The Palestinians can expect nothing but stringency from the new Israeli coalition, the daily Die Presse writes.  "People are fond of pointing out that in the course of history it has often been right-wing governments that have summoned up the power for peace agreements. And during his first term as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was more peaceable than he is now being depicted. After all, it was he who at the Wye Plantation gave the green light for the partial withdrawal of Israelis from the occupied areas. … Netanyahu is an opportunist and Avigdor Lieberman is also likely to be one too. But even this gives no cause for hope. Opportunists adapt to situations as they arise. And at the moment this is what the situation looks like on the Israeli and Palestinian fronts: a radical standstill. The window of opportunity for peace in the Middle East is not just closed, it's been walled up." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Middle East, » Israel
All available articles from » Christian Ultsch

The Süddeutsche Zeitung fears an escalation of the Middle East conflict: "Under Benjamin Netanyahu and his vassals from the right-wing and ultra-orthodox camps there will be no new political impulses but only regression and renewed hostilities. Netanyahu will manage the conflict, not solve it. He and Avigdor Lieberman are the gravediggers of the Middle East peace process. They want to maintain the occupation and establish more Jewish settlements. All of that suits the radical Islamic Hamas perfectly well. It doesn't need a peacemaker in Jerusalem, but a Netanyahu who wants to end their rule in the Gaza Strip with violence. Hamas needs Netanyahu because the confrontation with Israel legitimates its existence." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Domestic Policy, » Europe, » Middle East, » Israel
All available articles from » Thorsten Schmitz

The conservative daily Rzeczpospolita criticises the likely choice of Avigdor Lieberman for the post of Israeli foreign minister. "To put it cautiously, Israel would be presenting itself to the world in an unflattering light. Casting aside all caution one can say that there is the danger that Israel commits diplomatic suicide [in this matter]. And what's more this comes at a time when Israel has called for a boycott of the UN's 'Durban II' conference scheduled for April, which is aimed at fighting racism and xenophobia. Israel knows that it will be the main target of criticism there. … The nomination of such a politician as head of diplomacy certainly won't help the cause of boycotting 'Durban II' because it will also have the effect of making every Western politician think twice about even meeting up with the Israeli foreign minster." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Middle East, » Israel
All available articles from » Jerzy Haszczyński

Pope Benedict XVI is setting off on his first pilgrimage to Africa today. "With more than 158 million faithful the continent has become a new beacon of hope for the Vatican," the liberal daily Sme writes. "If Africa was once a hard nut to crack for the European missionaries of old, thanks above all to Pope John Paul II, who travelled there on 16 occasions, it has become a modern bastion of Christianity. For Benedict XVI Africa represents a major challenge as the Church has several long term problems to deal with there. One of them is the spread of Aids and the Church's strict stance on the use of condoms. Many members of the clergy are calling for an exception to be made for married couples in which one of the partners is infected with HIV. But even if the Pope sees Aids as one of the greatest dangers for the continent he will not change his position on condoms. … For the African clergy observing the vow of celibacy is also a problem. In tribal cultures men are not considered to be men until they have fathered a child." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Religion, » Africa
All available articles from » Tomáš Hudák

On the occasion of the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul, the daily Le Monde dedicates its leading article to the world's water resources: "Water is vitally important. But as opposed to the air we breathe it is not considered the common property of all humanity. Whereas the climate issue already falls under international agreements, the management of water resources remains the prerogative of individual states. Yet too few of these have prioritised it in their environmental policy. ... Ecosystems that are exploited today may be unable to provide future generations with enough clean water. Water is on the front line in the fight against poverty, disease and hunger. If it is in short supply the economy cannot develop. The UN warns that If today's water management continues the impact on human development and security will be 'grave'." (16/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Environmental Policy, » Global

