The issues of privacy (not) arising from micro-drones spiral off into unfathomable moral complexity. That future is so now. You want a little device to zoom more or less silently through the air and hover at a handy distance to watch what is going on in your neighbour’s bedroom (or maybe your […]
I have linked here before to various wonderful stories and insights by Ray Bradbury who died this week after a long life of writing genius. The appreciations pour forth. Here is a nice one. Here is a rare example on the Internet of a full short story by him: ‘No […]
I have spent most of the Bank Holiday break mulling over daily cryptic crossword clues created by Leo Traynor and posted by him on Twitter @LeosClue. He has mustered about 1000 people grappling with his crafty clues to the point of submitting answers, the vast majority of which are wrong. […]
DIPLOMAT magazine’s website now has my recent article on this subject. It starts with a story: Back in 1997 Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Bosnia. I accompanied him on the plane from Banja Luka to Sarajevo. During the journey the Prime Minister asked what had happened to his idea that […]
As you know, this blog takes the view that in a globalised world a terrorist threat to the networks that support modern life are a threat to us all. And that international law doctrines of self-defence and ‘national sovereignty’ need to be redefined accordingly: if a state wants the benefit of modern […]
Here for all Balkanphiliacs is an interview with me in the Belgrade publication Svedok. In the unlikely event you don’t speak Serbian and/or Google translator blows up under the pressure, here is the English text I sent them which as far as I can see has been reproduced in Serbian […]
You’ve probably been wondering what happened to that really cool Arab Spring stuff when all the young liberal Arabs we’ve been trying to find for so long finally got on Twitter and Facebook and linked up. And changed the world! So has Mark Steyn – read the whole piece (of course) […]
Greg Pytel (GP) returns, asking me to post a comment to my post below, which of course I have done. His further observations are interesting. I do not think it was fair to put up a running commentary (Especially as you well know that all I really wanted was to put […]
Derek Tonkin makes plenty more smart points in emails to me which he is pleased to see made available to a wider audience (edited and reorganised slightly by me for this format). See especially his wise concluding sentence. Thus: Sanctions In 1999 the UK Government completed a general study of […]
Have you heard of anyone called Greg Pytel? The name rang no bell with me either until this morning, when this annoying peevish message arrived: Dear Mr Crawford, Over a year ago I wrote an article "Regulating financial risks" (it was also reprinted by a couple of financial websites like […]
