Meow: Vienna's 1st Cat Cafe Opens
喫茶文化の町に猫カフェ ウィーン、初日から盛況
2012.5.5 08:22
社説:超高齢社会 「肩車型」の常識を疑え
毎日新聞 2012年05月05日
女性や熟年・高齢者が支える側にまわれるような社会のしくみ、雰囲気が必要なのである。
メディアが小沢とか、二股とかに、現を抜かしていてはこの国は沈没しよう。
German tourists claim racism at accident scene
Published: 7:38AM Saturday May 05, 2012 Source: Fairfax
ニュージーランド
英地方選で与党２党惨敗 緊縮策に批判、政権運営困難も
If elections could change things, they'd be illegal
The Greek elite have new scapegoats - society's wretched and defenceless: immigrants, prostitutes and the poor.
Last Modified: 04 May 2012
ギリシャも混沌としていて、様子が把握できない。
Europe’s far-right crawls toward power
May 05, 2012 12:56 AM
By Elaine Ganley
日本の極右化を不安がっていた、欧米のリベラルメディアが、実は、自分たちの文化に潜む陰、シャドーを日本＝他者に投影していたのだ、と考えればわかりやすい。
もっとも、
仏大統領選:「主要政党に絶望」カギ握る極右首位の村
毎日新聞 2012年05月04日
産業の空洞化、見捨てられた村落、というのは日本も他人事ではない。
Can it EVER be socially acceptable to have hairy armpits? Woman who gave up shaving debates prickly subject on This Morning
By DEBORAH ARTHURS
PUBLISHED: 12:16 GMT, 4 May 2012
そういえば、黒木香さんはいまどうしているのだろう？
It is pathetic after 25 years in Japan he still rants on Debito org. However it was the right decision for a man like that to leave Japan.
また一人有道ブログから去る。お達者で！！！
2012年5月5日（土）付
「原発ゼロ」社会：上 不信の根を見つめ直せ
2012年05月05日 13:30 エネルギー
橋下徹氏のための原子力リスク入門
「次世代へ、原発ゼロの未来を」各地で集会・デモ
原発反対の活動自体はいいのだが、原発は嫌だ！と思っている内輪だけで騒いでいるようにも思える。
私は 不安定供給に対処するため、多様なエネルギー源をもつこと、そして、原発の軍事的戦略的価値、も評価するが、仮にそれは度外視しても、
１）原発の危険性は水力発電や火力発電の危険性に比べて、高いのか？
２）原発を廃止した場合のコストの負担を貧乏人、あるいは中小の工場に耐えてもらうだけの具体的政策はあるのか？
３）原発を廃止した場合の具体的な代替策はあるのか？
少なくとも、こうした問いに説得力のある回答がほしいところ。
逆に推進者については、原発の安全チェック体制、万が一の事故のときのための避難体制、常時非常時の情報開示体制などをしっかり整備して国民に明示できなければ、国民の不安は払拭できないことも自覚すべきである、と考える。原発をめぐる政府・学会・業界の人的体制に対する不信感はまんざら理不尽とはいえないからである。
VIENNA May 4, 2012 (AP)
Would you like a cat with your coffee? If so, Vienna's newest coffee house is the place to go.
Five cats roam freely in "Cafe Neko," ready to be stroked and cuddled ― and when they are tired of all the attention, they can disappear into their own space or climb high above the tables, out of reach of the guests.
"Cafe Neko" opened Thursday. Owner Alexander Thuer tells the Austria Press Agency that the idea to combine coffee with cats comes from his Japanese wife, Takako Ishimitsu, who says such establishments are common in Asia ― but rare in Europe.
But not all guests are welcome. Dogs, which have entry to most Viennese coffee houses, have to stay outside.
喫茶文化の町に猫カフェ ウィーン、初日から盛況
2012.5.5 08:22
社説:超高齢社会 「肩車型」の常識を疑え
毎日新聞 2012年05月05日
「支える側」と「支えられる側」の比率はこの数十年ほとんど変化がない。今後も高齢者や主婦が働いて「支える側」が厚くなれば、高齢化率の伸びほどには現役世代の負担は増えないだろう。
無年金や低年金の高齢者は多く、親の介護のために離職する人も後を絶たないが、年金も介護保険もなかったころに比べれば、今の現役世代の負担は一概に重くなったとは言えない。
大量のプラチナ世代が「支える側」に回ったとき、この国のかたちはずいぶん違って見えてくる。
女性や熟年・高齢者が支える側にまわれるような社会のしくみ、雰囲気が必要なのである。
メディアが小沢とか、二股とかに、現を抜かしていてはこの国は沈没しよう。
German tourists claim racism at accident scene
Published: 7:38AM Saturday May 05, 2012 Source: Fairfax
Disturbing the beautiful memories of New Zealand will be a "nightmare" for two German tourists who stumbled into a "racist" scene while passing through Hamilton.
