While the boring Koran non-burning story was running, over on Radio 5 Live someone used the metaphor that "you’re not allowed to shout ‘Fire’ in a theatre" as the basis for circumscribing free speech. And here is a grander person, namely US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, saying the same […]
The Independent today runs the story of deaf diplomat Jane Cordell’s claim that the FCO unlawfully discriminated against her in refusing to post her to Astana (Kazakhstan) as the cost of the ‘reasonable adjustments’ needed to allow her to work there would not (said the FCO) have been reasonable. And […]
This existential question was solved once and for all by English judges in the eternally famous 1927 case of Fardell v Potts which explored the core legal concept of the Reasonable Man and considered whether it should be extended to include the Reasonable Woman. The facts were clear enough: In this case the appellant […]
Full Disclosure I know many of the people involved in the issues described below and now and then have been privately helping JC formulate her arguments. World Scoop Today I spent some time in an impressive frontier territory, full of exotic geological formations and mysterious goings-on. Namely […]
Over at Business and Politics is my latest piece, on the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. It looks in a roundabout way at issues of information flow, risk management and ‘corporate culture’: Perhaps our hard-pressed rig operator makes the mistake of fact, misinterpreting the information being pushed to […]
My piece at the Independent on the outcome of the Ejup Ganic trial in London provokes the usual flurry of comments: Mr Crawford is one of the morons that manipulated both US and UK foreign policy towards Bosnia in the 1990s. As an officer in the NATO force that arrived […]
A London court has rejected Serbia’s application to get former Bosnian/Bosniac leader Ejup Ganic extradited to Belgrade to face charges on the infamous Dobrovoljacka Street killings in Sarajevo in 1992. The word ‘rejected‘ perhaps does not do justice to District Judge Timothy Workman’s demolition of Serbia’s case. Perhaps ‘blew to smithereens beyond […]
Welcome Browser and other new readers. After reading my thoughts below, check out this piece I wrote back in 2008 about inat. If you don’t understand inat, you can’t understand Kosovo or Serbia or anything about former Yugoslavia. Sorry, but there it is. * * * * * The International […]
Remember the Archbishop’s Tale? That was the peerless work of someone far far away called Iowahawk. Now he’s back, as ever on the subject of Holy Men. In this case two distinguished US politicians-cum-vicars, Al Gore and John Edwards, whose capacity for loudly pursuing righteous causes is exceeded only by the scale […]
The legal processes surrounding the attempt by Belgrade to get former BH Presidency member Ejup Ganic extradited from London to Serbia to face war crimes charges rumble on. The latest hearing has ended. According to the Sarajevo media, judgement is expected on 27 July. Needless to say, media reports of […]
