One of the amusing Criminal Law undergraduate questions in Jurisprudence centres on the law of mistakes. Suppose it is a rainy night, and I am in a restaurant without my umbrella which I lost the other week. After paying my bill I decide to chance it. I shiftily look around […]
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 […]
Here are my ten entries for this year’s Orwell Blog Prize: 14/01/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art740 17/03/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art859 03/05/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/art928 17/06/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/anonymous-bloggers-at-work- 26/06/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/a-musty-needy-eu-speech 04/08/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/NRWKVL599211 21/09/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/russia-s-foreign-policy-psycholgy-contd- 30/10/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/even-yet-more-further-labour-kaminski-nonsense 15/11/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/european-foreign-policy-v-the-iron-laws-of-physics 20/12/2009 https://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/copenhagen-climate-summit-um-not-un These are a decent sample of my output this year, some more analytical than others. I have tried […]
As I wisely wrote back in 1998: It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that certain provisions of the new Constitution accepted by the Balkan nationalists at Dayton introduced a new apartheid-like discrimination in Europe. Article V laid down that “The Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall consist of … […]
I previously have quoted the famous chess aphorism attributed to the hypermodern chess grandmaster Aron Nimzowitsch back in 1927, the threat is stronger than the execution: The sense is that one can wait for some time to play a strong chess move, letting the threat that it might happen create […]
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 […]
Nothing shows the power of the state so much as forced displacements – where local populations are told by the Authorities to move for the sake of the Greater Good. It is one thing this happening on a small scale to enable significant new development to happen and where a […]
I hope by now that you have all read The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. It is one of the most profound science fiction short stories ever written, because it has at its heart the core question of science and indeed existence: Can entropy ever be reversed? What is entropy? […]
A busy few days for old-fashioned diplomacy, with China taking no obvious notice of British and other pleas for clemency in the case of Akmal Shaikh, and the Tehran regime hauling in the British Ambassador Simon Gass to issue dire warnings about a ‘slap in the face’ from Iran. Some thoughts. First, […]
The popular rising in Iran against its revolting regime is gaining momentum. But will that be enough? A good WSJ piece on the Big Picture: Much has been written about the fact that Iran’s democratic movement today combines the three characteristics of a velvet revolution—nonviolent, nonutopian and populist in nature—with […]
