The Bell #5: June 2014 - Endings

UCM & UCMSA Universalis magazine Issue #5 June 2014

theBell

2 theBell University College Maastricht

UCMSA UniversalisIssue #5 June 2014

3theBellUniversity College Maastricht UCMSA Universalis Issue #5 June 2014

editorial» issue #5

colophon

ABOUT:The Bell is an independent

student magazine by the UCMSA Universalis Magazine Committee for University College Maastricht

(UCM). The Bell is free for students and staff of UCM.

The content of The Bell does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the committee board, the board of UCMSA Universalis or UCM.

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CIRCULATION: 150 copies and online

COMMITTEE BOARD:

Sofia Jarvis (chair)Finn O’Neill (chair)

Floor Rawee (secretary)Sarah Valeska (secretary)

Leonie Hanewinkel (treasurer)Dominik Leusder (treasurer)Rosie Postlethwaite (editor)

Lea Schaefer (editor)Dominic Gohla (layout editor)

Eivind Bratterud (layout editor)

CONTRIBUTORS: Benjamin Bose

seBasTian Brückner

Florian GoldschmedinG

soFia jarvis

elena klaas

alexandra lazar

dominik leusder

orlando mednick

jan meijer

Finn o’neill

rosie PosTleThwaiTe

FloorTje rawee

liseTTe revuers

maTThew ryan rice

clea samson

lea schaeFer

julian scholTes

jan sTeinke

luke TimP

sarah valeska

Leonie Hanewinkel

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMERAll content © respective authors

contact usQuestions, concerns, wish to send in a letter (max. 100 words) or want to advertise? email: [email protected]: www.ucm-universalis.nl/committees/thebellfacebook: fb.com/thebell-magazine

Sweet UCM,

The nearing end to yet another school year here at UCM has inspired our theme of “Endings” for this issue of The Bell. Of course, the end of the school year -- or the complete end of UCM for the graduates-- is not the only important ending. In this issue some other endings; the end of the sidewalk, the end of a novel, the end of child-hood, or the end of study abroad. For us at The Bell, the end of the school year does mean yet another important ending: the end of our time as the current Bell board. Of course this comes with a bit of nostalgia, but this is a classic case that fits the cliché quote, “there are no endings, only new beginnings.” With the end of our time as the board comes a new board, who we are sure will do a wonderful job continuing the UCM magazine that we started just a little over a year ago. And so we pass it on...

~The (old) Bell Board

Sweet UCM,

As we say goodbye to the old board of The Bell, the new board would like to thank them firstly for actually setting up the magazine and giving UCM a written platform and secondly for their help in allowing us to settle in to our new roles. As the new board we have some exciting ideas for how to expand The Bell and hope to put these ideas into motion next year; whether that is adding an online element to the maga-zine or broadening our reach across the city and the university. We hope to help the magazine grow and as the new chair my greatest aim is to expand the magazine and hopefully attract more writers from UCM. This final issue of the year, ‘Endings’, marks the end of the academic year and the end of UCM for many of you. As a meagre first semester student, it is hard for me to think about graduation, yet as I saw many of you celebrating your capstone deadlines the other day I sensed your excitement. Excitement is exactly what should come from an ending. So, as you all hopefully enjoy your summer holidays, I hope that you can take a minute to reflect on the excitement of life and the beauty of its cyclical nature.

~The (new) Bell Board

Alexandra LazarA Gate to Nothing, Yet Everything in Helsinki Finnish people appear isolated, tough and unim-pressed by your presence. They’re so beautiful they look sculpted. Like its people, this gate stands alone, it’s beautiful and it’s sturdy. What appears to be lacking in the people and overcompen-sating in this gate is the bubbliness and comfort which its colour seems to radiate. Those were my initial thoughts, at least. However after breaking the ice and approaching them, the Fins are some of the most intriguing and wholehearted people I have ever come across. Plus they have some pret-ty random badass gates around Helsinki.

Jan Steinke, untitledSomewhere in Australia



overview»editorial

3SWEET UCM...BOARD

introspection

5UCM 3 YEARS ONROSIE POSTLETWAITE

6THE GRADUATE - A RAPCLEA SAMSON

7HIP HOP MAASTRICHT

ORLANDO/ME.SU

8SUGGESTIONS FOR THE UCM CURRICULUM

ANONYMOUS

endings

9THE POINTLESSNESS OF ENDINGS

FINN O’NEILL

9/10WHY FACEBOOK IS DYING - AND WHY ITS USERS ARE GETTING SMARTERMATTHEW RYAN RICE

11/12IS THE WRITER DEAD?FINN O’NEILL

12THE END OF CHILDHOODFLOORTJE RAWEER

13BECAUSE COMING HOME MEANS SAYING GOODBYEELENA KLAAS

current affairs

14/15SURVEILLANCE OR EAVESDROPPING?BENJAMIN BOSE

16/17/18MODI’S OPERANDIDOMINIK LESUDER

18/19THE POWER TO DEFINEJAN MEIJER

19DUM DUM DOODLEANONYMOUS

20NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM - A NEW WORLD ORDER?SEBASTIAN BRÜCKNER

21REVIEW: “THE OTHER HAND” BY CHRIS CLEAVESOFIA JARVIS

abroad

22STUDY ABROADLEA SCHAEFER

creative

23WHERE THE ROAD ENDS, NO MAN KNOWSLUKE TIMP

24THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING THE UCM BELLDOMINIK LEUSDER

25SOCIALBEDITASFLOORTJE RAWEE

26TRUTHFLORIAN GOLDSCHMEDING

26POEMSNEIL O’FINN

27BEST ENDINGSREADERS


In my first week at UCM a very clever professor made a speech, which I imagine all new stu-dents at UCM over the years have heard. I don’t remember much about it, it was a general explanation of Liberal Arts that was meant to convince us that we had in fact made the right decision by choosing this vague sounding degree program that gave no indication of a future ca-reer path and sounded a bit like 3+ years of ‘how to sound intel-ligent at parties’. It was meant also to give us a script for what to say when our sceptical aunts/grandfathers/friends ask us ‘so what exactly do you study?’.

But one thing I do remember is this, he told us ‘it is about find-

ing out what success means to you’. I remember sitting there in that beautiful lecture hall, look-ing at all the different faces and hearing all the different accents and thinking ‘this is it, this is real-ly cool’. I don’t speak more than one language and I didn’t live in ten different countries when I was growing up. The only thing that makes me remotely exotic is coming from the other side of a very tiny bit of water, and the recipe of weird jokes, loud speaking, unnecessary swearing and self-deprecation that comes with that. For this reason I was very impressed by the number of

people who said “well my mum is German and my dad is French, but I grew up in Colombia” and so on and so forth. I couldn’t be-lieve the grand ambitions that people had brought with them to UCM, the desire to end world hunger, save the environment, bring peace to the Middle East. Not to mention the experience that people had, travelling all over, doing internships with NGOs and political parties.

I couldn’t think beyond the next meal, let alone decide how I was going to change the world. It took a while before I realised that the wise words of the pro-fessor were more relevant than I had thought. He hadn’t just meant that we should strike a comfortable balance between work and play, or that we shouldn’t become so stressed out by the fear of failing courses that we forget why we we’re taking them in the first place. But we also shouldn’t spend all our time comparing ourselves to others. We shouldn’t define ourselves by a 7.5 or an 8.1, and we shouldn’t mistake a high profile job and a six figure salary for a meaningful life. We shouldn’t think that to make a difference we have to travel the world or sit behind a desk making the big decisions. We don’t have to network with the powerful and our names don’t have to be well known nor our papers widely read for our actions to be important.

This may be what some of us want, it’s pretty attractive for ob-vious reasons. We might be able to have the six figure salary as

well as the sense of satisfaction that our actions have done some good, but if it comes to choos-ing between the two we should know which we’ll choose. We should know why it is we want to do what we want to do, if it is for the fame and the glory, the immortality or the money. It’s easy to get caught up in the liberal-thinking, do-gooding,

smart-talking frenzy, and to think that we have to disguise our sim-ple ambitions of a nice income, nice house in a nice neighbour-hood with a nice spouse and a couple of nice kids if we’re lucky, as a socially acceptable desire to help mankind. But it’s also easy to get dragged into the competi-tion, to think that becoming the next German Chancellor, secre-tary general of the UN or head of Greenpeace is the only way to enact change in the world, to put your three years of moral philos-ophy, identity studies or conflict resolution into practise. The real-ity is all you have to do is know yourself, know what it is that you want, know what you think needs doing and know how you can help get it done, it may not be glamorous but it will be true. Apologies for the rhyme, know what success means to you.

Rosie Postlethwaite

I COULDN’T BELIEVETHE GRAND AMBITIONS

THAT PEOPLE HAD

UCM3 YEARS ON

OUR NAMES DON’THAVE TO BE WELL KNOWN

FOR OUR ACTIONS TOBE IMPORTANT



I’ve been trying to write a prop-er article for some time now, and somehow, it always ends up being very lame and unsat-isfactory. I’ve been told that the theme of The Bell’s last issue of the year was ‘endings’, so natu-rally, I thought of writing about graduation. However, inspiration has left me, and what I pictured in my head as the perfect, sarcas-tic piece of writing, is alas noth-ing but an unattainable fantasy. Because any attempt to write a decent article in the conven-tional way of article writing was doomed to be lame, I decided to try something else. So here is my “rap”. If you feel the vibes of cre-ativity make you wanna shimmy shimmy and drop a beat, then go for it and make those lyrics your own. If not, you can find this highly embarrassing recording of my attempt to somehow make this sound like music, in the link provided below. So here is my understanding of UCM, and the interpretation of my feelings to-wards it. (N.B. All innuendos of me not studying are completely fictional, please do not kick me out)

Yo Dre drop the beat

It’s getting’ late, I should just hop on my bike

Get my butt to class, 8h30 you know what it’s like

But it’s raining outside, I don’t wanna get all wet

Just another lame excuse for me

not to leave my bed

Yeah we’ve all been there, I don’t study I don’t care

Just skipping through my read-ings like I’m cruising through

Bel AirIn class, I’m the prince, I pretend

I know my shitBut the truth is I’m asleep, all I

wanna do is quit

Submit, that paper I spent all night writing

Bullshit, yeah this course should be called creative writing

I’m dominating it, with Lakatos and Kuhn and Popper

With my clique, in the common room I’m the hustler

Cause I’m leader of discussion,I’m the chair of you confusionI’m the problem to your state-ment when you can’t answer

the question

Damn PBL sessionProblematic Bullcrap Lesson

I cluster information, all I want is recreation

No bell, but we all know class

is overNobel, the price I’ll get when I’m

wiser and olderThe graduate, yeah I’ll be a thug

of self-reflectionLike Dustin Hoffman I’ll master

the power of seduction

I be fly, making jealous those side line haters

Don’t falsify me cause being ratchet is my major

My life be a like model that your hubs cannot access

My lyrics: paradigms and nev-er-ending progress

In the end I biked to class,

Learnt my lesson and at lastFinished up three years of col-

lege it’s a mystery I passed!

Now it’s time to graduate,Got no more resit to take

Walk of fame, on the stage and that’s my icing on the cake

Maybe it wasn’t so bad, because

look at me I made itI survived I passed the test, now

I’m smart and educatedSo I guess it’s safe to say that

UCM was not that lameAfter all that procrastinating I made it to the wall of fame

Word.

Yeah UCM

Haha, we made it

No pain no gain

Now I’m the graduated

Here is the link to my embar-rassment: https://soundcloud.com/clea-samson/the-graduated

Clea Samson

SCAN THIS Q R - C O D E TO LISTEN!

THE GRADUATE -- A RAP


Hip Hop is my passion. I live and breathe Hip Hop and I yearn to enter “the music scene”. When I arrived in Maastricht, rapping had been my passion for a cou-ple of years however that doesn´t mean my skills in the area were properly mastered. I was also not sure if there was such a thing as a “Maastricht hip hop scene” to begin with. As it turned out, Maastricht’s Hip Hop scene was almost non-existent. That isn’t to say there weren’t Hip Hop heads; on the contrary in fact there are countless Hip Hop lovers in Maastricht - but no cohesive or-ganisation behind it.

There were no Hip Hop nights happening on a regular basis (aside from the shocking faux Hip Hop nights playing bad RnB and let’s be honest, no one wants to hear that) and no rap group that I knew of existed yet. I then took it upon myself to change this and started working with GURU, a newly found web-site created by students for stu-dents in Maastricht dealing with local and global current affairs in late 2013. It was there that my plan to create a series of rap interviews with aspiring rappers in Maastricht blossomed. The series of interviews started off with a performance by me, us-ing a beat made by Assillator (a local producer from Maastricht) and four interviews with Maas-tricht´s rappers followed. Togeth-er we then had the exiting idea to combine our skills and creativ-ity under the name of “the MC

Maasterminds”. We are now a rap group made up of seven members, including me, who are eager to produce our own videos and establish an organised rap scene here in Maastricht.

I hope that MC Maasterminds allows for the promotion of Hip Hop on a larger scale than was previously available. Even though MC Maasterminds is a rather new concept, our shows at the WE Festival and Double Trouble were great successes. Currently, I am in contact with more produc-ers and more rappers who want to be part of a creative scene for Hip Hop and live emceeing in Maastricht. Hopefully things will progress in the future, not just for the MC Maasterminds but also for the Hip Hop music scene in Maastricht in general. We recently attempted to start a new chain of Hip Hop nights called “Bring Da Ruckus”, which predominantly featured Hip Hop and had live rap performanc-es, with cheap beer and cheap entry. The event was anticipat-ed eagerly and a venue was or-ganized beforehand but when it came to it, we faced difficulties with the speakers – the worst case scenario for a musical per-formance! Only three of the six available speakers were func-tional, the rest were broken. For the first half of the performance there was a crackling sound, distorting all hearing, and you could not hear the music or the rapping. Due to the bad sound quality, friends of mine thought

I was rapping in German. I am English. In the end, great ideas can come with drawbacks and that evening many people left within half an hour and there are now no plans to continue the Bring Da Ruckus line any time soon.

I hope that the Hip Hop scene in Maastricht will continue to grow and hope for more support by, for example, offering musi-cians functional venues. Com-ing up, we hope to perform at a café opening, and although I am leaving for my semester abroad, I strongly believe there are peo-ple who will help the scene to develop and grow. So the mor-al of this is: If you like Hip Hop and live in Maastricht, don’t fear, we’re here for you. Me.Su sign-ing out. One love, peace.

Orlando/Me.Su

HIP HOPMAASTRICHT



SSC3476 Theological tempta-tions (5 credits)Note: this course can be used for the humanities concentration as well.

SCI1985 Practical chemistry (5 credits)

HUM3785 Cyborg ethics (5 cred-its)

SSC2789 Marihuana in the 21st Century (5 credits)

HUM4000 Introduc-tion to cab driving (5 credits)

PRO000 Drink drank: conjugation for be-ginners (5 credits)

SKI3080 Work experience (0.01 credits)

SCI1000 Where the babies come from (5 credits)

SKI1000 Lab skills: Where the babies come from (2.5 credits)

SCI5000 The dynamics of hand drying, or, how many paper tow-els do we actually use? (5 credits)Prerequisites: Calculus, Linear algebra; Where the babies come from; Optimisation; and Brain and action.

SKI3000 Writing in no context

whatsoever (2.5 credits)

SSC2025b: Memory! The board game (5 credits)

PRO911 Practicing terrorism (5 credits)

SSC1222 International relations II (5 credits)Note: This course can be used for the science requirement.

SSSC0008 Slivovic, Sambuca, and sobriety (5 credits)

SSC8000 Atrocity octagon:victims, perpetrators, bystand-ers, and their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and also the mailman. A course on gross hu-man rights violations and why we get the mail every day.(5 credits)

SCI6666 Illness as a failure of modelling nature (5 credits)

SKI3419 Lab skills: cooking meth (2.5 credits)

SCI1070 Rocket science (5 cred-its)

SSC2055 International relation-ships: pitfalls and climaxes (5 credits)Prerequisites: Sex, sexuality, and society; and where the babies come from.

SKI3333 Grade deoptimisation after temporary absence (2.2 credits)

HUM6666 Writing as an end in itself (5 credits)

SSC2424 Post-something (5 credits)

SSC2681 Patriarchal studies: Daddy issues (5 credits)

HUM5000 Theories of time trav-el (5 credits)

SCI3698 Astrology (5 credits)

SSC3461 Scandinavia and Fin-land studies: Why they are so awesome (5 credits)

HUM1111 Nozick bashing (5 credits)

SSC6666 The white male: char-acterisations and descriptions of how it influences our identity (5 credits)

As we all know we have some pretty bizarre course names at UCM: Theorising Terrorism, To-talitarian Temptation and Atroc-ity Triangle to name some of the

most popular/bizarre! Below, we propose some radical, yet fully thought-through, (and perhaps tongue-in-cheek) changes to the Course Catalogue… Who

knows? Maybe in the coming years we’ll see some of these as part of the curriculum for UCM students!

