On pirates and Nazis

Today a group of German lawyers arrived in Kenya, where they will attempt to defend several Somali pirates being held there for attacking a German ship earlier this month. With a new pirate attack happening nearly every day off the eastern coast of Africa, the coverage has skewed towards tales of capturing these guys, not who will defend them in court. I wrote a piece about this German defense team, which appeared recently in the Christian Science Monitor.

Also in the Monitor recently I write on John Demjanjuk, 89, currently fighting deportation to Germany on the grounds that he was a former Nazi SS guard responsible for the death of some 30,000 Jews.

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Essay on Czech EU presidency in Prague Post

If you're following the G-20 summit in London, you'd be forgiven for assuming there are only four major European powers present: Germany, France, Italy and the UK. But in fact, the whole of the European Union is in the British capital, under the representation of the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

The major focus of the G-20, of course, is whether global powers can somehow toss aside their differences and find a measured, common plan for dealing with the economic crisis. But among the dozens of smaller stories playing out at the margins of the meeting is whether outgoing Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek can somehow regain a degree of relevancy on the EU stage following a disastrous few days last week, when his government collapsed and he insulted President Barack Obama in a speech to the EU Parliament.

In an essay published today in the Prague Post, I argue that Topolanek can indeed recover and that the Czechs can still have an impact on the EU's agenda, especially when it concerns Eastern Europe, during the latter half of their presidency. 

Whether Czechs deserve to, given their shameful lack of confidence in the very idea of the EU, is of course another matter altogether.

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