Here is a bizarre article by one Sławomir Sierakowski over at Project Syndicate, who ought to know better. It gets off to a flying start with the title: The Polish Threat to Europe. Not, you note, A Polish Threat to Europe or even A Polish Threat to Europe? No, it’s the definite […]
Here’s my piece today for the Daily Telegraph on the mighty Owen Report on the murder by polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. With added Katyn: For anyone interested in the way governments operate, there is nothing more astonishing than the policy memorandum sent from Beria to Stalin in 1940, tersely […]
My previous post linked to the new gloomy piece by Robert Kaplan for the WSJ, in which he ponders the possibility of Europe reverting to deep historical fault-lines: The sturdy core of modern Europe approximates in large measure the Carolingian Empire founded by Charlemagne in the ninth century. The first […]
My previous piece about Poland and its new Law and Justice (PiS) government’s manoeuvres has attracted a lot of attention in Poland – see the vivid stream of comments from all sides of the arguments and more. This morning it has been announced that the European Commission has decided to […]
Here is another Guardian piece on the moves by the new Polish government led by Law and Justice to heave out key people from the state broadcaster and bring in new people they appoint: Under the new law, senior figures in public radio and television will be appointed – and […]
Around the planet the world’s networked seismographs will have revealed in seconds all sorts of things about North Korea’s latest big bomb test, hydrogen or otherwise. Notably that it was indeed a bomb (and not an earthquake) and where exactly the test took place. Other instruments will be tracing the […]
Hurrah. Jay Pollard has been released on parole on strict conditions after a full 30 years in a US prison. In 1986 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the USA for spying for Israel. He has served his full term, despite the generally close US/Israel relationship and numerous public and […]
Separately on Twitter I have been sparring with Phillip Blond of ResPublica on an interesting issue or two: is ISIS effectively a state for international law purposes, and if so does that make it easier for France to mobilise effective military action under NATO’s famous Article Five? You’ll have to […]
My latest DIPLOMAT article on migration and refugees had this dismally prescient passage (emphasis added here): According to the Office of The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2014 on average some 40,000 people a day were driven from their homes by conflict or persecution and compelled to find […]
My latest piece for DIPLOMAT magazine, on the EU and its refugee/migrant crisis: Who exactly is a citizen of state X? And what rights (if any) does a person who is not a citizen of state X have (a) to enter state X and (b) to stay there? The answer? […]
