The Endless Journey
One part of western culture that has been little recorded and also greatly repressed is that of the Gypsies.
Their culture remains one of the most misunderstood and underrepresented, and is often falsely stereotyped by other cultures. Some characteristics that permeate all gypsy cultures is the denial of citizenship, denial of being bound to [...]

There is some friction between Belgium and Turkey.
First there was the case of Fehriye Erdal, a far-left militant that was convicted last Thursday in Belgium for being a member of a criminal organisation (Turkish group DHKP-C or Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front). Trouble is, when Belgian authorities proceeded to arrest her she had disappeared. A big [...]

Ok, the Italian elections are now just about one month away, although you wouldn’t guess this from reading the British press where the David Mills/Silvio Berlusconi case is what seems to be making all the running. Now as I indicated in this post, I will try and give some systematic coverage to the election issues [...]

There was a big uproar in France during the past few weeks caused by the horrifying murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23 year old Jewish shop clerk, by a gang of hoodlums who called themselves, very aptly, “The Barbarians”.
Halimi was abducted by the gang on January 21st. On Monday 13th he was found naked, gagged [...]

An interesting point of view.
“Islam is in fact a laicity-based faith [one
rooted in the separation of religion and government affairs],”
the Franco-Tunisian writer and essayist Abdelwahab Meddeb
explains in an interview. “It has no Church, nor a supreme
moral authority. During his final crusade, the Emperor
Frederick II, had observed that Muslims made a distinction
between the temporal and the [...]

Reactions from Lib Dem bloggers: 1,2,3,4.
Also, fistful member Matt (not a lib dem) points out taht ‘It wasn’t a particularly good result for YouGov, who have been Britain’s most accurate pollster in many elections, and particularly in hard-to-guess ones such as leadership elections, ie the Tories’.

Following up on the points made in this post and this one, former EU competition commissioner Mario Monti has a comment article in today’s FT (behind the firewall unfortunately, but his point is clear from the extract):
The single market, a key pillar of the European Union since its foundation, is in danger. Several member states [...]

Just off the wires from Iraq:
The sectarian cleansing that drove 68-year-old Abbas al-Saiedi from his home may be as alarming a sign of a country on the brink of civil war as the killings that have swept Iraq in the past week…….
Al-Saiedi’s story, a tale of fear and desperation told to The Associated Press on [...]

Thursday’s edition of the International Herald Tribune features an interesting article concerning the recent European rows about state interference in favour of so-called national champions.
Quoting Elie Cohen, the Tribune’s authors - Katrin Bennhold and Graham Bowley - suggest that both the French government’s allegedly new/refound role as M&A consultant in the Suez and Gaz de [...]

How did modern architecture in Spain get so good? asks Witold Rybczynski.