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 […]
As we all know, across its vast territory Russia has all sorts of energy resources. And, as energy gets scarcer, Russia therefore gets richer and can throw its weight around again, right? Not so fast. The problem with vast energy reserves is that it costs a vast amount to develop them. […]
Googling for some figures on the depths of winters in Siberia, I found this 1998 scientific research: Cold related mortalities and protection against cold in Yakutsk, eastern Siberia: observation and interview study And the Conclusion after all that learned analysis? A shocker: People in Yakutsk wore very warm clothing, and in […]
Interesting new policy initiatives from the Conservatives on how to use IT to improve government. Yet… I hanker after Something More from our leaders. It’s all so prosaic. Worthy indeed. Yet a touch uninspiring? Why not bring in some Russian-style politics to liven things up a bit and make political campaigning up and down […]
Russia’s gloomy demographic trends are a fascinating subject. For years now Russia has been losing some 750,000 people per year. Poor birth rates, high death rates: horrible abortion, HIV, accident and TB statistics, the accumulation of decades of communist mal-investment and then studied unwillingness by successive post-communist administrations to face […]
At last. Someone intelligent looking at first principles: The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation… Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of […]
I have not added anything on this important subject, as my earlier posting in December said more or less all I have to say on it. This time the Russians have played hardball, actually letting people all over the place get very cold by turning off gas supplies. The accounting […]
Back in November I wrote about diplomatic negotiating, including a passage on the Middle East: In the Middle East there is an existential negotiation going on over the very existence of Israel. Either Israel exists, or it doesn’t. The Iranians under current management are contriving to give the impression that Israel […]
I am pressing on through The Exception, by Christian Jungersen. This is a terrific novel. It is set in a small Danish NGO of experts on war crimes. The team there, almost all women, start falling out when some threatening emails arrive. The ensuing suspicions and intrigue are described in a gripping […]
The Turkey/Armenia relationship still grapples with the scale and definition of the huge numbers of killings of Armenians in 1915. A new and bold initiative in Turkey aims at collecting signatures of apology, albeit not using the word ‘genocide’. Meanwhile the Polish media have picked up on work done by […]
