Opinion / Negotiation Technique

Femen meets The Guardian

The topless Femen activists are profiled (so to speak) in the Guardian. A new generation of militant über-feminists? Or preening nudist ninnies? Read the rich vein of comments and decide for yourself.

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Structure and Story in Speechwriting

I have written here previously on Message, Structure, Story and Signposts in public speaking. See eg here. This piece (c/o the ever-excellent Browser) is a super look at how to structure a movie plot by telling a simple story. It works for speeches too: Here is my detailed description of […]

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Another Ambassador Dies on Duty

Here is my Telegraph Blogs piece on the terrible attack of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens: There is no easy diplomatic response to such atrocities. Blaming the host country for poor security does not go far – usually they are as appalled as the rest of us at […]

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Facebook – and Class Struggle!

Y’all are sitting there pondering one of the great Left issues of the day. Is Facebook part of the class struggle? Are people on Facebook a class, and if so are they exploiting or exploited? Why are new forms of social media so dangerous? Yes, it’s the American Left in […]

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Assange and Australia: The Ranters Rant

At the risk of boring you all to death, I link to my new Telegraph Blogs piece on #Assange. Many excellent and pertinent comments: Penned by a gutless burocrat who spent his entire worthless career cowering inside a British Embassy, knowing that no matter what garbage he wrote, he was […]

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CC v BB: Are Embassies ever Violable?

My various postings and pronouncements on the rights and wrongs of the UK government’s ‘threat’ to remove the diplomatic immunity of the Ecuador Embassy in London to enable J Assange to be nabbed have prompted Brian Barder to weigh in. And when Brian weighs in, he does so thoroughly. His […]

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How to Solve the Assange Problem: What If?

The Assange case is stuck and embarrassing. How might one look at this issue as a professional mediator? As things stand, the interests of Assange/Ecuador and UK/Sweden respectively largely coincide. Assange/Ecuador want to use the issue to bolster their reputations and poke the US/West in the eye. UK/Sweden want to […]

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J Assange at The Corner

Here at The Corner (National Review Online’s popular stream of consciousness in the USA) is a piece by John O’Sullivan that picks up some of my ideas but comes down in favour of gracefully letting Mr Assange stew in his Ecuadorean juice: With those two points in mind, why not try […]

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More on Assange and Diplomatic Immunity

In a comment on my earlier post, my old sparring partner and inveterate contrarian Brian Barder takes up the challenge re diplomatic immunity and Assange: Entertaining knockabout, Charles, but completely wrong. The embassy’s premises are unequivocally immune from entry without the agreement of the ambassador, under international law as laid down […]

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Diplomatic Bags (Assange)

Having gone through a full cheery diplomatic career without having read the Vienna Convention, I thought that I would see if J Assange might be popp’d in an Ecuadoran Diplomatic Bag and removed from the UK that way. In other words, can he be ‘smuggled’ out in broad sight or […]

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