"Three homicides in a day, seven in a week, twenty over the first six months of the year. These are war bulletins coming from Naples everyday", writes Dominique Dunglas. "Buried in rubbish that is no longer collected, worn out by an endless social crisis, in the hands of organised crime the Parthenopean capital is dying. ... The new generations of apprentice god-fathers who once thrived on cocaine traffic now only know extreme-violence as a means of obtaining power. And blood breeds blood". The journalist quotes the Neapolitan judge Paolo Mancuso: "The social crisis, unemployment, the lack of judiciary means. All of this needs to be acted upon. Violence has reached an unprecedented level and destroyed all social relations. We have to rebuild from ruins." (02/11/2006)

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The journalist and writer Giorgio Bocca analyses the strong-hold of the Camorra, the local mafia, on the city. "Crime has won for the time being. Naples has hit rock bottom. It has reached the limit beyond which any cohabitation is impossible. Naples has something that most Italian towns do not know: mass-poverty. Like in Alexandria, in Bombay, in Calcutta, where an endless number of people survive, rather than live, where every day, enormous crowds of people go looking for survival without really knowing where to find it. In Milan and in Turin, there is poverty, but in Naples mass-poverty is the natural ally of delinquency ... . The Camorra has a decisive function in this city: to guarantee the survival of marginal people. The forms of complicity with the Camorra that has appropriated an immense majority of Neapolitan public property are innumerable, infinite and above all unthinking." (02/11/2006)

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Michael Braun says it's a bad idea to send soldiers to Naples. He points out that this strategy has already been tried and didn't work: "The Mafia acknowledged their presence but simply carried on as before ... There was a time, in the mid-1990s, when it looked like Italy would be able to bring down the mafia. There was talk of 'Spring in Palermo' and 'the renaissance of Naples'. Mafia bosses were rounded up and arrested by the dozen, and civilian society woke from its slumber. But in the end the State left them alone again. Once Sicily's Mafia put an end to its spectacular murders of public prosecutors and politicians, the anti-Mafia campaign was no longer a priority – even for the political left. All of a sudden, the public prosecutors who wanted to bring the Mafia's white-collar accomplices in economic and political circles to justice found themselves isolated again. The message got through: as long as the Mafia and the Camorra didn't go too far, they have nothing to fear from the law. Naples doesn't need soldiers; it needs a political signal from Rome that the Italian State no longer wants to live with the Mafia." (02/11/2006)

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"My position as an historian with an East-European sensibility allows me a different approach to the history of barbaric Europe and helps me avoid falling into the trap of a unilateral vision of Europe's past", explains Karol Modzelewski, professor of medieval history at the University of Warsaw, whose opinion is related by Gilles Anquetil. "The cultural roots of Europe are also barbaric. But the historical and ideological vulgate tries to deny this. Since the Christianisation of the European space, a very selective genealogy has been constructed, neglecting the mosaic of barbaric populations who composed Europe for centuries. We have focused only on Mediterranean heritage -Greek and Roman- and then on Christian heritage. The history of populations that do not have their origins in the Mediterranean and who lived in the confines of the Roman Empire also forged our European culture." (02/11/2006)

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Mariam Lau comments on the revival of the headscarf debate in Germany after Ekin Deligöz, a member of the German parliament for The Greens, received death threats after calling on Muslim women to throw off their headscarves. She describes the headscarf as a means of demarcation. "The young girls who go round in high heels and heavy eye make-up make it difficult to perceive wearing headscarves is a sign of chastity... The coquettishness of the headscarf consists in the implication that men will turn into animals if one only reveals oneself. At the same time, their wearing the headscarf carries the implication that they regard their German peers as whores... So the discussion about the headscarf is not just about the women who are victims of a patriarchal society, as far too many of them no doubt are. It's also about those who wear the headscarf of their own free will. Why shouldn't we make it clear to them that we would rather have them among us without headscarves?" (02/11/2006)

