Doreen Pastor
I'm a PhD candidate in German studies at the University of Bristol researching the politics of memorialisation and how visitors engage with challenging histories.
Location Bristol
Activity
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There is a lot of agreement that political leaders should be able to express their religious views. But consider the recent incident in the federal state of Bavaria (Germany) where the local president demanded the display of Christian crosses in all public buildings arguing that Islam does not belong to Germany - is this appropriate? Here is an article on the...
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@EllaEdwards True. There is also a large percentage of voters who felt that the UK is losing control, i.e. their identity is lost. Here is a great report: https://whatukthinks.org/eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/NatCen_Brexplanations-report-FINAL-WEB2.pdf
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Hello Liz, have a look at the reflections from week 1 as it discusses the dissemination of these goals: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/global-citizenship/3/steps/345088.
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Very good points about the rhetoric of migrants in the public sphere. As someone who came into the UK, I get frustrated with, for instance, EU citizens called migrants while British citizens living in the EU are called 'expats'.
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You should be able to download them from this link: https://missingmigrants.iom.int/mediterranean-update. But do please let me know if you can't access them.
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Interestingly, Germany has introduced a new law against "online hate speech", it's not working out very well and it's received well either by Human Rights campaigners, there is no easy answer: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/05/tough-new-german-law-puts-tech-firms-and-free-speech-in-spotlight
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@BarbaraParsons Twitter can be incredibly useful, e.g. it allowed me to connect with other researchers in my field which, under different circumstances, probably would have never met. And it's always great to hear opinions outside one's own bubble. Unfortunately, a significant amount of people use it to voice their disappointments with all sorts of issue. It...
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Very true. A lot of conversation is through body language which is completely removed when one sits behind a screen. I have seen some terrible situations recently on Twitter which escalated very quickly and I doubt that this would have happened, if the relevant parties had talked to each other face to face.
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Very good points. The trouble is that even public figures are not necessarily held accountable for what they say. A classic example was the Jeremy Corbyn incident recently where several MPs accused him of having been a communist spy, they even demanded that his (GDR) Stasi file should be published. It got so out of hand that the German authorities intervened...
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Thank you for sharing your experience. I grew up partially in East Germany (GDR) and I had an uncle who ended up in a Stasi prison as he stood up against the GDR regime. It had a huge impact on the rest of his life. I still struggle with my grandad's (his dad) behaviour who remained utterly convinced of the GDR system despite having seen his son becoming a...
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Don't be disheartened. Thank you for raising the point of security in Botswana, sometimes other external circumstances prevent us from taking more action with regards to climate change and these are important points to consider. In the UK, for instance, locally grown food is usually very expensive and therefore out of reach for many people.
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Doreen Pastor replied to Barbara Parsons
Very good points. Unesco has already published a vast amount of information about the impact of climate change on world heritage sites. There might come a point though when we have to make a decision which ones we safe and which ones we won't: http://whc.unesco.org/en/climatechange/. In terms of happiness, here in the UK we're already seeing the impact of...
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Doreen Pastor made a comment
Very current article on environmental devastation and conflict in Nigeria, for anyone who is interested in learning more: https://theconversation.com/nigerias-conflict-is-a-result-of-environmental-devastation-across-west-africa-91694
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Hello Luke, this interesting article one Catalonia has just been published, you might find it interesting: https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/01/31/8254/
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Doreen Pastor replied to Melanie Simons
This is a very good point and it already happens in the UK. Two bird species, Great White Egret and Little Egret, are now breeding in the UK, in fact not far away from Bristol on the Somerset Levels. Both are so-called colonising species which haven't been in the UK before, highly likely now because of temperature rise. On the other hand, we still lose nature...
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Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm stunned that someone would suggest that you would not get a job due to your dialect. I also doubt that this is true. Your experience however reminded me of my own situation in Germany - I'm from the federal state of Saxony (East Germany) where we speak German with a very strong accent (in fact, it's a very soft...
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Today is the UN International Mother Language Day with interesting relevant resources: https://en.unesco.org/international-days/international-mother-language-day
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Doreen Pastor replied to Paige Taylor
Thank you for your comments and for sharing The Guardian article. I lived in Somerset/UK during the severe winter flood 2013/14 and I had work colleagues who were forced out of their homes. I got stuck in my village once as all surrounding roads were flooded but luckily never had to leave my home. I remember the heated debates in local village halls where it...
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@DerekBanks Not sure whether they are in breach because ultimately the Russian minority is allowed to stay in Estonia and they do have passports. They are 'gray' passports. The situation in the Baltic states is really complex. The Soviet Union suppressed the Estonian language and culture and one attempt was to resettle Russians into the area. So after...
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You can also be excluded if you don't speak the language - a very good example is Estonia where Russian speakers will not get an Estonian passport unless they speak Estonian. Here language is used to build a very young nation and to obviously distance the country from Russia after years of Soviet oppression.
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This is an interesting blog post on national sovereignty comparing Brexit and Catalonia: http://danielgueguen.blogactiv.eu/2018/02/05/brexit-and-catalonia-a-fascinating-parallel/
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Doreen Pastor replied to Sarah Blake
Genocide Watch (US based) organisation published an article on the now 10 stages: http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/
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Doreen Pastor replied to Åke P
Thank you very much for sharing this link.
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A non-violent example is Sweden which rescued prisoners from concentration camps in Germany by direct negotiation, however the rescue mission didn't take place until March 1945. A different example is Myanmar at the moment where the treatment of the Rohingya minority is regarded as a genocide. Does the international community have the responsibility to...
