Partial Readings: Europe in Flux
Partial Readings: Europe in Flux
Partial Readings: Europe in Flux
The Exploitation of Grandparents in Spain
Leaders of the General Workers? Union in Spain have called on grandparents to strike next week, in protest of the many unpaid hours they spend caring for their grandchildren. ??Learn to say no? and ?don’t feel guilty? are the slogans,? said union leader Manuel Pastrada. Spain does not offer state-funded childcare; meanwhile, officials there ?approved a new austerity budget to be put before parliament, including a tax rise for the rich and 8% spending cuts.? Public employees will face pay reductions, and all departments will see spending cuts. Childcare remains absent from the agenda.
The Refusal of the Self in France
André Glucksmann explains the anxieties that underlie the recent expulsion of Roma from France:
The question of the Roma is not about public or social security, it is about mental security….Postmodern Europe loves to break taboos which impose restrictions on its freedom, but at the same time rears up in front of immigrants. And it is petrified of the Roma, a people who move around of their own volition and tradition. We have to understand that this is less about a refusal of the other than a refusal of the self.
Stephanie zu Guttenberg, the thirty-three-year-old wife of conservative German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, made tabloid headlines for her new book, Schaut nicht weg! (Don?t Look Away), which accuses Lady Gaga of harming children. According to Tobias Rapp at Der Spiegel, the argument goes something like this: ?The Internet is full of pornography and makes it easy for kids to get their hands on it. The Internet is also an important conduit for pop, which plays with sexual images. So, connecting A with B and B with C, Guttenberg concludes that Lady Gaga has something to do with pornography and, therefore, endangers children.?
But Rapp draws larger conclusions from the book. Not only are Guttenberg?s ideas on ?how to raise children hardly [different] from those of the average Green Party voter?and light years away from what was, until only very recently, the consensus among the CSU (Christian Social Union) voter base?; the book is just one piece of evidence that ?Germany is evolving into something new. It is more variegated, more complicated and more complex than the Federal Republic of old.?
History Proxy Wars in the Ukraine
Earlier this year, the release of never before seen documents on the Holodomor?the forced starvation of millions of Ukranians in the early 1930s?led to genocide charges against long-dead Soviet leaders. But the public promotion of historical memory, part of a reassertion of Ukranian national identity, has come under attack with the new government of pro-Russian President Yanukovych, whose security forces are arresting historians for revealing ?state secrets.? Roman Kabachiy speculates that the arrests have less to do with national security than with a conflict taking place in many former Soviet states: whether to foster nationalism, or to draw close once again to Russia.