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Catalan nationalists of the centre-right ended up at the head of the regional parliamentary elections held on Wednesday, November 1st, with a relative majority of 48 seats out of 135. This is a result that will force them to unite with the left-wing parties in order to be able to govern. For the daily, these results confirm that the "Catalan voters are against absolute majorities or allowing a part to govern alone. This electoral verdict, which obliges political forces to make pacts, shows that the culture of coalition, so wide-spread in numerous countries of our European surroundings, is gaining ground among Catalans. And the other lesson to be learned from yesterday's election is from the high level of abstention observed once again (around 43.2%). It indicates a certain fatigue among electors who have noticed that their preoccupations do not feature in the programmes of political parties." (02/11/2006)

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"We are the most spied-upon society in Europe, with more CCTV cameras than the rest of the EU combined", laments the daily. "New Labour has used the shock of the 9/11 attacks to launch the most sustained assault on personal freedom ever seen in this country outside wartime. It is not just the ubiquity of CCTV cameras or speed cameras - they are simply the visible manifestation of Tony Blair's obsession with control. It is the plans for ID cards and biometric recognition, the national DNA database (which even its own inventor believes is out of control), the computerisation of medical records, the national children's database, ever more intrusive questions proposed for the next Census. Taken together they are stripping us bare of any real sense of privacy. ... There are profound philosophical questions about the relationship of the state to the individual at stake here." (02/11/2006)

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More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Domestic Policy, » United Kingdom

David Wagner comments the proposition made by the Luxembourg member of parliament Michel Wolter to modify the national flag. "Everything indicates that times are going to get harder. What could be better to direct debates away from subjects of social politics or economics? Because patriotism is a bit like monarchy or religion: it is of no use apart from favouring a false sense of belonging to the detriment of acknowledgement of social injustice and disparity, which are very real. But the manoeuvre of Wolter and company is even more worrying. Those responsible for the Initiativ Roude Léiw [The Red Lion] may be idiots serving an operation satisfying and perhaps reinforcing the national and patriotic sentiment of the population. After last spring's football season that was troubled by debates on the subject of foreign flags and a duel-nationality bill, it was high time to reassure those whose sense of national identity is fast withering away." (27/10/2006)

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Sören Krarup is an MP for the Danish People's Party - which gives the liberal-conservative government its parliamentary majority - and one of Denmark's most influential politicians. He has now sparked a wave of controversy by proposing that the German-Danish border be pushed southwards. Krarup, who was born in the border region with Germany, maintains that the Danish government should not be content with receiving financial support from the Danish minority in Germany. Torben Krogh is appalled. "Sören Krarup's proposal puts the Danish minority in Germany in a difficult position and is a pathetic attempt to turn the party's nationalist project into an expansive one." (02/11/2006)

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In 2004 Great Britain and Ireland opened their labour markets to workers from the nine new EU member states, however they plan to impose restrictions on the number of workers coming from Romania and Bulgaria. Andrea Tálasi explains that this is because the influx of workers from the nine new member states was much greater than had been expected. "The number of Eastern European workers who have moved to Great Britain over the past two years is so great that they now account for two percent of the country's 30 million employees. The great majority of them (270,000) are Poles. They have established their own enclaves, newspapers and grocery stores. Many of them work as bus drivers, plumbers or builders. Lithuanians, Slovaks and Latvians came too. Hungarians, Estonians, Slovenians, on the other hand, preferred to stay at home. (02/11/2006)

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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » United Kingdom, » Ireland

The journalist Paulo Fereira considers that the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) - an organisation launched on Wednesday, November 1st that unites over 300 trade unions from 154 countries - can play an intermediary role in globalisation. "Though somewhat tardy, the arrival of the ITUC is good news. So long as it is not contented with good intentions and that it does demonstrate a constructive attitude without constant recourse to blockades. For a start, this means trade unions understanding that the world has changed. Hard-line defence of workers' rights in rich countries is unavailing. The rights and living standard of workers should be defended in countries that are in the process of attaining globalisation, in China, India and Brazil. As long as these countries remain poor, without any protective workers' rights, nomadic businesses will continue to have a preference for them. This is the worst scenario for the survival of trade unions themselves." (02/11/2006)

