My recent observations on the arrest of the network of Russian sleeper/illegal spies in the USA have been noticed and commended by Boris Volodarsky: Finally, out of a wall of stupid and totally unqualified media reports, including two articles in The Sunday Times (July 4, 2010) not to mention the […]
Former Ambassador turned ‘activist’ Craig Murray is a commendable phenomenon for self-publicity. His website now attracts a considerable following, far higher than this modest effort. But he achieves this in part by rehashing old FCO material, and noisily claiming to gullible readers that it shows all sorts of things (eg ‘complicity […]
It is wearying being peppered with facile media so-called analysis of the Russian spy story featuring this sort of line: Huh? What’s all the fuss about? What’s there to spy on in the places these amateur people were living in? Did the Kremlin really want to infiltrate the PTA? Typical […]
We all agree that government spending in many Western countries is too high – stupidly high. We are cranking up debts to pay for current consumption at a rate which suggests to the markets that we have lost our minds. The markets look to charge us higher interest rates, as […]
Sorry not to have been more active recently, folks. But I have had to travel to Stuttgart, Geneva, Warsaw/Cracow and now Brussels all in the past ten days, while keeping an eye on our attempts to sell Crawford Towers. My latest manoeuvres involved leading a course on Ethical Dilemmas in […]
Excellent NYT piece by Errol Morris via Browser exploring the Dunning-Kruger Effect: the fact that our incompetence/ignorance masks our ability to recognize our incompetence/ignorance: Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.” It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know […]
Will the EU exist in its current form in a million years’ time? No! In 100,000 years’ time? No! In 1000 years’ time? No, but there may be traces of its current form. In 100 years’ time? Maybe, but much changed. In a mere 10 years’ time? Probably, but perhaps […]
Craig Murray offers some thoughts on where significant cuts might be found in the UK diplomatic effort. It includes this: … our Embassies in EU countries remain among the biggest and grandest we possess, reflecting the days when our shifting bilateral relationships with European nations were literally matters of life […]
A day with my nose press’d hard against the perspiring computer screen writing scenarios for a new course which I lead later this month, all about Ethical Dilemmas in Diplomacy. As far as I know this is a pioneer course, the first of its kind to be taught to professional […]
When I was growing up, Israel was a favourite in some progressive quarters – an open-minded and successful society in a national-socialist Middle East, with trendily progressive kibbutzim where gap year students could go and hang out in the sunshine. Israel had been created in 1948 with the best possible level of international credibility […]
