When the memories of the past

are different and contradictory and apparently as alive as the present.

Unpleasant truth

and denial regarding Roma in Eastern Europe. A pop-star sparkle.

Cultural patrimony, reconsideration of the past and history

in the case of the Altar of Zeus from Berlin.

European cities ask EU

to be more involved in elaboration of immigration policies. This shift from the general/global level to the particular - and with an approach closer to the real situation - it is more than necessary. Immigration policies should be concerned with individuals and their needs. General policies could neglect the specifics - demographic and social aspects. Local communities are able to offer the feed-back and the information in order to reevaluate those policies according to the demands.

Germany's worrying

undemocratic trends.

Education and peace treaties

A 2008 Report of Save the Children outlines the limited place offered to education in peace treaties and the need to reconsider the schools, at the international level, as "places where intellectual curiosity and respect for human rights is fostered".

The writer's heart, in exile

Being forced to reconsider your writing universe in a foreign language is a painful experience. In the former communist Central and Eastern Europe, the outcome is mostly a love-hate relationship with the mother country, an overcriticism against what it is perceived as cultural and economic underdevelopment and political immaturity. Or, they are dreaming about an utopian space, whose traditions were brutally destroyed by the foreign influence - specifically, the Soviet one.

Practically, the pain is the way in which you should reinvent yourself, your words, the new dictionary you should learn - culturally (because otherwise you cannot be took into consideration by any serious edition house) and from the point of view of the language in itself. You should reinvent your style, yourself. And even after the successful integration and the first edition published in the new language, the feeling of being a foreigner remains: in the interviews you are asked to express yourself as belonging to the other world and you are still considered a curiosity, not part of the Western canon.

If in the case of the case already mentioned - of the former communist countries writers - it is possible to find common references - obsessively considered as a proof that Central and Eastern Europe is part of Europe too, for the writers beloning to the Middle East, this link should be reinvented. And, the use of "big" regional categories - as Central and Eastern Europe, or the Middle East - cultural constructions we are using because of our laziness of thinking - is explanatory enough to proove our serious limits of understanding the other.

But our knowledge in itself is quite limited. And all we could do is to try, as much as possible, to improve little by little the confuse shapes of our knowledge, by reading and trying to find out more about other cultures and representatives of those cultures. And you need passion and a lot of perseverance, even you assume for the very beginning you will never be able to learn "all". An incentive and a possible reason to try to coexist with our own ignorance.

Rafik Shami's book - Damaskus im Herzen und Deutschland im Blick - is my first contact with Syria, viewed from a writer. Who was forced to left the country and reconsider himself as a writer. Who is now published in Germany and in other countries, but not in his home country. We are living in a globalized world, where the identities are shaped and reshaped several times during our life-time, according to the influences we are receiving from various environments we choose or we are compelled to chose. But we cannnot refuse ourself the question: who I am, which is the main narrative I am belonging to? A given political context - the dictatorship, in this case - should force a choice, you assume because no other opportunity for intellectual survival. But after this situation is gone - not yet the case in Syria - this choice is to be reconsidered and your identity rewritten. The red-line of the entire writings of a writer in exile: Who I am? Who I dare to be? For how long? How to go beyond the permanent status of a foreigner - in the home-country as in the chosed country?

And how to explain yourself? Using what kind of language? And the context in itself is not very helpful: the "mediators" - foreigners familiar with the language and culture of your home-country - are lacking, or are misleading. Your voice could be without any impact, because your difference don't fit the usual stereotype about your culture - mainly shaped by various political and geopolitical elements. Another added value to your loneliness.

The foreigners, with different cultures, backgrounds, level of education, are a part of the Western societies you cannot neglect. Sometimes it is difficult to understand. A very useful example - with some comic accents - in the book is related to the ways in which patients originary from the Middle Eastern countries are behaving in relation with the doctors and various medical requirements. A translator should be there to explain to both parts about the tabus and cultural limits and how to find a "healthy solution".

If it will be to find a word to resume to whole book, it is dialogue. It is not about strengthening the differences and to fight an enemy - not easy to find, just to have the disponibility. From the tradition of the coffee houses - put under political observance, since the very beginning, the 16th century - to the 1001 Nights, everything is about dialogue, discussion. When the weapons started to talk, it is only under the political influence. How to counterweight the political influence with the intellectual power it is still problematic and, at least for the moment, impossible.

