One of the many best things about writing this blog is that people I hardly know or may not have ever met get in touch in all sorts of ways. Thus. Remember my piece a while back about the startling and startlingly bad film Battle of Warsaw 1920? A reader today […]
Here’s another truly horrible piece at Social Europe Journal that caught my beady eye. It’s by one Kinga Pozniak (someone of Polish origin no doubt, an anthropologist who lectures at the Western University in London. Not London, England. London, Canada). It’s entitled "Poland’s ACTA Protests – Molecular Change in an unlikely […]
My piece about the latest Summit over at Daily Telegraph blogs is up, prompting the usual vivid comments from Daily Telegraph readers: This piece by Crawford simply comes across as Civil Service gobbeldy-gook and demonstrates that he’s no understanding of any of this. Is that why the Civil Service seem to […]
That story about my having contributed to the energetic Berlin Speech by Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski has reappeared, this time in a piece by Krzysztof Szczerski MP, a member of the Polish opposition. It’s in Polish. But the opening passage caught my beady eye. In it Mr Szczerski notes the […]
Here is a nicely turned interview with Polish writer Andrzej (Andrew) Stasiuk where he gives us some deliciously naughty thoughts about European nationalism and German hegemony: Before Europe existed because it knew how to take risks, it went to sea to seek a fortune. Today it just accumulates and fears […]
One of the things I do on training courses aimed at telling people how to Write with Impact is to cite Shrek. Issues and Shrek are like onions. They have layers. No piece of writing can address all the layers of any problem. The trick is to show awareness of other layers but focus […]
A lively day. First, I spent the night in a wonky hotel in downtown Lewes. The room sloped alarmingly in two directions, to the point where anything smooth risked sliding off the table. The sign in the bathroom read thusly: “Shower Mat Ensure the suckers are in contact with the […]
Here in powerful fluent form is Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, speaking today in Berlin about Europe and the Eurozone. If anyone can find a better peacetime speech by any Polish Foreign Minister or any Polish politician ever, let it be produced! Not that it is perfect. Too many rather […]
As readers here know, the Spiegel Online site is a fine way to find thoughtful pieces on the goings-on in Europe from a German perspective. Try these two for size. The first is an interview with Polish Central Bank Governor Marek Belka (who served for a while as a technocrat Prime Minister […]
Most readers of this website are interested in one way or another in ‘foreign affairs’. As I have described on different occasions here, the heart of international diplomacy is the state. That idea in its modern form emerged from the Peace of Westphalia. Here are some passages from my 2009 […]
