Category: Current

The publication of the manifesto in September by the former Czech president, Václav Klaus, and signed by various European politicians and academics, which criticised an article by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the German Green Member of the European Parliament, was not the first occasion the two men have crossed swords. In December 2008, a famously bad-tempered exchange took place between them

INTRODUCTION For much of the twentieth century, it was widely accepted in liberal circles that America is the blueprint for the future of other countries. England was treated as a similar blueprint in the nineteenth century. But the Anglosphere cannot be a blueprint for other, very different countries. Even Continental

Where does Europe end? The question of boundary has been discussed for quite some time. It is an old one indeed, going back to the destruction of the Jewish temple, the disintegration of the Greek city-states, and the collapse of the Roman Empire. This is what provides historical material for the

1. FALUDY’S FABLE The Faludy Park near Toronto’s university district is named after the poet George Faludy. The author of My Happy Days in Hell survived terrorists and tyrants in various parts of the world before spending the last 22 years of his exile in an apartment overlooking the small patch of

By the Jubilee Line from Green Park station in central London it takes only fifteen minutes to get to North Greenwich which is the nearest underground station to the Millennium Dome on the Thames, now an O2 stadium for sporting events and pop concerts. From there a taxi will get you to Woolwich in another fifteen minutes. I took this

Szeklerland (in Hungarian Székelyföld) is a historical region of Transylvania, a Hungarian province given to Romania by the Versailles peace treaties after the First World War. With a population consisting of an overwhelming proportion (80 percent) of Szeklers (Székelys), it constitutes an ethnic enclave within the territory of Romania. The Szeklers are

DIVERGENCES IN THE MYTHICAL “EASTERN BLOC” Five years on the advanced West continues to struggle after the surprisingly deep contraction of 2008/2009 while the global economy keeps growing, albeit at a slower pace. The performance gap has thus remained wide between the West and the rest: the world economy has expanded around

EMERGENCE OF THE THIRD KIND Few observers, if any, would have predicted that demonstrations that commenced at the Gezi Promenade of Taksim Square at the end of May over plans to build a shopping mall in the area would continue to capture the attention of both domestic and international audiences