Tobias was apparently too modest to announce it here so I’ll do it for him: Almost A Diary is back online after a month of hosting troubles.
The new address is http://almostadiary.baldingwithgrace.de

Tip of the blog cap to David, who points out that Der Spiegel believes a blackout in part of the United States is a sign of a superpower at the edge of chaos, while a blackout across almost all of Italy (those lucky Sardinians!) is a sign of trees falling in a forest.

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It seemed like a good idea, but it just didn’t work out that way…
Belgian War Crimes Law Undone by Its Global Reach
Cases Against Political Figures Sparked Crises
Belgium decides that not every nut with an ax to grind should be able to sharpen it in the Belgian justice system. That’s just as well.

[Nota Bene: Due to the deeply inane nature of JavaScript, clicking the "continue reading" link may not display images linked to posts. It doesn't work for me in Mozilla or IE. If you click on the permalink, you will see all the content.]
Reader Christophe Kotowski sends a link to today’s International Herald-Tribune (a.k.a. [...]

A shameless plug:
The Center for Applied Policy Research, a think tank attached to the University of Munich does good work on the nuts and bolts of a large number of EU issues. In particular, their Bertelsmann Group for Policy Research will be covering the IGC as thoroughly as it covered the Convention and the previous [...]

Via Crooked Timber and Mark Kleinman, I’ve just read this utterly stupid column from Forbes:
Europe’s Utopian Hangover
The EU is built on a fantasy–that men and women can do less and less work, have longer and longer holidays and retire at an earlier age, while having their income, in real terms, and their standard of living [...]

This was just too perfect not to pass along:
Rosbalt
Opinion: Europe Is Too Weak to Be Russia’s Ally
MOSCOW, September 25. ‘The US and Russian presidents have an opportunity to
take a big step towards closer bilateral integration,’ Sergei Karaganov,
president of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, told a Rosbalt
correspondent yesterday. He suggested that they may even [...]

Today’s Le Monde points out the odd dichotomy in American policy towards “Old Europe.” It seems that the US has been playing nice with Germany and giving the French government the cold shoulder.

Read more… or Read more right here… »
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Well, I didn’t generate too much controversy yesterday, so let’s see if this one is a runner. Prodi is going to have a face to face meeting with members of the European Parliament to try and explain how the Eurostat mess was allowed to happen. According to the FT story Prodi is ‘attempting to [...]

And before anyone suggest it, this Russian advert is not going to be the new Fistful of Euros logo.
Any Russian speakers who can say what the text in the advert means?