The misleading names of post-communist parties

For example: the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

It was created in 1989.
Among its "aims":
- Capital punishment for those convicted of terrorism, premeditated murder, and other serious crimes;
- The abolition of "non-traditional" and "fanatic" religious sects in Russia;
- Control of all agricultural land by the state

Mentioned just a couple of example, prooving the full contradition between the name and the practical objectives. The leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, is currently mentioning the need to reinforce the "Russian power', "accusing" its political opponents of being "Jews".

Once again, in order to open the ways of understanding the post-communist world, it is necessary a very careful lecture and decyphering work of words, expressions and attitudes.

Remembering

the Night of the Troubles, 1969.

Multicultural stages

in Oregon.

Beauty and murder

in Dresden.

We love aliens

but not illegal kids.

Or how the political choices are reflected into the movie subjects and, mainly, their fundings.

Sommer time

and intercultural problems on the beach.

in Egypt

and

in France.

And what the "burqini" creator thinks about.


Plus: another view from the Middle East: the religious Israeli beaches customers.

The lost children

of the Romanian Revolution.

Saving the cultures, on-line

How to help a culture to still remain present, despite the decresing number of its representatives? The on-line, virtual environment it's creating a huge opportunity in this respect. In this case, the museum-without-walls about the Jewish culture in Poland, iniatiated and maintained mostly by non-Jews.

Eastern Europe's Muppies

or how the transition in Eastern Europe is nothing but waiting. The aim of this waiting is usually called "change" but by now it is hard to understand if it is a slim common understanding of the content of this great, great word.

Who are the Uighurs?

a photo-reportage - Foreign Policy

When East meets West

and don't want to see each other again.

It is more a matter of ignorance than a purposive behavior. Those cities are not chosen because of their history, but because are affordable. The same is happening each year in Cyprus or in the Greek islands.

New violences against Roma in Hungary

Another deadly attack against the Roma community.

There are here two problems.

Roma is a huge transnational minority, with lots of problems and, mainly in Eastern Europe, lacking the proper organisation allowing them to defend in an organised way their rights. EU is mostly unable to tackle this issue, as the Central and Eastern European countries should go beyond a long inherited racism.

On the other side, you have an increasing violent and aggresive extreme-right, targeting - for the moment - mostly the Roma minority, without being countered with the proper tough actions. Finding the perpetrators of deadly attacks is in many cases a closed case, without any result.

Are the Central European countries ables to react in full awareness to those past threats to their present and future?

The future of handbooks

is on-line.

Social discrimination of Roma

in Central and Eastern Europe.

A short history of the post-war archives in Romania

The administration of the national archives is part of the effort to reorganize and assert a historical identity, in the new created states from the beginning of the 20 century. In the conception of some inter-war period Romanian historians, those archives should be more than a depositary of history but most be used at maximum for the "knowledge, clarification and solving the issues of the national history", also by the creation of the specialists able to read and interpret the documents. In Romania, the communist regime, obsessively preoccupied with history, gave to the archives the role of certifying the various ideas and legitimation strategies envisioned by the ideologues of the party. What happened after was facing the culture of secrecy, without specialists able to cope with the documents and to read them from a scientific perspective, free of any kind of ideology.

Jewish Assimilation in Hungary

by far, one of the most interesting example of integration in Central and Eastern Europe.

One single example, to be found in many other cases: the mathematician Lipót Fejér (1880-1959) was born Leopold Weiss. Around 1900, he changed his name, to make himself more Hungarian.

But this decision wasn't enough to be fully considered a Hungarian, and on the occasion on his appointement, in 1911, to the chair of mathematics at the University of Budapest the following incident took place:

Although already world famous and warmly endorsed by Poincaré on the occasion of the awarding of the Bolyai Prize, Fejér's appointment to a chair at the University had been opposed by anti-semites on the Faculty. One of them, knowing full well that Fejér's original name had been Weiss, asked during the occasion of Fejér's candidacy: 'Is this Leopold Fejér related to our distinguished colleague on the Faculty of Theology, Father Ignatius Fejér?' Without missing a beat Loránd Eötvös, Professor of Physics, answered "Illegitimate son". After that the appointment sailed through smoothly.

K Tandori, The life and works of Lipót Fejér, Functions, series, operators, Colloq. Math. Soc. János Bolyai 35 (Amsterdam-New York, 1983), 77-85.

Education and Islam

in Germany.

The Case of the Missing Russian Crime Novel

An interesting feature published by Radio Free Europe.

The new elites, by themselves- The German case

Being part of the elites - the best and the first from any domain - wasn't never easy. There are always certain family and professional and financial networks you should be part of in order to get a chance to arrive in this exclusivistic club - how to you succeed to keep your membership being another part of the problem, mostly up to yourself and your professional and intellectual capacities.

