Eurovisie June 2018 by Eurovisie

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volume 13, issue 5 - June 2018

editorial

mats licht

I 4

Alternative Futures Alexandra Staudinger

Antisemitism Mats Licht

Welcome to our Place Joep Leerssen

Democracy at the University Hanna Blom

Longing and Belonging Joana Voss

The Enlightenment in Politics Matthijs Lok

Where are Amsterdam's Homeless? Clara Iszezuk

Montenegro and Milo Đukanović Nikolai Markov

Amsterdam, where art thy Toilets? Sally Dixon

Will PESCO give the EU military power? Michelle Kooiman

have to make a confession: I worship the Eurovision Song Contest. I am usually reluctant to admit that, but given that this is my last issue as Eurovisie's Dear Leader, I feel bold enough to stand proudly and proclaim my love for this ridiculously entertaining crapfest. 40-something pop-musically insignificant nations competing for the honour of hosting the greatest travelling gay party event in the world. Even the UK graciously pumps out a mediocre song every year, just in the spirit of fair competition, instead of sending one of its world-class acts. That is not what Eurovision is about: what makes the thing beautiful is that NOBODY takes it truly seriously, simply because music cannot be measured. That is a delightfully realistic admission in our times of universal quantification. Points do not denote quality, because quality is meaningless, but give countries a chance to ritualistically snub or flatter each other for their past year's image. Eurovision suspends the seriousness of European nationalism for one night, replacing it with ridiculous costumes and impeccably produced musical garbage that represents each country's idea of what Pop truly is. It is a slap in the face of every serious nationalist: neo-fascist Austria wins with a bearded drag queen. Battered Ukraine gets rewarded for its suffering. Israel can dream of being European. In this world of make-belief, anything is possible. Until the next morning, when the reality's hangover catches up with us. At night, Israel could pretend to be a normal country for once, like its government was not corrupt and bent on war, like Iran was not biding its time to erase it from the map. The day after a clucking Netta won Israel some “normal” recognition, 62 Gazans were killed by the IDF. Eurovision also teaches us that we truly cannot have nice things.

imprint Editorial office: Kloveniersburgwal 48, room E2.04/2.05, 1012 CX Amsterdam Editor-in-chief: Mats Licht Editors: Hanna Blom, Anna Boyce, Sally Dixon, Clara Iszezuk, Michelle Kooiman, Nikolai Markov, Alexandra Staudinger, Joana Voss Design: Emiel Janssens With contributions by: Joep Leerssen, Matthijs Lok

Alternative Futures From Black Panther to futuristic funk music, Alexandra Staudinger identifies the utopian aspects in recent science fiction and shows how, against the pessimist current in popular fiction, we can be inspired to work towards positive futures.

2017 article by the New York Times declared our times as the ‘Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction’, drawing on many examples of pessimist fiction, written particularly in the United States. From The Handmaid’s Tale – though originally published in the 1980s by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, it was with the TV adaption that her ideas have reached mainstream culture – to The Hunger Games and Mad Max: Fury Road: a striking amount of those works of fiction which have received the widest publicity, both as novels and on screen, are set in catastrophic futures. Common themes include a near-infertile environment post-apocalypse, the sexual and reproductive exploitation of women, and the totalitarian control of the masses through means of modern technology.  In Mad Max: Fury Road, the Imperator Furiosa (bald Charlize Theron) rescues enslaved warrior-

producing beauties from their polygamous slavemaster-turnedhusband in an epic ride across the post-apocalyptic desert, where the population dehydrates due to water scarcity. The telling “milking scene” of ever-pregnant women in the movie is reminiscent of the systemic reproductive exploitation of young, unmarried women in The Handmaid’s Tale, who are raped until pregnant, in order to guarantee the ruling class’ survival.  Atwood has said that dystopias might be more popular nowadays because they are easier to believe, after all humanity has lived through them in the past horrors of slavery, fascism, and communism. Her own work was inspired by the real-life account of an African-American slave, Harriett Jacobs, who escaped to the North and told of the sexual violence she endured in her memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, an appeal to the indifferent minds

of white American women in 1861.  Though similar to Mad Max: Fury Road’s environmental deprivation, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games series has the majority of its residents not dry out – it is set in North American Panem after all – but starved, while the capital’s elite swallows a vomiting potion in order to taste all delicacies on a never ending buffet. A different dystopian theme is the threat of total control through technology, as present in episodes of today’s TV-series Black Mirror as it was in George Orwell’s 1984.   Despite all these English titles, dystopian literature is not solely a North-American and Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, it also is a rising trend in the Arab literary scene. Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, an Egyptian science fiction and horror author who died in April this year, takes Cairene gentrification to the extreme in his

novel Utopia, a dystopia which shows the overwhelming number of poor people living in shambles in the city’s outskirts while the rich enjoy the inner city. Ironically, in real life many of Cairo’s richest quarters, like 6th of October City and Maadi, are located outside the buzzing centre, while the average Cairene tumbles through the megalopolis’ overcrowded core. Egypt’s government has ambitious plans in the same direction: by 2019, it intends to move five million of Cairo’s residents to the new capital currently still under construction. It is a utopianist’s dream as far as the plans are concerned, with plenty of recreational facilities and greenery for government and embassy staff to enjoy, right there in the desert. Given the country’s dire economic and political situation, however, there is a big risk that the new capital will not become more than a playground

for the rich or a failure in urban planning, like Brasília. Whatever the reasons for the prominence and popularity of dystopian fiction, there is something to self-fulfilling prophecies. If we imagine only the worst-case scenario and surround ourselves with fictional apocalypse, while simultaneously consuming news coverage that highlights all that is going wrong in the world, it becomes harder to keep an open mind and an optimistic spirit for the future.   But Egyptian-born technologist Ramez Naam has such an optimistic spirit, he has written the trilogy Nexus about the potential promises as well as risks of a mind-connecting drug of the same name. With the capability to feel someone else’s emotions, combine and share intellects, humans have the potential to enhance their intellectual capacity, and interact

in a more empathetic way. If the drug is abused, however, it turns into a tool with which to exert full body and mind control, creating slaves and armies for any purpose imaginable.   In a real-life scenario, dystopia seems to be looming right around the corner, especially with climate change. As the late Stephen Hawking prophesied, humanity might move to another planet at some point in the future; until that time has come, however, it is imperative to keep our planet cool enough for human habitation. The idea of human habitation on another planet in Hawking’s research has been taken up by science fiction authors like Nnedi Okorafor: the Nigerian-American author tells the story of a teenage girl who is accepted to an intergalactic university, located on another planet. Though born and raised in

a dry region on Earth, it is possible for the girl in this fictional world to visit and move to other planets in the universe, as humans and extraterrestrial species are in contact and sometimes even in strife with one another. The girl, part of the – really existing – Namibian indigenous Himba people, travels to the university planet inside a giant space shuttle-like fish, a living creature which is used for interplanetary transportation. In the Binti series, technological innovation is achieved in a sustainable way, with plants and living organisms used for transportation, insulation, and for oxygen provision. Rather than exploiting nature’s resources in an ultimately self-destructive manner, Okorafor’s societies make use of the environment for their own benefit but view flora and

fauna as living organisms and not only passive material ready for consumption. Thereby their planets are clean and their raw material is used economically, while futurist technology allows for a high standard of living. Many of Okorafor’s books are utopian: from the environmentally conscious and sustainable way people live on various planets to the intergalactic university as a melting pot for all kinds of creatures, where tribal members such as the story’s heroine Binti can study on a merit-based scholarship. Higher education, as a result, is available to the most isolated communities in the universe, as university enrollment is granted based on individual talent and merit rather than on the educational level or

wealth of one’s family. Furthermore, a strong anti-racist aspect shines through Okorafor’s work, that first describes the feeling of being an outsider, which is then transformed within the more inclusive setting of the university: '[…] I had been the only Himba in a sea of Khoush [a human tribe, i.e.]. Here, everyone was everything...'   African-centered utopias like Okorafor’s fall under the category of Afrofuturism, a growing genre not only in science fiction, but also in graphic novels and in musical production. Afrofuturism is a cultural expression that shows positive future visions inspired by or set on the African continent, with people of African descent at the centre of attention and shown as powerful agents in a new age.

