On the one hand, we have one-man band Dr Gene Sharp (my emphasis): His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern – and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble. For decades now, […]
What drivel is gushing out now from assorted progressives, variously blaming Tony Blair, the Blair Doctrine and his ‘hypocrisy’ for propping up Gaddafi. See this embarrassment posted by Channel 4 by self-styled Gurublog. And this even worse posting at Liberal Conspiracy by Claude Carpentieri: Imagine if you had a quid each time […]
Oh, now I see it. It’s all our fault! British weapons are believed to have been used to murder more than 300 Libyan pro-democracy demonstrators. Relatives of those killed during the Lockerbie massacre condemned the ‘shameful’ British dealings with Gaddafi. And Mona Rishmawi, legal adviser for the UN High Commission on […]
Yesterday I was invited at a full seven minutes’ notice to discuss live on LBC with James Max an interesting question. Namely isn’t it disgraceful that invitations to the Royal Wedding have gone out to various Arab monarchs who currently are busy shooting their own people? Given that taxpayers’ money […]
It’s great news that two high-profile Libyan Ambassadors have leaped screaming from the burning deck of fast-sinking Libyan diplomacy. Isn’t it?
A long post. Go and grab a coffee. Right at the very very start of this blog in January 2008, I wrote about one of most vivid pieces of work in the FCO, my paper about MTS and Non-MTS back from 1984 in Belgrade. Here’s the link. The idea was […]
It turns out that there is a lively market for advice and training on the subtle arts of Diplomatic Protocol and Etiquette. Why? Because these days many organisations (including official international organisations among eg the UN family as well as NGOs and large corporations) send people on postings in far-flung […]
The Egypt drama is producing floods of very shallow analysis waters. Seumas Milne in the Guardian can always be relied upon to give us the Left Dimwit view, complete with added Dave Spart adverbs: The manoeuvres at the top of the regime have transparently been choreographed in Washington … more […]
Trite (and tritely wrong) comparisons are being drawn between what is happening in different Arab countries and the collpase of European communism. My thoughts: Egypt‘s Berlin Wall Moment? Back in 1990/91 first the Warsaw Pact then the Soviet Union keeled over and died. In the arc of decadent national socialist […]
Attentive readers recall that a year ago I joined a group of former British Ambassadors in setting up ADRg Ambassadors, a new panel selling professional diplomatic consulting, training and mediation skills to support ‘corporate diplomacy’. Here is what I wrote at the time. Since then we have been busy ‘building the brand’ to […]
