The Prague Spring was provoked by a crisis in the Communist Party, but the claim that it was merely a result of political squabbles among Party members falsifies history and rejects a significant fragment of the national heritage.

Unresolved boundary issues, squabbles over oil revenues, the ongoing conflict in Darfur, escalating tribal violence in the south and generally weak state capacity across all of Sudan complete a very depressing picture of the state of affairs in Africa's largest country.

By reinforcing negative stereotypes of rival countries, such squabbles over history and remembrance sow fragmentation and instability, and have certainly fueled the region s recent territorial disputes. Indeed, the politicization of history remains the principal obstacle to reconciliation in East Asia.

These squabbles in the face of undeniable, large scale human suffering controvert the EU s core values, including its commitment to adhere to a rules based international order. They also reflect a disturbing trend affecting EU institutions individual countries interests are increasingly trumping unity and cooperation.

Indeed, Taiwanese capital and know how built much of China s hi tech industries, and well over a half million Taiwanese live and work near Shanghai in a virtual replica of Hsin Chu, Taiwan s Silicon Valley. But in Chen s Taiwan, domestic squabbles took precedence over economic development.

Unfortunately, the Commission composed mostly of elected officials, rather than experts wasted its time in political squabbles. Its members could not agree even on how to define subprime mortgages and calculate how many such mortgages there were in the United States at the time of the crisis.

After a bit of drama, Austria also gave up its opposition to the accession talks, in exchange for a promise of admission for Croatia, and the intra European squabbles have been patched up. So the British, under Tony Blair s current presidency of the EU Council of Ministers, have gotten their way for now, and the Americans keen backers of Turkey s EU aspirations have once again succeeded in acting as a European power.