Europe

Azeri journalist Eynullah Fatullayev, who has been serving a variety of prison sentences since April of 2007, was given his freedom today in one of President Aliyev’s amnesties.  As readers of this blog are aware, the charges against Fatullayev had ranged from libel to inciting terror to tax evasion – and more recently, to drug […]

Protest rallies in Georgia, begun over the weekend in Tbilisi and Batumi, seem to be headed for violent confrontation today (Wednesday afternoon in the US, early Thursday morning in Tbilisi) after apparently failing to achieve the goals of their organizers or to attract widespread public support. It’s not that the latest opposition movement (called the […]

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 […]

Europe is trying to maintain its international rank and power not because of its latest successes, but because of tradition. Here is the idea emerging with the recent arrest of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Khan (also called DSK) concerning the appointment of a new IMF chief. The theme of this blog is not to discuss […]

EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, is not unaccustomed to criticism. A fresh wave of critique was recently dished out by the Belgium foreign minister Steven Vanackere. Ashton was attacked for her “silence” on important issues. Vanackere added that Ashton’s silence would be filled by other players (Germany, France), who Belgium would be obliged to […]

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 […]

Morgan Kelly, the reluctant hero of Michael Lewis’ tale of Gaelic misadventure and Irish banking woes in March’s Vanity Fair, had the leading op-ed in Ireland Sunday warning that by agreeing to a bailout, the Irish economy has actually doomed its economy. To recap, in 2009 the Irish government decided to nationalize four major banks […]

Azeri youth activist Jabbar Savalan was convicted last week (4 May) on charges of marijuana possession and sentenced to two and a half years in prison.  As readers of this blog may recall, Jabbar was arrested in February after calling for protest actions on Facebook and attending a youth conference in the city of Sumgayit.  […]

“The EU will have its voice in the General Assembly,” said President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy. For this first time of its history, the EU will be able to address the UN General Assembly (UNGA). By passing on May 3, 2011, the Resolution 65/276 on “Strengthening of the United Nations System: Participation […]

The outcry is global, the West made a strategic mistake by going to Libya. The humanitarian desire to protect civilians in Libya from their deadly dictator has shifted to a political desire of regime change. NATO and its allies are getting seriously bogged down in Libya raising several points. First, France is no longer the […]

Germany and Austria opened their labor markets for the EU class of 2004 over the weekend, the last EU nations to do so. However, based on press reports from Germany and Poland, there appear to be divergent views regarding how much labor will actually transfer. The Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung believes that any Pole seeking work […]

European leaders seem to ardent letter writers, after Sarkozy’s and Berlusconi’s co-missive to EU Commission President Barroso, the latter has now replied. In the case of the Franco-Italian letter dealing with a – supposed – immigration crisis caused by more than 20,000 recent arrivals from Tunisia, most observers focused on the proposal of a temporary […]