Evelyn Kirn, 39, and Saira Viehmann, 33, were found stranded in Garden Place, out of pocket and car-less with an ugly tale to tell.
The friends had clocked more than 4000km in their Nissan Sunny after they arrived in Auckland on April 1 for a six-week stay. They travelled the length of the country, part of a year-long trip of a lifetime.
It was idyllic - until they drove into a Glenview roundabout.
With Kirn at the wheel, they pulled out with another vehicle on the inside lane, intending to go straight.
But the inside vehicle sped ahead revealing an "old woman" on the inside lane indicating to turn left. Kirn slammed on the brakes - but it was too late, and the woman ploughed into the Nissan's front right light.
"We said, 'OK, we want to leave everything like this until the cops come," Kirn said. "In Germany, what we learn is if you have a car accident just leave everything like it is."
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Police were called but didn't arrive for about 20 minutes.
"There were people coming from the neighbourhood who were angry because we didn't want to move the cars. A relative of the lady in the other car, a middle-aged man, started to get aggressive and yelling at us.
"He was saying something like, 'you stupid foreigners who don't know the rules or how to drive here, go back to wherever you come from'."
The tourists claimed the man tried to shift one of the cars off the road but Veihmann blocked him. "I stand before him and say, 'no you don't'," Veihmann said. "Then he was very aggressive and pushed me. Then I say, 'no, we wait for the police and the traffic can go on.
"He went on, but I was faster and stood on the door and say, 'No, I don't go away' because we don't want to move the car. He was very, very aggressive."
By the end, the pair said a mob of 20 angry people from the neighbourhood had arrived.
"I tried to explain that we are foreigners and we don't have any support here so the only thing we can do is wait for the police to decide who is guilty or not," Kirn said.
"If we are guilty, we respect that, but it's no reason to insult us."
Veihmann said she felt everyone was against them and they had to fight to wait for the police.
"I felt I never want to come back to NZ. It's very nice nature but we didn't know people were racist."
Kirn, a trained sociologist, said it was strange being accused of being a "stupid foreigner".
"We didn't even know if it was our fault - everyone was so mad at us."
When the police arrived they immediately moved the vehicles and interviewed all involved including a witness, but the man who pushed Veihmann left quickly.
Kirn was fined $150 for not giving way and the pair will lose the $1500 car rental bond.
They plan to spend the next week working on a farm in Auckland and will fly out to Samoa on May 11.
ニュージーランド
英地方選で与党２党惨敗 緊縮策に批判、政権運営困難も
If elections could change things, they'd be illegal
The Greek elite have new scapegoats - society's wretched and defenceless: immigrants, prostitutes and the poor.
Last Modified: 04 May 2012
This is what democracy looks like in the place of its birth today:
Criminal neo-Nazi groups launch murderous pogroms against immigrants - driven away from their homes from imperialist wars in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa - thereby sharpening their fighting skills on the bodies upon the most vulnerable, and effectively preparing themselves for the upcoming assault on the homegrown resistance movement.
Crypto-racist and violence-prone armed gangs - aka dias and delta motorcycled police teams - roam the streets of major cities, beating up journalists and harassing and arresting those who appear "suspicious" or "rebellious".
・・・・
In today's Greece, one can see the future of tomorrow's Europe
・・・・
"The elite's strategy ... after the failure of racist arguments on culture and corruption, a new shibboleth has appeared - the society's wretched and defenceless: immigrants, prostitutes and the poor."
ギリシャも混沌としていて、様子が把握できない。
Europe’s far-right crawls toward power
May 05, 2012 12:56 AM
By Elaine Ganley
PARIS: Marine Le Pen wants to bust the French political system – and people across Europe and beyond should take note.
Her stunning score in the first round of French presidential election won her anti-immigrant National Front a place in the Europe-wide march of nationalist – sometimes extremist – parties toward seats of power.
Le Pen’s rage will be on millions of voters’ minds, both her critics and fans, as they elect a president Sunday.
The same day, Greek citizens, strapped by austerity measures in a nation crushed by debt, could vote in about a dozen lawmakers from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
Bit by bit, far-right parties from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia are gaining momentum among the populace and a foothold in their nations’ power structures.
