Die Tageszeitung, 22 July 2010
Líder Maximo emerges as "Maximo Dealer," puns Tageszeitung in the wake of the July 21 announcement by the Spanish Foreign Minister and the Cuban parliament chief that all of the island’s political prisoners would now be released. According to the Berlin daily, Cuba, which urgently needs to restore economic relations with the European Union, is applying a method reminiscent of the communist state in East Germany: to obtain hard currency, the GDR was in the habit of imprisoning anyone it believed West Germany would pay to have released. TAZ warns that there is no guarantee that the current state of affairs "will not lead to a new wave of arrests."
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies.
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either?
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku.