(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 […]
The idiom ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ describes an easy job – you just can’t miss. Mythbusters helpfully experiment with different sorts of guns and containers to show what works best. (Advisory: best not to watch if you are a sensitive fish): But that is a hard task indeed compared […]
Most people seem to think that Gaddafi’s long ‘speech’ last night set a new record for oratorical appallingness: "I am a fighter, a revolutionary from tents … I will die as a martyr at the end," he said. "Muammar Gaddafi is the leader of the revolution, I am not a president […]
On the one hand, we have one-man band Dr Gene Sharp (my emphasis): His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern – and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble. For decades now, […]
Yesterday I was invited at a full seven minutes’ notice to discuss live on LBC with James Max an interesting question. Namely isn’t it disgraceful that invitations to the Royal Wedding have gone out to various Arab monarchs who currently are busy shooting their own people? Given that taxpayers’ money […]
It’s great news that two high-profile Libyan Ambassadors have leaped screaming from the burning deck of fast-sinking Libyan diplomacy. Isn’t it?
What drivel is gushing out now from assorted progressives, variously blaming Tony Blair, the Blair Doctrine and his ‘hypocrisy’ for propping up Gaddafi. See this embarrassment posted by Channel 4 by self-styled Gurublog. And this even worse posting at Liberal Conspiracy by Claude Carpentieri: Imagine if you had a quid each time […]
Oh, now I see it. It’s all our fault! British weapons are believed to have been used to murder more than 300 Libyan pro-democracy demonstrators. Relatives of those killed during the Lockerbie massacre condemned the ‘shameful’ British dealings with Gaddafi. And Mona Rishmawi, legal adviser for the UN High Commission on […]
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 […]
Twitter steered me to a fascinating (and not unsympathetic) Guardian interview with Niall Ferguson who is cranking out another TV series, this time on Civilisation: The West and the Rest. Thus: "The book is partly designed so a 17-year-old boy or girl will get a lot of history in a very […]
