A long report by the ‘European Council on Foreign Relations’ describes how the EU is losing ground at the UN in terms of mobilising support from other countries for votes on human rights issues. A summary is here. See also the Guardian account. The general problem? Thus: "The EU is suffering […]
My previous piece on the ECFR Report about the EU’s growing ineffectuality at the UN quoted this: … The assembly kicked off this week in New York with the west bracing itself for another debacle. Serbia is to use the session to demand a vote on the "illegality" of the secession […]
Is Zimbabwe’s political power-sharing agreement good or bad for Zimbabwe? If anything is deemed to be better than total collapse, it might be seen as good (for the time being, until it isn’t). But it sets a wretched precedent. It has all the moral stature of a deal between a […]
Greetings Britblog Rounduppers. Number 187 hosted by Liberal England is here. It links to my post on European Parliament instincts to ‘validate’ bloggers: Charles Crawford offers a voice of sanity here: Above all there is a way to ‘validate’ the best bloggers. It’s called the marketplace, millions of judgements by […]
I previously linked to Christopher Hitchens and Michael Totten analysing why the Kosovo case is quite different from the cases of either S Ossetia or Abkhazia, rendering spurious/dishonest Russia’s recognition of the latter two as new states. Here for good measure is former US Ambassador to Zagreb and Belgrade, my friend Bill […]
The Guardian today: Russia to leave Georgia after EU deal How utterly shamefully absurdly useless these people are. The ensuing article: In a press conference yesterday afternoon, after four hours of talks, Medvedev made clear that Russia’s withdrawal of forces depended on Georgia signing a "non-aggression pact" with South Ossetia and […]
Jon Worth has a couple of thoughtful observations on the farcical European Parliament report which broods on the disruptive role of bloggers. I think that he has a point, of sorts. But the best way to deal with vampires when they pop out is not to assume they are unmenacing just […]
Far from accepting the defeatist idea of different and inevitably rival ‘spheres of influence’ in Europe, the EU should use its one true serious advantage vis-a-vis Russia, namely far greater wealth and a far better example. Andrew Wilson captures it well: The most effective way of dealing with a newly-assertive […]
This (via Daniel Hannan) is absolutely grotesque. What are we being reduced to? And why are we paying taxes to subsidise the madness of thought leading to such a pernicious, creepy document being even considered, let alone written?
The Times has two noteworthy pieces on Georgia and its ramifications today. Bronwen Maddox weighs in on the EU’s defiant chihuahua-like stance: … even though the EU should rightly settle for the lowest common denominator on such important questions of its own identity, the proposals were weak beyond parody. “The Union […]