More than 5,000 Bulgarian police officers went on strike on the weekend. The conservative daily Novinar comments on their demands for a 50 percent salary hike plus changes in legislation aimed at improving security: "The national call for a strike that brought thousands of policemen on to the streets of Sofia is the strongest signal sent to the Bulgarian state and society in years. Strikes and union protest actions are part and parcel of democracy. No one is surprised when a professional group resorts to such measures nowadays to defend its interests. But when the police stages protests it is not a normal union action. These are the people who strive to ensure public order and security. This is the state force aimed at fighting crime. When thousands of police organise a national protest they are showing through this gesture that in the crisis they too are one of the major components of statehood." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Bulgaria
All available articles from » Georgi Koritarov

According to the British daily The Independent at least 1,000 Muslim men living in the UK have several wives even though polygamy has been banned there since 1604. The Danish daily Jyllands-Posten writes: "The information on illegal polygamy has got people talking in the UK, because despite everything the entire country has not been infected by sharia-speak. ... This discussion should nevertheless be seen in a larger perspective which includes the cowardly and embarrassing entry ban for the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, who had been invited by the British parliament [to show his anti-Muslim film Fitna]. And we should not forget that this selfsame British parliament was only one vote away from passing a law which would ban, among other things, this present article: the law would have disallowed criticism of religions and their more or less self-proclaimed representatives. These are dismal prospects." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Religion, » Weltanschauung, » United Kingdom

The intellectual Fanos Kakouriotis analyses the state of the Italian Left in the Greek daily Eleftherotypia: "After 1991 the Left in Italy followed a ... politically correct line. ... It got rid of everything that had anything to do with the word Communism, apart from a few exceptions like the Communist Refoundation Party. After that ... it also struck the word Left from party names, giving birth to the Democratic Party. ... After the resounding defeat in Sardinia ... and the resignation of Walter Veltroni as chairman ... the Democratic Party seems to be afflicted with old-age syndrome, and to have regressed to the stage of early infancy. Today ... Berlusconi appears as Italy's most believable politician (for many the 'workers' prime minister), and in view of the prolonged dormancy in which the ... apolitical, anti-Marxist centre-left finds itself, it will ultimately be the right-wing extremists and neofascists that benefit." (16/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Italy
All available articles from » Fanos Kakuriotis

What the baby boomers were in the West the so-called "decree children" are in Romania. This epithet was given to the generation of children born between 1966 and 1990 as a result of Decree 770 passed in 1966 which banned all methods of contraception as well as abortion. Writing in the daily Adevărul, Emilian Isaila examines the resilience of Romania's decree children in times of crisis. "I belong to a generation that was born in crisis - a demographic crisis. I am a decree child that grew up and worked in the midst of crisis. If you ask me, the state of non-crisis is what I find strange. In all my life I have never known a time when the number of jobs available was greater than the demand for work, with the exception of the anomalous past three years. … What is happening now is dramatic. A crisis that hit out of the blue and is destroying our hard-won optimism. But there is a small but important difference between the crisis of the communist system and that of the capitalist system. The latter offers people an opportunity. And decree children don't need anything more than an opportunity. Communism gave them none. I belong to a generation that had nothing and gave nothing; that was forced to rely on itself to survive. People like me don't see the crisis as the end of the world but as the end of a world. And in most cases that simply means a new opportunity." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Weltanschauung, » Romania
All available articles from » Emilian Isaila

In the liberal intellectual weekly Élet és Irodalom Gábor Bruck and Zoltán Vági reflect on the condemnation of capitalism evident all over the world. "In recent times capitalism has become a dirty word. Today it symbolises insatiable greed, the unbridled rule of profit and the exploitation of citizens. … Anti-capitalist tendencies can be observed across the globe. Meanwhile the facts paint a different picture. Crisis or no crisis, people's standard of living has never risen as much as it has since the emergence of the capitalist economic system. Although many of us believe that for now our current level of development has reached the end of a linear curve, the history that has been put together piece by piece by historians, economists, doctors and archaeologists tells a different story. The fact is that over the past 150 to 200 years mankind, and with it wealth, assets and living standards have all developed far more rapidly than they did from the Palaeolithic era right down to Napoleon. Instead of angrily consigning capitalism to oblivion we should keep these advantages in mind." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Economic Policy, » Global
All available articles from » Vági Zoltán Bruck Gábor

