Bribes as the Lubricant of Neoliberal Central Europe
Let’s be honest: the center of Europe is not just the region of phony Habsburg nostalgia and a shared cuisine. It is also the place where experienced patients hand over a box of chocolates (with a creatively hidden banknote) to the treating doctor and/or the nurse. Continue reading
“Recent political and social developments in Austria have been widely portrayed in simplistically metonymic terms, with controversial figures such as Waldheim and Haider being perceived to epitomise Austrian society as a whole.” In his paper, Christian Karner analyses “the discursive/lyrical content of some of the songs by STS and Austria 3, two of the most successful bands within the genre of Austrian popular music. Approaching these two case studies from the theoretical perspectives of discourse analysis and cognitive anthropology, he tries to show that ‘Austro-Pop’ has – at important junctures in recent Austrian history – served as a tool of ideological resistance and created sites of social critique and cultural introspection.” (…) I have to admit: I am not really sure about this…
An article by the renowned Yale historian Timothy Snyder
(c) New York Review of Books, 2011
Or is the choice between Yanukovych and Tymoshenko
rather the choice between the Plague and Cholera?
delirium clemens 