Headlines pouring out over what Sir Michael Wood said this morning to the Chilcot Inquiry: Straw rejected advice that Iraq invasion was ‘unlawful’ Let me give you my potted view of this as a lawyer by training but not practice. The various FCO and other documents (some formerly SECRET) now […]
An ever-alert reader moves on from the wonders of Ask Imam to a British website for what I take to be Fairly Militant Muslims, notably this analysis of the difference between a lion and a lioness: What would a lion without a mane look like? That’s right, it would look […]
We all have lots of questions, often about our own most detailed bodily processes: And they sure need answering. Luckily for us South Africa’s Mufti Ebrahim Desai is our online fatwa resource and raring to go. Especially on everything (and I mean everything) of interest to Women and their religious requirements. Hmm.
Back in Moscow in 1994 or thereabouts I asked a top Russian foreign policy pundit what would happen to Ukraine, then languishing in a deacying post-communist stupor. "We’ll just buy it," came the sardonic reply. But what about less obvious places, such as Nauru, which has just recognised Abkhazia and […]
Here is the as yet unofficial transcript of part of Alastair Campbell’s session with the Chilcot Inquiry. Quick work to get it up so fast. Others have dumped on the performance of this New Labour eel yesterday. See Paul Waugh describing how my old boss Rod Lyne did the business: Campbell […]
A reader says nice things about my long posting on the Copenhagen Negotiating Disaster (for the EU at least) but also asks a terrific question: A remarkable piece of analysis, Charles, with fascinating insights for the outsider. I detect a theme emerging in your posts – a sort of neo-realpolitik […]
David Aaronovitch writes eloquently about what he sees as the hypocrisy of all sorts of people who deny gayness in Africa (and elsewhere): …are there no gays in Malawi or Uganda and have there been none, in any significant sense, throughout African history? Is it just now, as a product […]
No amount of exhortations that the international community ‘be more robust’ in and with Bosnia can get round the horrible fact that the key problem is profound disagreement on what Bosnia and Herzegovina is (are?). The Bosniac/Serb/Croat communities and their leaders just do not and will not agree on what […]
Chistopher Hitchens looks at some distinctions without differences: My colleague and friend Fareed Zakaria wrote not long ago in these pages that there was a significant difference between, say, the Taliban takeover of the Swat Valley and the launching of suicide attacks on the non-Muslim world. I said to him […]
In the Times Dominic Lawson is unimpressed by the tone of UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband in talking about Iran and China: Our diplomatic war of words with Iran is brewing nicely. Last week the foreign secretary, David Miliband, condemned as “disturbing” the Ahmadinejad regime’s “lack of restraint” in its […]
