Why do teenagers find SchülerVZ, flickr or YouTube so fantastic? What are they finding in the communities on the internet that doesn't exist in real life, and what exactly are they doing with it? The JFF- Institut für Medienpädagogik (Institute for Media Education) looks into these questions and learns from a 15 year-old "I think the future will just be one big Second Life."...
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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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Russia has long since degenerated into morally bankrupt totalitarianism. Europe used to take a proud stand on freedom. So why isn't it doing anything? By Andre Glucksmann
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How sex-obsessed is a culture that teaches a woman that she is basically a walking, sitting or reclining set of genitals? How over-aroused is a society in which men are expected to have no qualms about pouncing on any woman who happens to walk by, unless a divinely ordained dress code forbids them to do so? Dutch writer Margriet de Moor looks at Islam in the light of Europe and Europe in the light of Islam. (Photo © Maria Neefjes)
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"In America I learned that Europe is possible." A conversation with Bernard-Henri Levy about his trip through the USA, the neo-conservatives after the disaster in Iraq, the fascist roots of Islamism and France before the elections. By Thierry Chervel (Photo: R. Escher)
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The recent represssions of demonstrations by "The other Russia" suggest that Putin's regime is very concerned about the opposition. But why? He has the country solidly under his thumb, his ratings are good, the people fear his departure. But of course, as Sonja Margolina reports, "controlled instability" has certain advantages.
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