It was too simple. Black and white, with a drawing and some type, from a distance, it had the feel of an old school punk flyer. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be solidarity demo flyer, to support Occupy Gezi. Sporting Turkish hashtags (“DiREGEZI”) it could not have been more contemporary, either. Yet, written at the bottom was a distinctly identifiable German phrase: Wir Sind Das Volk (“We are the people.”) (More…)
Her elbow had been smashed. Bike wheels caught in a tram track, she’d been catapulted into the air, landing on her left arm, in front of Porta Nuova, Turin’s main train station. Within seconds, pedestrians had dragged her onto the sidewalk, and put her in a cab. When she finally came to, she was in the emergency room at the city’s best hospital. (More…)
Christians could be a minority by 2018, census analysis reveals. So read The Guardian headline, two weeks before Christmas. By no means the first such prominently-featured title of its kind, I took a second look, wondering if I was seeing things. Fortunately, I wasn’t. Not that I have anything against Christians. But, the idea that there could be a Western country in which Christianity is on the decline, is a novel one. (More…)
Italy and Communism. For over seven decades, the two words were indelibly linked. Perhaps only pasta, at least abroad, was more synonymous with the southern European state. With good reason. Few, if any Western countries, had as strong a Communist movement, or major political party ( the PCI ) as Italy. (More…)
The Occupy movement was perplexing. Heavily covered by some media organizations and ignored or ridiculed by others, it could seem huge one moment and tiny the next, a bold model for the future or a tired rehash of countercultural platitudes. Outside the United States, figuring out what to make of this decentralized phenomenon was even more challenging. (More…)
World War II was only yesterday. So one might surmise, during the month of April, by flyers posted in Berlin. Largely focused on May Day, a near equal number tend to be dedicated to commemorating Russia’s victory over the Nazis a little over a week later. Celebrated every 9th of May, the event marks Germany’s May 8th 1945 surrender. (More…)
Foucault would have laughed. That is, at the flyer, and its politicization of mental healthcare. Proclaiming that we must be emancipated from psychiatry, it had a distinctly retro feel to it, harkening back, as it does, to the heyday of post-structuralism, on the one hand, and the era of Soviet mental hospitals, where dissidents were often confined, on the other. (More…)
Hour after hour, I’m bombarded with reasons to dislike Barack Obama. He has conceded too much ground on what’s left of the American safety net. He hasn’t conceded enough on executive privilege. He keeps talking the talk, but refuses to walk the walk. An American Tony Blair, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Enough of this relentless assault and I’m ready to disown him. But then I see something like this. (More…)
Margaret Thatcher provoked the same passionate responses in death as she did when she was Prime Minister. It’s hard to imagine a Briton being on the fence about her. That was once true for her American counterpart Ronald Reagan as well. But he fared much better than Thatcher in retirement. Both because of sexism and the suspicion that, despite his fiery anti-statist rhetoric, he was deep down a “softie” (More…)
The Germans get too much credit. Granted, considering the scale of Hitler’s transgressions, it’s to be expected. However, Nazi crimes tend to overshadow the responsibility of the Third Reich’s main European ally, Benito Mussolini, for overseeing his own share of butchery in the Balkans. (More…)
There was a time, in the 1970s and 1980s, when Germany was a welcome destination for many asylum seekers, because of the relative generosity of its Basic Law and the eagerness of its citizenry to demonstrate a break with the nation’s intolerant recent history. But that changed in the wake of reunification and the establishment of the Euro Zone. (More…)
Few continents have been as lost on the left as Africa. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been openings, however. From the anti-Apartheid movement of the 1980s, to the Arab Spring, there have been plenty of opinions on offer. But, the idea of Africa, as a site of political struggle, between the West, and its inhabitants, is relatively new. That is, to post-Cold War progressive politics. (More…)