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Feedback ---- SPIEGEL'S DAILY TAKE Former Iraq Hostage Makes Bizzare TV Appearance Susanne Osthoff, the recently released German hostage in Iraq, raises eyebrows by giving an incoherent television interview in a concealing headdress. Bob Geldof defends his decision to become a consultant for Britain's Conservative Party. And a former Nazi training camp will soon open to tourists.
Zoom DPA Susanne Osthoff, who was released from Iraqi kidnappers last week, baffles Germany by going on television swathed in black. If former hostage Susanne Osthoff had been better advised, she probably would have opted against appearing on German television entirely covered in a black headscarf. The hijab, which left only a pair of slits for her eyes, made the freed hostage look like a disturbing cross between a Chechen Black Widow suicide bomber and a ninja. On Wednesday night, 10 days after her release from captivity, a televised interview with Osthoff, who had been held in Iraq for three weeks, was broadcast on the German public television channel ZDF. In the interview's introduction, the presenter explained that Osthoff's choice of dress was suposedly intended to preserve her identity --a bizarre thought considering that Osthoff's face has been all over the front-pages since November and most people in Germany must be quite aware of what she looks like. Besides, she didn't wear a headdress in her interview with Arab broacaster Al-Jazeera earlier this week. The second shock for viewers was the rambling, incoherent nature of Osthoff's answers. ") of the original 15-minute interview was barely comprehensible. Questions were left unanswered and at times Osthoff rambled off into non-sequiturs about how badly she had been treated by her landlord back in Germany. When asked how the kidnapping had been carried out, she was evasive, simply responding: "I think these details are not interesting. People watch a lot of television and realize perhaps that you don't let yourself get abducted voluntarily." Perhaps Osthoff was still shaky from what was presumably a traumatic experience? People close to Osthoff told the media her appearance was "strange and unusual," adding that the stress of the kidnapping seems to have made a nervous wreck out of the once self-assured, articulate woman they knew before the incident. Regardless, the appearance has done little to help her public image in Germany. Media scrutiny of Osthoff on Thursday was intense, with the mass-circulation Bild leading with "Susanne Osthoff: Crazed TV Appearance," complete with a half-page picture of the headscarf-adorning former hostage. The entire second page is taken up with what the paper calls "The Osthoff Mystery," which links her to Saddam Hussein's regime and asks where she got the money to send her daughter to an exclusive boarding school. "The puzzle of Susanne Osthoff will preoccupy us for a long time to come," the paper concludes, ominously.
Zoom AP Sir Bob becomes advisor for the British Conservative Party. He defended his decision by saying he was not party political and "in nobody's pocket." Bob Geldof not only has one of the foulest mouths in show-business, it is also one of the biggest. On Wednesday Geldof opened it again and attracted criticism when he announced his intention to become consultant for a new policy group on global poverty for Britain's Conservative Party. The choice was a surprising one given the Tories' reputation as the party of wealth and privilege. Geldof quashed cries of partisanship by telling the BBC, "I don't care who I have to go to to try to make this agenda work." He sees his willingness to advise both the conservatives and Tony Blair's Labour Party as proof of his non-partisan agenda. I've no intention of becoming any of those things," he said. If I can be of benefit to help shape another party's policy towards this agenda, then I will do it." The new Conservative party leader, David Cameron, said he was "thrilled" that Geldof would advise the Tories. Since he was elected as leader at the beginning of December, the 39 year-old Cameron has been trying to make the party more appealing to women and younger voters -- no easy task considering Cameron's stuffy "Old Boy" Etonian background. With this aim in mind, the poverty group is just one of six policy groups to be announced by the Tories. And with Geldof on the team, the Tories could well become the surprise party of choice for the younger generation. Although there is something slightly repulsive about using the plight of Africa as a tool in the undignified scramble for votes, at least it has meant the issue is back to the top of the agenda in British politics.
Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In-Box everyday. The opening of the former Vogelsang Nazi training camp south of Cologne to the public in January has unleashed a wave of criticism in Germany. As always with the architectural remnants of Hitler's regime, there is indecision about what exactly to do with these areas of historical interest -- the main fear being that they could become places of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis. Vogelsang, which was built in 1934, was used to transform the Nazi youth into the regime's elite cadre. "We want to train these young people to become the party's leaders, the political elite, real men," is how Robert Ley, who supervised the handover of the building to Hitler in 1936, described the facility's mission. After the end of World War II, Vogelsang was used by the Allied forces through an agreement which expires on December 31. Some extreme right-wing Web sites are already calling for neo-Nazis to visit the area as soon as it opens on Jan. Last week a nearly EUR30 million plan was unveiled that should meet the problem head on: It proposes that the site be used to document Nazi history and that it also include a convention center for hosting seminars dealing with racism and human rights. More controversially, the site would also be developed as a tourist center, with a hotel, holiday flats and a cafe.
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In Today's Feuilletons The FAZ reports how Iraq's elites are being wiped out, and Orientalist Walter Sommerfeld praises work done there by archaeologist Susanne Osthoff.
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