Black Panther’s fictional East African country Wakanda with its advanced, eco-friendly technology is perhaps the most prominent example of afrofuturist vision right now.  Afrofuturist music first emerged in the 1950s in the US with the genre’s founding father Sun Ra, who drew inspiration from Egyptian mythology for not only his name, referring to the ancient Egyptian sun god, but for his music in general. Two decades later, US musicians like Parliament included afrofuturist notions in their avant-garde funk music in the 1970s. In the now re-emerging musical expression of Afrofuturism, also designated as Afrofuturism 2.0, young artists like Janelle Monáe create songs that show black subjectivity in a more advantaged position in the future,

while simultaneously offering a gendered, racialised, and classed critique of today’s societies. In two of her albums, Metropolis: Suite 1 (The Chase) and The Archandroid, Monáe sings about a future society with both humans and robots of human intelligence and presents herself as part human, part robot. On the albums’ covers, she alters the colour of her skin, from almost ethereal white to the shade of black that Monáe’s skin is in real life. The changes in skin complexion as well as her experimentation with humanoid robots blend racial differences and express her futurist view that humans will merge with robots someday.   Outside the realm of artistic production, there are many examples of real-life utopias: US

professor Erik Olin Wright lists some of them in his Real Life Utopias project. Israeli kibbutzim, collaborative agricultural collectives and merit-based scholarship education like the United World Colleges (UWC) all are a case in point of people creating and joining more sustainable and inclusive living alternatives. Some of these projects were inspired by fictional worlds that contested the borders of what was deemed possible at the time of their imagination, until it could be realised later.  In short, despite all international and personal mayhem that might be going on, a good future is possible. With that in mind, let us end with probably the only positive quote extant in The Hunger Games: ‘May the odds be ever in your favour.’

t is easy these days to fall victim to the misconception that time is running backwards. The world, some say, is beginning to look a lot like that of a bygone age. War hawks on both sides of the Atlantic conjure up memories of the 60s, Britain would fancy itself at the centre of a new Commonwealth, and the Polish government is actively trying to erase its 20th century from the books. Beyond polemics, our times of course bear only a cosmetic resemblance to those days of yesteryear that some sentimentalists are toying with. They are merely applying a familiar vocabulary to an uncertain future – after all, nothing quite keeps the votes coming like empty promises of security in a time of universal change. But even with the mere churning of past rhetorics, a true relic is swept back up from the mires of history's cesspool once in a while. In short, a spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of Jew-hatred. Let us first run through the history of what is more commonly called “antisemitism”. This more elegant neologism was coined in the late 19th century, when folkish prejudice against Jews in Germany gradually developed into a more intricate racial ideology. In general, it is a common conception in Europe that antisemitism is something universal, grounded in the intrinsic, selfevident otherness of Jews. This of course betrays an utterly anachronistic world view of neatly ordered national communities throughout the course of a decidedly disorderly history. Before the 20th century, we should remind ourselves, cultural heterogeneity and otherness were omnipresent, even if Europe was lagging somewhat behind other parts of the world in terms of religious diversity. Consequently, the perceived otherness of the Jews turned truly

problematic only in Europe. In general it is important to distinguish religiously motivated Jew-hatred from modern antisemitism per se, which is a modern phenomenon grounded in European nationalism. This antisemitism did not exist before the 19th century. Religiously motivated anti-judaism also remained a distinctly European issue, particularly in the Middle Ages. Medieval history is ripe with manifestations of harrowing violence against European Jews: the prominent communities of Shum (Speyer, Worms and Mainz in today's Germany), for example, were virtually destroyed by marauding Rhinelanders during the first crusade. Over the years, the Jews of France and Germany were gradually driven eastward, where they eventually developed Ashkenazi Jewish culture, which is still the prototype of the Judaism we know today. Spain and Portugal, in turn, summarily expelled all resident Jews in 1492, and subjected their remainders to torture and forced conversion on an industrial scale, as part of an effort to consolidate the recent territorial acquisitions from heterogenous Arab polities, which have since been framed as a “recapture”, or Reconquista in the European canon. Almost all Iberian Jews, henceforth called the Sephardim, resettled in the Ottoman Empire, where they were welcomed openly and specially protected by the state for centuries. Under this relative freedom, cities like Salonika could rise to become unprecedented centres of Jewish culture the likes of which Europe would never see. A dark legend of so-called Blood Libel, as was omnipresent amongst Cwhristians even in the Turkic Empire, never existed in medieval Islam. In this light, today's proclamations of Europe's “Judeo-Christian foundations” seem cynical at best.

His B be on and on Child

An old yekke joke goes as follows: Teacher asks: ‘Fritz, of what race are the Jews?’ ‘Semites!’; ‘And the Germans?’ - ‘Well,... Antisemites!’ Mats Licht explores the peculiarly European phenomenon of antisemitism.

Blood n us, n our dren.â&#x20AC;¨

Over centuries, Muslim and Jewish intellectuals were part of vast scholarly networks spanning the Orient. In many ways, the fundamental structure of God, belief and faith in Islam and Judaism are much more familiar to each other than Christianity and its supposed sister religion. Islam and Judaism are both pure monotheisms, Abrahamic and staunchly textual, while Christianity can claim none of these traits. Here, too, it seems that the resemblance is merely cosmetic, the result of a common vocabulary of characters and prophets, which nevertheless evokes fundamentally divergent meanings in different religions. So how can it be that these days â&#x20AC;&#x153;muslim antisemitismâ&#x20AC;? is so readily accepted as a given fact? We must remind ourselves of the distinction between modern and medieval antisemitisms here. The latter had barely any bearing on Jews living among Muslims. The former, however, followed European forays into imperialism. Modern antisemitism is European in origin, too. Only through the emergence of nationalism in the entire continent did notions such as scientific racism, euthanasia and racial hygiene develop. Judaism was thus transformed from a religion into a race, which did not fit into the new Europe of nation states any more. Towards the late 19th century, explicitly antisemitic politicians began to distinguish themselves, first in Austro-Hungary, then in Germany and France. Russia, at the time the country with by far the highest number of Jews amongst its population in the world, became a centre of new antisemitism, which combined a dangerous mixture of religious symbolism and modern racial ideology into fuel for an unprecedented wave of pogroms and antisemitically motivated violence. Around the turn of the

century, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion appeared in the Russian empire, one of the most momentous forgeries in history. Until this day it serves as the foundation of every antisemitic conspiracy theory, and crucially informed the ideology of Germany's National Socialists. Along the way, Europeans exported their sophisticated framework of discriminatory ideologies to the Middle East, often as part of an attempt to destabilise existing social systems. At the same time, as a response to increasing hostility against Jews, the foundational ideology of modern Jewish identity developed in Central and Eastern Europe: Zionism. It also did not exist as a monolith, but over time a compromise between its various streams manifested itself. It became a secular, culturally oriented, idealist-socialist Jewish national movement. While Jewish life in Europe found its preliminary end in the Shoah, Zionism in Palestine gradually wrestled the foundation of the state of Israel away from European resistance. It was this initial crisis that caused Muslim societies to develop modern forms of antisemitism. On the basis of the knowledge Europeans had brought, Arabs, increasingly influenced by Western-style nationalism, built an ideology that posited Jewish Israel as the bane of the Islamic world. Israel's unexpected victories in the subsequent wars in 1948, 1956, and 1967, which were very much struggles for survival for the young Jewish State, only strengthened that ideology. Particularly the failure of Arab Nationalism left the Middle Eastern states with a crisis of meaning, which could conveniently be filled with this new brand of political antisemitism. In retrospect, Islam was reinterpreted as an auxiliary ideology in this endeavour. What had been the basis of

