Jean-Jacques Roth doesn't consider a boycott is the best weapon against Beijing. "At the moment we can note the remarkable efficiency of a handful of militants capable of besmirching the official image of the Olympics with their Ketchup-splattered T-shirts. This pressure will not wane; it will grow with every lap of the Olympic flame. If China understands early enough that YouTube can be more devastating than a boycott, that opinion beyond its empire is a force to be feared, it will find the pacifying gesture that will save its face, the Games and wounded consciences. The Olympic Games could then become the 'catalyser for change', which Jacques Rogge, the current IOC president, would like to believe in." (27/03/2008)

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Robert Korzeniowski, director of the Polish television channel TVP Sport, describes the demands that athletes shoulder the responsibility of the world's political problems by boycotting the Olympics as "hypocritical". "Neither businessmen nor politicians have taken serious steps in reaction to the tragedy in Tibet. I haven't heard anything about orders for aircraft, cars, computers or other goods produced in China being cancelled. ... Businessmen and politicians want to use the Olympic competitors to clear their consciences while they themselves continue to pursue their political and economic interests. But why should athletes, of all people, suffer to make this world a better place." (26/03/2008)

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For Eric Benhamou, "Beijing is not like Moscow in the days of the Iron curtain. China is a power that counts and the Olympic Games is an incontrovertible event for which Coca-Cola and McDonalds haven't hesitated to pay 100 million dollars to feature among the main sponsors. ... So a boycott is out of the question, nobody is proposing one, not even the dalai-lama in exile. Indeed, boycotting has never proven efficient while it would certainly do a disservice to the athletes themselves. Thus the riposte will be symbolic at most: the absence of a few leaders in the grand stands on opening day. What is more shocking is the IOC's silence. It had banked on the Olympic Games being able to force the Chinese authorities to be more open to questions of human rights. It has clearly failed. We are now left to hope that the CIO will prove stricter in the future, perhaps, why not, with a new charter." (27/03/2008)

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"The Olympic family, as it likes to call itself, must finally admit that it does indeed possess political power," Christof Siemes writes and explains: "What political power does sport have? Olympic officials answer this question as it suits them at any given moment. They urge the two Koreas to compete under a joint flag - as if that wouldn't be a political demonstration. Former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch promoted the awarding of the games to Beijing above all with the argument that Olympia could change a city 'and even a country'. ... Just over a month after Beijing won the games, Samaranch's successor, current IOC boss Jacques Rogge, explained that his organisation was not a 'watchdog' for the observance of human rights in China." (27/03/2008)

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Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger examines the assumption that integration into the globalised economy, and by extension capitalism, has a democratising effect in the long term. "This is a hypothesis for which you wouldn't put your hand into the fire considering the Chinese government's conduct in the Tibet conflict and the general stubbornness of the communist regime. ...The Western democracies will therefore have to come to terms with a conflict that will define world politics for years to come: economic integration will continue to deepen - provided globalisation doesn't suffer a serious setback - and democracies and authoritarian dictatorships will exist side by side. The Tibet conflict highlights the friction between these two types of system. How strong this friction is depends on the dimensions of the conflict and the different interests involved." (27/03/2008)

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Journalist Seamus Milne highlights the scope for "stronger alliances between the secular left and religious progressives against poverty, capitalism and war". "[Previously] organised religion stood with the established order, preaching social deference to the powers that be and leaving hope of justice to the hereafter. But as religion has declined in Europe and elsewhere and capitalism has eroded the ties binding religious institutions to ruling elites, that has become ever less true. … Religion cannot but now find itself in conflict with the unfettered rule of money - a capitalism that seeks to dominate exactly the social and personal arena which religion has always regarded as its own preserve. And as it becomes less useful as an ideological prop for power, religion's more radical and anti-establishment strains have become stronger. That is the context in which, for example, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela declares Jesus as the first socialist… .” (27/03/2008)

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During the NATO summit in Bucharest on 2-4 April, NATO member states must reach a decision about the applications for membership filed by Ukraine and Georgia. Branko Soban predicts that in view of Russia's stance, the decision won't be unanimous: "Russia genuinely feels threatened - not only by the US missile defence shield project in Poland and the Czech Republic and NATO's efforts to gain Ukraine's support. Russia is afraid that an exclusive club of Western countries is forming behind its back, which could be in a position to debate the architecture of security without its involvement. ... Russia will offer Georgia, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldavia a form of neutrality and respect for their autonomy as a substitute for NATO membership." (26/03/2008)

