Hurrah. In the days and weeks to come all sorts of information about the mission to capture/kill (or was it only the latter?) will gush out. It is already clear that the Americans had been painstakingly trying to get to Bin Laden via his main communication trail, namely a highly trusted […]
We have returned from Florida and I am emerging from jet-lag, just in time to appear today on the BBC World Have Your Say radio programme this afternoon on the rather incoherent subject of Privacy. If you are interested the link to the programme is here, until it fades away. I […]
Here’s a bold idea. That the peoples of the ‘Western Balkans’ (ie mainly the former Yugoslavia area) push out the febrile internationals and sit down for some hard talking: With the Powers pushed out the locals – assuming they actually want to settle their disputes – could then grapple with the choreography […]
Remember Margaret Thatcher on Honest Money? One of my favourite political moments was the Panorama interview with Margaret Thatcher as the 1987 election loomed. She was asked about her policy on inflation. Maybe the Q and A were somehow choreographed? The camera panned in to close-up as she replied "I […]
Then there is the other Gaddafi option, of proclaiming a polite ceasefire then launching an attack in the hope that it creates new facts on the ground faster than the NFZ forces can act to stop it. This is all about Gaddafi’s personal message of ‘negotiation’ with the rebels – […]
The text of the Libya UNSCR is here. Key point as Sir J Greenstock has just pointed out on Radio Four is this (emphasis added): Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take […]
No sooner had I put out the idea this morning that Gaddafi might do well not to blow Benghazi to bits but instead behave in a more guileful way than the cunning fellow proclaims a ceasefire! I knew of course that he swings by this blog now and again, but […]
Here’s something I sent to the Evening Standard – not sure if they used any of it: Perhaps the most difficult moral and legal question of our time is this one: “who is my neighbour?” Domestic law has moved a long way from an earlier tradition that what went […]
“Where the Americans?” That’s the sixty-four-dollar question. Chaos in Egypt: “Where are the Americans?” Gadaffi in Libya: “Where are the Americans?” Devastation in Japan: “Where are the Americans?” I am in London for a few days. At a dinner party last night, that was once again the question: “Where are […]
The agonies continue at the LSE over the fact that it took Libyan money. Here is the sensible memo which an unhappy Fred Halliday wrote on the subject in October 2009. It reads quite well now. Here briskly defending what New Labour did by way of opening up to Libya is […]