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Twenty-two years after it was first published, a Czech-language version of Milan Kundera's most successful novel 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', authorised by the author himself [born in Czechoslovakia], has been published in the Czech Republic. Alexander Balogh sees this as a literary sensation. "Following the defeat of Prague Spring in 1968, Kundera's works were put on the state index of forbidden works. His status as a forbidden author forced him into exile in France, where he not only found a new home but also a new language for his literature. Since the mid-1990s Kundera has written all his books in French. Until 1989 his Czech and Slovak readership could only get hold of his works through Samizdat – or exile editions. They were therefore all the more surprised when the situation didn't change after the collapse of communism. Kundera himself prevented the publishing of his books in the Czech language, so paradoxically he became an unread author in his own country." (02/11/2006)

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More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » Czech Republic

The Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered two years ago. Jan-Werner Müller takes the opportunity to review the new book by author Ian Buruma, who grew up in the Netherlands. 'Murder in Amsterdam' analyses the "multicultural drama" being played out within Dutch society. "Burama aims to make one thing particularly clear: how specifically Dutch the characters and the entire nature of this 'drama' are – and how characters that at first appear to be complete opposites share basic attitudes that can ultimately only be understood within a Dutch context. For example, the book portrays the predominance of a kind of watered-down Calvinism that still makes strict ethics seem the only morally acceptable attitude. Buruma implies that Dutch tolerance is the result of a momentous act of cultural-political and psychological restraint that has prevailed since the religious wars. Up to now, this legacy has been managed by an elite that is not so very different to that once portrayed by Frans Hals: responsible-minded, self-confident, but also self-satisfied." (02/11/2006)

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More from the press review on the subject » Film, » Literature, » Religion, » Weltanschauung, » Netherlands

Dominik Kamalzadeh reviews the controversial new film 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan', which is now showing in cinemas around the world. In the film, the Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, travels to the US. "This grey-suited, lanky, moustached, and among other things radically politically incorrect, anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and misogynous reporter from the Wild East confronts the world with his broken English. He makes no bones about his prejudices, thus exposing the similar but better-concealed resentments of his supposedly liberal counterparts... Significantly, Borat meets with much less resistance from the underprivileged. A group of blacks don't see him as a racist Kazakh but as a weird freak who happily adopts their codes. It's the outsiders who make a new kind of community possible, in which even strangers can be assimilated." (02/11/2006)

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As different newspapers are publishing an appeal calling for the elucidation of Anna Politkovskaya's assassination, the daily presents an unpublished text written by the Russian journalist, found in her computer after her death. She describes in it the deterioration of journalism in her country. "Our task is to distract the public and if we write something serious, it is only to show how magnificent all forms of the 'vertical power' are. Let me point out that these last five years President Putin has not ceased building a 'power vertical', consisting from one end to the other in the designation by him, or those selected by him, of all civil servants and all of the bureaucratic hierarchy. ... The struggle for the right to circulate impartial information and to serve this information, not the presidential administration, is a rear-guard battle. Thus has commenced an era of intellectual and moral stagnation in the professional milieu to which I too belong." (02/11/2006)

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Virginijus Savukynas reflects on the Lithuanian identity. He says the stereotypical representative is a Lithuanian-speaking, white Catholic who goes around humming folk songs and can't stand the government or the Poles. But what role does religion play in Lithuania today? "Catholicism is indeed an important component of the Lithuanian mentality. Until the 19th century, you had to be Catholic to become Lithuanian. Later on, the language factor became more important. Today the Catholic Church in Lithuania no longer claims to have a monopoly. It is tolerant and makes attempts to establish dialogue with Muslims. Although most Lithuanians are Catholics, many nonetheless believe in reincarnation or astrology." (02/11/2006)

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All available articles from » Virginijus Savukynas