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE UCM CURRICULUM


So much discussion is based around endings. But, what’s the point really? If everything has an end then why must we discuss it so frequently? I’m not an expert in the field of endings so I cannot come up with a definite answer; however my guess would be be-cause it gives us a sense of com-fort and closure. Yet, I accept it’s all nonsense. We all know the great cliché ‘every cloud has a silver lining’… well every end-ing does open up a new door. I hate clichés; they are ironically great but really annoying!

But, why can’t we talk about the new opening rather than the end of whatever may have finished? Let me take you back to 2012 and in particular the weeks leading up to December 21st. (A quick recap - December 21st 2012 was the end of the world… well many anticipated it to be due to some misinterpre-tation of the Mayan calendar). It was genuinely insane and incred-ible just how many people be-lieved that the end was coming - we are obsessed with the end. I remember reading a poll from Reuters which found that around 15% of people asked believed

the world would end in their life-time - I am almost certain these people present quite an irration-al portion of the population, yet the statistic shocked me. What was probably more shocking to me was how there was an actual sense of disappointment on De-cember 22nd when people woke up and the world was still there, just doing its thing. The world had not ended. Nevertheless,

despite no real end-of-the-world scares since then, on a more lo-cal and personal level we cannot escape our hypnotic obsession with the end.

There are some obvious areas where endings are inescapable for us - happy endings in films or books, for example (even bad endings…who doesn’t enjoy a gritty bit of dystopian film or lit-erature!?). On a more daily ba-sis though a lot of what we talk about is closely related to end-

ings…‘I can’t wait for this week to be over’…’I can’t wait for the end of this course’…It’s quite en-joyable to talk about the end of something as it presents us with the great question of what will happen when that something has ended.

Well, sadly, after the end of whatever is in question all that happens is that life continues and nothing exceptional real-

ly comes after an ending. The only real end which occurs in our lifetime comes in the shape of the morbid subject of death. Strangely enough in compar-ison to discussion about end-ings, we aren’t that keen on talking about death despite it being ‘the ending of all end-ings’. I am not suggesting we should talk about death on a more daily basis, or that our

discussions of endings are entire-ly misled; but perhaps there is a greater optimist inside all of us who would rather discuss begin-nings and openings. There is at least some food for thought to ponder until the next apocalyptic theory arises. Ironically, despite a rather cynical discussion of endings, even this article has to come to an end:The End.

Finn O’Neill

«endings

The Pointless-ness of Endings



There’s something that’s particu-larly gratifying about going on a vacation, knowing that you just have the time of your life with a great group of people in a great destination spot, without having to feel obligated to post the play-by-play experience on Facebook for (potentially) hundreds of peo-ple to see. After all, if you your-self know that you’ve enjoyed yourself, why does there remain the inherent need to make one’s life entirely public?

Of course, I will admit that I have done this—just as nearly every other Facebook user has. Posting pictures of, for exam-ple, an awesome trip is fun and

convenient in the sense that it allows you to share the memo-ries en masse and in an instant. There is one thing that I’ve ob-served, though, and that is this: Facebook is gradually declining in popularity. In my eyes, this is a very good thing.

Based on my observations over the past few months, Face-book users are beginning to re-alise that there is extraordinary value in living and enjoying life how one chooses — separat-ing the aspects of what should be kept private and sacred, and what family members and close friends look forward to seeing every now and again. I can’t help

but notice which of my Face-book friends are logged on, and how often. Then again, much of what I’ve observed is that those who are logged on are never on the site for any large stretch of time, nor do they post elements from their personal lives nearly as much.

At the same time, this gradual decline in Facebook usage insti-gates sociability. When interact-ing with someone through Face-book, both individuals are behind a computer screen and having a genuine conversation becomes null and void. Conversely, ac-tually getting to know someone well before “friending” them is something that I hope will be-come a part of the near and dis-tant future. By getting to know someone in person first, you’re not as inclined to learn about their personal lives by weaving through their personal informa-tion and past posts. You’re able to see and learn who they real-ly are as a human being—with minimal stalking involved.

With that said, Facebook can’t be all bad, can it? Of course not. In fact, there are several things which it does very well. For ex-ample, Facebook has become the standard medium for com-munication among UCM stu-dents because of its easy-to-use interface. Through this, students who want to be notified of up-coming UCM events can do so if they choose. If however one prefers to be left alone and out-side of the Facebook world, they can do so as well. Similarly, there have been numerous occasions in which Facebook chat has also

been an invaluable tool. Send-ing out invites to a party on Fri-day night has never been easier (and free of charge, no less).

Then there’s the case of Face-book “friends.” Of course, with UCM being a very closely-knit student community, it’s impor-tant to have networks available. Yet, from an anthropological standpoint, the concept is en-tirely unrealistic. By nature, hu-man beings have always formed circles of about 150 people. These are people with whom

they interact on at least an oc-casional basis—people whom they “know” or are “acquainted with.” Then, even more intimate circles consist of about 50 peo-ple—people with whom we con-sider ourselves close. As such, Facebook just doesn’t seem to provide us with the ability to har-ness this intimacy. It immediately subjects us to having individuals linger within our personal net-work without often ever speak-ing to the majority of them. In that regard, there is an explicit

FACEBOOK IS GRADUAL-LY DECLINING IN POP-ULARITY. IN MY EYES, THIS IS A GOOD THING

Why Facebook is dying — and why its users are getting smarter

BY NATURE, HUMAN BEINGS HAVE ALWAYS FORMED CIRCLES OF

ABOUT 150 PEOPLE


and stark difference between Facebook “friendship” and true, genuine friendship. Personally, I prefer the latter.

Here’s the good news: Face-book users are becoming aware of what Facebook is good for, and what is better off left in one’s own personal realm. Is it dying?

Yes—or at least compared to its level of usage one or two years ago. Will it die out completely? It’s not likely, because Facebook to this day still boasts a hand-ful of technological advantages which people may never want to give up. As in many aspects, I’m one to say that a “happy medi-

um” is what is best for Facebook users and the human race. In other words, don’t let your life dictate Facebook, and more im-portantly, don’t let Facebook dic-tate your life.

Matthew Ryan Rice

‘I want to be a writer’ is a pretty uncommon phrase from any realistic and rational person. Well...

I want to be a writer. I remem-ber when I decided, about 2 or 3 years ago, that it was what I wanted to do. The moment I re-alised that I wanted to give writ-ing a real go was probably in the top 3 most depressing moments of my life... ‘Oh shit - I am going to have to do this aren’t I?’ I re-member thinking - and still con-tinue to think quite often. Lucki-ly, I have a supportive family who basically believes in pursuing whatever makes you happy; so the fact that I chose to become an under-paid, unappreciated, romantic idealist didn’t both-er them. The first time I really started doing my own creative writing was such a gratifying ex-perience because I was surprised

at the ease. To say that it was easy doesn’t mean it was good, it doesn’t have to be good. Un-less you have ever tried creative writing you wont understand the liberating and gratifying feeling which it gives you - so you may as well try it just to try and recre-ate those feelings.

I was stuck in the 60s and 70s for quite a big part of my life which probably didn’t help me in trying to be a rational per-son. ‘I want to be like Hunter S. Thompson!’ is a thought which has probably crossed my mind around 100 times if not more. When I finally dragged my mind away from the utopian vision I had created of writing in Ameri-ca at the time of the Beat Move-ment and into the much less in-spiring 21st century, my euphoria was replaced by realism. Realism that I would have to spend a large part of my career working

for local newspapers (not be-ing chief sports correspondent for ‘The Times’) covering stories about the local under-11 third di-vision football tournament rath-er than the World Cup. That was my first realisation - at that stage ‘sports journalism’ was it for me.

My second realisation has developed more recently as the idea of becoming an author or a poet has hijacked my mind... Will I actually write a masterpiece? Having mainly been brought up reading books from the 20th century this question seems more pertinent in my mind - the real truth is that when you look back on the 20th century there were certain creative sparks in a generation and that is something I have yet to experience in my life so my ideal of being a writer has to exist in the past. Look at the 1920s - a time of great economic and political turmoil and excite-

IS THE WRITER DEAD?



ment - when you had Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound writing. Or the 1960s, when Thompson, Kerouac and Ginsberg were do-ing their thing (and what a thing that was!). Of course these writ-ers have become astronomical-ly famous after they had writ-ten there stuff, but at the time of writing they were still huge names... people were excited about their next book or their next collection of poetry. When I try to think of truly great authors today it is very hard. The fact that Harry Potter is presented as being the literature of a generation is a little bit disheartening; a magical world doesn’t quite reflect the world we live in. When I think of great literature and poetry I think of works which reflected the cul-ture or political atmosphere of the time...I’ll leave it to you to decipher what Harry Potter tells

us about the cultural and polit-ical feeling of the 21st century.