medieval tolerance was transformed into a spiritually charged vehicle of political hate. Enlightened post-war Europe, in turn, was quick to clear itself of antisemitism's ugly memories. The monumental task of rebuilding the continent could do without a thorough confrontation of wartime complexities, and it was far too convenient to summarily blame the vanquished Reich for everything that had transpired. Of course, the Nazis' guilt was so monumental that it simply drowned out any coinciding evil in the short term. The vast majority of European Jews perished, an entire culture that had existed in the central European heartlands for centuries was trampled into dust under the Wehrmacht's boots. Even if some numbers of Eastern Jews survived, the world they had built was still eradicated, largely without leaving behind anything but crumbling headstones. But beyond the crimes perpetrated by the German nation, the bonegrinding chaos that was the Second World War also diverged into an unprecedented settling of scores. After all, the Germans did not monopolise Jewhatred. Particularly in Poland, where law now proscribes any mention of Polish complicity in the Holocaust, German policy fell on fertile ground. The Polish case is an illustration of how thoroughly obsessed European nationalism was and still is with the Jewish issue.

among the newly-independent nations of the East, wrote Zygmunt Bauman, the Jews were left without purpose. Those minorities with a national focus outside of Poland, like Hungarians, Belorussians and Slovaks, could be assimilated and used to push Polish nationalism against their brethren beyond the borders, while the Jews were left a nuisance that threatened Polish cultural supremacy. Some of Poland's most beloved inter-war writers, like Julian Tuwim, Antoni Slonimski and Adolf Rudnicki, were also universally despised because

halted by the German invasion. Despite their otherwise problematic relationship, Germans and Poles saw eye to eye in regard to the Jews: in Bauman's words ‘by the time the war broke out many a Pole was sufficiently primed to think […] that “after the war we would have to erect Hitler a monument.”’ After the war Poland, like all other European countries, made sure that the blame for the virtual disappearance of the country's Jewish citizens lay squarely with the teutonic invaders. This endeavour was aided by the fact that barely anyone of those who could object to that version of events returned. Poland lost 96% of its Jewish population, almost 3,000,000 people, between 1939 and 1945 to genocide and displacement. Of the few hundred thousand left after the war, over 90% left again until 1970. This was because antisemitism in Poland did not end when peace broke out. It even continued institutionally, now under the auspices of “antiZionism”. After the Warsaw Pact broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967, and protests against the government flared up in early 1968, the Polish government under Gomułka promptly used the opportunity to expel 14,000 Jews and to harass the remaining ones, hoping to use antisemitism as a conduit for general unrest.

"The Polish case is an illustration of how thoroughly obsessed European nationalism was and still is with the Jewish issue."

For decades independent Poland had struggled with the multicultural character of its population, which seriously hampered Polish ethnic nationalism. Within the heated struggle of competing nationalisms

of their Jewishness. Their avowed loyalty to their country's culture could not save Poland's Jews. Well before the first signs of German aggression, Polish foreign minister Józef Beck repeatedly called for European governments to help ‘solve the Jewish problem’ through massive emigration, while Polish attempts at passing Nurembergstyle laws against them were only

The infamous Polish case is by no means unique within the European context, even though it managed to tarnish the country's reputation lastingly. Now, politicians

everywhere are talking about “importing” what is supposedly Muslim antisemitism to Europe. Dutch political parties were pressured into signing a new accord on antisemitism earlier this year, which included a much wider definition of the phenomenon and was arguably aimed specifically at recent immigrants. In Germany, the discourse has become particularly cynical, with parties who openly espouse Nazi ideology positioning themselves as the champions of European Jewry against invading antisemites. Germany and its neighbours would do well to remind themselves that one can only really “import” something that is not already there. In the case of antisemitism, this is clearly a whitewashing of history. It seems that Europe's historical penchant for hating the Other is merely changing targets at the moment. For obvious historical reasons, antisemitism is widely frowned upon all over the continent. As much as some people would love to be antisemitic themselves, the concept screams Nazi a little too loudly these days. But it takes little imagination to see the obvious parallels between antisemitic tendencies and antagonising Muslim refugees. Poland has trod an uneasy path between embracing memory and rejuvenating hatred. When Polish nationalists march 60,000 strong through Warsaw demanding a 'white Europe' and praying for an 'Islamic Holocaust', we should be weary. They are connecting seemlessly to a history of xenophobia that has already claimed the lives of millions once, but its energies are obviously far from exhausted. Antisemitism in Europe is alive and well, but it is not coming from abroad. Just because the branding has changed, the product stays the same, and right now, with a fresh target, it is flying off the dusty shelves.

Welcome to our place Joep Leerssen

n the ludic 1970s there was a fashion for jokey declarations of independence. Here in Amsterdam the Kabouters or “Gnome Party”, an offshoot of the anarchic-situationist Provo movement, declared an “Orange Free State” dedicated to the cheerful pursuit of sex, drugs and rock ’n roll. (I was 15 at the time, green with envy, hoping against hope that it would last long enough for me to grow up and get a piece of the action. No such luck.) A few years later I entered the independent free state of Hay-onWye. A quaint, underpopulated village on the English-Welsh border, where a second-hand bookseller had stocked up in abandoned properties until the entire vilage was an antiquarian walhalla; and to cap it all he issued a unilateral declaration of independence, styling himself “King of Hay”. Visitors to Hayon-Wye could get their passport stamped, and if you were into that sort of thing you could (for a price) get a resounding government title – ambassador, or duke, or whatever. I still cherish a set of Walter Scott novels which I got for the royal sum of five pounds. Not quite in the sex, drugs & rock ’n roll line, but the times they were a-changin’. Ever since, I have had a soft spot for micro-nations. They flourish, briefly, on the unstable margins of the nation-states – often as an ironic refusal to accept the tyranny of fact. A bit like in Jacqes Brel’s film Le Far West, where grown-ups make the Wild West

happen in a derelict Walloon factory, simply by willing it and believing they could be, can be, cowboys, real cowboys. A bit like Karl May, that Far West adventure novelist who had a bat in the belfry and believed he had in fact really experienced the adventures he described in his novels, was, himself, his fictional hero Old Shatterhand. A bit like carnival, where an entire city can for three days place itself under the rule of a prince/jester. One place was particularly fond to me. A spit of land that had formed as a sort of sandbank in the river bed of the Meuse south of my home town of Maastricht. It was only accessible from a wet part of riverbank on the Belgian side but the peninsula itself stuck out beyond the border into the Dutch part of the river. A few micronational situationist events took place there, usually involving crates of beer and a portable stereo, and magical because we were, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. Alas, alas, the authorities have rationalized the border and the place-in-themiddle-of-nowhere is now just another place-on-the-Walloonborder. I am nostalgic for borders. They were places of lawlessness. On that Walloon side south of Maastricht there used to be two biker cafés, dens of iniquity, safe only for Old Shatterhand-style kickass bad boys. One was called WEES WELKOM, the other, right next to it, BIJ ONS. Welcome - to our place. My my, how Europe has been a-changin’.