Very few Polish workers in the UK have been laid off as a result of the economic crisis because they have a reputation for being punctual and hard-working, writes Zbigniew Maciągin in the daily Polska. "'Aren't you afraid of losing your job?' I asked a colleague of mine who's been living and working in the UK for the last two years. 'Not in the least!', he answered. ... That's just how it is. Poles who are employed abroad are not the first ones to lose their jobs. They are industrious, punctual and inexpensive, because they earn very little. And they enjoy a high degree of trust among employers. Even if it's now no easy thing finding and holding a job in the West, there are still people who manage to do so. That's why there hasn't been a mass return of emigrants." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Economic Policy, » United Kingdom, » Poland
All available articles from » Zbigniew Maciąg

A growing number of Estonian workers who had left their country are now returning, the daily Eesti Päevaleht notes: "They have lost their jobs in the UK or Scandinavia and the economic situation is difficult everywhere. But perhaps even without the crisis more emigrants would have returned to Estonia. They return because they feel homesick, long for their families and because of the general improvement in the standard of living. It is estimated that the level at which earning a higher salary abroad ceases to be a major argument is 1,000 euros, and here in Estonia we weren't too far off that last year. Nonetheless it is chiefly workers who were employed in countries which provide very low unemployment benefits or who work in branches that are hard-hit everywhere, for example builders, who are now returning." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Migration, » Economic Policy, » Estonia, » Europe, » Global

The left-liberal Frankfurter Rundschau criticises the reporting on the shooting spree in the southern German city of Winnenden in which a 17-year-old shot 15 people and then himself: "The overriding confidence that lessons had been learned from the school catastrophes in Erfurt, Emsdetten and elsewhere concerning the media's treatment of shocking news was put paid to in Winnenden. The rat race for the fastest information and the best access to evil secrets has quickened its pace. Twitter messages spread like wildfire immediately after the first shots were fired, and blurred images of the dying killer shot with a mobile telephone were immediately uploaded onto the relevant online portals. The depth of focus no longer plays a part in deciding which images are used. ... Anyone who demands journalistic etiquette, let alone media ethics, has not understood the dynamic behind the new information technology. A media machine in which everyone is both receiver and broadcaster can no longer be switched off." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Audiovisual Media, » Print media, » Online media, » Media policy, » Germany
All available articles from » Harry Nutt

The daily Večer criticises the huge media interest in the incest case of Austrian Josef Fritzl. "This terrible, unparalleled crime has made the alleged perpetrator a well-known man. And Fritzl is already wondering how much money he can get for selling his story as a bestseller or film. Because someone is always willing to pay for this kind of thing, the suffering of his victims will continue. Even if they change their identities they will always live in fear that someone recognises them. And precisely this - in addition to the torment they have already suffered - is the tragedy of their story. For almost 25 years no one looked for Fritzl's daughters - no one was even aware that there were three other daughters. … Now, when they want to live their lives without the media circus they won't be allowed to. Many years ago Josef Fritzl determined the eternal fate of his family, now others will decide his." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Audiovisual Media, » Print media, » Online media, » Austria
All available articles from » Elizabeta Zorman

The conservative daily Lidové noviny criticises a recommendation by the European Parliament intended to avoid discrimination of women in the way they are addressed. The paper "contains instructions for how to act appropriately in communication with women in the parliamentary buildings to ensure maximum gender equality. Women should never be addressed as 'Fräulein' but as 'Frau'. Parliamentary employees were to refrain from using 'Fräulein', 'Mademoiselle' or 'Señorita' because such forms of address imply that a woman is still single and thus cannot be considered neutral. The paper also recommends that one always act according to context. During a meeting of experts the address 'sehr geehrte Expertinnen und Experten' (lady and gentlemen experts) was preferable to 'sehr geehrte Experten' (gentlemen experts). … British MEPs made no bones about condemning the brochure as proof that the parliament was 'definitely moving into the realm of the absurd' on this issue." (17/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Public Culture, » Europe
All available articles from » Kateřina Šafaříková