Thanks to the diligence of Instapundit, I bring you two fine essays. Make time to read them, as you’ll be smarter when you have done so. The first is by Kenneth Anderson, who looks at the legal and moral/philosophical basis for rival options for other countries intervening in Libya militarily […]
The agonies continue at the LSE over the fact that it took Libyan money. Here is the sensible memo which an unhappy Fred Halliday wrote on the subject in October 2009. It reads quite well now. Here briskly defending what New Labour did by way of opening up to Libya is […]
Craig’s made a big effort to change his website. Here’s the result. Definitely a cleaner, sharper ‘look’, although some might wonder about his self-description: Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist The experts in such matters always say that it’s best to brand yourself in terms of what you do now and […]
Update: welcome Guido readers Imagine you are William Hague or Hillary Clinton, pressed with a real sense of wanting to Do Something to help the Libyan masses. You draw a noisy stick across the bars of the FCO/State Department cage to rouse the bemused and sulky inmates, and demand ideas for action. […]
I have previously written here about the FCO’s approach to ‘consular’ work (ie helping British nationals overseas). See eg here: The media love to pounce on allegations of FCO staff being unkind or inefficient when they find British citizens overseas who have hit trouble. For every hundred people who write in to you […]
I previously offered some operational ideas for Doing Something about Libya. One of them was this: expert support for opening of all Libyan regime secret police and other archives asap – let the dirty chips lie where they fall (mainly in Moscow?) The more I think about it, the more […]
Middle East not scary enough for you? Try this magnificent analysis by Thomas Benton of precisely why US undergraduates are now locked in to a cycle of lame underperformance and associated petulance when their failings are pointed out to them: Increasingly, undergraduates are not prepared adequately in any academic area […]
(Apologies to Iain Dale’s readers and other readers – an earlier version got garbled) Ed West at the Telegraph puts the issue with commendable boldness: No Arab country has ever produced a democracy, or at least a lasting democracy; none of the 22 member states of the Arab League are classified […]
A long post. Go and grab a coffee. Right at the very very start of this blog in January 2008, I wrote about one of most vivid pieces of work in the FCO, my paper about MTS and Non-MTS back from 1984 in Belgrade. Here’s the link. The idea was […]
I know, I know. Egypt is a big deal so I need to share my thoughts with you on it. But even though it’s only February 2011 we already have the winner for the Article of the Decade. It’s this one, by Clark Whelton, former speechwriter for New York City […]
