The Americans have a way with words: a good loser is a Loser. In other words, by contemplating the possibility of defeat yet remaining cheerful about it you psych yourself down – and help bring defeat about. Which brings us to President Obama’s recent remarkable off-hand thought: I’m always worried about […]
Is here. It is better than his Cairo speech which had rather too many philosophically incoherent passages. This one is easier to make, of course, as he is aiming it at one country in particular and not at an amorphous ‘Muslim world’. So the key messages can be more finely […]
Here is part of a comment on a previous posting of mine on Western policy in the Balkans: It isn’t the US’s or the UK’s business to "achieve stability or long-term solutions" in the Balkans, the Middle East, or anywhere else. The sooner these two moralising countries (whose own morals […]
Talk about Hopey Change. Things have moved into a dizzying new universe when the EU makes a rather brisker set of noises on Iran than the USA. Here is the worst utterance of a US Presidential spokesperson – ever: Obviously, we continue to have concern about what we’ve seen. Obviously, the […]
Here is the text of UN Security Council Resolution 1874 condemning North Korea "in the strongest terms" for its nuclear test on 25 May 2009. The UNSC tried to tighten the embargo on material and skills needed for nuclear weapons activity from reaching North Korea: 11. Calls upon all States […]
Alex Massie perceptively wonders whether there is anything to be done with North Korea other than Doing Nothing (Much), as every other option is fraught with problems. He kindly says that he would like to hear from me on the subject. Always pleased to oblige. Here goes. A policy is […]
Here is the full text of President Obama’s Cairo speech. It had many strong points. A friendly, open-hearted yet serious and businesslike tone. Lots of inclusive words such as ‘respect’ and ‘partnership’. Some quite firm lines on Israel and its right to exist, to the point of being seen as surprisingly […]
Was there a massacre by Sri Lankan forces as they finished off the Tamil Tigers? And did the UN know about it? Seems so. The numbers of people killed look to go well beyond the Srebrenica war crime. Critics of such horrors often miss one of the unspoken points about […]
Michael Yon has built up a great reputation for going to look at tough places under his own steam and reporting on them to an Internet readership. Here he is following a major US diplomatic push in Asia (not something much covered in the UK). US Defence Secretary Gates talks […]
This is so grisly an analysis of how President Obama is whittling the Clintons down to very little, it might almost be true. Hence Hillary Clinton’s tentative responses on North Korea?
