Iain Dale makes a trenchant observation: According to Woodward and his Cabinet colleagues, the banking crisis is almost entirely down to the effects of globalisation and the US sub prime mortgage market. I completely acknowledge that this is at least in part an entirely reasonable argument. But if you don’t […]
A long report by the ‘European Council on Foreign Relations’ describes how the EU is losing ground at the UN in terms of mobilising support from other countries for votes on human rights issues. A summary is here. See also the Guardian account. The general problem? Thus: "The EU is suffering […]
My previous piece on the ECFR Report about the EU’s growing ineffectuality at the UN quoted this: … The assembly kicked off this week in New York with the west bracing itself for another debacle. Serbia is to use the session to demand a vote on the "illegality" of the secession […]
Russia’s PM Putin and President Medvedev have been hosting groups of Western journalists, to quite good effect from the Russian point of view. Even if some of the language used by Putin might have been a bit … overvivid. A tendency also visible these days in the robust style of Russian […]
I previously linked to Christopher Hitchens and Michael Totten analysing why the Kosovo case is quite different from the cases of either S Ossetia or Abkhazia, rendering spurious/dishonest Russia’s recognition of the latter two as new states. Here for good measure is former US Ambassador to Zagreb and Belgrade, my friend Bill […]
The Times has two noteworthy pieces on Georgia and its ramifications today. Bronwen Maddox weighs in on the EU’s defiant chihuahua-like stance: … even though the EU should rightly settle for the lowest common denominator on such important questions of its own identity, the proposals were weak beyond parody. “The Union […]
Analysis/comment on Georgia/Russia gushes out. EU leaders meet tomorrow. Hence we have the latest UK positions as described by Foreign Secretary David Miliband and (today) Prime Minister Gordon Brown. These senior British statements are both alas inelegantly drafted. Who is preparing these texts for our leaders – and are they themselves […]
Welcome Instapundit readers. David Miliband puts forward the best available case for why the Kosovo precedent has no bearing on the Georgia case: Some argue that Russia has done nothing not previously done by Nato in Kosovo in 1999. But this comparison does not bear serious examination. Leave to one […]
Few if any entries in the coming week as the sun finally emerges in Florida after Tropical Storm Fay. Back to normal service at the end of August. Just to add that timeshare salesmen in this part of the world are startlingly good. We were offered the usual free donuts […]
Michael Binyon deploys chess metaphors to describe Russia’ s military push into Georgia: Vladimir Putin lost several pawns on the chessboard – Kosovo, Iraq, Nato membership for the Baltic states, US renunciation of the ABM treaty, US missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. But he waited. The trap was set in […]
