You can always rely on the hard-left Seumas Milne in the Guardian to articulate the far opposite of what any normal person is thinking – a handy public service he gives us here, helping us all formulate our thoughts so precisely in opposition to his. Click on the picture above his latest article […]
Iran hangs two activists who joined last year’s street protests and distributed images of them on the Web and (the horror) chanted slogans. Up the road in Syria a 19-year old woman blogger has been sent to prison for five years for spying: The judge did not give evidence or details […]
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 […]
The Egypt drama is producing floods of very shallow analysis waters. Seumas Milne in the Guardian can always be relied upon to give us the Left Dimwit view, complete with added Dave Spart adverbs: The manoeuvres at the top of the regime have transparently been choreographed in Washington … more […]
Trite (and tritely wrong) comparisons are being drawn between what is happening in different Arab countries and the collpase of European communism. My thoughts: Egypt‘s Berlin Wall Moment? Back in 1990/91 first the Warsaw Pact then the Soviet Union keeled over and died. In the arc of decadent national socialist […]
I remember a senior American diplomat arriving at the FCO in 1992 and describing just how busy he was helping get US food aid to a Russia left reeling after the abrupt collapse of communism. We genteel Brits were startled when he described himself as ‘drinkin’ from a pressure-hose’. The imagery! Still, […]
Egypt faces more or less spontaneous mass unrest aimed at toppling President Mubarak, who has been in power too long for anyone’s good. Great swathes of Egypt’s Internet access has been shut down. James Cowie is following: This is a completely different situation from the modest Internet manipulation that took place in […]
This isn’t first century BC Egypt, when having an attractive leader might theoretically provide some kind of geo-political advantage vis a vis our standing with the Romans. I don’t want to see a drawing of the former Governor of Alaska in what appears to be a leather bustier and garters… […]
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 […]
Sorry, I was distracted from packing to spot this strange headline on the BBC web-page: US ‘revokes Venezuela envoy visa’ Why have they put most of that in inverted commas, as if it’s not true or somehow qualified or in doubt? The BBC’s own article on the subject reports a State […]