I don’t deny that great books are still being created. I have read some incredible books in recent years but perhaps it is the fact that these authors are not seen in such an as so impressive, that bugs me. I suppose if you want to go into the arts in whatever way - and yes, writing is part of ‘the arts’ - you need to believe that these times will come back again. I for one believe in a revo-lution - a political revolution but that is for another day - but in a cultural revolution first and fore-most. A writer needs to have an air of arrogance which is for the most part clouded by a depres-sive feeling of pessimism, but without that belief that some-thing can be great then there is not much point in pursuing it. Despite the writer having faded

away from the limelight, I do be-lieve the time will come for the writer to reappear as a real force politically and culturally. Perhaps the internet has played a role in moving the writer away from the limelight, however I believe in the power of printer books and believe that great writers will reappear; undoubtedly they still exist they just aren’t seen in the same light as previous great writers.

On a side note, everybody should get involved in ‘the arts’ in whatever way; it is such a liberating feeling and a pur-poseful way of escaping the mundaneness of the real world and to exist in some cultural ether where anything is possible. Everybody can do it.

Finn O’Neill

Sometimes, after a long day in the library, I find myself jump-ing down the steps of Centre Ceramique. I would actually like to dance, scream, act crazy, run and then just fall down. But I don’t, because it would be a bit ridiculous to do that, wouldn’t it? A 22 year old girl screaming like a baby in the library, just to release some energy. But why?

Why do we have to grow up, act as proper adults once we reach the age of 18. Suit up, talk nicely, and act as if we got it all figured out. As if. As if we’re all completely nor-mal. As if.Does everyone not sometimes just need to dance around,

jump, run, scream, or do a som-ersault? Don’t you know how much energy it gives you to just let it all go?There will always be a child in us. And I think we should take care of that child.

Floortje Rawee

THE END OF CHILDHOOD


Once again, I find myself on a fast train from Munich to Co-logne. I already know all of the stops that are coming next, and ahead and in between. Because this year, I have taken this ex-act train - and the return one - around 10 times. At least.

And once again, the typical melancholy starts, as I put my “On the train“ playlist on and look out of the window into the beautiful German land-scape that is bright and green during these first days of sum-mer. Of course, and I think we can all agree that, train rides tend to wake emotional feel-ings in everyone at some point - the world is rushing by and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

But this is different. I am sad, because once again I had to say goodbye. Goodbye to the small little town I grew up in, good-bye to my family and the friends, goodbye to speaking German 24/7 and listening to the delight-ful Bavarian accents. As always, these couple of days left me in a very chaotic emotional state. The pure and absolute joy when the train enters the familiar sta-tion and I know that my mum will be there to pick me up, with my favourite food already on the table as I enter the house. The happiness when I random-ly meet someone in the streets I haven’t seen for ages and we start chatting about our new lives. The emotional throwback when I take the train that passes my high school and everything seems like I never left because

nothing has changed and I am 15 again, young, naive, innocent. And, finally, the sadness that settles in, slowly, as I realise that its Saturday evening already and I will have to leave tomorrow. Again. So now, on a train filled with anonymous people, this is what I think of. And I wish, oh how I wish that for just one day, I could go back in time again,

where saying goodbye meant see you tomorrow. Because now, saying goodbye means I don’t really know when I will be back, it could be a while. And things will have changed, even though for me it seems clear that once I leave, time freezes and only starts again when I get back. But that’s not really how it works.

And once again, my phone vibrates and tells me that my friends are wondering when I’ll be back in Maastricht. Be-cause there is this party tonight that sounds amazing, and they all want to go and want me to come. And suddenly, I cannot wait to be back. Because I know that in a week, we will sit on

the roof of my student house, on a starry night, with bottles of cheap beer and deep con-versations about life. I will walk into the common room and be happy to see all of those faces that are so familiar now, but had been completely new to me not too long ago. I will formulate problem statements and learn-ing goals, write papers in the reading room and hurry to finish the last e-reader right before the next tutorial. And just like that, it’s exam week again and I will go home a few days later. Only now, on the train, these feelings that I had on my way back will have completely turned around. I will think about how incredibly fast this period flew by again. How I am already done with two core courses, and how after the next period my first year at UCM will be over in no time and it still feels like forever. And I am not even excited to go back, be-cause these last days in Maas-tricht have been wonderful and I wouldn’t want to miss them

for the world. And I realise - and cannot believe - that only after this short time, this also feels like home, a home I have to say goodbye to, as well. Then, just as I am about to get melancholic and sad again, I realise that this is the beauty of it all. Sure, there is twice the heartbreak, twice the goodbyes, twice the tears. But this also means that there are twice the people I can be grate-ful for to have in my life, twice the laughter and twice the good times.

Yes, there is twice the ending; but also twice the beginning.

Elena Klaas

BECAUSE COMING HOME MEANS SAYING GOODBYE



Surveillance or Eavesdropping?Since the NSA revelations, there has been increasing scruti-ny on the security services as to how they gain their information. Much of this focus has been on the extent (and legitimacy) of domestic and interna-tional monitoring and sur-veillance techniques put in place by organisations such as the NSA and GCHQ. The unfolding events in Syria (and since this article was initially writ-ten, Iraq) place further pressure and scrutiny upon the security service’s effectiveness in gaining and acting upon information re-garding terrorism and radicalisa-tion. While it is right that surveil-lance techniques are questioned, it is also important to investigate and assess how information is gained past the process of simply monitoring.

The way in which individ-uals and communities are ap-proached and dealt with when they are involved in this process of gaining information can have knock on effects. This is because the processes involved in infor-mation gathering, detention or

questioning, can be coercive and discriminatory. This can subse-quently lead to disenfranchise-ment or radicalisation. In the case of Syria (and now Iraq), it is postulated that the involve-

ment of foreign fighters in those conflicts poses a direct national security threat to European na-tions. So while it is right that the Syrian conflict is identified as a hotbed of possible radicalisation, and therefore a security threat, it is also equally necessary not to disenfranchise the communities in question.

One attempt to solve this security problem has been an appeal from the UK police for Muslim women to provide in-formation on family members attempting to go and fight in a foreign conflict. It is not neces-sarily clear, however, whether individuals would be willing to potentially criminalise their fam-ily members, whilst it also seems

self evident that one would try to stop their relative from engaging in such behaviour. Furthermore, there is little to suggest that the communities in question would be willing to play this role giv-

en the excesses of similar information programmes such as “Prevent”; a pro-gramme that was found to be spying on innocent and unsuspected people and was described by a select committee as being responsible for “stigmatis-ing and alienating British

Muslims”. It is not just Muslim women

who the security establishment is targeting. Researchers and academics with links to certain communities are being targeted in order to provide information. While this seems like an effec-tive method of gaining informa-tion, the interference of security services in an academic’s work somewhat compromises the aca-demics, as they must inform their participants that the information will be shared. It is probable that an academic known to be affil-iated to the security services is less likely to be able to gain ac-cess to ostracised communities. Indeed, I became all too aware of this myself after initiating re-

current affairs»


search regarding counter terror policy.

On 16th April, 2014 I was travelling home from Maastricht, via Amsterdam, to Liverpool. On arriving at Liverpool airport I was stopped at border securi-ty and was asked if I didn’t mind answering a few questions (al-though, had I not agreed I could have been detained under sched-ule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act). The man, who identified himself as being from ‘Special Branch’ (a generic term for security forces in England), proceeded to ques-tion me as to my purpose for being in the Netherlands and my purpose for visiting the UK. After telling him that I studied in Holland, the man in question be-came very interested about the structure of UCM, the topic of

my degree, and even more spe-cifically, the topic of my disser-tation. In total, I was questioned for a period of around an hour regarding the topic of my dis-sertation and research that I had conducted for the ethnography project at UCM. In the project, British Muslims were interviewed in order to investigate the impact of anti-terror legislation on that community.

While I was told that this stop was random, their line of ques-tioning reflected knowledge of the research project that was stated in an email that I had sent to a mosque in Liverpool regarding research participants. Given that their line of question-ing corresponded so closely to this email (and the wide-ranging

surveillance activity), it seems far more likely that this was not just a random search but that I was detained deliberately.

