Construction of the Elbe Philharmonic is underway, with its opening planned for autumn, 2011. Hamburg?s creative artists are not alone in seeing a new landmark for their city in this spectacular concert hall....
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Since the 19th century Ukrainians have been dreaming of a return to the paradise lost of Europe. But Ukraine's rich and painful history remains a blank spot in the European collective consciousness, or a mighty underground river flowing out of Europe's cellar, littered with corpses. By Oksana Zabuzhko
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Italy has been slow to address the danger of radical Islam. For too long it was the domain of right-wing rabble-rousers while the left slumbered away in "Islam correctness". At last the left-wing liberal Reset magazine has launched a proper debate. By Franz Haas
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The Amsterdam district of Slotervaart, where Theo van Gogh's murderer lived, continues to be plagued by outbreaks of violence from youths in the immigrant communities. Many of their parents have withdrawn from what they perceive as the hostile outside world, which they invariably blame when their children go astray. By Margalith Kleijwegt
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The sexual revolution has run itself aground on the back of standardisation and banality. It's time to fight Hefnerism with radicalisation not restriction, declares Dylan van Rijsbergen
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Serbia is reclaiming Kosovo as the "cradle of the nation" while showing
nothing but contempt for its population. Serbian writer Vladimir
Arsenijevic outlines the calamitous relationship of his compatriots to the
Albanians.
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No sooner were the fires put out reelected the government that bore the than Greek votersbrunt of responsibility for the tragedy. Did those who suffered so much learn no lesson from their distress? Crime writer Petros Markaris looks at why the Greeks have failed to find their way out of the political crisis rocking their country.
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The third anti-porn campaign of the women's feminist magazine Emma is absolutely necessary and, at the same time, hopelessly old-fashioned. You can't use the tools of the 70s to fight the pornographication of today's market - at least not if you want to win. By Iris Radisch
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Russian journalist and Putin critic Grigori Pasko talks with Tobias Goltz about the North Stream Pipeline, Russia's state-controlled media and how his like-minded colleagues are dropping off like flies.
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The elites of East Germany lack orientation, as only the West has left its imprint on the power structure. Roland Mischke talks with political scientist Gunnar Hinck about imbalances and incompetences among East German leaders.
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Anyone who counts Danube Swabians, Slovenians and Italians among his forefathers and lives as a Bosnian Croat first in Sarajevo and then in Zagreb, is entitled to call his birth a political project. Miljenko Jergovic tells the story of his family, of people whose identities have more to do with what they are not, than what they are.
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The resounding electoral victory of the Islamic Justice and Development Party bodes a conservative turn with Muslim undertones in Turkey. Since Atatürk's reforms in the 1920s, Turkey has been held by a corset of modernisation along Western lines. Long-established elites have fostered nepotism and a general dumbing down. Yet this corset has also had a healing effect, failing which the AKP's victory would look very different indeed. By Zafer Senocak
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The Arab League has imported from Europe the idea of a cultural capital and Algiers has the honour this year. Money and political will abound. But what culture has survived the years of terror, and who dares speak his mind in the increasingly Islamic regime? By Sonja Zekri
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It was the fall of communism and its attendant anxieties that gave birth to the European ideal. The first task of a new Europe must be to hack out clear paths through the jungle of ideologies, because a civilisation that does not clearly proclaim its values, or leaves its proclaimed values high and dry, treads the path to perdition and terminal debility. By Imre Kertesz
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The more I suffer, the better it is, thought Lidwina of Schiedam (1380 - 1433). She remained bedridden for forty years after an accident, and was subsequently canonised. There are more similarities than differences between this Roman Catholic saint and the modern radical Muslimas of the Hofstad Network, says Dutch sociologist Jolande Withuis. An essay on the potential threat of terrorism from young Dutch Muslimas.
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Despite a serious blow to the Kaczynski twins' lustration law by Poland' s Constitutional Court this May, the country will continue to x-ray its past. Ryszard Kapuscinski, prize-crowned author and reporter who died this year, is the latest of a string of intellectuals to have their secret police past uncovered. By Thomas Urban (Photo: Irmi Long)
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