President Obama’s much-praised message of friendship to Iran got a dusty public response from the Iranians, including some nice imagery: The new US president sends us a Persian New Year greeting message but in the same accuses us again to support terrorism and to be after nuclear weapons," the supreme […]
Warming to my theme on how the West probably has made the Zimbabwe problem worse, I think that Clare Short letter in 1997 to Minister Kumbirai Kangai MP deserves a close look from the point of view of professional civil service technique. So, here goes. George Foulkes has reported to […]
Spiegel Online International carries all sorts of excellent pieces, beautifully written in or translated into English for a wider audience. This one about Islamic extremists in Sarajevo is thought-provoking. And not all the thoughts are positive: The obliteration of Israel is heralded in a torrent of words. "Zionist terrorists," the […]
Here is Archbishop Desmond Tutu boldly advising President Obama in an article written for the BBC: In the first days after 9/11, the United States had the world’s sympathy, an unprecedented wave of it. President Bush squandered it. Obama too could easily squander the goodwill that his election generated if […]
Craig Murray’s site links (approvingly) to a site busy collecting signatures in support of indicting Tony Blair for war crimes. And hurrah!, Noam Chomsky has signed up. As has uber-Darwinian Richard Dawkins, another person who seems to think that his lively insight in one area of science requires us to take very […]
While we are thinking about who ‘allows’ what, the British Government have announced that Dutch MP Geert Wilders will not be allowed to enter the UK, as his very presence will ‘threaten national security’. The public debate appears to be focusing on this man’s right to speak his mind. Not […]
The point of the crushing and monumental brutality against Hama by the then Syrian leadership was to send a message to Islamic extremists: Do not mess with us, and if you do we will respond with crushing and monumental brutality Which has more or less worked quite well, as far […]
A reader writes about FCO blogs: FCO bloggers try to keep to policy areas they have responsiblity for. Diverging from this has caused the odd frantic call from London to the offending blogger. There is nothing to say that staff cannot advance national interest behind closed doors AND engage in […]
The new Obama administration has made a fine old mess of this one: When the vice president, the secretary of state and the national security adviser all say you have been tapped to be the next United States ambassador to Iraq, odds are it’s a done deal, right? Apparently not […]
Now and again you see something that lifts the standard for us all. Here is a superb analysis by Jason Lee Steorts at NRO of the foreign policy process and Iraq – looked at through the eyes of a poker player – which gives us numerous insights into how things work […]
