Articles

When it comes to the economy, the moral leadership Obama promised is conspicuously lacking. Will the US president and his economic advisors be willing to regulate a financial sector to which, for some, they are worryingly close?

Attempts to compensate for Belarusian lack of national pride by turning the country into a fortress and uniting nationality and religion are “insane”, says Rashed Chowdury. “Belarus can be a Christian country, but it must never be a country for Christians.”

The language of morality has been hijacked by the religious Right – yet however shabbily its partisans may behave, argues Susan Neiman, they offer a public conception of goodness the Left forgot how to defend.

Analysing the political and social conflicts in post-war Italy, Francesco M. Biscione recognizes the seeds of civil war that “without interruption, have cast a shadow over our collective life”. An “underground Italy” far removed from the principles of the republican constitution can be found at every social level throughout the post-war period. These classes have finally found their political home in the movement conceived and led by Silvio Berlusconi.

EU member-states are rejecting integration just when national sovereignty worldwide is entering a new period of relativity. National governments blame Europe for the problems of the moment and lay claim to the successes resulting from action at the European level. The result of this obsession with the nation? The EU is politically impotent on the international stage.

Over the last thousand years, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have had multiple identities and been members of several empires. Now, writes Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, “we should be looking to create identities that go beyond those that history and others have foisted upon us”.

While the Nordic countries cannot compare with France, the Netherlands, or Great Britain when it comes to classical colonialism, this is no reason not to discuss their colonial past. An understanding of northern colonialism must start with Nordic culture’s view of nature and the myth of the “first man”, writes Stefan Jonsson.

If we concentrate on Auschwitz and the Gulag – generally taken to be adequate or even final symbols of the evil of mass slaughter – we fail to notice that over a period of twelve years, between 1933 and 1944, some 12 million victims of Nazi and Soviet mass killing policies perished in a particular region of Europe, one defined more or less by today’s Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.

By adopting the language of human rights, a new UN proposal condemning “defamation of religion” cements oppressive governments’ control of free speech while still sounding compatible with the advanced multiculturalism of liberal democracies, writes Miklós Haraszti.

Despite the horror-stories circulating in the world press, Hungary’s budget deficit at 3 per cent of GDP and its public debt at just above 70 per cent do not fare too badly in a global comparison. “So what’s our problem?”, asks Zoltán Farkas.

After his return from the Homo Alibi festival in Riga, one of the participants in the Mobile laboratory of theatre and communication, an initiative of the F.I.T. – European theatre festivals network (Exodos Ljubljana is one of its members) – stated in The Guardian that British theatre has a serious problem.

“The Right is culpable. Reactionary. Slightly ridiculous”, writes Romanian philosopher Andrei Plesu in “Dilema veche”. “The Left, in contrast, is impudent, cheeky. It can’t remember the bad things. It hides the Gulag behind a veil of intelligence, nuance, and ‘historical necessity’.” A provocative statement that has prompted a response from Plesu’s leftwing counterpart, the Hungarian political scientist Gáspár Miklós Tamás.

“Undoubtedly, leftwingers exist who can find excuses for the Soviet penal universe. But I don’t regularly discuss matters with them”. The Hungarian political scientist Gáspár Miklós Tamás responds to Romanian philosopher Andrei Plesu’s assertion in “Dilema veche” 243 (2008) that “The Left […] hides the Gulag behind a veil of intelligence, nuance, and ‘historical necessity’.”

“Undoubtedly, leftwingers exist who can find excuses for the Soviet penal universe. But I don’t regularly discuss matters with them”. Thus responded Hungarian political scientist Gáspár Miklós Tamás to Romanian philosopher Andrei Plesu’s assertion in “Dilema veche” 243 (2008) that “The Left […] hides the Gulag behind a veil of intelligence, nuance, and ‘historical necessity’.” “Quite honestly, you are too equidistant for my liking”, writes Plesu in his concluding comment.

In the 70s and 80s, many women found the female in literature inspiring but then Nathalie Sarraute snarled in an interview: “When I write I am neither man nor woman nor dog nor cat.” To her, the notion of female or male writing – écriture féminine ou masculine – was totally void of meaning. Moi finds that since then the discussion has gone nowhere. “To make women second rate citizens of the world of literature is to say that the female experience of the world carries less value than the male.”

The unwillingness of the Lithuanian embassy in Ankara to issue a visa to “Varlik” representative Sila Okur prevented the journal from participating in the Eurozine conference in Vilnius last month. Okur was finally defeated by bureaucratic obstacles erected by an embassy clerk, starting with demands for ever more documents and ending with a summons to the embassy 450 kilometres from “Varlik”‘s offices in Istanbul. In response, “Varlik” dedicates part of its June 2009 issue to “Cultural relations in visa territory”. In an introduction to the themed section, publisher Osman Deniztekin explains why.