Various things about Transnistria that didn’t fit in the previous post. If you don’t find this sort of thing interesting, don’t hit that link.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

1) Transnistria is [...]

Quietly, there seems to be a tiny crisis affecting European politics. For a start, there’s the rocambolesque imbroglio making Belgium a generic cynosure. It would be hard to do better than to point again to Crooked Timber, although it’s worth pointing out that Jean Quatremer is doing a good job too. I especially like the [...]

Physics Today has a very interesting, and refreshing, online article (hat tip Sargasso) on Islam and science that ties in neatly with AFOE’s review of Olivier Roy’s latest book Secularism confronts Islam. The article is written by Pervez Hoodbhoy, nuclear physics professor at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. As usual, I shall give our [...]

The German newspaper whose web site is now marginally better organized reports that Germany will offer a legal means to regularize the residence status of people who have lived in the country for several years without having, shall we say, dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s at the local immigration office. State [...]

As long as they’re in Spain, that is..
Less snarkily, the article asks the very important question whether this is an answer to the problem of aging populations, and contrasts Spain with Denmark and Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign. And it even tackles Edward Hugh’s concerns that the Spanish construction boom may pop with unpredicted consequences.
Meanwhile, [...]

Richard Corbett MEP directs us to this BBC report on Spain’s rash of political parties dominated by immigrants from other European countries, especially Germany and Britain. In one municipality, San Fulgencio, there are some three such parties, including one run by a former policeman that declares its opposition to immigration.
This immediately raises an interesting question [...]

Just back from a trip to France, where this quote in a book on the history of Libé struck me:
Le Tiers-Monde commence en banlieue!
The Third World begins in the suburbs, in other words. This was 1972 or thereabouts, and it was a slogan of the very far Left.
Curiously, the same notion is still [...]

By pure coincidence, next month brings not one but two major turning points for Serbia.
First, there’s the Ahtisaari plan for Kosovo. As we all know, the plan would give Kosovo de facto independence. On one hand, that’s just recognizing reality on the ground; 90% of Kosovo’s population wants nothing to do with Serbia, [...]

Somebody is worried that Slobodan Milosevic might escape from death. And so, they dug up his corpse and drove a stake through his heart.
Seriously. They really did it.
One might also want to read this.

Remember that book by Matthias Matussek we fisked some time ago? Well, a telling quote from it was that Weltverbesserungsmassnahmen - measures to improve the world - were supposedly a very German notion. I’m not sure about this - I suspect they are more a (very broadly) left-wing notion, although one that must include the [...]