European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 24 October | 121 comments (121 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Living on the Planet - 24 October (none / 1)

LIVING ON THE PLANET
Society, Culture, History, Information

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Oct 23rd, 2009 at 09:26:21 AM EST

Re: Living on the Planet - 24 October (none / 1)

Japanese university plans huge 'manga' library | France 24

AFP - In a move to promote serious study of Japanese manga, a university in Tokyo plans to open a library with two million comic books, animation drawings, video games and other cartoon industry artifacts.
Tentatively named the Tokyo International Manga Library, it would open by early 2015 on the campus of the private Meiji University, and be available to researchers and fans from Japan and abroad.

About time.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Oct 23rd, 2009 at 02:11:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living on the Planet - 24 October (4.00 / 2)

Will Year of Miracles Be Squandered?: Cynicism Threatens to Destroy Gains of 1989 - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Poland and Central Europe have prospered since the fall of communism in 1989. Today, however, Europe is faced with a great test. A leading Polish journalist and ex-dissident argues that cynisism and the lure of authoritarianism are the new threats to a European freedom secured only two decades ago.
What are the reasons behind what happened 20 years ago? The most banal answer to this question is that communism proved economically ineffective. But there are still communist countries today, despite their systems' inefficiencies: Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and China. Therefore, we cannot be satisfied with a purely economic answer to this question.
The year 1989 was a year of miracles, an annus mirabilis. Yet the explanations for the fall of communism differ...
...Communism fell, paradoxically, because the Soviet elite believed it could be reformed...
Part 2: The Working Class Who Toppled Communism Were the First Victims of the Transformation
Adam Michnik was a leading dissident in communist Poland and is editor in chief of the Warsaw-based daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

(As a general comment: though I think he has the usual CEE liberal ideological blinders on, in-between there are lots of astute observations in the piece --- some in separate comments below.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Oct 23rd, 2009 at 02:11:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living on the Planet - 24 October (none / 1)

Four Perspectives
When I look back, I have four perspectives: a Polish one, because I am a Pole; a Russian one, because the cards were really shuffled there; a Central European one, because the fall of communism was not a purely Polish phenomenon; and finally, the perspective of the West.
The West was not at all prepared for what happened... The decisive factor was Russia. The perestroika reforms set new forces free, and they triggered further processes that developed a new dynamic. For a long time, neither the ruling communist elite nor the opposition in Central Europe understood what was actually underway in Russia.
...In Poland, the idea behind the Round Table was to bring about a kind of Finlandization of Poland. We knew we could not win a war against Russia, which is why we had to work with what came to us from Russia. Thus perestroika was our natural ally.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Oct 23rd, 2009 at 02:12:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living on the Planet - 24 October (none / 1)

The change in the party began in Hungary. Imre Pozsgay, the leader of the liberal nationalist wing, was one of those responsible for the "thaw" in the public media. He also encouraged an accommodation with the "nationalist" wing of the opposition... The Hungarian opposition was weaker than the Polish, and from the beginning it was divided into two currents, nationalist and liberal...
Poland went furthest, as the government's Round Table negotiations with Solidarity broke through the iron logic of the communist regime and opened it up to ideas that had not been heard since August 1980, when it was at its height... it was a major revolution without a revolution. No one took to the streets; there were no barricades, and no executions... it is unclear how things would have developed if both sides in Poland had realized that their decisions would lead to German unification.
...East Germany was a barrack-state that would not exist without the Red Army. The East German opposition thought differently. It had the most left-leaning opposition of all the East bloc countries. It sought the democratization of East Germany. The autumn demonstrations in East Germany began with the slogan "We are the people" before the slogan "We are one people" emerged.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Oct 23rd, 2009 at 02:12:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living on the Planet - 24 October (none / 1)

Goebbels-Baarová: more than just a German-Czech love story - Radio Prague

A play based on the short but stormy love affair between the Third Reich's infamous propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and a young Czech film star has been causing quite a stir locally. Goebbels-Baarová has sparked controversy ― partly because of its unforgiving treatment of actress Lída Baarová and its message aimed at today's Czechs...
The play focuses on the off-screen romance between Goebbels and the young and beautiful Baarová after she went to Berlin after being signed up by the famous German film studio UFA in 1935.
...Baarová had longer to reflect on their relationship which helped to taint her in the eyes of many Czechoslovaks as a collaborator. She died aged 86 in 2000 in Austria with that fateful romance of six decades earlier having haunted the rest of her life.
...The director says that Lída Baarová is symbolic of certain currents in Czechoslovak society in the 1930's that flirted with the Nazis. The short-lived Czech government between the Munich agreement and final invasion of the remnants of the Czech state in March 1939 took an overtly collaborationist line with Nazi Germany. Other choices about collaboration in different circumstances came later.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Oct 23rd, 2009 at 02:13:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living on the Planet - 24 October (4.00 / 2)

Fritzl Analyst: 'I've Seen Evil from Almost Every Angle' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Austrian psychiatrist Heidi Kastner has spent her career preparing expert opinions on fathers who abuse their children, including Josef Fritzl. In a SPIEGEL interview, she discusses her new book and her experiences researching fathers who abuse their children in horrendous ways.
SPIEGEL: Ms. Kastner, you write about cruel and extreme acts of violence against children. Who would want to read this sort of material voluntarily?
Kastner: I don't know. I am confronted with these cases regularly. Perhaps I have lost, to some degree, my awareness of how this affects others. Someone who works as a garbage collector eventually gets used to the stench.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Oct 23rd, 2009 at 02:13:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living on the Planet - 24 October (4.00 / 3)

The Miracle of Perm: From Russian Gulag to Avant-Garde Mecca - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Is Moscow or St. Petersburg Russia's cultural capital? Neither one, apparently, now that Perm is seen as the hot new contender for the title. The city of a million people, near the Ural Mountains, previously known for its Soviet-era labor camps and weapons factories, is experiencing an astonishing transformation.