This Libya business gets worse. Now the UK government is tangled up in explaining what it did or did not to to help victims of IRA terrorist bombs get compensation from Libya, source of the IRA’s Semtex explosives. Here is a piece about the basic legal claim involved. To my long-lost […]
My latest article for DIPLOMAT magazine is out (not currently available online, alas). It is all about HOBGOBLINS AND OMELETTES: WHERE DIPLOMACY MEETS ETHNICITY It starts thus: A vital date in the history of the modern world is 1648. That was when the Treaties of Osnabrück and Münster were signed. […]
The UK’s ‘devolution’ arrangements are complicated and either stupidly inconsistent or elegantly tailored to meet varying local requirements, depending how you look at it. Here is the official summary: Devolution of powers Following referendums in Scotland and Wales in 1997, and in both parts of Ireland in 1998, the UK […]
Three Thousands Versts of Loneliness analyses Putin’s approach to Soviet and Russian history as revealed in his letter to Poland: The ‘Putinite regime’ is commonly portrayed as if it were intent on overseeing Stalin’s rehabilitation, often with the implied aim of entrenching its own, purportedly authoritarian, project. As this weblog […]
As many senior international dignitaries gather in Gdansk today to commemorate the start of WW2, Russian Prime Minister Putin (one of the guests) has written an open letter to Poland to give a clear and (as of now) definitive Russian view on the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact. Here is the Russian official […]
It is always fascinating to read original official documents, in this case a selection of papers about the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted for the Lockerbie bombing. So have a look here. Yet it all seems … incomplete. Where are the letters and emails from/to the […]
Who is to lead Europe? The French and Germans, of course. Who else? Gordon Brown is barely surviving as UK prime minister, and the Conservatives are as provincially Eurosceptic as ever. Europe simply cannot count on the British, at least for a while… Silvio Berlusconi’s sexcapades and Spain’s dire economic […]
What do British diplomats in Europe do all day? Here is a fine example of the Embassy in Warsaw taking an idea (in this case advancing the prospects for disabled people in Poland as part of an EU-wide move in this area), then finding senior Polish partners and moving things […]
Here is an eloquent, impassioned account of a first visit to Auschwitz. Not least the stunning bewildering realisation when you arrive at the site that the car-park in front of it is full of … tourist coaches. People in shorts with video cameras, chatting away, perhaps looking forward to moving […]
Carne Ross sends a cheery comment on my posting about his article: that I am wrong! Re-read the article with a bit more care and you will see that I do not advocate the rise of the Bono’s and Soros’s, I simply recognise it. It is an unarguable truth, acknowledged […]