During the hour, I was ques-tioned regarding my religious affiliation (it seemed that they just assumed that I was a convert to Islam) and the findings of the aforementioned study that had been conducted. More specif-ically, they were curious about whether I had connections to any radicalised (i.e. terrorist) individ-uals and finally whether I would be willing to inform them of any information gained in future studies if I came across any threat to the British state/infrastructure. The most alarming thing about this is that I was stopped under legislation designed to prevent the planning or initiation of ter-rorist plots. It seems rather dan-gerous that just engaging in an academic study on the opinions of the British public leads to sus-picion that you possess informa-tion pertaining to a terror attack and can potentially lead to your arrest. Furthermore, the contin-ued assumption that I was a con-vert to Islam (probably down to my beard) reflects the tendency for security policy to be based on profiling of individuals that con-form to the archetypal notion of what is “suspect”.

It is clear that the security services are attempting to gain closer links to individuals (family members and researchers) who come in contact with individu-als who are perceived to pose a security threat. Although it is re-assuring that the information re-garding security policy is derived from communities with more intimate insights, the application of coercive methods (the use of section 7, encouraging individu-als to criminalise their relatives) to do so indicates that the meth-ods used to garner information

are likely to lead to disenfran-chisement. Furthermore, the method of detaining academics to garner information is a frank-ly unacceptable process as it is unjustifiably coercive and places unwarranted ethical implications on academics wishing to contin-ue researching. While it is clear there is a threat posed from in-dividuals returning from foreign conflict, it is necessary for the policy that tackles the threat to not lead to adverse consequenc-es.

Two days after initially writing this article I was again stopped at airport security leaving Liver-pool travelling to Amsterdam. I was again taken to a room to be questioned, this time for around half an hour. I was again asked whether whilst engaging in fu-

ture research I would tell them if I found any terror plot and asked me in very specific detail about my knowledge of ambitions to institute Sharia law in the UK. The next day, news broke of Isis’ invasion of parts of northern Iraq. While I can in no way link these two events, or comment on their significance, what they seem to suggest is that the ‘War on Terror’ is heating up. In com-batting this threat, it is impera-tive that the old mistakes are not repeated that have (in part) led to the current situation in Iraq and Syria.

Benjamin Bose

THEIR LINE OF QUES-TIONING REFLECTED KNOWLEDGE OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT

DETAINING ACADEMICS TO GARNER INFORMA-TION IS A FRANKLY UN-ACCEPTABLE PROCESS



Narendra Modi’s powerful new coalition has put an end to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in a landslide victory that is set to usher in a new era of economic prosperity. Mean-while, many Indians are in-creasingly marginalised, eth-nic and religious tensions are mounting, while civil liberties are being circumscribed.

The main political problem of mankind, Lord Keynes said, is to combine economic efficiency, social justice and individual liber-ty. At certain stages there occurs a trade-off between one or the other; liberty and justice being subordinated to the demands of efficiency, or vice versa. Justice is not always the first virtue of po-litical institutions.

Since India shed the Imperial yoke and awoke to freedom in 1947, the predominant econom-ic policy has been that of quasi Soviet state planning within the framework of democratic social-ism. Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the remarkable men who steered In-dia toward independence, serv-

ing as Prime Minister until 1964, inaugurated these policies and oversaw their implementation:

“I must frankly confess that I am a socialist and a republican, and I am no believer in modern kings of industry and princes – or in the order which produces them – who have greater pow-er over lives and for-tunes of masses than even kings of old and whose methods are as predatory as those feudal aristocrats.”

But honourable as the Nehru-vian emphasis on social justice may have been, inevitably, Neh-ru’s socialist ship was wrecked on the reef of economic reality; one of the greatest ironies of the last century has been the fact that socialism tends to work least in countries which have the greatest need for it. Though the successes of state socialism were considerable it is a highly unsuitable system for backward, agrarian societies. A period of capitalists’ industrialisation and

liberalisation must precede vi-sions of egalitarian justice.

Unfortunately for India, Neh-ru’s intellectual myopia has been passed along the lineage of his political dynasty: his daughter Indira, his grandson Rajiv and other members of the progres-sive Indian National Congress party have perpetuated these egregious policies, driving India to near bankruptcy, inflation and famine in the early nineties and leaving a political system and bu-reaucracy so venal and corrupt, it defies any decent contem-plation. Eventually, Manmohan Singh presided over the liberali-sation of the country and served as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014. His leadership, however, was largely at the mercy of Sonia Gandhi, the powerful head of Congress, widow of Rajiv Gandhi and the archetypal fat, useless, nepotistic incumbent. By the end of his term, Singh had to admit failure: the economy faces ‘very difficult circumstances’ he said in August of last year, in the wake of a tumbling Rupee.

With the political ascendancy

MODI’S OPERANDI


of the Narendra Modi, India for the first time has a government whose priority is growth. “Toi-lets, not temples” was one of the slogans of Mr Modi’s disci-plined and expensive campaign, alluding to the disgraceful fact that over 600 million of India’s sons and daughters have no access to basic sanitation. Mr Modi, who had his humble be-ginnings as the son of a tea-sell-er, had been the governor of the state of Gujarat since 2002 and his success in transforming the state into an economic power-house has resonated well with the elec-torate: the historical vote procured Modi’s BJP and its allies 336 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha and saw the Congress party with their can-didate Rahul Gandhi gnashing their teeth impotently at this unprecedented elec-toral humiliation. With such a substantial majority, Mr Modi has a huge mandate for economic reform. He needs to remedy sluggish growth, messy public finances, soaring inflation and the corrosive effects of graft. 90% of all Jobs in India are in-formal, with only 3% of Indians paying any income tax. Feckless courts and a byzantine bureau-cracy are the bane of India’s economy, with bribes in excess of $10bn paid to officials over the last decade. Mr Modi must trim back wasteful subsidy schemes, recapitalize the rotten balance sheets of Indian banks, tack-le high inflation, widen the tax base, implement land reforms, and in doing so cut through the mesh of administerial restrictions and vested interests that prevent India from growing at a rate of 10% or above. But what will the

human costs of Modi’s reform be?

The current joke in New-Delhi political circles is that whilst yes-terday India had no real govern-ment, under Modi it has no real opposition. The punch line refers to the now incumbent National Democratic Alliance and the po-litical leverage is has by virtue of its huge majority. But how many Indian actually voted for the BJP and its allies? Roughly 31%. This is due to a wretched system called first-past-the-post voting,

in which the winner takes it all, winning the seat even with the slimmest of majorities. 70% of all Indians voted against the NDA and may now have to bear the brunt of policies they have not approved or be excluded from the boom. Mr Modi has to sup-ply growth, but if he can’t supply inclusive growth, he might see the return of the Nehruvians. The second danger of Mr Modi’s ascent to power is the spectre of religious violence. Mr Modi is well known for his Hindu nationalism and is a member of the Rash-triya Swayamsevak Sangh - an extremist, far-right Hindu group that was involved in the assas-sination of Mahatma Gandhi. As governor, Mr. Modi presided over the 2002 Gujarat massacre. He is accused of deliberately not intervening and thereby giving

his consent for the killing of up to 2000 Muslims at the hands of Hindu fanatics and police forces. Such clashes are not uncommon in India and are set to rise under the administration, part of which is also the Shiv Sena, a chauvinist and fascistic Hindu group linked to communal riots and bomb-ings.

Equally disquieting is the fact that freedom of expression is increasingly under assault. Films portraying the Gujarat massacre have been banned by Mr. Modi. Rohinton Mistry’s acclaimed nov-

el Such a Long Jour-ney was denounced by the Shiv Sena and Bombay Uni-versity subsequently removed the book from the syllabus. James Laine’s study of the Maratha king Shivaji, an icon of the Shiv Sena, was at-tacked and banned, and the library of ancient texts in Poo-

na, was looted and many man-uscripts destroyed. Wendy Do-niger’s The Hindus was equally berated by extremists who suc-ceeded in scaring Penguin Books into withdrawing the work. Siddharth Varadarajan, the edi-tor of The Hindu, was forced to resign because the owner’s felt he wasn’t pro-Modi enough. Sagarika Ghose, a leading an-chor of CNN India was ordered to stop posting tweets critical of Mr. Modi.

India is like an ancient palimp-sest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie have been in-scribed, without any succeeding layer completely covering what had been written previously. This rich tradition of multitudes and diversity, coupled with the turgid politics of its inception, which



saw the country crudely vivisect-ed along religious borders by the British, is the reason why the re-public is such a formidably diffi-cult country to govern. Millions of religious denominations, the cast-structures and hundreds of

different ethnic groups, all jum-bled unceremoniously under one tricolour saffron-white-green umbrella. Indian is functioning madness, boasting an honoura-ble democratic track record. This record cannot, however, persist

in a climate of fear and extrem-ism. The values of freedom of thought, pluralism and tolerance stand in desperate need of reaf-firmation.