The European debt crisis has added a sharp edge to the mix.
More than two dozen parties around Europe denouncing immigrants – mainly Muslims – as invaders, and calling globalization and the European Union devils in disguise, are gnawing at the political mainstream.
“Islamism is the totalitarianism of religions and globalization is the totalitarianism of trade,” Le Pen, who won almost 18 percent of the first round vote, said at a news conference this week. “The nation is the only structure capable” of vanquishing the evil.
The Dutch nationalist Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, the third-largest in the Netherlands’ parliament, brought down the minority government last week simply by withdrawing support – an inspiration to Le Pen who cites it as an example of what she and her party could do.
Le Pen’s strong third place showing in the first round caused conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy to blatantly borrow from her rhetoric in hopes of wooing her voters and saving his job when he faces a runoff Sunday with Socialist Francois Hollande.
Hungary’s populist center-right government headed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban is worrying the European Union because of a repressive media law and other restrictive measures. But the country also counts extreme-right Jobbik as its largest opposition party, one with anti-Roma and anti-Semitic overtones.
Not one reason can be cited for the rise of populism or the extreme right in a Europe with such varied political, economic and social landscapes and, for former Soviet satellites in central Europe, widely divergent histories.
“There is a need to react to the feeling of the decline of Europe ... Many people, the middle and lower middle classes, feel that their social status has escaped them,” said Erwan Lecoeur, a sociologist who studies the far right.
This perceived loss pushes them to reconstruct a new, redefined sense of honor – with the nation as its center and outsiders, including the elite, as the enemy.
Lecoeur cites the term used by renowned turn-of-the-century sociologist Max Weber to refer to whites too poor to own slaves – “the syndrome of poor white trash” – as an apt description of the psychology underlying adhesion to populist parties.
But identifying the parties in question is itself confounding. Are they populists? Nationalists? Extreme right? That depends. They come in all shades.
Anders Behring Breivik, the fanatic extremist who killed 77 people in a July bombing and shooting rampage, was a member of the Progress Party in Norway for seven years, until 2006. The anti-immigration Progress is Norway’s biggest opposition party, with 41 of 169 parliamentary seats. Yet it is more moderate than many of its European counterparts and thinks of itself as conservative.
Few parties wish to be referred to as extreme right, which conjures up images of Hitler or the rabble of jack-booted neo-Nazis now being kept at distance by parties like the National Front.
The varying degrees of extremism and the very nationalism these parties espouse have thus far prevented any meaningful alliances between Europe’s far-right groups.
Le Pen contends the neo-Nazi label doesn’t suit her and is used to discredit her party, although her National Front, founded in 1972 by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen – convicted numerous times of racism and anti-Semitism – has long been described that way. Experts say the party is deeply anchored in extreme-right ideology.
Le Pen prefers to describe her party as patriotic and nationalist and says she can live with the term “populist,” increasingly used to describe Europe’s far-right parties.
The National Front under Marine Le Pen, party leader since January 2011, embodies the new far right, out to prove that immigrants are stealing jobs, multiculturalism is sapping national identities and Europe is severing nations from their souls.
Le Pen and Wilders of the Netherlands are the most visible symbols of the rise of the European far right. Both are outspoken and charismatic in their bids to bring change.
Le Pen hopes to pierce France’s power structure, converting her first round score – a record for her party – into seats in parliament in June elections. Her short-term dream is to become the chief of the French opposition under a leftist president.
Wilders’ Freedom Party, which is anti-EU, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel, already has. It won 25 of 150 parliamentary seats in 2010 elections. This week, Wilders launched his English-language autobiography, “Marked for Death, Islam’s War Against the West and Me,” with a trip to the United States.
Another Freedom Party, this one in Austria, holds 34 of 183 parliamentary seats and polls second in opinion polls, just behind the Social Democrats, one of two parties in the governing coalition. Like France’s National Front, it has – under new leader Heinz-Christian Strache – pulled the curtains on its anti-Semitic bent to exploit fears of Islamist domination and the EU.
The Nordic countries each count populist parties opposed to immigration, and the Danish People’s Party, Denmark’s third largest, pushed the government to adopt some of Europe’s strictest immigration laws.
Europe’s debt crisis has been fodder for anti-EU parties. Marine Le Pen, like others blaming the euro currency for her country’s ills, says, “I knew it would take us into the abyss.” She wants a return to the franc. There is real concern that Europe’s debt plight will further stoke dormant tensions.