We have never been democratic

As the student council elections took over the lectures and the public spaces of the UvA, Hanna Blom pondered how these good-willed student politicians will be able to combat the The Hague-inspired neoliberalism of the university boards, which is breaking down the Humanities faculty into bite-sized, internationally appealing, overly broad courses.

n May, students had the opportunity to vote for student council. This piece was written before the outcome of the results, but it will be assumed for the sake of the article, as well as in line with past years’ results, that five people bothered to click the link and still way too many people voted for the Vrije Student. It is neat how many condoms you can give out when you receive 12.000€ in campaign money from the youth department of the VVD. This is the university's take on democracy: booths of second-year students promising to post your lectures online. While the excitement of student politics is

lost on the majority of the student population, once in a while a future measure from the board comes to light which reveals destructive cutbacks for the university, leading us to pine for real representation.   It is the cycle of institutional disappointment that takes place at both university and national level. First, information is leaked of some horrible proposal solely driven by profit, proving once again that the people in charge do not have the best interest at heart of those they were meant to govern. It can be voting against crucial policy proposals under the guise

of “pragmatist politics”, or selfproclaimed democratic parties not being in favour of a referendum. It can be memos which either did or did not exist and end up clearly existing, in which the prime minister discusses eliminating 1.4 billion annually from the budget in order to appease foreign investors.     Or it can be the University of Amsterdam, introducing a plan to reduce the entire Faculty of Humanities to a Liberal Arts College, getting rid of massive amounts of faculty staff, courses, languages; driving a metaphorical bulldozer through this institution of

knowledge which has built such a reputation over the years, around the globe.  This plan, Profiel 2016, was successfully taken down three years ago, but it is sadly coming back in less noticeable ways.   When the public makes their outrage noticeable, when their discontent manifests disruptively enough, the people in power are forced to listen, apologise and change their course of plans. This is the orgasmic point of the cycle. You marched, tweeted, occupied or put a large enough decapitated horse head in their bed and they succumbed. The sudden wave of feigned democracy can make any activist delirious.     During #dividentgate, when once again it was declared that the trust of the Dutch people had been lost by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, UvA Professor Ewald Engelen wrote in weekly Dutch opinion magazine De Groene Amsterdammer that the shock felt after the scheme of lies came to light was understandable, but at the end of the day ‘capital is in power and our democracy merely serves to hide this reality.’ Any move, speech and cough can be explained as helping one another, but would not have happened if they did not contribute to the accumulated wealth. It has now been years of cutting back on elderly care, education on every level, culture and so on, and we are still in the darkness, with the promised light at the end of the tunnel nowhere in sight.    The UvA – in the process of cutting so many corners it is hard to imagine what will be left of its Humanities department in the end – has a thorough campaign going to attract students from outside the Netherlands, those students I am talking to now. European Studies is a class-A example of the university’s

big internationalisation plan, in which often teachers have to switch teaching languages from one year to the other. International students are considerably more likely to finish their Bachelor’s in 3 years, while the Dutch slackers have the audacity to fail courses, do multiple exchange programs or just aimlessly continue to take on more classes. Aside from this difference in studying culture, students coming from elsewhere have a 19% chance of lingering in the Netherlands, who as subjects of Rutte III’s kingdom you could also

“If we only invest in Humanities to attract international students and never to better education, the choice between quality and quantity is clear.” see as intellectual capital, who’s extended stay in the Netherlands give the national economy a boost of € 740,000,000 annually. Seeing as there is enough incentive to swallow these specific students and spitting them back out as bachelor students in three to four years, it makes sense that the UvA is rushing to internationalise while quality of knowledge is on the back burner.    It is again logical that after the promise of finding alternatives to the plans against which hundreds of students and faculty protested in 2015 with the occupation of the Maagdenhuis, the same plans are now again being introduced by the

University. The leaking, the protest, and the promise have all three taken place already, so whatever happens now happens, until something takes place again and we all get back into the cycle.    When everything taught within the Humanities framework is continuously seen as a luxury, exclusively enjoyed by pale middle to upper class children who wear blazers to the university for each other and need some philosophic interlude between their coffee drinking and obscure movie sightings, the faculty will perish. If the only reason to invest in Humanities is to attract more international students and not to create opportunities for research or for better education, the choice between quality and quantity is clear. But perhaps a paradigm shift could happen, where investing in the university and specifically the Humanities no longer equals setting a pile of tax money on fire, but rather becomes a sound investment in the future of this country.  Perhaps efficiency could stop being the buzzword, before it is too late.   Until this takes place and we all get to dive into a rich pool of academic knowledge where research is funded, professors have realistic workloads and we all get to worry about the legacy we leave rather than the amount of taxes, revolting is necessary – plainly annoying the university into listening to the needs of the students who are paying the literal and figurative price. A profitdriven university will only further develop to supply knowledge which is in direct service of capital, and this ideology will continue to take everything that can be held dear in academia until students stop imagining they can dismantle this destructive system with the tools handed to them by the master.

t is no coincidence that it was the context of wartime England of 1942 that led Simone Weil to define Heimat ("homeland") and being rooted as “perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul”. Heimat discourse has existed for at least a century, but its public relevance tends to peak synchronically with moments of collective feelings of uprooting. Naturally then, the European refugee crisis has sparked a new popularity of Heimat as a political buzzword. In fact, in the past ten years, the term Heimat has made an astonishing career. For a long time, Heimat had been a word that few people born after 1950 would have used unironically or without imaginary quotation marks. Its not exactly glorious history had

survived at most in composites that describe places, such as Heimatstadt (“hometown”). Today, you can sell cookbooks, music, baking mixes, drinks, and TV shows with the strange nostalgia of the word again. As a crisis-preventing safe shore, it is referred to on dish cloths, pot holders, and doormats. Cafés, restaurants, and hotels name themselves after the term to attract customers. Against the backdrop of this Zeitgeist of collective Heimat contemplation, it is not only rightwing populists who readily reappropriate the term. In fact, the German government has just launched a new Heimat-ministry in charge of “protecting” what it is that makes German nationals feel “at home”. Seen by some as a symbolic political act, the public is

entangled in a heated debate on what exactly people mean when they speak of their Heimat. Its core meaning is perhaps “home” in the sense of an environment, but as illustrated by combinations like Heimatland (“native land”), Heimatliebe (“patriotism”) and Heimaterde (“native soil”), it carries so many different connotations that no single English word could properly translate it. A look at the historical development of the term reveals why some analysts have called it nothing more than a political myth, readily exploited in times of uncertainty by the political left and right, in order to redefine it to their advantage. Invented at the turn of the 20th century, the Heimat movement coined the term as a rejection of Germany’s rapid

Longing and belonging Heimat as political myth-making? Joana Voss deconstructs the deepest need of the human soul.

industrialisation and as an expression of a desire to retreat into nature. During the First World War, Heimat was then adapted into the name of the nation and gendered into a place of motherly security or the sweetheart waiting at home for her soldier’s return, and set in opposition to the enemy on the battlefield. The Nazis further intensified this reference to nationhood, turning it into an expression of German identity under threat and their corresponding expansionist ambitions. The chaos of the Weimar Republic and the identity crisis of the German people had emptied Heimat of concrete meaning and made it available for virtually any re-definition, which meant that it was incorporated into Nazi ideology and given a völkisch

undertone. In what became the Heimat period (1946-1965), German artists later tried to de-politicise the concept by emphasising nature and provincial homeliness. Yet, this was challenged by the Anti-Heimat movement, a left-wing project trying to re-evaluate German national identity in the cold light of the Holocaust, and inverting Heimat back to the repressive, xenophobic notion designed solely for the oppression of outgroups. In another attempt to save Heimat from instrumentalisation for a racist agenda, other left-wing initiatives painted German reunification as an example of Heimat as an inherently inclusive unifying global peace project. Together with an awareness for destructive pollution and a rise in environmentalism, Heimat again

was coined as something worthy of protection, only this time by the political left. As this brief historical analysis already suggests, Heimat stands for a variety of consciously attached meanings of rootedness that need to be carefully disentangled to make sense of the implicit human desires it speaks to. To me, on a first intuition, Heimat seems to describe a feeling of comfort best illustrated in the moment of returning to my parents’ house on the evening before Christmas and eating the same spaghetti that grace memories from my childhood. But what exactly is it that makes this feeling so secure? Perhaps it is the ease of belonging. The desire to literally be “at home”, where you know who “you” is and how “you” relates to your

