Dear old al-Maarri was a great skeptic poet. He wrote a parody of the Koran, and his friends would tease him and say, "al-Maarri, but no one says your Koran." And he said, "Yes, but give me time. Give me time. If people recite it for twenty years it will become as popular as the other one."

It's a total failure of the Western imagination that the only enemy they can see is Adolph Hitler.

People are increasingly beginning to feel that democracy itself is being destroyed by this latest phase of globalization and that politics doesn't matter because it changes nothing.

Terror breeds terror. I am completely opposed to both state terror and those who respond in a similar way. There is no justification for any group that associates itself with the Left to kill innocents and encourage suicide bombings.

At the time of German Reunification, it was no secret that Germany would soon become the strongest political entity in the European Union. And that has happened.

Tragedies are always discussed as if they took place in a void, but actually each tragedy is conditioned by its setting, local and global. The events of 11 September 2001 are not exception.

Tony Blair is a war criminal.