Dominik Leusder

THE POWER TO DEFINEBeing “politically correct” has turned into some kind of in-sult. This is a shame, because without political correctness we open the floodgates to racism, sexism and intoler-ance.

There was a time when racism was still a taboo and discrimina-tion was frowned upon. Now, anyone with such an opinion is dismissed as “politically correct”: a cowardice problem-denier who doesn’t want to face reality. It has been a popular term among American conservatives for some time, but recently it has been used in the Low Lands as well.

But where does political cor-rectness, or its colloquial abbrevi-ation “PC”, come from? Its roots go back to the 1920s and are part of a development in West-ern philosophy in the 20th cen-tury called the “linguistic turn”: the realisation that language above all is essential in the per-ception of reality and social or-der. Or, simply put: what we say and hear is extremely important. An important contribution was made by cultural Marxism, which argued that traditional cultural phenomena that are taken for granted in Western society are not so much natural as they are ideological. Combined, you get the claim that traditional social relations are not natural, but –

how we love the word – socially constructed. As said by sociolin-guist Crispin Thurlow, “Chang-ing words can change what we think about the world around us”.

In practice, political correct-ness attempts to remove any forms of implicit bias in lan-guage, such as saying “men” when we talk about “all people”, or “chairman” for “chairperson” (come on, there is no such thing as a “chairwoman”). In time, it

has also extended to avoiding sensitive or offensive terms and using other, more neutral terms instead. “Blind” has (in some places, notably the US) been replaced by “visually impaired” and “retarded” by “mentally im-paired”.

But PC has been viciously attacked by American conserv-atives, not in the least because – it must be admitted – of some cherry-picked extreme examples. In particular the second principle of political correctness, the re-gard for sensitive word-use, has received much criticism. Replac-ing one word for another would create a so-called euphemism treadmill: the new term would become sensitive over time as well, and needed to be replaced

by a new word – we keep run-ning but we don’t get anywhere. We have among other things seen this in the Netherlands with the terms “immigrant”, “alloch-toon” and most recently, “New Netherlander”.

The euphemism treadmill is real, but it is not because of political correctness, nor does it happen to all attempts of politi-cal correctness. Firstly, one of the earlier examples of a euphemism cycle is the name for that place we call toilet now; it used to be called the “bog-house”, which turned into “house-of-office”, then into “toilet”. Later, new words such as “restroom” and “bathroom” have been used. Euphemism treadmills are not exclusive to political correct-ness, and will occur in language anywhere, anytime. Secondly, changing a word can change how we perceive the world, but it is often not sufficient. We do ac-tually need to make an effort to change our perceptions (too bad huh?) and language is a tool to do so. The real problem with new words for “immigrant” and “al-lochtoon” was not the sensitivity of the word, but the thing that was described: Dutch nationals or residents with a non-Western cultural background. The school-book definition of “allochtoon” desperately tried to find a neu-tral way of incorporating those Moroccan, Antillian, Turkish (etc.) Dutch people that were born and raised here, and thus did not pass as “immigrant”, but for some reason still needed to

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ATTEMPTS TO REMOVE ANY FORMS OF IMPLICIT

BIAS IN LANGUAGE


be put in a separate category. They did this by including an-yone with at least one foreign parent – which brings about oth-er practical difficulties. The discomfort with this arbitrary and ideologi-cal categorisation leads to a constant changing of words, but perhaps we should instead stop speaking of these peo-ple as one group and recognise their Dutch-ness?

A final – more optimistic – comment on the euphemism treadmill is that it does not al-ways occur: there are plenty success stories where a change in language does in fact bring about outcomes in real life. For decades, homosexuals have been generally referred to as “sod-omists” (referring to a Biblical

sin), “temperamental” (a euphe-mism) or “homophiles”. How-ever, the treadmill stopped once a clear balance was found with the words homosexual and het-

erosexual, together with a cul-ture shift in the 1990s. The same happened when “negro” was fi-nally replaced by “African-Amer-ican”, among the other identi-ties of the American melting-pot such as “Asian-American”, “Native-American” or more spe-cifically “Mexican-American”. Unfortunately, “white” has

not been replaced by “Europe-an-American”.

In its effort to criticise “ex-treme” political correctness, the

anti-PC movement has taken exorbitant forms itself, mak-ing the defence of PC lan-guage a taboo in itself, and allowing extreme-right wing parties to become increasing-ly radical. But it is essential to realise that political correct-ness is more than just avoid-ing uncomfortable words, it’s actually a very powerful tool

for a more inclusive society. To quote Toni Morisson, “the polit-ical correctness debate is about the power to define. The defin-ers want the power to name, and the defined are now taking that power away from them”.

Jan Meijer

And this is the end of the tour. The tour guide lady is Wendy, I know her, she’s great. So most people, when she says that, say oh, no…And from a few there may be a sigh of relief. They have other things to do or never wanted the tour in the first place. But Wendy saying that this is the end always does something to people. I have found that people are quite

intrigued by ends and endings. Maybe that’s why they come to the museum, because there’s a lot of stuff in it that has end-ed. For a long time I wondered why ends are so important to people. I stopped doing that. Because now I know. It’s a sim-ple rule: the more thoughts you have, the more you think about endings. In the end, when you have many, many thoughts the end means everything.

I once asked the museum. Don’t think it doesn’t think, it does. It just thinks long and slow thoughts. So I asked it what it thought the meaning of it all was. It thought about it for a long time, and then mumbled something I wasn’t sure I heard

right. To me it’s blue? Maybe. Or: 42. Nothing about endings, anyways. People have short and fast thoughts. And they seem to feel that everything is about time. And that because of that everything is about end-ings – because they have so lit-tle of it. And they say that if you have very little time, you need to think hard about how to use it, before it ends. Don’t waste time. Gotta make something of my life. After not thinking for a long time, another thought hit me. Maybe it’s the other way around. The more you think, the less time you have. Take the museum. Thinking long and slow. It has all the time in the world. So don’t think about endings. Don’t think about how to use your time. Don’t think at all. And start today. How I have all these thoughts? I have no idea.

every issue

DUM DUM DOODLEshares its thoughts!



A new world order – a phrase usually associated with conspira-cy theories like the Illuminati or Bilderberg, but when we look at the news recently we see the first signs that we in fact stand at the brink of a new world order. This change is however not se-cretly engineered by a nefarious organisation, but is happening right before our eyes and led by two of the great powers, China and Russia.

The international system of the last 70 years was based on two main features: US-leader-ship and a system of treaties and organisations setting clear boundaries on what states can and cannot do. Both these fea-tures will seem to weaken or dis-appear in the near future. While the US faces an - at least relative - decline compared to other ma-jor powers, two of these powers begin to reshape the internation-al system in their image. Both countries attempt to establish new doctrines within the inter-national system which would transform the world as we know it.

The current system has brought an era of unprecedent-ed peace and prosperity1. For decades there has been no war between great powers, and pov-erty rates are at a level never seen before during the history of mankind (at least in the West-ern world). We owe this devel-opment largely to the United States and their continuous en-

gagement in international affairs since World War II. By basically single-handedly creating the in-ternational structures we see to-day and getting involved in mat-ters abroad the US has ensured the development of the modern world.

Russia and China attempt to undermine this system in sever-al ways, but currently the most obvious way is the redefinition of national sovereignty. Russia is about to establish a doctrine which would severely curtail the sovereignty of every state with a sizeable Russian minority. By put-ting the well-being of - even just ethnic - Russians abroad under the responsibilities of the Russian state, Russia justifies interven-ing in other states affairs, either through threats, as in Central Asia, or directly through force in Ukraine and Georgia.

China on the other hand tries to establish a doctrine of historic ownership. Her attempt to claim several islands in the South Chi-na Sea defies major international treaties and China has not shied away from using force against those who seem to have a bet-ter claim. China justified this ter-ritorial expansion with historical ownership of these places.

US-Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia of being set in a 19th century mentality, and he is not entirely wrong with that assessment. His statement, how-ever, does also show the biggest danger the US and Europe face.

Being condescending and see-ing Russia and China as out of touch with the modern world does not give enough attention to the real danger these ideas might pose. Even more, the lack-lustre response of the Western world to events in Ukraine and the South China Sea and espe-cially the reluctance of the US to get involved internationally after two extensive wars, opened the floor for the revisionist powers and their attempts to change in-ternational rules in their favour.

