Yesterday was regional elections day in France. France has not traditionally had any strong local government structure - one of the first acts of the revolution was the abolition of the old provinces and their replacement with purely administrative “departments.” However, the last 20 years have seen radical changes in the way French [...]

Early Monday morning, Israeli forces killed Hamas’ spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Here’s some early coverage of this important development from Reuters, AP, and Haaretz.

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In the Herald Tribune:
March 11 forced Europeans to confront a tragic reality, which many of them had refused to see for too long: They too are at war, without any exceptions - both “new Europe” and “old Europe.” Islamic fundamentalism is at war against democracies, irrespective of their stand toward Washington. It is liberal democracy [...]

Harry’s Place is running a Do Something for Iraq campaign to promote ‘campaigns, projects and charities that are directly helping Iraqi people’

Juliana, former Queen of the Netherlands, has died aged 94

Recently, Samuel Huntington laid out his reasons for being afraid of Mexican immigrants to the US in an essay in Foreign Policy. You should read it. But even more importantly, make sure to read our AFOE co-editor Scott Martens’ most excellent three part (one, two, three) point by point refutation of Mr Huntington’s effort over [...]

The emergency meeting of EU interior ministers today has recommended that next week’s heads of government meeting appoint an EU anti-terrorism ‘czar’, but there will not be a centralized ‘European Intelligence Agency’

I am normally a pretty staunch supporter of privatisation. I just provide the double pronged caveat: where it is well thought out, and where it makes sense. Juan Cole has a contract tender specification posted which for me defies all reasonable explanation. It is for a private contract force to protect the Green [...]

According to the people who voted in the Bloggytm category “best European weblog”, the best one is Textism. The four runner-ups are, in order of appearance on the award’s website - Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent, Open Brackets, Giornale Nuovo, Chocolate & Zucchini. The overall winner is, by the way, BoingBoing, the directory of wonderful [...]