It was with a little trepidation, that we at KP were planning to write about the danger the western world was getting into with talks of military intervention in Libya as a possibility. We have already been there and we are still suffering the consequences, as Afghanistan and Iraq remind us. Then, we read in The Guardian an article written by Simon Tisdall: “Libyan crisis: Britain and allies now risk overreaction”. We were relieved as we have been thinking along those lines, and we found ourselves in total agreement with his article. Read the rest of this entry »

While the world is watching the Middle East protests with concern, Europe is likely to receive the brunt of it with the influx of refugees fleeing their countries some for fear of their lives and some looking for a need to get food and jobs. Apart from Italy which is already tending the arrival of large numbers of Tunisians and Egyptians to the Lampedusa Island, other European countries had not yet had any noticeable increase of Middle East people. Read the rest of this entry »

While the Egyptians, after more of two weeks of protests that brought the ousting of Mubarak, were beginning to celebrate what they perceived as victory even though the military has now all the power (see articles in KeyboardPolitics from Feb. 2 and Feb 10), a different kind of protest against a prime minister was taking place this past Sunday in Italy. Read the rest of this entry »

The chaos in European airports due to a volcanic ash plume from Iceland continue today and nobody knows really when things will go back more or less to normality. The hope is this weekend those hundreds of thousands of travelers who have been stranded all over Europe will be able to reach their destinations. Read the rest of this entry »

With any luck Europeans will wake up tomorrow morning to the news that finally they have a permanent president of the European Council and a foreign minister. No that many of them will have been worrying too much about it. After all the average citizen is not voting to choose them. It is mostly done by the leaders of the 27 countries who form the EU: 26 men and one woman. Read the rest of this entry »

Firm in his resolution and in spite of the consequences, the Czech Republic president, Václav Klaus, has not signed yet the Lisbon Treaty. He has demanded new “opt-outs” to prevent Germans expelled from the Czech Sudeten region after World War II from reclaiming their property. Read the rest of this entry »

While right now in the US politicians are bickering and posturing trying to get a health reform much needed but little believed in, very soon they are going to be involved in another important matter which is adding to the deficit the government is running but much more important increasing the deaths of the American and NATO soldiers: Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »