“There is a better Turkey with European standards,” is a remark made by Norwegian Minister of Defense Espen Barth Eide to Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu at the European Congress of Socialist Parties held in Brussels.

Because he is a main opposition leader, the CHP leader concludes that this remark that praises Turkey also praises the ruling party. For this reason, at the panel on the Arab Spring, he argues with the Norwegian minister at the event, saying, “Our leaders want to imitate the Arab leaders.” Acting more like a conservative politician than a socialist minister, the Norwegian minister drives Kılıçdaroğlu into a corner by saying, “A Turkey reconciled with its history and Muslim heritage is more European than the Westernization initiative based on Kemalist authoritarian methods.”

The Greek debt crisis and the fear of contagion in a number of European countries has resuscitated old controversies over the depth of the European integration and latent tensions that have been cumulating over the lifetime of the European Union.

Over the last months different scenarios have been suggested, from the disintegration of the monetary Union to the creation of a federal core of countries with tightly connected economic and fiscal policies. The recent developments seem to be giving the right to those who have been all along suggesting that the result of the current crisis will be more integration among some of the EU member states.

UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has a number of objectives including: attaining education for all; mobilising science knowledge and policy for sustainable development; addressing emerging social and ethical challenges; fostering cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue and a culture of peace; and building inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication.

It can now add state making to its list of objectives. As has been reported: "A state which doesn't officially exist was granted membership of a UN body." UNESCO voted 107 votes to 14 (with 52 abstentions) to admit Palestine as the 195th member state to U.N organisation. Because Palestine is not a member of the U.N. admission to UNESCO required a recommendation by the Organisation's Executive Board and a two thirds majority vote in favour by the General Conference of Member States present and voting (abstentions are not considered as votes). Australia voted with America (and 14 other countries) against Palestinian membership.

Every day that passes adds to the fraudulent image of what is called Western democracy.

Sarkozy and Merkel meet with Greece’s Prime Minister Papandreou at a G20 summit in Cannes.

Consider that the entire Western world is outraged that the Greek prime minister announced that he is going to permit the Greek people to decide their own fate instead of having it decided for them by a handful of banksters, politicians, and bureaucrats living it up at taxpayer expense at “talks” in the French resort of Cannes on the Mediterranean.

We all love gifts. We love the blessings that beautify our lives. We love our children, our spouses, our parents, our friends. We love our youth and we love our health. We love our homes, our cars, our money, our beauty. But what happens when a gift becomes more than just a gift? What happens when a want becomes a need, a favor becomes a dependency? What happens when a gift is no longer only that?

For a dozen years a diverse group of believers has convened monthly to find mutual understanding and respect – for their diverse faiths.

This group, the Christian-Muslim Dialogue, meets monthly to discuss issues between the two faiths. Sometimes the issues revolve around headline news stories, while other times the group simply discusses similarities and differences between the two religions. Though discussions typically focus on relations between Christians and Muslims, the meetings are open to anyone.

Leon Trotsky, the most prominent figure of the Russian Revolution of 1917 after Lenin, was sent to cover the Balkan War as a war correspondent by the Russian newspaper Kievskaya Misl. In the Fall of 1912, Trotsky entered the areas populated by Muslims after the retreat of the Ottoman armies and was shocked by the massacres:

"[T]he komitadjis (Bulgarian/Serbian rebels) began their work the moment the sky grew dark. They broke into Turkish and Albanian homes and did the same thing, time and again: Stole and slaughtered. Skopje had 60,000 inhabitants, half of whom were Albanians and Turks. Some of them had fled, but most of there were still there. And they were now victims to the nightly bloodbaths."

The Legend of Leyli and Majnun

Nizami, poet of the most famous version of "Leyli and Majnun."

"Leyli and Majnun" is an immortal love story sometimes compared to "Romeo and Juliet" though it predates Shakespeare in oral tradition by more than 1,000 years. Today, it is still one of the most popular epics of the Middle East and Central Asia among Arabs, Turks, Persians, Afghans, Tajiks, Kurds, Indians, Pakistanis, and, of course Azerbaijanis.

In his speech this week at the Reagan Library, New Jersey governor Chris Christie posited a concept he called "earned American exceptionalism," which seemed to favor influencing other countries through American example rather than assertive efforts to remake them in the American image. Christie said, "There is no better way to reinforce the likelihood that others in the world will opt for more open societies and economies than to demonstrate that our own system is working."

This could be a welcome departure from the kind of "nation-building" adventurism that George W. Bush pursued in Iraq and which, under Obama, was placed at the heart of the American mission in Afghanistan. But it still seems to commingle sentiments of American exceptionalism with the idea of the universality of American values.

By appealing to the notion of inter-ethnic rotation of senior government positions, Milorad Dodik has exploited and widened divisions between the Bosniaks and Croats, thereby further stymieing the formation of a state-level government.Just before Bosnia’s October 2010 election, I predicted that the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik would do everything he could after that election to frustrate formation of a new state government for as long as possible. My pessimistic forecast was proved all too right.