environment. Johann Gottfried Herder once described Heimat as ‘the place where I don’t have to explain myself.’ This then suggests that Heimat can be defined as “a place where one best knows oneself”. Heimat here, like in its original meaning, is first and foremost something that protects its subjects, which clashes with the idea of it as something that needs to be protected from outsiders, for what protects its subjects is by definition stronger and can hardly be in need of their protection respectively. But is Heimat really a place? Certainly, feeling at home can be independent of matters of movement, detached from one’s physical location. This makes sense, considering that people can feel at home even while living in different, physically changing environments distinct from their places of origin. Rather than a place, Heimat is then a space where one best knows oneself. This makes it first and foremost a mental picture. “Knowing oneself” here points to the intimacy that comes with inhabiting a space or cognitive environment where one finds one’s identity best mediated in the general idea of how things should be in physical and cultural relation to one another. This however bears some further inconsistencies, for the fact that we seem to connect Heimat to something predictable (i.e. “knowing how things work”) suggests some sort of stability, constancy, resistance to change even. Yet, to the extent that identities are unstable, subject to continuous reevaluation and transformation, then associations with Heimat as the root of identities must likewise be somewhat fluid. Fluid that is, in the sense of being subject to peoples’ scrutiny and judgement on what Heimat should be, or the imagination of a place where one would truly feel at home. This, then, introduces a new dimension of

Heimat as a longing to shape one’s own environment and touches upon Heimat as the left-wing utopia, inclusive of all people, the idea of a space in which every single person can live in dignity without fearing any kind of violence. The term Heimatrecht (right of domicile) reflects this idea, referring to the state as the guardian of its subjects’ right to social security in difficult times. The difference that we have reached here is then one of Heimat as a nostalgia on the one hand, and as a utopia on the other. In part, this explains the struggle that the political left has had with the term. A look at cultural history shows that they cannot be clearly separated, as

"Rather than a place, Heimat is then a space where one best knows oneself"

people seem to think about Heimat primarily in the times they feel they have lost something like it. At the same time, our memory when we think nostalgically about Heimat is a selective (i.e. utopian) one, always stressing a positive evaluation of the connection between identity and one’s home, the desire to go back to how things never really were. While we have so far praised the inclusiveness of Heimat as a utopia, which is emphasised in left-wing appropriations of the term, it is on this very same ground that fascist connotations flourish, for what is inclusive to one group is, of course, always exclusive to another. In fact, upon closer inspection, all three definitions that have been offered

here so far suggest some kinship ties because they all point to the perception of home as a space of comfort, security, and predictability in which disruption or distress can only ever come from outside the community. In this sense, Heimat can be seen as a property claim and any reference to it as the expression of an experience of loss bears the danger of turning it into something that needs to be defended against outsiders. But how can that be reconciled with Heimat as something that protects, then? Looking back at the historical susceptibility of Heimat to violent political exploitation, the many antagonisms surrounding Heimat that have been unravelled here seem to support those analysts who claim that Heimat is ill-defined per se, invented precisely for political myth-making in times of collective feelings of uprooting. It is hardly possible to reconcile all the deconstructed antagonisms into one coherent definition that reflects Heimat as something that protects, but needs protection, as an identityconnection that is stable or natural, but constructed in the sense that we long to actively shape it, and the according dialectics of inclusiveness and exclusiveness, utopia and nostalgia. Whichever of these is favoured in changing narratives of Heimat, is then ultimately a reflection of zeitgeist and must be contextualized against the backdrop of political, economic, and social transformations. Accordingly, the current popularity of Heimat-discourse cannot be understood without a deeper investigation into people’s perceived personal and collective insecurities, norms, goals and evaluations. Returning to the wisdom of Simone Weil, such an investigation can be declared even a duty towards humankind, for it contains the key to the essence of our most basic needs as human beings.

The Enlightenment in contemporary Politics: a malleable Foundational Past MATTHIJS LOK

ery few historical periods are currently regarded as a source of inspiration for contemporary Europe. In a time when countries like China, Russia and Turkey, as well as the individual European nation states, are rediscovering (and reinventing) their own imperial and national

past, the European project seems above all to be about escaping Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history. A visit to the newly constructed House of European History in Brussels makes this abundantly clear. The project of European integration was a way of ending the centuries of warfare and internal European strife, culminating

in the bloody civil wars of Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s twentieth century. Whereas formerly Europeans turned to an imagined Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages or the Renaissance to mirror their own ideas of Europe, after 1950 there was only the future promise of prosperity, stability and peace through European integration. In

the early 21st century even that European future seems to have disappeared, leading to a sense of crisis and a frantic search for “European narratives”. The only past that still seems to provide meaning nowadays is the 18th-century Enlightenment, the century of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Kant. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, for instance, found the inspiration for a post-national, cosmopolitan European citizenship in the 18th century public sphere. Only recently the French president Immanuel Macron in his inaugural speech stated that he aimed to defend and uphold the Enlightenment ideals, blending nationalism and universalism in the French national tradition. European leaders regularly refer to the 18th century as the cradle of supposedly European ideals such as human rights and liberal democracy. For Neoliberals, the 18th century Scottish thinker Adam Smith, who coined the term ‘invisible hand’ is regarded to be the main prophet of the free market (distorting the original intentions of Smith in the meantime). Conservatives see the eighteenth-century Whig politician Edmund Burke as the father of modern conservatism. In Conflict Studies, Kant is seen as the founder of modern Peace Studies. For Europe’s political establishments, the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment, rather than Pagan Rome, the Christian Middle Ages, the humanistic Renaissance, the Nineteenth century (the era of colonialism, industrial pollution, social and economic inequality and nationalism) or Europe’s “dark” twentieth century, serves as the main “foundational myth”. In the 18th century, rationalism, cosmopolitanism, democracy and human rights were formulated.

In short: European and Atlantic “modernity” was invented. One of the central characteristics of enlightenment thought is, of course, the idea that progress and the improvement of society are possible through learning and rational policies (although some philosophers such as Voltaire were also pessimistic to what extent this progress was actually achieved in his own era). The extent to which the Enlightenment view of the world still very much informs the contemporary western way of thinking became clear to me when I followed the western press coverage of the (so-called) “Islamic State” over the last years. In the Western press, “IS” was mainly framed as “primitive”, “backward” and “medieval”. The execution of prisoners was described as “barbaric”. The organisation was seen as not fitting into the “modern age” or as belonging to a different era. In many ways of course, IS is and was a very modern phenomenon drawing on modern techniques of mass communication. But the fact that IS was described in a typically Enlightenment dichotomy of “civilisation” versus “barbarism” taught me the extent to which Enlightenment paradigms are unconsciously determining the (Western) European world view. However, the Enlightenment is of course not without its critics. Historians have over the last decades also pointed to the darker side of the eighteenth century “Enlightenment”, for instance regarding the defence of imperialism, colonial expansion and gender inequality. The narratives of progress and civilisation seemed to provide European colonisation with a liberal justification. Most contemporary criticism draws on older works: after the Second World War, the German philosophers Horkheimer and Adorno famously

thought the Enlightenment to be the primary cause of the strive for total domination of nature and the control of society, which culminated in the death camps of World War II. Interestingly, in many ways these post war criticisms from the left drew on the 18th century critics of the Enlightenment, who were mostly religiously inspired. Catholic priests

