The weekly writes about the dispute triggered by the French daily France Soir's decision to republish the caricatures in its Wednesday, February 1 issue. An editorial choice questioned by the paper's owner, Raymond Lakah, who responded by firing the managing editor, Jacques Lefranc. Before learning of this development, the paper's editor-in-chief, Serge Faubert, explained in an interview led by François Sionneau why the daily decided to publish the drawings. "Not everyone is obliged to share the strictures of a religion, whichever one it may be. ... I believe freedom of expression wears thin if one fails to use it. And caricature is an element of free expression. We are a republican newspaper and we fight for republican values. The moment that someone wants to forbid caricatures, that is the moment we publish them." (02/02/2006)

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Fleming Rose, cultural editor of the Danish broadsheet Jyllands-Posten, claims in an interview led by Radek Nedved that Danish Muslims travelled to the Middle East with the express purpose of stirring up the Mohammed cartoon dispute. "They deliberately spread lies about the way Muslims are treated in Denmark and about my paper there. Among other things, they used two Mohammed cartoons which have never appeared in a Danish paper. What we are witnessing here is a struggle between a modern secular democracy in which everyone has the right to say and write what they want and forces which are trying to push their religious taboos on people who adhere to beliefs other than their own." (02/02/2006)

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In an interview with Jörgen Steen Nielsen, Islam expert Tariq Ramadan describes the recent escalation in the dispute surrounding the Mohammed cartoons as crazy. "On both sides there are people with a vested interest in an escalation of the dispute. They goad the other side with overreactions and provocations, and pull a lot of people in their wake. On the Muslim side the dictatorial regimes are using the conflict to demonstrate that they are the best defenders of Muslims and Islam. On the European side there's a right-wing bloc which has made it their business to spread an image of Muslims as undermining freedom of expression and wanting to change Western society. It will take clever and sensible people on both sides to put an end to the insults and overreactions." (02/02/2006)

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The editorial writer Rui Camacho is surprised that the editor of Jyllands-Posten should be amazed by the reaction these caricatures have provoked in the Muslim world. "Salman Rushdie could have explained to him what happens when one questions the Muslim prophet!" Camacho notes ironically. "But the most surprising thing is that there are still intellectuals out there ready with a justification when people react to any humourous treatment of the prophet by burning books, flags or newspapers. The editor of Jyllands-Posten was right not to apologise. This is not just about blasphemy toward a God that does not laugh and does not permit others to laugh at him, it is about higher values, those pertaining to freedom of expression and freedom to laugh. ... Fanatics may burn the Danish flag because they don't like a few drawings, but not here, not in Europe, not under the Western firmament." (02/02/2006)

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According to Christian Geyer, the decision of several European newspapers to reprint the cartoons is long overdue. "Since the forced apology issued by the Danish newspaper, the dispute has escalated to a point at which the only way to de-escalate the situation is not to give in, but to publish the cartoons. Only by uniting in defence of the principles of democratic public life will Europe be able to relieve the pressure on a single newspaper and a single country currently being blackmailed. They naturally can't stand up to the pressure on their own. Only by uniting in solidarity will Europe be able to make it clear that religious fundamentalists who don't respect the difference between satire and blasphemy have a problem not only with Denmark, but with the entire Western world." (02/02/2006)

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The daily runs a drawing by Chappatte on its front page in which the caricaturist depicts himself saying, 'I did not draw him' while holding up a sheet of paper with the words 'Muhammad with a giant schnoz'. The editorial writer Patricia Briel analyses the consequences of the dispute. "When all is said and done, the reaction of the Arab-Muslim countries reflects the urgency and necessity of launching another Ijtihad, the effort that consists of constantly revising the interpretation of Islam's precepts in order to adapt them to the contemporary world. Today, several Muslim intellectuals are urging people to maintain a healthy distance from sacred issues - the only approach that is liable to prevent Islam from being manipulated by religious extremists. Taking up Ijtihad again, interrupted in the eleventh century, would encourage a more fruitful dialogue between Western democracies and Islamic societies." (02/02/2006)

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Hungary seems to have difficulties confronting its past, notes historian Róbert Braun. He goes on to draw certain parallels between how the István Szabó case and the Holocaust have been dealt with. "Without intending to equate these two totalitarian systems, one can nonetheless safely say that both forms of dictatorship represented a serious blow to moral values. This is why it's so crucial to take on the challenge of confronting our memories, both of the Holocaust and of socialism. For me, the passiveness of many reactions to the revelations about István Szabós is more worrying than his life as such. The silence, too, is bad, because silence is the attempt to flee justice. In our recollections of the past we should be aware of fundamental moral differences: in totalitarian regimes there were culprits, victims, resistance fighters and voyeurs. The issue of who were the culprits, who the victims, who resisted and who just looked on needs to be discussed." (02/02/2006)

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"It is time to consider the principal of sovereignty as a responsibility," writes Amitai Etzioni, a professor at George Washington University. "The idea implies a radical shift in the vision of self-determination that has prevailed since the Peace of Westphalia, dating back to 1648. ... Sovereignty, under the new definition, is conditional: a State can maintain its sovereignty only if it accepts its responsibilities to its citizens and to the international community. Hence, a government that is incapable of protecting its people against ethnic cleansing, as was the case in Rwanda or Kosovo, or against famine, as in Nigeria, is considered to be a government that has forfeited its right to independence. From this point, the UN is completely within its rights if it issues an order to intervene in the internal affairs of this State." (02/02/2006)