If we are indeed heading for a multi-polar world, without clear domination by the US, we are also heading for a world which will be fundamentally different, and worse, than what we know today. We would see a world in which small states are back at the mercy of their large neigh-bours, and states like China and Russia begin to establish influ-ence zones in which they do not allow any outside interference.

The key to preventing this change is the attitude of the Western world and especially the US to these developments. The current lacklustre responses to the Ukraine and Vietnam crises are only encouraging. If the cur-rent system should be preserved then clear statements have to be made that violations of basic principles will not be accepted.

Sebastian Brückner

NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, A NEW WORLD ORDER?


Review: “The Other Hand” by Chris Cleave

In April of this year, the Netherlands began to see a steep increase in the amount of asylum-seekers arriving in the Netherlands. The number of asylum-seekers went from an average of about 1,000 per month to an average of about 4,000 per month. This increase was largely owed to an increase in asylum-seekers from Eritrea, and it is thought that the human smugglers whom asylum-seekers pay to help them enter Europe had recently changed their route to one that ended in the Neth-erlands. Fred Teeven, the Dutch state secretary of Security and Justice, in an interview with the Dutch television show “Eén op Eén,” called on Dutch civilians to report any “sus-picious” activity that may be relat-ed to smuggling of asylum-seek-ers. When asked what would happen if the g o v e r n m e n t didn’t manage to stem the flow of incoming asy-lum-seekers he solemnly stated, “I will.”

The Other Hand, written by Chris Cleave, tells a different side of the story of asylum-seekers, specifically of one asylum-seeker. The novel is about a girl named Little Bee, who flees to London in the midst of an oil war that

is taking place in her village in Nigeria. After two years in an asylum-seekers centre outside of London, she is let out of the centre illegally when one of the other girls trades sex for their release. Once out of the asylum-seekers centre, Little Bee is confront-ed with the hardships and the lack of free-dom that come with living ille-gally in London. She is able to live with a British woman who she met in Nigeria in the midst of the horror of the oil war, and whose life she in-

advertently c h a n g e d t h r o u g h their meet-ing. Though the wom-a n — S a -rah—is kind to Little Bee and wants to help her, her lover is less willing to accept Little Bee and the “ d a n g e r ” that she, as an ille-

gal citizen, poses to their lives. Throughout the novel Little Bee faces constant insecurity and a feeling of a lack of belonging.

Through the story of Little Bee, Cleave shows how “a lit-tle war” in some far-away third world country that isn’t worthy

of any media attention can de-stroy entire villages without our

knowledge. He shows the naivety that many W e s t e r n -ers have about Afri-can coun-tries and the prob-lems caused. And what he especial-ly shows, is how the m e a s u r e s that our W e s t e r n g o v e r n -

ments take to “protect” our countries from too many asy-lum-seekers and the supposed fi-nancial, social, and cultural dan-gers that could come with them, actually create great danger and insecurity for these asylum-seek-ers themselves.

At one point in the book, Little Bee says, “Maybe the new colour of my life is grey. Two years in the grey detention cen-tre, and now I was an illegal im-migrant. That means, you live in a grey area. I thought about how I was going to live. I thought about the years, living as quietly as could be. Hiding my colours and living in the twilight and the shadows.” Little Bee is a fiction-al story, but it makes you think about the real asylum-seekers and the policies we have towards them. There are thousands of asylum-seekers from Eritrea sit-ting in the asylum-seekers centre here in the Netherlands. Maybe they are also thinking that the colour of their life is grey.

Sofia Jarvis



Study AbroadEndings usually come with a nostalgic awareness of the existence of time: things aren´t permanent, but have a starting date and a “dead-line”. Having had such a great time studying abroad in Singa-pore, as well as travelling af-terwards (mainly in Vietnam, a country that definitely reawak-ened my wanderlust) it came as a bit of a shock when my Moleskin announced in red bold letters that my flight back to Eu-rope was only two days away. Naturally, having been abroad for 4 months and travelling for 4 weeks, keeping track of dates and times had lost its signifi-cance. Being a traveller, as pri-meval as it may sound, I lived according to my natural instincts and personal preferences – I woke up when the sun rose, ate

whenever I was hungry and slept when Vietnam´s sky turned dark, glowing of city lights. Looking at my “travel deadline”, the aware-ness of knowing things come to an end was always coupled with a great excitement about return-ing.

Still, when a “life chapter”, such as a semester abroad, ends, it may seem like a slap in the face – giving rise to an uneasy feeling, time slipping through one´s fin-gers. Looking back at experienc-es, sensations and newly found friends, it was difficult for me to pin down the moment when time started to fly. Did I lose track of time? Not really. I was always aware of the fact that I would go home after 5 months, which I think has made my semester abroad as exciting and great as it was. Like most things, travelling or going abroad for a semester, has a starting point and an end to it. Having only a limited period

of time at one´s disposal results in a feeling of “now or never”, which pushes one´s personal boundaries. One becomes more fearless and things get done quicker. When one has all the time in the world to do things, time seems to go without notice, and becomes easily taken for granted. When going abroad or travelling one can experience a sense of urgency, which refresh-es one´s spirit of curiosity. Then, even though travelling comes with a deadline and the knowl-edge of departure - an ending in sight - it always renews my awareness of the importance of looking at life more as a journey instead of a routine. Taking the wanderlust with you when re-turning home will make daily life more adventurous.

Lea Schaefer

abroad»


Where the Road Ends, No Man KnowsHow do you explain to a man wearing a business suit that a song written by hillbillies from the great South told you to for-get your lust for the rich man’s gold? That it means more than anything offered by his world? That his very attire contradicts your nature? The confused and often smug look on their fac-es is testament to the collision of two worlds, two universes that overlap only in the every-day friction of society. When a half-drunk, chain-smoking, long-haired youth who spends his days smoking weed, drinking wine and discussing the secrets of the cosmos rubs shoulders in the supermarket with a clean cut, briefcase-wielding profes-sional who sits behind a high powered computer all day in some vacant office with no face, crunching numbers and running projections for a company that seeks an empire out of profit whilst parading as though it has the bests interests of humanity at heart. I could see nothing in their hollow dreams, their vague ambitions to produce more and consume more and numb them-selves to the facts of life bub-bling splendidly away all around them. I could only look inward. I could feel that feeling growing inside me, taking me back. And suddenly, there we were, at it

again. Youth lost to the moment rejoicing in the triumph of the stars, breathing freedom. There was a roaring bonfire that sep-arated us, scattering everyone around a central point in one big, arching circle. Groups that once mingled joined together, everybody focused on a lonely guitar that wept in the night’s stillness. Characters lurked in the shadows, eyes fixed on the shingling notes that hung in the revelry around the thick brush of bodies that grew out of no-where. The long-haired hippie that held the beast in his nim-ble hands, crumpled with age, sung in blunted tones of pain and glory and life and death and learning. Every few words he mumbled. His toothless mouth crooked from abuse of the bot-tle, his brain so fried that he would just make up the words as he rolled on the rhythm, a godless prototype living his own version of life, fearless, guiltless. A paradigm shift in himself. His bandaged left foot was a symbol of the caring community he had belonged to, a bunch of young students, drifters, and down-and-outs that gravitated towards the sound of the abandoned, broken factory on the outskirts of town; up the river, away from the centre of the busy city and the crushing mundanity of sub-urban chains that shackled crea-tivity and stifled the promise of true expression of self. Me, I was one of them, a hopeless vaga-

bond adrift in the storm of life. Plagued by uncertainty I shone. On those nights everybody did. We made our own rules, crafted our own society, built our own reality out of the depths of our collective imaginations. I sup-pose the warehouse was the per-fect place for us, then. A physical reflection of our abused souls, alone on a cold wet highway that led somewhere out of town. I had been on that lonesome road for a while, wandering here and there and going wherever peo-ple would take me. What was it that she said to me that night, by the fire? Time passed and memories forgotten, I can only half remember the sweet words she whispered. Perhaps she had said that we were all tired from the very beginning, every one of us, and that was why we all sought the numbness so fond-ly. Or perhaps she had said that we were playing with fire to make fireworks, consumed by it all. I cannot remember precisely but, as her pretty face fades like all beauty eventually does, the feeling she inspired within me remains, tugging at my aching heart. Even now, a tiny bit older and wiser and more experienced but still so young and adrift, I know that somewhere ages and ages away, in some forgotten place, her words will still sing sweetly, softly, in the dark velvety embrace of my soul.