"members of the Far Right described themselves as guardians of the Enlightenment against the barbaric Islamic migrants coming from the East"

argued that Enlightened philosophie would lead to a world inhabited by selfish individuals only interested in their own material gain, followed by the collapse of all social order resulting in a despotic state and a tyrannical ruler. In my history Bachelor’s course Legacies of the Enlightenment, BA students, next to reading 18thcentury sources and state-of-theart literature on the 18th century, researched the contemporary uses of the Enlightenment past, a subject on which no comprehensive book

exists. The results of their research projects were insightful. In France, the current president, as we have seen, claims to be a staunch adherent of Enlightenment ideals. In the Netherlands the political role of the Enlightenment came to the forefront a couple of years ago in the controversy surrounding the Liberal member of parliament, Somali born Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Supporters of the political party VVD described her as the ‘black Voltaire’. In the newspaper Trouw, however, many supporters of Hirsi Ali, among them the philosopher Herman Philipse and Leiden law professor Paul Cliteur, were accused of ‘Enlightenment fundamentalism’, claiming that Enlightenment ideals could be just as oppressive and intolerant as those of their religious opponents, echoing eighteenth century criticism of the supposedly ‘tyrannical’ philosophy. Also, in the debate on euthanasia, regular references to the eighteenth-century proponent of suicide, David Hume, could be found, as Delano Beeking noted. The most interesting country to study is probably Germany. It is surprising to learn that not only centre political parties such as the liberal FDP regarded themselves as part of the Enlightenment tradition, but that also members of the Far Right described themselves as guardians of the Enlightenment against the barbaric Islamic migrants coming from the East. In German national thought, as you may have learned from National Thought lectures, a distinction was often made between German romantic Culture versus French enlightened civilisation. The hostility to the ‘French’ Enlightenment and the French revolution culminated in the Third Reich. After the defeat of the Nazis, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment with Leibniz and Kant as figureheads became the

‘good’ German and European past, legitimising the post-war Western German Federal Republic (BRD). As Charlotte Backhaus noted in her essay: ‘the Enlightenment hence similarly serves as a bulwark against the fascist past for the New Right, serving as a symbolic differentiation from Nazi ideology and any charges of continuing the Nazi tradition (…). Accepting the Enlightenment as a central part of the West, it becomes an instrument in the creation (or rather reassertion) of an essential dichotomy, positioning an enlightened, democratic Germany against the allegedly incompatible values of Islam.’ I will not end this article with a plea for or against a particular kind of ‘Enlightenment’, I merely contend that the 18th century is of fundamental importance to the way contemporary Europeans interpret the present and define themselves, and that it is our task as Amsterdam Europeanists to critically examine the uses and appropriation of this Enlightenment legacy. These examples show the extreme malleability of the Enlightenment as a foundational past for contemporary Europe. Contemporary (neo-)liberals see the 18th century as the cradle of individual liberty as well as the origin of the invisible hand of the market economy. Left wing cosmopolitans, such as Habermas, look to the Enlightenment as the beginning of human rights talk, a public sphere and cosmopolitan citizenship. Left wing radicals see the Enlightenment primarily as the source of the evils of modern society, European eurocentrism and colonialism. Enlightened modernity is, finally, used by the rising Far Right as an argument to halt the immigration of people from barbaric countries “not sharing modern values” and defending Europe’s “secular modernity.”

Where are Amsterdam's Homeless? Homeless people are a universal sight in every city, yet they seem curiously absent in Amsterdam. Clara Iszezuk asked herself why and found some unexpected answers.

remember one night, three years after moving to Amsterdam: I was watching my favourite childhood movie, Modern Times directed by Charlie Chaplin himself, released in the US in 1936. A particular scene sank me into deep reflection, depicting the meeting between Chaplin and a young homeless woman, played by Paulette

Goddard, attempting to steal a loaf of bread in front of him. This scene made me realise that I never really saw any homeless people and even fewer beggars in Amsterdam. Compared to most European cities I visited around Europe, the streets of Amsterdam seemed to be devoid of flagrant destitution and homeless people. I felt a bit guilty for being so

focused on my own comfortable life that it took me three years of living here to realise it. I could remember one lady asking me for a euro in the street to buy a burger. I also remembered an old man begging in the metro, and a young man asking me for a cigarette at the entrance of a supermarket, carrying a pile of Z!, Amsterdamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s street magazine.

This last memory drew my attention to street magazines. Those newspapers exist in almost every European country and are sold by homeless people with a permanent place and permit of residence. The first street magazine was called The Big Issue, distributed in London in 1991 and quickly became a big success. The Netherlands followed in 1994 with Straatnieuws in Utrecht, Z! in Amsterdam, Street News in The Hague and De Rotterdamse Straatkrant in Rotterdam before spreading to the rest of the country and all over Europe. The organisations behind street magazines aim to help people reintegrate into society while giving them the opportunity to have a legal source of income. The newspapers are financed by advertisements and the street sales. In order to avoid waste and to give more responsibility to the sellers, they need to buy the magazines themselves. If needed, they can get a free pile to start. With the money earned, they are then able to invest in new ones, allowing them to keep a temporary professional activity. This modest income can give to those persons in precarious situations a slightly better livelihood, self-respect, and dignity. The homeless are often marginalised in our modern societies, and the sale of street magazines contributes towards a more positive image of homeless people in general. Street magazines do not make the number of homeless magically decrease, but surely they are a small step towards reintegration and establishing self-esteem. It is sometimes easy to look the other way, but sometimes a simple smile or a short discussion can mean a lot for those street magazines sellers struggling to cope with their difficult situation and social status. But who are those people holding a pile of newspapers at the entrance

of a supermarket? Why do we see so few homeless people in the streets of Amsterdam and the Netherlands? The city council estimated the number of people sleeping everyday in the streets of Amsterdam at around 200, even though it is illegal to sleep in the streets or even in your car in the Dutch capital. The police can even arrest people for this reason, especially if a disturbance to public order is supposedly

"Compared to most European cities I visited around Europe, the streets of Amsterdam seemed to be pretty devoid of flagrant destitution and homeless people" created. Most European cities are filled with homeless people and beggars, often afflicted with tragic issues like drug addiction and alcoholism. In Amsterdam you hardly find any because of a policy starting in 2006 concerning the four biggest Dutch cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht. The government implemented a project seeking to get its homeless people off the streets. From 2006 to 2010 more than 10.000 people living in the street were offered free accommodation, thus providing a roof over their heads, the possibility of a stable life, and the hope for a better future to more than

5.000 people. Those people were also helped in finding personal assistance, tackling addictions or treating psychological problems. This project cost of 175.000.000 euros, calculated by the ogovernment as each invested euro potentially saving 2 to 3 euros that would have been spent otherwise on homeless people. Did this project remove all the homeless people in Amsterdam? No, the numbers keep growing. According to different sources, there are an estimated 20.000 homeless people in Holland since 2010. But those numbers are hard to verify, as most homeless are not registered. The rising numbers of people in such precarious situations show that the recent government cuts to social welfare did not help the situation of night shelters and homeless aid initiatives either. In Amsterdam, most shelters are full every night and not everyone can find a warm bed. The numbers are rising because people can only get help if they reside in the city for at least two years. People from outside the Netherlands cannot find any help in Amsterdam. Some come from Europe but most are from nonEuropean countries. In Amsterdam, only 41% of homeless people in 2012 had Dutch nationality. During the winter, more shelters are open, offering some food and a warm bed for the night. If you wish as a student to give some time helping homeless people in Amsterdam, the Stoelen Project right next to the bar Waterkant on Marnixstraat always needs volunteers. You do not have to commit regularly, you could go just one time with a group of friends to cook in the afternoon, or do one or two monthly shifts to serve coffee and food. The season is almost over now, but they will open again in September.

