Opinion / Men, Women, Gender

US Public Debt Crisis: Meet English Football Socialism

So much going on in the world. Most of it unambiguously bad. Tension in Kosovo. Tension in the Turkish army. Libya duly quagmired. Famine in Africa. Something or other going in and around North Korea. And so on. Yet bigger even than those problems, each of which is capable of […]

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Look out, Foreign Policy! Here comes Talyn!

My article in DIPLOMAT about Diplomatic Loyalties has been recycled by Grassroot Diplomat, a site run by Talyn Rahman. She opens with this ambitious statement: Imagine this. You are a diplomat representing your birth country, but your heritage lies with two other states from your parents and you are married […]

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Powering Up! Women (Or Not)

Here is a strange piece at Forbes which I picked up via Twitter by Anne Doyle, an American woman who is big on Powering Up! women in general. She quotes what she asserts to be three ‘stunning examples of the cultural headwinds that women are still up against’.  What are […]

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Feminism = Peace!

Or not: "The change [in Administration policy] became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action to avert a potential humanitarian catastrophe, […]

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Arab Uprisings: The Limits of Diplomacy

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 […]

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Diplomatic Etiquette And Protocol

It turns out that there is a lively market for advice and training on the subtle arts of Diplomatic Protocol and Etiquette. Why? Because these days many organisations (including official international organisations among eg the UN family as well as NGOs and large corporations) send people on postings in far-flung […]

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Hillary Clinton’s Feminist Foreign Policy

Unsated by Steampunk Palin, you want more buxom feisty American women transforming the world against evil men? Swing by this Guardian analysis by Madeleine Bunting of Hillary Clinton’s feminist foreign policy: On countless occasions since arriving at the state department, Clinton has asserted that the rights of women and girls are now […]

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Britblog Roundup 287: Polish Fish and Chips Edition

These Britblog Roundups are getting erratic.   This one, for example, is a week late. The previously scheduled one never appeared. Nonetheless, pressing on, let’s start with what really matters. The arrival of British fish and chips in Poland.   An unapologetic feminist and trade union activist is unimpressed with […]

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What’s Happening In The EU?

Back from giving further diplomatic mediation skills training in Brussels to EU officials. Unlike the FCO, the EU’s nascent foreign policy machine dimly sees the point of understanding how to get better outcomes by using smart mediation techniques. So, I duly help deliver the superb training they need. In the margins I […]

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Ground Zero ‘Mosque’: Another Obama Speech Clunker

President Obama has pronounced on the Cordoba Center (aka Ground Zero Mosque) controversy.Speaking to a Ramadan gathering he said this: Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities -– particularly New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of […]

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