Here is a Daily Mail article picking up a Spanish media analysis rating … yes, the planet’s most gorgeous women politicians. Not exactly journalism at its most serious: Oh boy, this is going to get me into terrible trouble with Harriet Harman and her sisterhood. But how come the French have […]
Anne Applebaum says that the Obama/Clinton reset button for US/Russia relations is not working: Anyone who doubts the truth of this need only look at remarks Lavrov himself made last weekend in Brussels … The transcript of his remarks, and those of other Russians attending the same conference, do not capture […]
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 […]
A reader sends me this striking quote from Coningsby by Benjamin Disraeli, spoken in the novel by Sindonia, the brilliant Sephardic Jew: I always look upon Diplomatists as the Hebrews of politics; without country, political creeds, popular convictions, that strong reality of existence which pervades the career of an eminent citizen […]
The point about Political Correctness is that it is an attempt to define an ideological and then physical control agenda solely on progressive/leftist terms. It matters less what those terms are than that no-one else other than in-crowd progressives/leftists gets to have a say in defining them. Often the issue is […]
RFE/RL has many excellent pieces on the less settled parts of Europe and beyond. Here is a gloomy piece about the current trends in former Yugoslavia, arguing that with so many other problems going on elsewhere the ‘international community’ is not gripping Balkanic divisons which are reappearing busily all over […]
Remember the fuss about the oppressive and unworkable FCO rules on what former diplomats might or might not say in public? We now have new rules! And they are actually sensible. They put the emphasis on intelligent people using their Judgement: The FCO relies on former officials to exercise their […]
Here is a reasonable-sounding assessment by Jonathan Freedland of the early days of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy: That same official explained it to me like this yesterday: "The Bush administration hindered its own efforts by tying one hand behind its back. Diplomacy is a tool, but they viewed it […]
My former boss Sir Emyr Jones Parry was put forward to be the new High Representative in Bosnia. But there seems to be a problem. The Russians are unhappy with him, plus the Americans are unhappy with another EU candidate Valentin Inzko from Austria. Poor Bosnia. And Herzegovina. And indeed poor […]
How can the State Department have messed this up? How? No really, how? Hillary Clinton wanted to symbolise a ‘new start’ in US/Russia relations by handing over to Russian Foreign Minister Lvrov a gift of a red button with the Russian word for ‘reset’ on it. Geddit?! They want to reset […]