On the Doorstep of Europe

A view on the Balkans’ place in Europe is always worth some attention. Being Bulgarian and born in Germany, the rift between East and West has always interested Nikolai Markov. Having had the chance to hear Montenegrin President Djukanovic himself talk about the country’s perspective on westward integration, he took the chance to write this article.

olitical leaders occupy a special place in our hearts by default. We love them, we demand from them, we hate them, we make them, we change them. These leaders occupy an even more special place when we see them act in our European periphery, in this case the Balkans. How exactly that could articulate was to be seen on December 7th 2017, when the EAST Public event 'Euro-Atlantic Integration in the Western Balkans: a perspective on Montenegro' took place. On that day, none other

than Milo Djukanovic, now elected president of Montenegro, visited Amsterdam and gave a talk about Montenegro’s perspective towards westward integration. However, his appearance at the cafeteria of Bushuis,s and quick Google searches by us fellow students preceded whichever perspective he could offer in his talk – and his own special place was claimed already. Exciting for us students, civil servants of the Montenegrin state – ambassadors and the like, – Sir Geoffrey Nice, Leading Prosecutor

against Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia, and Djukanovic himself all followed up on Dr. Nena Tromp’s invitation. What happened once Djukanovic entered the room, though, was remarkable: two bodyguards came in and flanked the cafeteria at its two entrances, their suits a tad too small for the muscles they possessed. Only after their securing of the room did Djukanovic, more than two meters tall and seemingly very pleased with his visit already, appear himself. At

that moment, all the ambassadors immediately dropped their food and drink, were almost fighting over who would get to take his coat off; nothing seemed to matter any more, except for his presence. The only person I found relatively untouched by the commotion Djukanovic created in the cafeteria was Sir Geoffrey. Djukanovic’s actual talk, which was supported by live-translation through an interpreter, was even more interesting than the presence he created. Even though there was clearly no point in winning us over except for the moment – no crowd of possible voters was present after all – Djukanovic talked as though he was pouring his heart out, trying to make us all understand what he was eager to bring across. I took out my earpiece with the live translation at some point because the way he was speaking was so much more interesting than what exactly he was saying. To be very honest, the special place political leaders occupy prejudiced whatever he was going to say, although it sounded like the harsher version of a classic: just as Central Eastern Europe was invited to “come back to Europe” in 2004, the Balkans deserve as much a place in the new-found institutional centre of Europe. The more time is spent waiting and pending on such a decision of enlargement or at least the bringing further of a westward motion (by joining NATO, for example, as Montenegro did in 2017), the more those states are going to be looking for alternatives to feel part of a greater whole. In this case further integration eastward, in however far that is possible, is the alternative that Djukanovic sees fulfilled in Montenegro’s neighbours. Not only was it necessary to open up to the Balkan states, the EU and further Western institutions were missing important ground and

momentum by pointing out the lack these states express in democracy and rule of law, instead of jointly embracing them and thus helping them to make these issues and stereotypes a thing of a past. The way that Djukanovic explained his perspective as then-prospective leader of the Montenegrin state, these failures on behalf of the West were clearly expressed in largescale Russophilia as an answer to the question of Slav identity. As the West continued to allow the Balkans only a peripheral existence around the institutional centres of

"Two bodyguards came in and flanked the cafeteria at its two entrances, their suits a tad too small for the muscles they possessed" Europe, the people of those states were being pushed into critique against the West and approval of own alternatives in bargaining eastward. Although logical, it was a tale heard many times before. The West is letting the East live itself out at the periphery due to perceived backwardness, and if that were to change finally, the East would have a chance. However, if things were to continue down this well-known road, more and more momentum would be lost, the distance between Balkans and Europe would get ever greater – a mere continuation of the Eastern peoples’ suffering under external circumstances. This classical tale met a slight smirk at best. The research done prior

to the event had revealed a face of Milo Djukanovic that left his statements questionable at best, for it revealed his rise to one of the most powerful of the small states. In itself not a reprehensible achievement, it was reached under Milosevic’s wing, in the “successor” state of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, made up of Montenegro and Serbia) and connections to criminal factions on a high level do exist. However, it needs to be emphasised that such a smirk at the personal history of Djukanovic completely misses the point he is making, both through his rise and his statements. For almost twenty years Djukanovic occupied the positions of prime minister and president respectively. Although in a position that can easily be criticized, he is the person who oversaw Montenegro’s break from the FRY and strongly started to promote the divergence into westward integration. The status quo of the Balkan states, their troubled, bloody history and the lasting presence of corruption and crime have been major factors of consideration as far back as the closing of the iron curtain. How much does the lingering around this status quo contribute to change in the Balkan region, though? I am not trying to make the point that we need to overlook that same history, corruption, and crime, but that we need to engage with it, go beyond the natural stop our European values of democracy, peace and prosperity seemingly make for us at Europe’s periphery. If there is going to be hope for change and one desires to take action for a greater sense of unity in Europe, it is vital to engage exactly with that history and all the complexity it brings.

Venice of the north, where art thy toilets? In Amsterdam, there are just three public toilets accesible to women. Sally Dixon sets out to discover why this is the case and how this affects much of the city's population.

msterdam is a success story: the city has become a point of reference throughout the world and is an experience that many other cities have tried to imitate. Roughly 800,000 people benefit from living in one of the smartest and greenest cities in the world. Just the name Amsterdam evokes images of happy, leggy bikers cycling along the stunning canals. However, despite the perceived progressive nature of the city, why is half the population denied access to one of its most basic needs? This basic need is access to women’s public toilets. In 2015, the United Nations General

Assembly declared sanitation a universal human right - Damn straight! This means that everyone, everywhere, has the right to a toilet. Nevertheless, in Amsterdam, this is not the case. In the city, there are allegedly only three free public toilets that women can use. I chose to visit one of these toilets, located next to the Royal Palace, to assess the situation – and out of general curiosity, this toilet is the world’s first retractable urinal for women. When I visited on a humid, sticky weekend afternoon, there were the usual crowds of tourists hovering around Dam Square. I searched for this toilet with my camera poised

but then my heart (and bladder) sunk. The toilet, being retractable, was firmly in the ground – useless. Apparently, it is only raised to ground level at certain times. In comparison to the three women’s toilets in the city, there are thirtyfive public urinals for men. I am confident that all Amsterdam-based women reading this article have had a similar experience to mine. There is a spot of sunshine in the city and naturally huge quantities of the population flock to the nearest park. I found myself in Oosterpark with two of my male friends. After a few beers, the guys went to the nearest urinal, a mere stone’s throw

away. I uncomfortably resisted, knowing full well that going to the toilet was going to be a lot of hassle. Eventually, I had to go, and I reluctantly set off for the nearest place, a hotel. I then awkwardly snuck past the staff in my flip-flops and located the Dames sign. I really did not fancy buying a 4-euro bottle of mineral water to feel justified in using their facilities. This common experience was exemplified by Geerte Piening, a young woman who was caught urinating off a street on a night out around Leidseplein several years ago and fined €90. Last year, Piening contested the charge and was told by the judge that she should have used the men’s urinal. Surprisingly, the judge said he understood that, for women, using men’s urinals may not be pleasant, but that it was nevertheless possible. What this judge is failing to note is that even if it is partially possible for women to do so, why should we have to expose ourselves to painful and unsafe practices? The shocking verdict of this case led to the organisation of the Netherlands’ First National Public Urinal Urinating Day which was nicknamed ‘Power to the Peepee'. This day, which took place last year, invited women from across the country to demonstrate the possibilities of urinating in a public urinal built for men. Regardless of whether you are a keen yoga enthusiast, trust me, this is tricky. To emphasize this, hundreds of women posted pictures of themselves on social media attempting Cirque du Soleilstyle acrobatics merely to get the right angle. Most of the women who posted the photos were in the same age group as Piening. But what about the other women? Is the judge implying that elderly women, women with disabilities, and women with young children should also attempt to access the urinals? No female, regardless of

her age and background, should be subjected to this ordeal. Another pee-in-public protest was organized last year via Facebook, which mobilized women to come to Leidseplein to protest. Because too many women wanted to take part in the protest – over 1,000 women said they would attend the protest and nearly 8,000 said they were interested – it was cancelled due to space restrictions. As these figures show, there is a clear demand for clean and safe public toilets for women. Nonetheless, despite the media buzz caused by