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Historian and columnist Timothy Garton Ash maintains Iran has become a "leading test case" of how the world deals with the serious problem of nuclear proliferation. But he asserts the current treaty "is not adequate to the task and is often honoured only in the breach. ... So whatever we do about Iran, what we need is a new international system for the supervision and inspection of nuclear capacities in every country in the world. It should be explicit, consistent and administered by the nearest thing we have to a world arbiter, the United Nations. In order for it to be credible, established nuclear powers such as Britain and the US will have to submit themselves to the same regime of supervision and inspection as everyone else." (02/02/2006)

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"The Constitution is not dead, it is simply in a coma," writes the Dutch daily's former Europe correspondent. "Unlike France, the Netherlands has been avoiding the debate over the future of the European Union, a harmful development. ... Prior to last year's referendum, the Dutch government warned that a 'No' to the Constitution would lead to the country's isolation. Now, it is the government itself that is keeping the country at a distance. ... It wants to await the results of opinion polls before making any pronouncements. If the government does not offer its opinion, it will find itself isolated in the European debates. Other countries will be able to exert a greater influence than us on the final outcome, and decisions made by others will apply equally to us. We cannot keep saying 'No', we are in Europe, not on the Moon." (02/02/2006)

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Gerry Moriarty, the daily's Northern Editor, says the release on Wednesday, February 1 of two official reports offering conflicting views on the extent of arms decommisioning by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) "could cause enormous problems" for the peace process. "What must not be lost in all this analysis is the generally positive assessment by the IMC [the Independent Monitoring Commission, which found the IRA had retained some weapons] that this IRA supertanker is slowly turning in the right direction. ... Are we back to demands for more IRA decommissioning? Heaven help the political process if we are. If [Ian Paisley, leader of the loyalist Democratic Unionist party] wants to prolong the process sometime into eternity, the dispute over weapons and ammunition the IRA may or may not have in its possession has presented him with the perfect excuse for never sharing power." (02/02/2006)

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The Swedish government is considering passing a law to make Swedish the country's official national language, which it has not been up to now. The draft bill, under which only persons who can express themselves clearly in the Swedish language would be able to work in public administration, has already triggered an intense debate. According to those who oppose it, the law would discriminate against citizens with a foreign background. Culture Minster Leif Pagrotsky has now spoke out in its favour. "There are already a number of projects. There's an increased emphasis on Swedish language courses and we're promoting the publication of classic Swedish literature. I have no objections in principle to this law. I want to clearly emphasise that point." (02/02/2006)

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On the site of a former concentration camp for Roma in southern Bohemia, which was administrated by the Czechs during Nazi times, an obscure ultra right-wing party has tried to win votes with a dirty campaign over the past few weeks. The campaign has been successful, as Alexandr Budka observes critically. "Over the past two weeks, a total of 366 articles, some of them on the title pages, have appeared in the press. The campaign has also received plenty of TV coverage. Yet not once has there been any attempt to throw light on the party's extremist views. Do our journalists seriously share the National Party's beliefs that the Roma themselves were to blame for their own deaths because they didn't wash themselves often enough? That the Czech nation never did anything wrong or that homosexuality can be cured, as the party claims? The media is only concerned with profit... Xenophobia and hate of foreigners obviously sell just as well as sex in their opinion. Otherwise, 'reports' like those on the National Party wouldn't appear at all." (02/02/2006)

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The daily criticises the European Commission's attitude toward the hostile bid launched by Indian giant Mittal Steel for the European company, Arcelor. "The Brussels commission only wants to consider matters from a legal standpoint, as it effects competition, and nothing but competition. It shows that it is hostage to its liberal dogmatism, to the point of forgetting the weight of its own history: European construction began with steel and it is highly symbolic that steel should be the issue on which the Union finds itself currently foundering. The only ones who have dared to pose the real questions are the unions. They are rightly worried about the social consequences of the dismemberment of a European industry that is incapable of facing up to a globalisation process that is channeling wealth to Asia. The fact that the EU's member governments are unable to provide them with any response has serious ramifications for the credibility of each one.” (02/02/2006)

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In a commentary, Borut Grgic, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, calls for a new approach in European energy policy. "There are not enough sources of energy to replace Russia as a supplier. It's also questionable whether other European producers would prove more reliable. Meanwhile, global energy consumption is steadily increasing. Alternative energies won't be able to replace oil and gasentirely , and nuclear energy is a controversial issue in many countries." Grgic recommends integrating the European energy market and acquiring shares in the Russian energy sector. This "could make it more difficult for the Kremlin to use energy as a foreign policy weapon." (02/02/2006)

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The Spanish writer Andrés Trapiello looks at the commercial exploitation of Mozart's 250th birthday. "To what point do we have a right to tell the commercial market, 'Get your dirty hands off my Mozart!', when we are also complicit ourselves? To avoid the act of consumption when, for once, it brings us closer to excellence, strikes me as very strange and, in my humble opinion, makes us look inevitably like 'idiots'. And proclaiming that we are spurning consumerism, only to sneak back in through the back door, is a wretched ruse. ... It is not always pleasant to have to share something with people who we do not think deserve it. ... But if artworks from the past are to teach us something, it is their ability to belong, as Nietzsche put it, to everybody and to nobody." (02/02/2006)

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The Estonian photographers Kaisa Eiche and Taavi Piibemann have set up a photo exhibition in the windows of an old department store in Tartu. The show has triggered heavy protests, above all from the Orthodox Church, owing to its title "Would you buy it?", and its dealing with the question of whether God can be perceived as a commodity. Estonian author Andreas W. says he can't understand what all the fuss is about. "I really don't know whether we live in Europe or just talk about living in Europe. The reactions to the exhibition have forced me to re-think this issue. One must always bear in mind the fundamental truth that each era produces its own art, and today's art is no longer about beauty and the pleasant side of life, but raises unpleasant questions." (02/02/2006)

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