Europe

My name is Hamit Coskun and last year I was convicted in a British court of religiously aggravated public order offense. My “crime”? Burning a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London. Moments later, I was attacked in full view of the street by a man. I was hospitalized. Then I was arrested and convicted in Westminster Magistrates Court. I managed to get that conviction overturned, with the help of the Free Speech Union and the National Secular Society, but now the Crown Prosecution Service is appealing my acquittal, with the case being heard tomorrow in the High Court. Now I am in discussions with the White House

Over the past few days there has been a flurry of stories and official statements about Irish national Seamus Culleton, now detained by ICE for overstaying a visa for almost 20 years while on the run from multiple drugs warrants in Ireland. The clip of him saying his holding area is a “concentration camp” has been heard by millions, and liberals on both sides of the Atlantic have tried to turn him into a poster-boy white martyr of ICE. This is a “Look, it can even happen to white Irish” cautionary tale about the authoritarian terrors of America.  But once you actually strip out the rhetoric, the story looks rather different. It

Nothing has been as damaging for the British royal family as the unfortunate meeting of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein. Republican Thomas Massie and the Democrat Ro Khanna know this. In a press conference yesterday, they said they had been shown documents that have been otherwise redacted and withheld from the Epstein files. These documents included mention of girls as young as 9 years old. Massie and Khanna are responsible for the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. They have said that the levels of redaction and secrecy are unacceptable, and that they will continue to challenge the Justice Department’s approach to the documents. And this, according to Khanna, is extremely

The French IT giant Capgemini has put its US subsidiary on sale because of its association with the work of ICE in America. All hell broke loose last week in France after it was revealed by the state broadcaster that Capgemini’s software was being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify foreigners on US soil and track their locations. According to the BBC, Capgemini multi-million dollar contract with ICE was agreed last December and was scheduled to run until 15 March. It has now been curtailed after the company found itself in the eye of a storm following the deaths last month of two anti-ICE protestors in separate incidents

In 1969, Charles de Gaulle told his friend André Malraux that America’s “desire – and one day it will satisfy it – is to desert Europe. You will see.” It has taken nearly six decades, but de Gaulle’s prophecy now looks uncomfortably close to fulfillment. After years of diplomatic effort to manage, placate and charm successive American presidents – and Donald Trump in particular – European leaders are coming to a grim realization: the United States is, at best, indifferent to their interests and sensibilities and, at worst, openly hostile to them. Some, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, still believe Trump can be cajoled, that the transatlantic relationship can somehow

Russia started the war on Ukraine, so Russia should pay for the damage it has wrought. Such was Volodymyr Zelensky’s forceful message to European leaders last night as he pleaded for a “reparations loan” backed by the €190 billion ($222 billion) of Russian Central Bank capital frozen in a Belgian clearing bank since Putin’s full-scale invasion. “Just as authorities confiscate money from drug traffickers and seize weapons from terrorists, Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks,” Zelensky told his European allies. “It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal.” But after negotiations that went late into the night, Europe ultimately shied

Ten days after Thanksgiving, news watchers were exposed to one of the more culturally incongruous images in recent history: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron beaming in front of the British Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street, giving each other the locked-thumbs handshake familiar to African-American jazz musicians and professional athletes of the 1970s. Right on, brother! At that moment, according to Ukrainian media, thousands of Zelensky’s soldiers had been encircled by Russian troops near the city of Pokrovsk (or Krasnoarmiisk, as it may well soon be renamed). Large gaps were appearing in the Ukrainian front, desertions were rising and Russians appeared to be opening a

If I were a bookie, I would be making odds now about when the European Union will finally unravel and die. Unless there is an imminent and drastic course correction, the blessed event cannot be far off.  I might need a Doomsday Clock akin to the one publicized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Their clock hovers near midnight, which signifies nuclear Armageddon, the minute hand pushed closer or farther away from the blast depending on minatory world events. My clock would measure the EU’s proximity to implosion. Its recent decision to fine Elon Musk and his company X €120 million for “non-compliance with transparency obligations” has me nudging