Luke Timp

«creative



The Unbearable Lightness of Being the UCM BellTime for us is a reef on which our mystic ship must come to drown.

Time for you is but dove-droppings on your iron crown.Your aura of permanence, your tryst with eternity;your stoic persistence, your freeze-frame antiquity

are plain to all, gazing from this courtyard bathed in light; upon this Bohemian grotto, you gaze back from lofty height.

The texture of time doesn’t cause you the slightest sorrow;you are oblivious to that “tomorrow and tomorrow

and tomorrow”, that squalid existential despair of ours,us, whom time relentlessly and inexorably devours.

Yet yours is a Pyrrhic victory – can’t you see?Though not of iron, we tailless talking apes are free

to do more than strut and fret about posterity.By the way: “what has posterity ever done for me?”

I’m sure you envy how we share with each otherknowledge and good taste from our tweed-clad nourishing mother.

Elegant conversation, an elevated point of view;intellectual stimulation and someone you love to share it with you.

In this teaming womb of privileged we growand flourish and reinvent ourselves as we go.

After the Halcyon days, we get to put on a hatsaying Nietzsche this and Wittgenstein that!

Sure, some become, you may have surmised,characters so damn overstated, so italicized.

by taking it a touch too seriously that idea behindOscar Wilde’s injunction against the too literal mind,

“The first duty is to be as artificial as possible”,

But would this be so wrong?Life being short, art being long

shouldn’t they agree in this,and each attempt their synthesis:

Like heather and honey; like sugar and canelike structure and poetry; like shape and sound;

in this rendezvous of circumstances beauty is found.Only regret: we should have drank more Champagne.

Diamonds in the rough, into the world we will flock,And each will do what they canto remedy the wrongs of man.Only you couldn’t give a damn.

Only you are safe from the corruption of the clock.

Then again you’re only a sodding bell,and I’ve been drinking, as you can tell.

Dominik A. Leusder


SOCIALBEDITAS Summer, good weather, sun: it always makes you feel guilty. Ei-ther you enjoy the weather, but don’t study; or you study, but don’t do anything fun while the weather is finally good for once. It feels like a loose-loose situa-tion.

It also doesn’t help that every-one around you seems to do fun stuff, and you are reminded of it way too often when you’re procrastinating on Facebook. Moreover, all your friends want to do something fun with you. And after declining a couple of invitations, because you really do have to study, you also feel bad for complaining about friends in-viting you to do something.

Today, there seems to be a strong pressure to have the most exciting life. You can’t be the one who stays home on a beautiful summer evening, and everyone always does something fun. Why do they never have to study, sleep, work, or just be alone? Why are they always hav-ing ‘the best night’, with some random friends? Why do they have so many different groups of friends?

Dutch journalist Lydia van der Weide wrote about her ‘so-cial burnout’ in Linda. Although her friends and family suspected

that her job was the reason for her stress, she knew that, in re-ality, it was the pressure to have a impressive social life that was the problem. She wrote about all the reunions and old school and study friends she kept seeing because she kept in touch with them through Facebook. She continuously jumped through hoops for lunch dates with old acquaintances she actually did not have time for or would not have minded not seeing. All be-cause she felt that having a busy social life is important, and be-cause she could not say ‘no’. Her solution to the social overload: social detoxing on an island in Greece, to figure out which con-tacts are important for her, and to learn to decline invitations for events she doesn’t feel like going to.

I recognise myself in her story. I am not ‘socially burnt out’, not at all. But I do feel the pressure have an exciting life, just like most other people around me, I think. Right now, for example. I am lying in bed, writing this ar-ticle, and I hear people laughing outside while the sun is shining. I’ve not been really productive today, I’ve only seen two friends, and now I feel bad. But I probably shouldn’t. I’ll have a fun evening tonight (that is, if the Dutch soc-cer team wins), see people, talk and laugh. And even if I didn’t:

it is not a problem if I don’t have 10 meetings, lunch dates, din-ners or coffee dates on one day, regardless of how my Facebook friends are spending their days. It might even be nice, and relax-ing not to have to see so many people and have so much “fun” every day.

Of course, having friends is a good thing, and it is important to do lots of fun things. I do not believe that everyone should go through a process of ‘social cleansing’, or that being locked in monastery for two weeks and talking to no one is a good idea. I, for one, would probably go crazy.

But I do think that I-- and many other people I know-- should be a bit careful with our fear of missing out. We do not always have to be everywhere. We do not always have to be the last ones to leave to leave a par-ty. And, sometimes, we can even stay home. Often it is a horrible feeling to know that everyone is out having fun, and that you’re just watching a movie in bed. But if you get over that, just ignore your fear of missing out, you can just enjoy a quiet evening. That’s okay. You might need it.

I feel very wise. Or maybe I am just getting boring.

Floortje Rawee



TRUTHIn two, or three, or four sec-onds, minutes, hours there will be knocking on the doors. Be-fore sunrise but after midnight, you will receive what you have asked for. The last of all of those who open up their homes to strangers in the dark of night will know upon the break of day that they too have been betrayed. They had thought to be delivered, and relieved of all their sin; and everything would be fine as long as we give in. Might I say that upon some in-quisition this peculiar tradition

is one that clouds the visions of the truest, bluest eyes. When lies, false truths and misconcep-tions give way to the greatest deceptions; the ones where our attractions are turned the other way, and swayed towards a state of misinformed belief which we are no longer free to leave. We trust it with our deepest fears so that when all is said and done, when the race has finally been run, something will still remain if our efforts have been in vain. We collectively pretend that it’s a purer form of strength than one attained through hardship; ‘I be-lieve!’ and that must count for something, right? Yet within my reconsiderations I find that any

affiliation to a system of convic-tions forms a restriction to the open mind. A kind of thing that makes life easier while I still feel teased by all the appetites and curiosities for everything around. Until I find the answer to the questions of why the dances of the wicked witches move me, deeply, I will not be satisfied by fearing the observing eye of my external conscience. Outside of its line of vision there are no set provisions, no one but me can make decisions on what is true or right. Still it is so easy, so much fun, not to deal with many but just one truth.

Florian Goldschmeding

The WatersThis place. Perfection.All around serenity –that great abstract.No problems, none ofthis 21st century shit.Everything calm, all is well.Yet; there is something bother-ing me.I can’t describe what, butdespite all this somber serenity there is a problem.

Help! I cried to myself.I feel so out of place yet at home.Home? I don’t know anymore.Maybe this is it, that infamous yet absent word – home.OK. I’m going home now

UntitledThere it sat, every day in the same place.At first it was difficult to make out its figure,then it became clear.A wet look clouded its face – too much hair(it must have thought!)At first I just observed, interest-ing in itself,Then I dreamt. Oh! The serenity.

Just there – next to the broken bench –It sat. An eternal figure which stood strongAmongst a crumbling society around.Even the Church – once so great –

Was run down and looked disin-terested.Yet, it was the only thing to take an interestIn the ramshackled town which lay at itsFeet. Eyes hardly able to see throughThe wetted hair. Yet – enoughVisibility to comprehend the situation.I never was to know its name.

Neil O’Finn


Our favourite: Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.

The other entries: I shall take off in this blackened aircraft, / provisionally free / and deprived finally of all genealo-gy and memory and security, / in search of the frontiers of the night.

It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adop-tion of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050.

Slowly, very slowly, like two un-hurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east...

All was well.

But sometimes when I find the key and climb deep into my-self where the images of fate lie aslumber in the dark mirror, I need only bend over that dark mirror to behold my own image, now completely resembling him, my brother, my master.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impos-sible to say which was which.

Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.

Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing every-body.

And together they walked back through the gateway to the Muggle world.

After all, tomorrow was another day.

He loved big brother.

For everything to be consum-mated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

She waited for his knock, and then, briefly aware that she was leaving Toby’s room for the last time, ran downstairs to let him in.

He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem woke up in the morning.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

...and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry’s is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes’ colour are the words ‘THIS IS NOT AN EXIT’.

I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger… a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.

But the hands of the of the part-ners were already at K.’s throat, while the other thrust the knife into this heart and turned it there twice. With failing eyes K. could still see the two of them, cheek learning against cheek, immedi-ately before his face, watching the final act. “Like a dog!” he said; it was as if he meant the shame of it to outlive him.

But wherever they go, and what-ever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be play-ing.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him—and it was still hot.

But I don’t think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.

There was some open space be-tween what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it, you’ve got to stand it.

Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this.

A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NAR-RATOR. I am haunted by hu-mans.

BEST ENDINGS, AS SENT IN BY OUR READERS

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The Bell #5: June 2014 - Endings