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.

Just a short linkdump post. Newsweek has an interesting opinion piece by Fareed Zakaria entitled The Rise of the Rest that ties in nicely with my previous post Uncomfortable thoughts and philosophy. Zakaria is much more positive about the emergence of new global powers, even when he understands the transition engenders some degree of anxiety:
American [...]

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 [...]

It is a good thing I am not a journalist, since I often forget to write down the source of interesting comments I hear on, for instance, television. Come to think of it, this makes me a lousy blogger too. Anyway, recently my beloved Arte had an item on India as an emergent world [...]

The International Monetary Fund has released a staff analysis of economic competitiveness in the southern Euro area — France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.  It’s a fairly technical document – written as a series of papers with a brief overview chapter at the start, which probably means that many of its messages will be missed.  But [...]

On April 24, nine EU commissioners flew into Beijing, where according to Der Spiegel their mission will be to balance Tibet and trade. What this seems to amount to in practice is Peter Mandelson calling on the Chinese government to unequivocally come out against the wave of boycotts promoted by the fenqing and targeted primarily [...]

Not too long ago, Doug Muir wrote about why Nagorno-Karabakh may be coming soon to a front page near you. Back in the mid-1990s, I wrote something much longer on the conflict there. (PDF, ca. 500K) Money quote:
Two of the least useful questions for consideration of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh are “Who’s right?” and “When [...]