So the Turkish government indicted 86 people earlier this week for various nefarious plots involving Ergenekon, the secret far-right secular nationalist group linked to the military.
The timing of this is sort of interesting, since Turkey’s Supreme Court (which is dominated by secularists) is expected to deliver a decision soon proclaiming the ruling AKP party unconstitutional. [...]

An interesting post at Language Log, about the position of minority languages/dialects in France. Traditionally, France before the Revolution was more of a geographical expression than a state in the modern sense, to adapt the famous phrase about pre-Bismarckian Germany. Highly diverse regions, with little in common except allegiance to a distant Parisian king; the [...]

Very unhappy article in the Guardian today about the Roma situation in Italy:

Last week, Silvio Berlusconi’s new rightwing Italian administration announced plans to carry out a national registration of all the country’s estimated 150,000 Gypsies - Roma and Sinti people - whether Italian-born or migrants. Interior minister and leading light of the xenophobic Northern League, [...]

It’s getting harder to attach much meaning to G8 theatrics.  After George Bush and Dmitry Medvedev did their smiles for the cameras, it’s been one hot button after another in the US-Russia relationship.  Condi Rice in Europe first to confirm the deal on an anti Photoshopped Iranian missile radar system in the Czech Republic and [...]

Notwithstanding the Lisbon holdup, the European Union today confirmed the capacity of selected aspects of the project to move forward unhindered as the Commission and Council agreed on a January 2009 entry date of Slovakia to the eurozone.  The crown will convert to euros at 30.126 to 1 — which is the current rate, although [...]

It took just 57 days, which by Serbian standards is pretty quick. It’s a strange beast, with Milosevic’s old Socialist party riding shotgun on a coalition of pro-Western liberals and technocrats, but it’s actually less insane than what they had before. In order to make it work, they had to pass a Law [...]

Some European MPs sure love to control everything, as Alex’ post Horrible European Surveillance Proposals already demonstrated. It may be old news to some of you, but check out this motion for a European Parliament resolution (pdf) by Estonian MEP Marianne Mikko entitled Draft report on concentration and pluralism in the media in the European [...]

About halfway through this. It’s a history of Europe, 1945 - 2005, and it’s a great roach-killing doorstop of a thing.
It’s good, though. And it’s easy to read in installments of 10 or 15 minutes at a time, which is important for me at this time in my life (small children).
I [...]

What fuckery is this? It looks like the French government, having failed to impose an awful record-industry inspired snooping act at home, is trying to policy-launder it through the European Union. The so-called “3 strikes” law foresaw that ISPs would be required to cut off service to anyone who was found downloading or distributing copyrighted [...]

Following up to my earlier post, some discussion of the international reaction to Kosovar independence.
At the moment, 43 countries have recognized Kosovo’s independence. (I’m defining “country” here as “member of the UN General Assembly. Sorry, Taiwan.) Since the UNGA has 192 members, that means that more than three quarters of the world’s [...]