My gut tells me there’s a bit of inevitability about reforming the EU’s ridiculous farm subsidies, so it surprises me that Mikulas Dzurinda, Slovakia’s PM, is only the first of the 24 one of the first of the many EU leaders lined up against Britain to break ranks. ?I am for reforms,? Dzurinda declared.
Meanwhile Blair [...]

AP writes from Bratislava about how budget airlines are allowing middle-aged villagers from Central and Eastern Europe to get on an airplane for the first time. Presumably they will also allow British stag parties to enjoy piss-up weekends someplace other than Prague (or Ljubljana or Tallinn) for a change.
“British tourists can now discover Poland [...]

I’m crossposting something I originally wrote for my own blog because I realized it’s probably of far more interest to Fistful readers than to my own.
In March I wrote in Slate about Gerry Adams and the IRA, and the theory advanced by Ed Moloney (author of the excellent A Secret History of the IRA) [...]

Just when you thought the Czech Republic had finally turned into a normal, boring European country…
Prague blogger Doug Arellanes has re-capped the Czech PM apartment scandal story thus far, saving me the trouble. (Frankly Arellanes has told the story better than could have.) As he rightly says, the story “is taking on magical-realist tones.” [...]

A former US guard says he unwittingly gave Nazi leader Hermann G?ring the poison he used to commit suicide…. Story.

They say the Troubles are unlikely to return to Northern Ireland. They say the Irish Republican Army doesn?t have the option of returning to war. The IRA has the guns, the IRA has the men, the IRA has the capacity ? but they Just Won?t Do It.
In a post-Sept. 11 world, so the thinking [...]

The Satin Pajamas were a real hoot for me, frankly. Had the 1st Annual European Weblog Awards been submitted to a jury of ?experts,? there?s a general feeling among us Euros in the Fistful that a well-known site like Crooked Timber would have won. And frankly, that would have been boring as hell.
Instead, the [...]

Posted without comment, except for the heading:
Addressing his supporters earlier, Mr Yushchenko said “those people who will raise the issue of separatism will be held criminally responsible under the Ukrainian constitution”.
Story.

Glenn Reynolds made the following observation: “Well, New Europe has done pretty well on this front, with active and vigorous support [of the Ukrainian protestors] from Poland, Lithuania, and the Czechs. Old Europe, not so much.”
This is glib. Poland is indeed taking the lead in negotiating a solution — no surprise, since they’re right next [...]

It?s interesting that American conservative bloggers like Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg are touting the idea of making Vaclav Havel the UN Secretary General. I like the idea ? but for what I suspect are completely different reasons than the Instapundit crowd.

Read more… [...]