Henry of Crooked Timber, whom I know from way back, is in Ireland and has written up how the country’s referendum on the Lisbon Treaty looks the day before voting. There’s also a more academic version, for those inclined.
I hope that it will be a moot point, but I’m curious about how things would work [...]

Sadly, No reads Anne Applebaum so you don’t have to. Hijinks ensue.

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Quoth Clif:
What people on the street in Poland (or elsewhere) think of Obama because he’s black isn’t [...]

To Desmond McGrath, adding his expertise, wit and wisdom to the AFOE mix as a guest writer for the next three weeks. Desmond is based in Budapest, Hungary, so we are getting a few forints’ worth along with all of our euros. If we’re really lucky, he’ll explain the wonders of the double-long vowel and [...]

Perhaps not “While Europe Slept”, but can we have a little more attention to what’s going on in Italy? As well as the fascist saluting business, and the is-he-joking-is-he-serious threats of violence, we’re seeing gypsy camps being set on fire by thugs, whose behaviour is being excused by the Northern League on grounds that the [...]

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 [...]

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.

In what seems like incredible clumsiness on someone’s part, the Culloden hotel (outside Belfast) got a request from Northern Ireland’s regional development agency which was interpreted as calling for the hotel’s minority staff to keep a low profile during meetings of a big foreign investment conference later this week –

[...]

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 [...]