Mgr. Peter MARKOVIČ

Europe already accomplished a miracle once before: enemies became neighbours. In the light of the euro crisis, the cardinal question must be confronted once again: how can Europe guarantee its citizens peace, freedom and security in the risk-storms raging in the globalised world? This calls for nothing less than a second miracle: how can the […]

Europe is Europe’s last remaining realistic political utopia. But Europe remains to be understood and conceptualised. This historically unique form of international community cannot be explained in terms of the traditional concepts of politics and the state, which remain trapped in the straitjacket of methodological nationalism. If we are to understand cosmopolitan Europe, we must […]

Dosud jsme tvrdili, že charakterové rysy vyvolané naším socioekonomickým systémem, tj. naším způsobem života, jsou patogenní a nakonec vytvářejí nemocného člověka, a tedy i nemocnou společnost. Ovšem existuje ještě druhý argument, který ze zcela jiného hlediska podporuje hluboké psychologické změny v člověku jako alternativu vůči ekonomické a ekologické katastrofě. Tento argument byl podán ve dvou zprávách […]

President Obama stands accused of political correctness for his unwillingness to accuse groups such as the Islamic State of “Islamic extremism,” choosing a more generic term, “violent extremism.” His critics say that you cannot fight an enemy you will not name. Even his supporters feel that his approach is too “professorial.” But far from being […]

Když lidé začnou pochybovat a hledat ospravedlnění, může je přepadnout nejistota. Ta nebývá právě příjemná, a tak se jí zpravidla snaží uniknout. Nátlak na přizpůsobení se normám šířeným kulturní výchovou bývá proto obvykle doprovázen snahou o diskreditaci a očernění norem kultur jiných. Na jednom konci spektra se pomocí rétorických projevů o „čistotě” a „nákaze” obhajuje […]

COMMENTING on the flow of migrants making their way through Hungary to Austria and Germany, a Hungarian journalist told me recently: “We don’t have cities anymore. Only an extended railway station.” Twenty years ago, Hungary and its Eastern European neighbors were transitional, post-Communist societies, and several — Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia — still are. Now, overnight, […]

Europe is facing the biggest wave of migration since that from the East at the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War. And it is indeed Central Europe, whose peoples regard freedom of movement as the greatest benefit arising from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, where today […]

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two […]

THOSE of us outside Europe are watching the unbelievable images of the Keleti train station in Budapest, the corpse of a toddler washed up on a Turkish beach, the desperate Syrian families chancing their lives on the night trip to the Greek islands — and we keep being told this is a European problem. The […]