Baffled by the sluggish rate of NATO bombing of Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, and the fact that this business is dragging on so inconclusively? Read this fine piece by Stephen Saideman at McGill University on the underlying negotiation going on. Really, I could not have it better myself. Thus: Simply […]
Mark Steyn with disarming honesty mulls over his 2002 assertion that Osama Bin Laden was well and truly dead: As things turned out, I was a tad, ah, premature Read it for a reprise of some earlier Steyn classics, including various high-profile punters analysing Osama’s 2001 video message: ROBERT FISK, foreign correspondent, The […]
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 […]
Here’s a bold idea. That the peoples of the ‘Western Balkans’ (ie mainly the former Yugoslavia area) push out the febrile internationals and sit down for some hard talking: With the Powers pushed out the locals – assuming they actually want to settle their disputes – could then grapple with the choreography […]
Remember my suggestions for sowing discord in Gaddafi’s ranks? Key idea, never known to fail: Divide and Rule. Sending public (and even better private) messages to key people around Gaddafi offering them some sense of security (no prosecution by International Criminal Court?) if they jump ship is an important tool. […]
Assorted Crawfs are heading West at the weekend for the warmth of Florida where we have our timeshare haha. Of course the Orlando theme-park experience is naff and plastic. On the other hand, it’s top-class naff and plastic where everything works and is geared towards separating you from your money […]
How does one argue with pure, abstracted irrationality? Facts. Logic. Consistency. By definition they all fail. Emotion? Anger, sarcasm, tears: all may help you get your points across. But the very fact that you are displaying emotion amounts to a concession to irrationality – a surrender to illogic. A realisation that you […]
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, […]
