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 . '/' . substr('9781888996821',-6,3) . '/' . '9781888996821' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Chris Abani
$14.20
 . '/' . substr('9780805083385',-6,3) . '/' . '9780805083385' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Michael Dirda
$22
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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The logic of global capitalism is everywhere. New investigations are showing that the same Wall Street tactics—and companies—that ushered our own economy to economic collapse have emerged to exacerbate Greece’s current financial crisis.
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Flickr / max-sham
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“Weird” Viktor Yanukovich has won the Ukrainian presidency, exit polls indicate, shifting power in the former Soviet republic to a more pro-Kremlin position after five years of “Orange Revolution” political fervor.
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Human rights organizations are on the offensive as groups mobilize pressure against Ireland’s ban on abortion, accusing the government of a deliberate campaign of misinformation and exposing women to undue risk by forcing them to travel abroad for abortions.
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abcnews.go.com/WN/DianeSawyer/
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday to loosen corporate restrictions on campaign finance didn’t sit well with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an international human rights coalition of 56 European nations, but somehow we doubt that the top court’s conservative justices are going to lose sleep over that particular critique.
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A new book by Michael Goldfarb grapples with the fate of a people caught between hope and history.
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Flickr / A Outra Vouz
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“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away”—T. Waits (1990). So goes the news that Portugal has become the sixth European nation to pass a law allowing same-sex marriage, though parliament rejected proposals to let gay couples adopt children.
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Flickr / Alessio85
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Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini made this observation on the BBC’s “Newshour” program: “If we were in America, where madmen carry guns, [Silvio] Berlusconi would be dead. We are in Italy. Madmen carry souvenir replica of the Duomo.”
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Europeans are coming to terms with the fact that President Barack Obama is not a miracle worker, and with the reality that everything he does is not magic.
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From the BBC: “Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been hit in the face and knocked to the ground after a political rally in Milan.” Update: Video
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CERN
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Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider buried deep beneath the Swiss-French border made history Monday, smashing two proton beams traveling at near light speed into each other. The LHC, also known as the big bang machine, is the largest machine on Earth and ... (continued)
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Flickr / SuperFantastic
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After surviving a car wreck in 1983 at the age of 20, Rom Houben was written off as a vegetable. He was actually perfectly alert. The Belgian would spend the next 23 years in a private hell until doctors finally discovered ... (continued)
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Christopher Caldwell explores in his recent book what he terms Islam’s “adversary culture” now challenging Europe’s own sense of historical identity.
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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In a surprising last-minute move, Tony Blair has dropped out of the race for the European Council’s presidency, a position for which he was an early favorite.
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defenselink.mil
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A year after declaring independence from Serbia, Kosovo has received good marks from European monitors for its first round of local elections, which could lead to wider recognition and acceptance of its newly established status in the international community.
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By William Pfaff — The international conversation since the Second World War tended to be something of an American monologue, but that’s changing now that the United States is widely perceived as a large part of the current world problem.
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U.S. Marine Corps / Sgt. Pete Thibodeau
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As President Barack Obama considers whether to send more American forces to fight in Afghanistan, it’s looking as if European countries are unlikely to commit more of their own troops to the cause, according to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
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White House Archive / Paul Morse
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The former British prime minister took a hit after France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel agreed over dinner at the Élysée Palace (oh to be a fly on that wall) that the first president of the European Council ought to be more of a right-winger. (continued)
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While America’s super rich are coping with bailouts and bonus envy, a group of well-to-do Germans, led by a brewery heir, has delivered a petition demanding a 5 percent wealth tax—on themselves. Imagine if Pete Coors demanded that the government spend more of his money on “ecology, education and social justice.”
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U.S. Army / Spc. Tia P. Sokimson
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By William Pfaff — European allies have tired of America’s cries of “wolf! wolf!” in Iraq (yesterday), Afghanistan (today), and (I fear) Pakistan or Somalia or Kashmir tomorrow.
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telegraph.co.uk
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It’s not clear whether the editors of Newsweek believe they hold any diplomatic power, but they’ve gone ahead and told Italy to “dump” its scandal magnet of a prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, in the magazine’s European edition this week. Let’s see whether Time can top this.
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Flickr / Hellgasms!
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This isn’t going to sound all that shocking, but remember that this country is still wrapping its head around evolution: Criminalizing abortion does not reduce the number of abortions; it reduces the number of safe abortions. Contraception, however, does reduce abortions, according to an epic study of 197 countries.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — The world hungers for great men to liberate it from grief. They rarely arrive, and even more rarely are they appreciated at the time for what they are.
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eetd.lbl.gov
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He’s not a year into his presidency yet, and when he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize that he just won, President Barack Obama hadn’t even occupied the White House for two full weeks. So, how are we to make sense of his surprise victory? The New York Times rounded up a bunch of ... well, learned white guys to comment on Obama’s and other U.S. leaders’ Nobel nods.
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World Economic Forum
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If all goes according to plan, the European Union will soon have a new honcho, and it looks as if the former British prime minister is the front-runner. But the bloom is definitely off the rose, Tony Blair having been such a Bush lappie during the Iraq war. Even in view of the former PM’s pro-war stance, Europe’s conservatives are the ones miffed at the idea of Blair possibly becoming the “president of Europe.”
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Wikimedia Commons / Agência Brasil
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Italy’s colorful prime minister is in a heap of legal trouble now that the country’s high court has stripped him of immunity. Despite facing charges of corruption, bribery, tax evasion and fraud, Silvio Berlusconi stayed in character, saying, “The trials against me are a farce. Viva Italia and Viva Berlusconi!”
