can also pay my taxes and insurance contributions on the website, and even find out whether there is currently a legal case against me. The advantage of many kinds of administrative transactions being done on the Internet is that it makes corruption physically impossible.” (01/09/2006)

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All available articles from » Piotr Manowiecki

The weekly 'O Independente', founded in 1987, will no longer be issued. "Conceived by young people, (Miguel Esteves Cardoso and Paulo Portas who were twenty-something at the time), 'O Independente' did not know how to grow up", writes Vasco Pulido Valente. "Indeed both of them ended up giving it up. ... This no doubt explains why the paper never lost, even at its peak, a certain sense of improvisation which was its charm, even when announcing it's imminent elimination. ... Portugal as normalised by Cavaco Silva [Prime Minister from 1985 to 1995], with his authority and incorrigible arrogance, demanded an enormous amount of insolence and audacity. With its free tone, 'O'Independente ' consoled the country. ... However, if on one hand there was a feeling, a certain euphoria in its columns all this time, there was not, on the other hand any real substance: no organised and shared political vision, no journalistic genre and no solid financial ground." (01/09/2006)

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Juliusz Kurkiewicz reports on the ambitious publishing project, "The Myths.” Initiated by a Scottish publisher, it has now been taken up by 24 publishing houses around the world. The project involves contemporary authors writing new versions of old myths. Kurkiewicz is enthusiastic about the idea and finds Polish author Olga Tokarczuk's story about the Sumerian goddess Inanna the best book in the series. "Tokarczuk doesn't only repeat well-known stories, she doesn't just give them a twist either, like other authors in the series. She plunges into the myth, tries to decode its meaning, shows that these are stories that could happen to anybody at any time – even though they've never actually happen to anybody. Tokarczuk's Inanna is called Anna In, and is a young woman we could very well meet on the street.” (31/08/2006)

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All available articles from » Juliusz Kurkiewicz

Several feature films are currently being made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Journalist Benedek F. Toth sees this as an opportunity for redirecting the process of coming to terms with the past. "The political scene and political parties are incapable of seriously examining the past, and of unconditionally supporting this process in the arts... But these films get their credibility by telling the stories of people who personally experienced the revolution. The films are about love, the hardships of daily life, banal lies, cowardice and courage. They are understandable and full of emotion. If these films eventually lead to a serious debate on the past, it will have been worth them being made.” (01/09/2006)

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The chronicler Daniel Scheidermann regrets that the French media focus on a new novel by Christine Angot at the beginning of this new season in publishing. "Apparently the new literary season of 2006 has lined up 683 novels. Woe to the authors of the 682 other ones. How could one not feel a pang of compassion ? ... Hats off. Hats off before the immense, the unfathomable, the oceanic laziness betrayed by this concentration on Angot. The laziness of the publishers. The laziness of the literary critics and their bosses, off on holiday with a clear conscience having tied up their pages at the end of August. General laziness, thus self-absolved, of all those who consent to this surrender of curiosity, to this submission to this self-proclaimed evidence, to this dictatorship of presumed success, that constitutes a single book, a single voice, among 683.” (01/09/2006)

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All available articles from » Daniel Schneidermann

Finland is one of the most successful competitors on the world market, and its educational system has a very good reputation abroad. But Stig Nygard asks whether all this is not just a superficial picture. The fact is that Finland has the highest rate of young male unemployment among the "old EU” countries. Finland also tops statistics for alcohol abuse and violence among youths. "Young people see work and leisure differently than their parents. They don't want their job to be the main thing in their lives, as the older generations did for so long. Instead, increasing numbers of young people look for fulfilment outside their work. Is it their disappointment at not fulfilling the expectations of their parents' generation, or their own idealised vision of achieving personal satisfaction in life that's making more and more young people throw in the towel?” (01/09/2006)

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All available articles from » Stig Nygard