Europe

Vladimir Putin was at a ceremony a few days ago at which he pressed the button that began the process of delivering natural gas to Germany through the Nord Stream pipeline. According to Gazprom, Nord Stream is the first direct link between Russia and the European gas transmission system. It runs under the Baltic Sea, […]

Azerbaijani courts have convicted and sentenced seven defendants in cases relating to protests in April of this year and the parliamentary elections last November. Six defendants (Babek Hasanov, Zulfugar Eyvazov, Elshan Hasanov, Arif Alishli, Elnur Israfilov and Sahib Karimov) in Baku were convicted of charges of “organizing actions resulting in the violation of public order […]

Chief of Staff General Işık Koşaner and all of the force commanders of the Turkish Armed Forces resigned by 18:00 EET today (July 29, 2011). This is considered as the biggest protest in Turkish republican military history and the first time that the Chief of Staff has resigned together with the commanders of the navy […]

As news of the horrific attack in Norway ticked in, we drew our conclusions regarding the perpetrator’s motives and background. The media were quick to point out that Norway contributes to the coalition forces in Afghanistan and Libya, and that Norwegian newspapers had reprinted the Muhammad caricatures that first appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands […]

Unemployment at 42 percent. A “negative” credit rating from Moody’s. Widespread corruption. And now without a government for nine months. Nearly 16 years after Dayton, the New York Times reports that the country is facing its worst crisis since the war. [Bosnia Flounders as Powers Argue: NYTimes]

In many places — here for instance — news outlets have conflated protests against austerity in Greece with European-wide discontent. This is a mistake. There is discontent in Europe, but what people are unhappy about differs from country to country. More importantly, the problems in these countries, even those on the debt-plagued periphery, do not […]

The premise of the whole Greek bailout exercise has rested on its economy improving. So far, it has not: Since the country’s first bailout last spring, unemployment has risen sharply and GDP ground to a halt. So after a year of  bailout roulette, the head of Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, said Sunday what […]

Daniel Drezner seems dumbfounded by the German government’s actions on both the eurozone bailout and nuclear energy and proposes a Merkel Algorithm as the explanation: 1)  A problem festers; 2)  Dither and do nothing; 3)  Public opinion polls drop; 4)  Let things fester some more; 5)  Lose an election somewhere; 6)  Announce new policy that […]

Imagine if tens of thousands of young Americans marched on The Mall to protest the Electoral College, the appointment of Supreme Court justices and the two-party system because they suddenly decided these institutions were not democratic enough. Something roughly equivalent to that is now taking place in Spain. While the country’s unemployment rate and general […]

Answer: $1.2 billion per year. That is how much Serbia’s failure to capture the man who is accused of orchestrating the massacre at Srebrenica has cost the country in lost investment, according to government estimates. As many have noted, his arrest should now pave the way for Serbian admission to the EU (though this process […]

It was all but certain that Dominique Strauss-Kahn planned to step down from the IMF this summer to declare his candidacy for president in next spring’s elections. It was also all but certain he would emerge as the Socialist frontrunner against incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. Now that these assumptions have been mooted,  the Socialist party has […]

As France and the world continues to absorb the developments surrounding IMF Director and shadow 2012 presidential frontrunner Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest for sexual assault, Arret sur images, a French website, brings to light some damning evidence involving a previous instance of sexual violence that was little-reported in certain parts of the French media when it […]