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ul.ie
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Sixteen months after rejecting the same treaty, voters in Ireland have emphatically accepted the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty—an agreement that gives more power to the European Parliament and creates the position of the president of the European Council.
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By William Pfaff — While the Republican leadership in the United States would have people believe that the country is being remorselessly driven to the far left under Barack Obama, European voters are moving toward the right.
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zimbio.com
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German election exit polls are showing that reigning Chancellor Angela Merkel is headed for a second term, with her conservative bloc collecting more than a third of the national vote.
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U.S. Navy
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Add this to the oft-forgotten list of things progressives can celebrate about the president: Obama’s decision to postpone the deployment of a missile shield in Eastern Europe has possibly averted a new arms race with Russia.
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Newsday
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As some politicians in the U.S. continue to get their gender-respective panties/underwear in a bunch over government spending to help people, “conservative” Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to “save the human race” from global warming with a carbon tax to help cut fossil fuel usage in France.
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aids-is-a-mass-murderer.com
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Invoking the notorious images of dictators like Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein as part of an AIDS-awareness ad series constitutes a serious gamble at best—and a deeply misguided move at worst, according to critics of the new “AIDS Is a Mass-Murderer” European campaign conjured up by a Hamburg advertising firm.
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womenonwaves.org
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After 10 years, the Dutch government may end the voyages of Women on Waves, a flotilla of abortion ambassadors who sail information and pills to countries that ban the practice. Originally designed as a floating clinic, “The ship is [now] a symbol, more than anything,” the group’s founder told Global Post.
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Flickr / Michell Zappa
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The world’s second-largest economy is back in the black. Japan’s economic growth is positive for the first time in over a year, beating expectations. The good news comes as the economies of Germany and France are also growing and China is in full boom. Kanpai!
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Flickr / showbizsuperstar
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In this topsy-turvy world it seems one’s proximity to full-blown communism is directly proportional to one’s success in capitalism. Take Red China’s explosive economic growth, or the unexpected success of semi-socialist Germany and France, which just bid auf Wiedersehen and adieu to the recession.
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Flickr / tastybit
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We still don’t know exactly why bees are dying in massive numbers, with potentially devastating effect on larger ecosystems, but honey-loving hipsters around the world are taking to their rooftops to help stem the tide.
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AP / Sang Tan
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Tony Blair has apparently set his sights across the English Channel, as he is a contender to become the first president of the European Union. While he has yet to officially announce his candidacy, the British government has already declared its support for Blair, and he is seen as a front-runner for the position.
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AP photo / Yves Logghe
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The world saw two major elections on Sunday—one on a continental scale, the other much smaller but no less talked about. The European Parliament will tilt further to the right after an election with near record-low turnout. In Lebanon, meanwhile, it appears that the U.S.-backed governing coalition will survive a strong effort by Hezbollah to win a majority.
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World Economic Forum
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U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lost three members of his Cabinet in three days, adding to a heap of political casualties that originally grew out of an expense claims scandal. The latest dropout, James Purnell, has called on his former boss to “stand aside to give our party a fighting chance. ... ”
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Flickr / leafbug
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A new study suggests that the number of children in Europe diagnosed with diabetes will double by 2020. After examining tens of thousands of cases, researchers said the cause of the increase remains largely unknown.
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By William Pfaff — The basic question is whether the United States wishes to treat Russia as a permanent enemy, even if it is not. The result of treating states as enemies is that sooner or later they become them.
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enjoyfrance.com
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By William Pfaff — There is an important current in conservative U.S. opinion that believes Western Europe to be under something like a siege, or a potential siege, by its large Muslim immigrant population. I should actually say that it’s not just American conservatives, although they write alarmed books about the impending Muslim domination of Europe, and the collapse of European Christianity and identity. They fear the Decline of the West.
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By William Pfaff — If Obama had wanted to give the NATO allies prudent advice about how to avoid terrorist attacks, he should have told them to have nothing to do with the American war on terror, even if it is now under Obama management.
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AP photo / Joel Ryan
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Following a private audience with the queen of England, President Obama joined a reception and dinner with other world leaders from the G-20 summit. What happens when you get Silvio Berlusconi, Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Prince Charles and J.K. Rowling in a room? More wine, please.
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Mike Keefe, The Denver Post —
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With military personnel deployed in 150 countries, Bill Maher says bringing the troops home from Iraq is only the tip of the iceberg. “Can you imagine if there were 20,000 armed Guatemalans on a base in San Bernardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber.”
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Senat RP / Polish Senate
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Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek is currently the EU’s rotating president and, like a drunken sailor on karaoke night, he’s letting everyone know what’s on his mind. On President Obama’s economic policies, for example, he declared: “All of these steps, these combinations and permanency, is the road to hell.”
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AP photo / Elizabeth Dalziel
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By Scott Ritter — Forget about terrorism for a moment. The potential catastrophe that climate change could unleash on America makes every other national security crisis pale in comparison. President Obama cannot secure the homeland without addressing this global emergency.
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Susan Jacoby’s lucid new book reminds us that the Hiss case offered a vengeful postwar right a golden opportunity to tar the New Deal as a crypto-communist conspiracy—and why it still matters.
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By William Pfaff — NATO today, approaching its 60th birthday, faces the prospect of sending home all of its units not willing to fight in Afghanistan under the American flag. They will go home to “defend” Europe. From whom?
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