The idealistic turned into generational nightmares communist "aim" of a society without classes and with equal opportunities for all was in full contradiction with a reality where the party leaders and their heirs - starting from the top of the leadership - see Romania, North Korea or Cuba, as only a couple of examples of inherited power, from a leader to the members of its family. In some cases, the right to apply at university was guaranteed mostly to those with "healthy origins", meaning from a low social background.

In liberal societies, a guarantee for success is still the social origin. And, in a way, it is easy to understand way. You inherited money and the prestige and you are trained to continue the business of your family. The career and future plans are tailored from a generation to another. The democracy guaranteed by Constitutions are counterweighted by the aristocratic system in the economic sphere. In the same time, a public school system, free/state-supported is guaranteeing to the children the minimum education, to be continued further, on the basis of abitilies and knowledge tests.

But, independently of this public system, the members of the elites have the choice, on the basis of their financial resources to follow the private system, from kindergarten to university, allowing - on the basis of curricula, proportionally evaluated in the prices of the scholarhips paid by the parents - the guarantee of a place in the elite system. Your direct environment is 80% made of the people with the same social background - of course, some exceptions are allowed, as the chances of a scholarhip offered for gifted children - with the same set of values and ways to spend the free time - from the favorite brands to the Swiss winter ski resorts and the exclusivistic expensive social networks.

What Julia Friedrichs is presenting, in Gestatten: Elite, auf den Spuren der Mächtigen von morgen is an inside view of this nascent society of youngsters intensively preparing to be the tomorrow's elites. Even the author is limiting at maximum the academic references and current discussions in the political science and sociology regarding elites, the perspective still remains interesting. Once enrolled in this system you close the doors to the outside reality: intensive works, reading, preparation of various tests. Even if you would like to have an eye outside, it is no time and the opportunities are limited. And, with the time, you loose any interest in it. And the danger in itself is the lack of adaptability and limited sociability. Of course, you have many friends sharing the same values. But, when it is about economy or leadership or mainly politics, the key is not to be good for being good, but to be as fit as possible and as flexible as possible to change and find new ideas corresponding to the needs of the reality. So, for a balance, you don't need an internship to a big company, but a couple of months spent in the real world: travelling with the public transportation, living in a poor neighbourhood, doing social work. Otherwise, you will have the theoretical knowledge and the resources, but you will lack the power and wisdom.

Geopolitics and airlines

The division of Cyprus and the economic consequences.

How to Write?

Not necessarily the subject matter, it is always about the style and the capacity to express what you are thinking about. Because the first rule is to have clear in mind what do you want to write and why. Nowadays, audience is becaming more and more unclear, but still the simple exercise of imagining another one reading your work is useful.

How to Write, by Alastair Fowler is an easy guide about words and how to make them to send messages. Including from general considerations to a couple of tips how to introduce paragraphs, connection words, use of the metaphors. Plus, at the end, an extensive list of dictionaries and thesaurus to be used by any kind of writer, a professional or an amateur.

Writing could be a passion or a full-time job. The aim is to be read/understood by the other and in order to attain this at least a minimum of general requirements are needed. Understanding the needs to use certain rules - grammar and ponctuation, as the need of a logical organization of the whole material - is the first stage and don't have nothing to do with creativity. Unless you want to be a dadaist-suprarealist writer. And, whatever the language and the natural gift, reading and updating permanently, including with a technical and sometimes arid bibliography - as how to use the "full stop" - could be useful. And lots of exercise as well. Exploring various technical and stylistical potentiality of the words is a full-time rewarding activity. Probably, many writers consider humiliating and worthless to write an ad or a news in the newspaper, or a political discourse - even they are many doing this, and successfully. But, at least for fun and as an exercise of creativity is worthy doing this. Each side of the words is opening new ways to understand and thus, better use them.

For me, the section 24, about Practicalities, was interesting because made me think about various cultural and civilizational habits we share with our time or inherited from a professional lineage. This section it is about: where to write, when, how to warm-up, management of the materials, ordering papers and writing instruments. Each of this issue deserves at least one book in itself.

The Language Row between Slovakia and Hungary

continues.

The never ending battle with the past

in Central and Eastern Europe.

The issue at stake is how to start a capitalist future without having a clear property situation. Poland and the Czech Republic are good examples of a good post-communist capitalist start and are successful EU and NATO members. Still, the restitution problem is dealing with the ways to solve the past problems. In countries as Ukraine, Russia or Serbia this process is just at the beginning if not started at all, meaning that, sooner or later the issue will be solved following the death of many of the possible individuals who would have something to request.