As the Eurostar links improve, Paris is emerging as the hub of a new Europe, with high-speed international links to Germany, Italy and Spain. As such, the city is once again in the kind of central role in Europe that it has always assumed to be its destiny. At the same time, unlike the competing cities of Barcelona, Berlin or Milan, Paris has not been forced to reinvent itself since the Sixties. There is therefore none of the architectural daring that characterises the new Berlin or the truly globalised designer culture of Barcelona. Indeed, after long years of political and cultural stagnation, the big question is whether tired old Paris - once so proud of its status as the so-called the 'Capital of the 19th Century' - is even fit for purpose in the 21st century.

The problem is that Paris is still beautiful.

Islamic culture has contributed a number of ideas to western culture, including the development of domes in building construction.

The United States possesses neither the capacity nor the wisdom required to liberate the world's 1.4 billion Muslims, who just might entertain their own ideas about what genuine freedom entails. Islam will eventually accommodate itself to the modern world, but Muslims will have to work out the terms.

The world in which we find ourselves at the start of the new millenium is littered with the debris of utopian projects, which though they were framed in secular terms that denied the truth of religion were in fact vehicles for religious myths.

Deception is justified if it advances human progress -- and then it is not deception.

Decade after decade, one century layering upon the last, the physical identity of this urban axis straddling two continents is constantly being reconsidered, if only bit by bit, piece by piece. So a visitor curious to understand contemporary ideas and influences in Istanbul, to know how the storied city is falling and rising today, should focus on individual elements.

We replay memories as though they were our own home movies. And other people's movies, and other people's stories, become, by some circuitous route, our own. The events unfolding up on the screen may not have happened to us, ... [ Read More (0.9k in body) ]