We’ve occasionally played with the idea of the EU as the Borg, a new kind of political entity whose chief means of power is membership in its system of technocratic cooperation. The paradigm of this is, of course, the successful absorption of the Mediterranean ex-dictatorships and the economic development of the poor periphery - not [...]

Over at the German-speaking version of ScienceBlogs, they’re talking about a referendum (and nobody’s going to sing a song with that as the refrain), or rather a whole package of them. Switzerland famously has a lot of referendums, but this one is interesting because it points up the fundamental tension between democracy and the republic.
So [...]

Stupider than you can imagine. Evidence, the map over at this fine post from Sadly, No!. Read the whole thing, but as well as introducing the best title for a blog post ever, they’ve caught “Gates Of Vienna” pretending that in the future, Europe will be divided into Islamic states (with incredibly silly names), Russian [...]

For me, the interesting bit in this Jean Quatremer story about the race to be the first EU president is right at the end.
On sait simplement qu’il y a des « négociations secrètes » sur le sujet avec Londres : elles porteraient sur la création d’une force aéronavale commune et la surveillance de l’espace européen [...]

Just a note on the Georgian/Abkhaz/Russian situation: the Abkhazians claim to have destroyed another drone, with a formidable Russian SAM system (NATO = SA-11). (H/T: Wired.) If the Russians have really given them one of these or possibly even these, they must mean it.

The American continent is about to get its first high-speed train. Where?
Argentina.
Argentina on Tuesday signed a contract with a consortium led by Alstom of France to build the first high-speed train in the Americas, linking Buenos Aires with the cities of Rosario and Córdoba in three hours, nearly a fifth of the current journey time.
Patrick [...]

The Georgians may have lost two more UAVs in the escalating crisis between them, Abkhazia, and Russia (in so far as the latter two are distinct). At least, the Abkhaz side is claiming that their “anti-aircraft forces” shot down two drones, presumably Georgian ones; the Georgians deny it, which is interesting because they were keen [...]

Jason Burke of the Observer reports that the next few days are expected to bring the indictment of people involved in Ergenekon. Ergenekon? Well, if you read AFOE you’ll already know that Ergenekon is a secret extreme-right network of influence within the Turkish elite, suspected of being behind a succession of acts of violence, which [...]

This post reminded me a lot of Vienna University in 2001-2002; I was there as a SOCRATES student, still actually a member of the Labour Party, while the strange times we live in began. I also first encountered the word “blog” around about then, and indeed visited the Blogger front page, but for some reason [...]

One of Nicolas Sarkozy’s worse ideas is the retention de securite, a change to the law that would allow for prisoners who complete their sentences to not be released if the government thought they were of “particular dangerousness” - this being an executive decision and hence very likely to be taken for reasons of low [...]