Cyfarchion a’r dydd Gwyl Dewi ein nawdd Sant

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Today is Saint David’s day, or Dewi Sant, so greetings to you all everywhere. As you know I am not a person with nationalist sentiment, but a good excuse for a celebration is always fine with me. One of my cousins, she must be in her seventies now, wrote to remind me:

“Greetings to you all on Saint David’s Day. Cyfarchion a’r dydd Gwyl Dewi ein nawdd Sant.

I hope you are all well. My Daffodils are out in the garden and I will wear my Daffodil and enjoy leeks – not from my garden! I am having a holiday on 1 March and so are many others inspite of Mr. Blair, who will not grant us a holiday. We will soon wear him down as the demand for a Welsh National Holiday is getting stronger every year.”

So onwards and upwards to the coalition of the willing, that’s what I say!

My latest harebrained idea

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A Few Euros More is not quite on hiatus, but clearly on the backburner right now. I thought I’d use this opportunity to do a little experiment. Anyone who feels like it is invited to post on AFEM this week. Just drop me a line at editors at fistfulofeuros.eu and I will give you access to the blog. Yes, you heard me, anyone who asks gets to post, until we tire of you.

My latest harebrained idea

Posted on by

A Few Euros More is not quite on hiatus, but clearly on the backburner right now. I thought I’d use this opportunity to do a little experiment. Anyone who feels like it is invited to post on AFEM this week. Just drop me a line at editors at fistfulofeuros.eu and I will give you access to the blog. Yes, you heard me, anyone who asks gets to post, until we tire of you.

Saving The Euro

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Do you want to save the Euro? Well one idea for how to do it has been proposed by University of Missouri-St Louis history professor John Gillingham: reissuing the 12 national currencies that were replaced with just one, while at the same time retaining the euro as a parallel currency that finds its market value in competition to reissued national currencies (podcast here).
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Bringing Down Europe’s Last Ex-Soviet Dictator

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Long NYT magazine piece on the Belorussian opposition.

“We go into these elections not because we believe in their fairness, but because this is a chance to go to the people, to conduct a campaign door to door,” Milinkevich explained through an interpreter. “I will not say that at every door people will become less fearful immediately. But very many people, when they see others who are not afraid, who dare to tell the truth, they will start to have more courage.” For now, many people react uneasily when they encounter him, as if he were an apparition. In the consciousness of a people saturated with state propaganda and ideology, he appears as the shadowy leader of a revolutionary cadre financed by big powers abroad and committed to the overthrow of the government.

Serbia to be first nation charged with genocide

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Serbia will come under intense international scrutiny today as it becomes the first nation to defend genocide charges, while separately facing censure for failing to surrender war crimes suspects.

Belgrade will be accused at the International Court of Justice of sponsoring ethnic cleansing in the 1990s which led to the worst massacres on European soil since the Second World War. Previously, only individuals have been charged with genocide, the most serious war crime.

Oh We Are The Champions

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Yes we are really, aren’t we. Especially if we are called Arcelor, or Danone, or Endesa, or Eni, or Enel, or Banca Antonveneta or Pekao. And what these champions have in common, and it is this which sets them so much apart from their footballing equivalents, is not the ability to win anything, but rather their capacity to lose, especially in a take-over battle from a foreign pretender. And just for this very reason it is, it seems, ok for you to include the referee in your line-up. Indeed such is the sporting prowess of these ‘champions’ that it is deemed that what they are most in need of is not the cold harsh wind of competition, but rather protection, and indeed protectionism, anything rather than face outright competition from would-be global rivals. A rare breed of champions these.

I think before I go further, I would like to draw attention to one idea which holds us all together here at Afoe:

“Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels. – H.A.L. Fisher”
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The Colour of Steel

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First of all many thanks to the kind folk of Afoe offering me the possibility of expressing my views on some European reactions to the Mittal Steel bid for the European steel giant Arcelor. By now most of you must have heard about this sitation. Mittal Steel is the world’s largest steelmaker and was founded (and is still currently run) by the Indian-born steel maker Lakshmi Nivas Mittal, the third richest man in the world.
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