"The judge said he understood that, for women, using men’s urinals may not be pleasant, but that it was possible" this case, what has actually been done? Piening spoke of how her goal was reached: she wanted to draw attention to the injustice. Of course, she undoubtedly succeeded in this goal, but change is yet to be implemented. When the case was popularised in the press, design competitions were underway for public toilets for women. Yet, the numbers speak for themselves. One year on, there are still 35 toilets for men and 3 for women. Clearly the number of women’s toilets needs to be increased at a rapid speed, and despite the costs that this will incur, it is crucial that these public toilets should be free. Right now, the average price to use a toilet in some of the available public places like Amsterdam Central Station is at least 50 cents. Why should public space become an extension

of private capital? Amsterdam is a wealthy city which reaps the benefits of a vibrant tourist industry and high employment. In fact, the city’s tourist tax will likely increase in 2019 and bring in another 150,000,000€. One way in which it could do this is by charging 10€ extra per tourist on top of the five percent tax that tourists already pay for their accommodation. Although this new law is not set in stone, it is likely to come into effect next year. Given that just a small percentage of this tax revenue would cover the costs for the women’s toilets, they can and should be subsidised by the municipality. Naturally the question of how a city should supply its public toilets for women is tied up with how the city chooses to invest its money. If a city does not provide equal ease of access to resources regardless of gender, that city does not value women equally. Because Amsterdam lacks the basic toiletry needs for women, clearly the city government does not view women’s ability to access public spaces as a priority. In Piening’s case, she was out in the middle of the night and her needs were neglected. By not providing women with somewhere safe and permanent to urinate, this government has not endorsed the right of women to feel safe in the city. How is this possible in a country where many policies – recreational drugs, prostitution and same-sex marriage to name a few – are considered among the most liberal in the world? This is a case where the government has prioritised male over female gender. To change the negative picture that is sent out to the women of Amsterdam and beyond, this must change. Action is needed to enable more than half of the city’s population to move around it with confidence and dignity. The female population exists, and its biological needs must be met.

Will PESCO turn the EU into a legitimate security agent? Over time, the EU successfully evolved into a major economic power block. However, when it comes to its interventionist capacities it still has much to gain. Permanent Structured Cooperation, PESCO in short, is a new policy proposal that will boost the integration process of its security and defence framework and might turn the EU into an effective and credible military power as well, Michelle Kooiman thinks.

hen Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, a security dilemma emerged on the European continent. Immediately, NATO decided to station more troops in former Soviet satellite states who feel understandably threatened. The following Ukraine crisis was a good opportunity for the EU to make use of their recently established security and defence policy, which was set up in order to prevent or tackle such security dilemmas. However, the EU was not properly addressed as a security agent, because the member states could not see eye to eye. Therefore, the EU’s

performance after the annexation of Crimea painfully revealed the ineffectiveness of the EU’s security and defence policy at that time. The Maastricht Treaty introduced the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in 1992, protecting the EU's interests regarding security issues within and outside the European borders. The CFSP emerged in the light of the new international security environment after the end of the Cold War. An integral part of this policy is the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) which provides the CFSP with, although very limited,

military capabilities. This policy area is struggling with organisational structures that limit its possibilities. The CSDP is an intergovernmental institution in which the member states, who possess, control, and provide the military equipment, have the final say. Therefore, the nation state is the central and decisive political actor in this policy area of the EU. Until now the planning concerning security and defence issues is conducted at the national level. Only after decisions on the national level have been made, the opportunity for a collaboration among member states of the EU is

being explored. A consequence is that non-matching national policies might obstruct a fruitful international cooperation. Member states also put their selfinterest before the harmony of interests, even though almost all member states have repeatedly pleaded their support for more integration on this issue. Many member states fail to spend enough on defence because many have not experienced war in decades. The budget cuts due to the economic crisis since 2008 did not help the defence sector either. Especially the economic depression drastically decreased the input all member states deliver to the CSDP. Consequently, only a few stronger member states are able to provide the CSDP with any military means. Furthermore, different historical traditions and experiences cause member states to react differently to a security dilemma the EU is concerned with. A revisionist Russia makes the Central and Eastern member states nervous, but the Southern member states are dealing with other security issues like the high influx of illegal immigrants. All these elements make it difficult for the CSDP to conduct missions, because it cannot seem to find common ground among all members. At this point, the organisational structure of the EU’s security and defence policy leaves much to be desired. All the flaws show that a drastic change of the organisational structure of the CSDP is necessary. This is where PESCO sets in. This policy proposal will make sure the EU does not have to collect every one’s ‘yes’ when it wants to implement policies that will benefit the safety of the EU-members. This also means that the EU can go on missions not all member states have to agree upon or take

part of. This would make it much easier for the EU to conduct military missions and make a difference when it comes to the prevention or resolution of a crisis. Last year, the European Council consented to this policy proposal and up to seventeen military projects are being conducted this year. The biggest project might be the creation of a “military Schengen zone”. This initiative will make it easier to transport military troops and means across the borders of participating member states. Also, the regulation of transport of military equipment

"The biggest project might be the creation of a ‘military Schengen zone’"

will be less strict. Especially this last proposal will benefit European security, since the multitude of rules slows down the militarising process. History has shown that timing is everything when a political entity must prepare itself for a security threat. PESCO forces the member states to work together and operate as one force. They have to agree upon the input the participating member states are willing and able to deliver. Because member states themselves decide to take part in a mission, they are willing to make an effort. Once the projects of PESCO have been initiated, the EU has more military means at its disposal

which they can use more frequently. This agreement will also create a community in which the member states are in constant dialogue with each other about security and defence issues. This would be the right time for the EU to implement PESCO, since the EU is faced with several security dilemmas. As mentioned earlier, the unpredictable and revisionist tendencies of Russia have created a tense situation in the Central and Eastern part of Europe. In addition, the constant threat of terrorism requires a smoother functioning of the EU’s security and defence policy. All member states of the EU could get targeted by this kind of threat. The terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris in November 2015 were carried out by terrorists who came from Belgium. This example alone shows that terrorism is an inter-state problem which requires an inter-state approach of dealing with this kind of threat. Most attacks in the Western world have been committed in EU-territory. Therefore, the EU must make it a priority to make the member states active participants in the fight against terrorism. Even though PESCO is a major step in the right direction when it comes to European integration, the EU still has a lot of work to do in order to receive more input and dedication of its member states, who are always reluctant to give up sovereignty when it concerns the security and defence domain. The national forces and military equipment of several member states do not suffice anymore. This is a big reason why Brussels should hammer on an intimate cooperation. The EU is on the right track of becoming a more legitimate security agent. However, it is a very slow process, which takes place in a rapidly changing world.

SES Calendar 6 June – SES & Radost Debate SES & Radost are organising a debate that will focus not only on public perception of some of the most debated personas in history and present time, but also on how institutions such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia contribute to these associations. There will be an introductory lecture before the debate, so everyone can participate in the discussion afterwards. Interested? Take a look at the Facebook event or the SES website! 16 & 17 June – Brussels Weekend On Monday the 18th of June, a lot of SES members have to be in Brussels for their courses. Prior to this day, the SES is organizing a fun-filled weekend for only 60,-! Join our visit to the European capital by signing up through the SES website. 28 June – Last borrel of the year The last borrel this year will be on Thursday the 28th of June – be sure to save the date! Café Sanders will be open until 03:00, and we have many other special things planned for this night.. Come and say farewell to Café Sanders, the Board and your university friends for this year. 30 & 31 June – Hitchhike Weekend SES is ending the academic year with a hitchhike competition to a yet to be announced destination. Find a partner and sign up through the SES website, who knows where you will be headed this weekend? One thing is certain though, it will be a very exciting weekend!