The Council of Europe’s Commission Against Racism and Intolerance warned in its annual report issued Thursday of a rise in intolerance of immigrants and minority groups like the Roma, or Gypsies, due to scarce job opportunities and welfare cuts.
“Xenophobic rhetoric is now part of mainstream debate,” the body said after country visits last year. “Resistance to racism is essential to preserve Europe’s future,” said Jeno Kaltenbach, chairman of the commission.
Far-right parties often advance in small steps, pressuring governments to align laws to fit their populist ideology. Others trumpet their message inside parliament with hopes of finding a place in the mainstream right.
“There is a very strong possibility of contamination of the classic parliamentary right,” said Nicolas Lebourg, an expert on the extreme right at the University of Perpignan.
Le Pen herself has said she sees her role as undermining the traditional right so she can eventually embody it.
“You only need to be a spoiler to have an enormous weight,” she said. “This victory is inevitable, like that of others in Europe who defend the nation.”
Whether the far-right can win real power – for example, running a major European city – is far from certain. But a party need not be in power to do severe damage as it fans social tensions.
“Europe today is a dry prairie waiting for someone to light a match,” Lebourg said.
日本の極右化を不安がっていた、欧米のリベラルメディアが、実は、自分たちの文化に潜む陰、シャドーを日本＝他者に投影していたのだ、と考えればわかりやすい。
もっとも、
仏大統領選:「主要政党に絶望」カギ握る極右首位の村
毎日新聞 2012年05月04日
国民戦線には移民排斥のイメージがつきまとうが、「村には移民問題も治安の不安もない。ルペン氏への票は外国人を排斥する感情ゆえのはずはない」と語る。
サンクリストフルジャジョレ村を管轄するバスノルマンディー州オルヌ県では５０５市町村中５２市町村で国民戦線が首位に立った。州議会議長のロラン・ボベ氏（５９）は「『自分たちは見捨てられた』との住民感情の反映だ」と指摘する。オルヌ県の主要都市アルジャンタンでは工場閉鎖が相次ぎ、近くのトルン村は無医村だ。「公共サービス・医療体制の不備、産業空洞化で住民が絶望している」という。
産業の空洞化、見捨てられた村落、というのは日本も他人事ではない。
Can it EVER be socially acceptable to have hairy armpits? Woman who gave up shaving debates prickly subject on This Morning
By DEBORAH ARTHURS
PUBLISHED: 12:16 GMT, 4 May 2012
そういえば、黒木香さんはいまどうしているのだろう？
Blackrat Says:
May 5th, 2012 at 11:08 am
http://www.debito.org/?p=10168#comment-328086
・・・
I am leaving Japan later this summer. I spent a total of 25 years here
・・・
It is pathetic after 25 years in Japan he still rants on Debito org. However it was the right decision for a man like that to leave Japan.
また一人有道ブログから去る。お達者で！！！
2012年5月5日（土）付
「原発ゼロ」社会：上 不信の根を見つめ直せ
野田政権は「脱原発依存」を掲げながら、規制当局の見直しをはじめ、何ひとつ現実を変えられていない。
再稼働についても、ストレステストをもとに形式的な手順さえ踏めば、最後は電力不足を理由に政治判断で納得を得られると踏んだ
2012年05月05日 13:30 エネルギー
橋下徹氏のための原子力リスク入門
「絶対安全」を求めて空論をくり返すのではなく、リスクをどこで割り切るかについて費用対効果の冷静な検討をしてほしい。
「次世代へ、原発ゼロの未来を」各地で集会・デモ
原発反対の活動自体はいいのだが、原発は嫌だ！と思っている内輪だけで騒いでいるようにも思える。
私は 不安定供給に対処するため、多様なエネルギー源をもつこと、そして、原発の軍事的戦略的価値、も評価するが、仮にそれは度外視しても、
１）原発の危険性は水力発電や火力発電の危険性に比べて、高いのか？
２）原発を廃止した場合のコストの負担を貧乏人、あるいは中小の工場に耐えてもらうだけの具体的政策はあるのか？
３）原発を廃止した場合の具体的な代替策はあるのか？
少なくとも、こうした問いに説得力のある回答がほしいところ。
逆に推進者については、原発の安全チェック体制、万が一の事故のときのための避難体制、常時非常時の情報開示体制などをしっかり整備して国民に明示できなければ、国民の不安は払拭できないことも自覚すべきである、と考える。原発をめぐる政府・学会・業界の人的体制に対する不信感はまんざら理不尽とはいえないからである。
