Sorry to have been a bit quiet, folks. I have been in Vienna with ADRg Ambassadors giving negotiation training to Senior Inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency. These Inspectors have a unique and important job, namely to help check what is going on out there in the world’s civilian […]
A snappy young Serbian woman with two degrees from universities in the USA comes back to Belgrade to live and work. She gets a good job in a major Serbian bank on the corporate communications side. She gives a presentation to the bank top brass on how the bank can […]
Always good to be reminded that Europe is not just the wimpy EU or neurotic Balkans. There’s also Ukraine, and where (if anywhere) it fits in to the Bigger Picture. Luckily we have Odessablog’s Blog on the case, watching things with an astute British eye from balmy Crimea. Here’s a […]
The Weinergate scandal soared to a spectacular new level yesterday in New York, when Congressman Weiner admitted to a press conference that he had lied about his obscene Twitterish activities. Not that that made his situation much better. Pressed on what he knew about the young women with whom he’d been ‘communicating’ […]
Off to Belgrade tomorrow for a conference on Thursday hosted by the Belgrade Forum for the World of Equals as supported by Russian partners. The theme is European Security in the Light of 2012 Elections. Notable speakers include Dragan Todorovic of the Serbian Radical Party, whose programme asserts Serbia‘s rights over […]
Here is a strong example from Walter Russell Mead of elegant but tough foreign policy writing, this time on the increasingly dysunctional US/Pakistan relationship. Once upon a time India with its phony anti-Americanist ‘non-alignment’ as encouraged by massive Soviet penetration of the Indian establishment was the main reason for Washington to treat […]
Hurrah. In the days and weeks to come all sorts of information about the mission to capture/kill (or was it only the latter?) will gush out. It is already clear that the Americans had been painstakingly trying to get to Bin Laden via his main communication trail, namely a highly trusted […]
What is a financial bubble? Too many people believing in their own cleverness as the structures they create slowly but surely depart from reality. Here is Michael Jennings at Samizdata musing on the comparison between the telecoms sector overcapacity bubble of a few years ago and the current plight of […]
In case anyone is still following this blog, yes, I am alive and sweltering on the Florida Atlantic coast. Pelicans flap lazily overhead. The sound of the sea swell is annoyingly loud in our hotel room. The plastic surgery and caked fake suntan make-up on TV religious and other presenters have […]
Do any diplomats out there recall anything from their careers about the amazing story of South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee, who was kidnapped in 1978 by the North Korean regime but managed to escape in 1986 and seek political asylum at the US Embassy in Vienna? It’s this latter event […]
