Society

Demography, fewer and fewer children being born, population decline, aging society, migration, crisis; when we talk about demography in the European Union today, these are the primary factors we think about. We hear it a lot, but how big is the real \"crisis\"?

In August 2023, an article exposing financial support from public funds for the animal farming sector was published in The Guardian. These entities receive over a thousand times more funding from the government fund than plant farmers, thereby blocking alternative access to funds from the European Union. Similar situations occur in the United States, where farms receive eight hundred times more funding from the state than those cultivating only plants.

Thanksgiving, celebrated these days in the United States, is often considered abroad as a turkey dinner feast. Americans travel thousands of miles – so that several generations of a family can gather around one table. Gratitude is expressed for the harvest, which in the modern world can mean economic welfare, health, fruitful relations with family and friends, and all the benefits of the year’s toil.

The Israeli-Palestinian war has stirred emotions well beyond the Levant. However, we should approach the censorship of public speech with a cooler head. The British Home Secretary has warned that waving the Palestinian flag might be deemed a criminal act. France has banned pro-Palestinian protests, and so has Germany. The Chief Minister of an Indian state directed the police to address pro-Palestinian statements on social media.

Europe has been built on the liberal values of democracy, rule of law, liberty, tolerance, and free markets. Yet it seems Europeans are forgetting what these values mean. \"Know thyself\" is a famous ancient Greek maxim, which Europeans do not seem to take to heart. A series of aggressive actions from Russia over the past decade were not enough for the EU to properly distance itself from Russian energy, until it invaded Ukraine.

The healthcare system has always been one of the most crucial points of a country’s social security, especially in Hungary’s case. In the last 15-20 years the Hungarian healthcare system went through a lot of changes and the general consensus is that despite the state insurance, the services aren’t sufficient.

In the realm of modern technology, the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) is becoming increasingly pervasive, reshaping industries and societies alike. AI, in its simplest form, refers to the development of computer systems that can perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence. It enables machines with the ability to learn from experience, adapt to new data, and make decisions with minimal human intervention.

The Hungarian government is pandering to its elderly voters through nostalgia. However, unlike other populists who promise to bring back a glorious and nonexistent past, the Hungarian leadership is putting hammer and sickle to work on bringing back communism - an era when their pensioner voter base was young and when absolutely nothing functioned properly.

Women in Poland are now more than ever at the heart of public attention. The closer we get to the election date, the more political declarations affecting women’s lives we hear. With numerous research studies proving that women\'s participation in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Poland will be politically decisive, the number of offers from party leaders is rising on a daily basis.

Joanna Łopat talks with Daria, 40 year-old Jewish women from Warsaw.