The BBC lovingly analyses Fidel Castro’s speech to the ‘National Assembly’ in Havana: … a hush descended … He smiled and waved to the crowd as he lapped up the warmth of their applause … a short but polished performance from the lively and healthy-looking Fidel Castro, his voice stronger […]
My recent piece about the feebleness of Peter Mandelson’s speechwriters looked ahead to the coming international tour of David Cameron to see if his people would do a better job. NB folks, what follows is not about policy as such. It’s about speechwriting and diplomatic technique, and the way messages are […]
Remember this piece about David Horowitz on Christopher Hitchens? Are you busy, with lots to do? Forget all that, and read this long transcript of American conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in conversation with Hitchens, now on heavy cancer treatment. Hitchens is a ferociously well read and knowledgeable person. He is a […]
Toy Story 3 is just superb. Go and see it. One highlight is Barbie abruptly hollering out one of the greatest ideas of Thomas Jefferson: Authority should derive from the consent of the governed; not from the threat of force Hurrah! Yet … what if those governing start off that way, […]
As his ratings and credibility slip-slide away, President Obama eyes the various US election races later this year. Will the Democrats do terribly? Or merely awfully? One plan he has – maybe the only plan he has – is to blame everything bad on the previous Bush presidency. Hence his […]
Democratist is someone who follows the goings-on across the former Soviet Union in some depth. Here he takes up William Hague’s recent speech on UK foreign policy, and makes an interesting point about how the UK invests in foreign policy outcomes in that complicated region: OSCE election observation is about the best […]
Now that Cuba has agreed to release – and exile – a goodly number of political prisoners, Spain expects the European Union to ‘respond’ and be more flexible. I have written here on various occasions about Cuba. Maybe the most astonishing thing about this run-down Cold War relic is not […]
As you all know from the great Frank Luntz, it’s not what you say … … it’s what they hear! And much of what they ‘hear’ comes from what they ‘see’ and ‘feel’. Thus the best speaker in the world will be undone if the audience see and remember him/her as the one who […]
Ok Ok. He has lots of vivid material to work with these days. But Mark Steyn continues to surpass himself. How about his advice to Hillary to dust off her election outfits? Memo to Secretary Rodham Clinton: Do you find yourself of a quiet evening with a strange craving for […]
Slowly but surely the language of lumpen totalitarianism creeps into democratic political life. Scarcely a day goes by with President Chavez of Venezuela ‘seizing’ some or other private company, usually with some banal bombastic menacing statements: A few days ago, during one of the rambling television and radio monologues for which […]
