Thorsten Brinkmann is a passionate collector of everything that is bulky, ageing, and somewhat musty. A book now offers the first overview of the Hamburg artist?s work....
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Austrian author and playwright Peter Handke's political stance on Serbia has not been easy for Western intellectuals to swallow. With the recent scandal of the Heinrich Heine Prize - which was awarded to Handke and then retracted - the writer's views are back in the spotlight. In an in-depth interview with Martin Meyer and Andreas Breitenstein, Handke tries to clarify his understanding of what happened in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
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Zarqawi was no Ho Chi Minh, and Iraq is no Vietnam. Across the world today, populations are being taken hostage by lawless usurpers. Somalia is an in vivo laboratory for the abomination of abominations: war against civilians. Either we accept a general Somaliasation and take refuge in an illusionary Eurasian fortress, or we revive a democratic, military and critical European-Atlantic alliance. By Andre Glucksmann.
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Flemming Rose, cultural editor at Jyllands-Posten newspaper, justifies his decision to publish the Muhammad cartoons, and takes stock of the controversy they ignited, arguing that Europe must shed the
straitjacket of political correctness.
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The Clearstream Affair is just the most recent symptom of a crisis that has been dogging the French Republic for three decades. The time for a "rupture" is at hand. By Andre Glucksmann
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How do our religious, ethnic and national identites sway how we feel about toleration? Is human culture more like a jail or a window? Are there touchpoints between Europe and America here? These are just some of the questions broached at signandsight.com's panel discussion on "The Limits of Tolerance: Multiculturalism Now" at the recent PEN festival in New York, with participants Necla Kelek, Pascal Bruckner, Richard Rodriguez and Kwame Anthony Appiah.
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The prison of the future: a debate on faith and reason at PEN World Voices, The New York Festival of International Literature. By Andrian Kreye
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When did I start thinking about feminism again? Last year, the year of my sixth male boss in a row. For us young women, equality of the sexes went without saying. Then we
flirted with old-fashioned roles, and now we're suddenly back in a
man's world. Along with henna hair, drooping breasts and dungarees, have we abolished equality? By Heike Faller
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Twenty years after Chernobyl, Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich talks to Sonja Zekri about the new face of evil and the lessons to be learned from the reactor
catastrophe.
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I want to see Turks en masse waving the German flag. Jobs, rules, the German language and free religion – these must be the pillars of a new German society. Today's West Germans, East Germans and foreign Germans are perhaps only the forefathers of the curious folk we will be in thirty years. And then, what belongs together will grow together. An appeal by Feridun Zaimoglu.
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Turkish-born German sociologist Necla Kelek has been accused of painting the Turkish community in Germany in a bad light. In an interview with Michaela Schlagenwerth, she explains that what she sees is what she writes. More dangerous than her portrayal, she says, is the pervasive blindness to the facts. (Photo Lebeck)
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Italians go to the polls on Sunday. Do Europeans realise what is at stake, or does Italophilia blind them to Berlusconi's brutal power games? Outside Italy, people fail to see that this "puppet" would already be behind bars in most European countries, and that its legal system and press freedom are on a par with Guatemala and Mongolia. But who could come next? Friedrich Christian Delius paints a dire portrait of Italy's ailing democracy.
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French philosopher and novelist Pascal Bruckner has no qualms about bucking public opinion. In an interview with Marko Martin he discusses Gallic fury, suburban rioters' scorched earth methods, the systemic weaknesses of French society and the Finkielkraut Affair.
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Citizenship tests are now all the rage in Europe. Britain and the Netherlands have made tests mandatory, and Germany is thinking of following suit. But opponents claim the proposed questions unfairly target Muslims and could not be answered by many Germans. Are you fit to become German? Find out with the 100 questions proposed by the German state of Hesse.
Send us your answers to: editor@signandsight.com. Thekla Dannenberg, editor and clever-clogs in German politics and history, will review your applications and notify you of her decision.
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Europe must pluck up the courage to introduce reforms. It needs its own
armed forces and foreign minister, a directly-elected president and an
independent financial basis. These should be decided on by a referendum
binding only in states where a majority had voted in favour. We present
excerpts from a speech in which Jürgen Habermas calls on Europe to act - and sketches a critique of the Internet.
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Adam Krzeminski is outraged by Luciano Canfora's highly selective "Democracy in Europe" which puts Stalinism on a pedestal. He congratulates a German publishing house for refusing to print it and believes European scholarship has shamefully neglected Polish history.
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