I posted a comment on another Iran piece by Michael Totten at Commentary Contentions: Another good ploy is to make clear that Western governments will do everything possible to expose the names of individuals in the regime suspected of ordering or encouraging acts of brutality against unarmed citizens, and to help […]
A reader asks: I’m dimly aware of some of the covert aid the US offered to Milosevic’s opposition prior to his downfall. I am wondering if you can share some details about those events as well as whether your government also provided similar aid. This would be a very long […]
Here is part of a comment on a previous posting of mine on Western policy in the Balkans: It isn’t the US’s or the UK’s business to "achieve stability or long-term solutions" in the Balkans, the Middle East, or anywhere else. The sooner these two moralising countries (whose own morals […]
Talk about Hopey Change. Things have moved into a dizzying new universe when the EU makes a rather brisker set of noises on Iran than the USA. Here is the worst utterance of a US Presidential spokesperson – ever: Obviously, we continue to have concern about what we’ve seen. Obviously, the […]
There is a lot on this site about the problems we and the people of the former Yugoslav region face in where precisely the borders of new states should be, and how those new states should be defined. Try this. Or this. Former US Ambassador to Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia/Montenegro […]
Obama fan Camille Paglia looks at that Cairo speech, and is less impressed than she had hoped to be. Thus: Obama’s speech (which I read rather than heard) seemed to my teacher’s eye like a strong first draft rather than a polished final product… The Cairo speech is well-organized, ticking […]
Orwell Prize-winner Johann Hari is the new generation’s answer to Polly Toynbee, a turbo-charged Progressive who pops up all over the place. It was he, you recall, who wrote a wildly wrong account of the railcrash episode in Atlas Shrugged: Indeed, her contempt for ordinary people extends so far that […]
Back in 1998 at Harvard I wrote a paper on the Bosnian situation and the ‘deep’ contradictions of the Dayton Peace Agreement. Here is one passage from it: … any attempt to negotiate a democratic Bosnia and Herzegovina solely with Presidents Tudjman and Milosevic and Bosnian leaders (Bosniac, Serb and […]
Undeterred by doing worse than the British National Party in the 2005 election result in Blackburn, former Ambassador Craig Murray is back on the campaign trail. He is running as a local lad independent candidate in the North Norwich by-election, under the slogan "honest people can fight back". And he is going […]
Or maybe its corporatistic Socialism? Who cares? Part of the problem here is definitional. No mainstream liberal actually wants government to completely seize the means of production, and no mainstream conservative believes that there’s no room for any government regulation or social insurance. Both sides believe in a "mixed economy" […]
