Strolling back home from the Christmas Market last night, we noticed bouncy pop music and an enthusiastic crowd in front of the Old Opera House. As we came closer, we could see the musicians, jamming on electric guitar and synthesiser. As rockers, they were (you will pardon the expression, given what follows) a little unorthodox. [...]

… or maybe ‘black paint’? Acouple of days ago, my sister told me she had a topic I could write about on afoe. It had occured to her that all continental names, except Europe, start with an ‘a’, and she wondered why that might be the case. A quick check at wikipedia revealed that her [...]

In light of the British obsession with all things related to the second world war and, especially, Nazism - the British history curriculum focusing on the NS period of German history has repeatedly been named a prime cause for “Kraut bashing” in the British tabloids - today’s Independent features an interesting article about an opinion [...]

Some orange in Brussels.About a week ago, I wondered what the chances were for an explosion when hundreds of thousands of people are smoking at a gas station. Unfortunately, now their leaders seem to have begun fooling around with the gas pump handles in truly ‘zoolanderesque’ manner.
More and more commentators seem to be afraid about [...]

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… [...]

Oh my, they actually did it.
Last Night, the Speaker of the Commons, Michael Martin, invoked the (1949)

1944-45. Nazis arm Soviet POWs who are promising to topple Stalin and who then turn around and liberate Prague from the Nazis, only to be turned over to the Soviets after the war ends. Nothing is as simple as it seems.
Vlasov’s forgotten army
Communists buried legacy of Soviet General Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov and his battalion of [...]

The Independent has an interesting article today entitled ‘Why will a quarter of Spain be supporting England tonight?’ (for those of you who aren’t aware, there’s an international football friendly tonight between Spain and England in Madrid) which looks at how the Spanish national football team is not supported by many of the people of [...]

Brad DeLong agrees with Daniel Drezner that, in a time in which the world’s news agenda is once again dominated by hatred and violence, it is important to remember that keeping up the hope for a peaceful future is not necessarily in vain.
Let us give thanks that the most brutal and blood-soaked border in the [...]

I suspect that I’m in a minority of AFOE’s writers and readers in that I actually saw the Berlin Wall in place pre-1989. We were on a school trip to Germany in 1987 and had actually been given permission to travel to West Berlin, so we naturally went to see the Wall. Strangely, though, it’s [...]