Europe

Most neutral observers of the Spanish political scene have the same reaction after looking at it for more than five minutes – “I give up”. Not only is the country very divided, the explanations of its divisions fit into no category. But neither are they strong enough the form a category of their own, a “Spanish Scenario…

World business and political systems are in a mess. America is run by a billionaire reality show host who builds golf courses and casino hotels. The European Union is about to have an economic breakdown after a cultural embolism. China still operates in a stasis of mutual distrust…

A global economic collapse has become unavoidable, said former chief economist of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) William White in response to the BIS’ quarterly report in September 2013. Experts forecast that a global economic collapse may occur, overnight, some time at the end of 2014 or in 2015. The fact that…

The policy of double standards and blatant hypocrisy of the European Union have led to what would have happened sooner or later – international terrorism striking back in the center of civilized world – Paris. On November 13, terrorists launched 7 separate attacks in the French capital, that claimed the lives of over 150 people. The attack in the Bataclan…

Around eight o’clock on November 8th, 1989, I stepped into a taxi at the Gare de Lyon in Paris carrying the first copies of a book I had written that included a plan for the reunification of Europe. I gave the driver my address, annoyed that he had the radio on. Suddenly, I heard the newscaster saying that the Berlin Wall had fallen! Before climbing up to my fifth…

After the usual weeks of negotiations, Portugal has a new government. It isn’t very new, being pretty much the same as the previous one. But that in itself is a newsworthy development. Antonio Costa’s Socialists lost the previous election, but due to the vagaries of parliamentary arithmetic ended up forming a minority…

Another day; another terrorist attack: it seems that every day I wake up at the minute there is a new terrorist attack that has shook the European continent, with France being the scene of frequent attacks over the past 19 months. The most recent attack in France (at the time of writing anyway) was on a church…

The US is intensifying its efforts to replace Russia as one of the EU’s largest energy suppliers, hoping to provide gas from the US itself to Europe, in addition to exploring regional players as possible suppliers. As Sputnik reported in an article titled: US will be Able to Supply Gas to Ukraine in Two Years…

‘With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half’…Otto von Bismark, Prussian statesman Nord Stream 2 got the green flag from the Danish government to connect with the landing station at Lubmin, Germany. The decision was melodramatic from the Danes, with a route just outside its territorial waters…

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wharton, Capote, Mann, Kafka, Svevo, Hesse, turn over in your graves! The cosmopolitan Europe of Paris, Vienna and Prague only managed to come together briefly over your tombs! Its thirty-some nations, each with their own language, quarrels and elephantine historical memories, will soon be gone, destroyed neither by Russian tanks…

The role that Turkey keeps playing on the geopolitical stage hasn’t changed much in the last couple of centuries. Being most eastward located European state and most westward located Asian state, it remains an important bridge between the two parts of Eurasia, just like Russia. However, those powers that would aspire to reach the hegemonic status have…