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"Granted, we are far from being able to speak of Europe as a major military power. Nonetheless, several preliminary steps have been discreetly taken in the past few years", explains Darío Valcárcel, referring in particular to the creation of the Military Staff of the European Union (EUMS). "There exists a transversal Europeanism that 80 % of the political class embraces, conservatives and socialists included. These Europeans believe that nothing can advance without a common defence. EU law, the single currency and cohesion are to be protected by a defence policy that can guarantee respect of treaties. The slow evolution of national armies towards a trans-national agreement demands urgent decisions. This means defining how it can evolve, within which limits and with which mandate." (27/03/2008)

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Maud Olofsson, leader of Sweden's Centre Party, has proposed making the amount of child allowance a family receives from the government dependent on the parents' income. The newspaper opposes this move: "The legitimacy of Sweden's welfare system essentially rests on the principle of general solutions: everyone is entitled to child allowance, medical care, schools and elderly care, irrespective of their income, and accordingly everyone is prepared to contribute to financing the system. Together with the tax reform introduced almost 20 years ago and a few other changes to the basic design of the Swedish welfare system, this is a plausible explanation for why Sweden is doing well economically, despite its high taxes." (26/03/2008)

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Adrian Hamilton reflects on Sarkozy's current visit to London. Regarding new opportunities for Anglo-French co-operation, he voices scepticism which is "partly down to Mr Brown's approach, or rather lack of it, to Europe. It is not so much that he is anti-European. He isn't. But he does not see it as a living, developing organism. It is a market, an area, a fact. ... The EU, to him, is a source of domestic political trouble and potential regulatory interference, not an avenue to the world of tomorrow. But then M. Sarkozy is not that much different. He is full of initiatives, it is true, but few are thought out and even fewer followed through. ... He came up with a policy for a Mediterranean-wide grouping without considering the effect on the non-Mediterranean countries of the EU, and in particular Germany. He believes in intervention to lower the rise of the euro currency but never squares this with a policy of laissez faire economics." (27/03/2008)

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Over the past few days, the Italian authorities have revealed that several dozens of buffalo farms surpass the authorized level of dioxin in milk used for mozzarella cheese. South Korea and Japan have reacted by temporarily blocking imports of buffalo mozzarella and Brussels has threatened to decree an embargo if the Italian authorities fail to provide detailed information. Marcello Sorgi fears for the Italian economy. "With the Alitalia crisis, the crisis hitting the exportation of this delicious cheese has suddenly become a real emergency. It risks repercussions on an already ailing Italian economy. How can this have happened in a country that, not so long ago, was classified the sixth most innovative and developing country in the world? … It is likely that this crisis will lead to drop in all exportation of national food, if not of all things 'made in Italy'." (27/03/2008)

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The country's major newspapers have appeared with a front page featuring nothing but a joint declaration with the title "The Seven Sins of the Press Law" today in protest at the draft for a new Slovakian press law. The country's journalists and newspaper editors fear that if the law enters force it will leave insufficient leeway for adequate journalistic coverage because the state reserves the right to correct reports and issue warnings. "Today's newspapers, with their blank front pages," Sme editor-in-chief Matúš Kostolný writes in a commentary on page three, "are the last chance to draw attention to the fact that the new press law portends the end of truly free media in Slovakia. Our goal is to seek out the truth and write about it, even if some people don't like it." (27/03/2008)

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Hungary's local press is largely in the hands of municipal authorities. This means that the respective city council decides who heads editorial desks, and editors-in-chief are very much aware of the fact that their future depends on the will of the majority in the city council. There can be no talk of journalistic independence or the public exercising a controlling function in such cases, journalist Tamás Bod points out: "Just under 20 years since the fall of communism, it's still unclear who owns the local newspapers: the entire nation, the city council, the majority on the city council or the mayor himself? In most cases one can observe that the mayor, or at best the majority on the city council, decides what is written and how it's written in these newspapers - which are financed with public money! ... Without doubt the level of political pressure varies, just as there are differences between the regional newspapers, but the situation is nonetheless absurd." (27/03/2008)

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In an interview conducted by Jean-Louis Turlin, the American writer Don DeLillo, whose last novel, 'Falling Man' has just been published in France, analyses the impact of the events of September 11th 2001 and terrorism on literature. "We are living in a dangerous era. What represents ephemeral news events for some, is for novelists a dangerous threat to the world. ... September 11 will become a major literary theme in the coming years if a sufficient number of young novelists feel they can measure up to the immense reality of the event. Will writers be ready to seriously tackle this major task where religion, politics and history all demand a place in the story? The novel, as a literary form, is hungry for experience. Its potential reach allows a writer to place enormous historical forces within the lives of individuals." (27/03/2008)

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