Category: VOLUME X, No. 6

CELEBRATING HUNGARY: 1956 AND 1989

“Hungary’s young revolutionaries had changed how the world saw Goliath. Yes, but more importantly they had changed how the world saw Hungary and Hungarians, not as bitter-sweet ironists, witty pessimists with a death-wish, compromised realists, but as ordinary people who were also gallants, gambling against great odds and turning their

REFLECTIONS ON THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL

“The Wall symbolised what we already knew: that Communism was a system built on a fragile foundation. One that would not last. Communism everywhere and all the time must rely on coercion. That means that its leaders can never ease up on repression. The moment they do, the people tear

A NAZI MURDER AND THE FALLOUT

“A neo-Nazi attack against a synagogue in the town of Halle, Eastern Germany, has shaken the Germany psyche. Two views have emerged about this. One is that the country is witnessing the return of rightwing terrorism with roots in Nazi violence of the 1920s and 1930s. The other is that

AUSTRIAN HEAD-SCRATCHERS

“Austrian politics over the last six months has been marked by a series of head-scratching twists and turns. An executive summary: September’s snap elections revealed (yet again) clear majority support for the two conservative parties, which had jointly governed until May. Yet six weeks later, we are on the verge

CHRISTIANITY, MIGRATION AND MULTICULTURALISM

“The recent promotion of the idea that Western societies must permanently downplay and apologise for their Christian culture while promoting that of the incomers has widened the gulf between elite and popular opinion in many Western countries. That has been further exacerbated by the recent promotion by left-leaning Western elites

IN SEARCH OF AN AMERICA – PART II

FIRST TRIP HOME Seeing the world in the vacuous ways tourists do, maybe observing strange alien cultures from a cruise ship as an upscale variant of consumption, is one thing, but it is quite another and a lot more gratifying to be able to do it with a useful purpose