Remember my rather dismissive account of the UK’s attempt to teach the Russians how to fish, rather than inundate them with free fish? And the ensuing Big Mac Attack? I have just heard from a former member of the UK Agriculture Ministry MAFF (by no means related to naff) who […]
Mr. President, Members of the Court, I am a devoted but disgruntled South Australian. “I hereby declare the independence of South Australia.” What has happened? Precisely nothing. Have I committed an internationally wrongful act in your presence? Of course not. Have I committed an ineffective act? Very likely. I have […]
Meanwhile over at the ICJ the USA and Russia (and Spain and Finland) have been giving their views. The USA arguments are smooth, somehow rather personal and elegant (including a nice oblique reference to Sherlock Holmes – the dog which did not bark, from Silver Blaze). The Russians are more formalistic […]
On US blogs I keep seeing the word rube appear. As here: For all the talk of Sarah Palin being a rube, just a backward waif from Wasilla, Alaska, few seem to appreciate that she, more than any other rumored 2012 Republican nominee, has mastered the cutting edge art of […]
Remember the Sharpeville Six? They were six South Africans convicted of the murder of a local township leader who ‘collaborated’ with the apartheid regime. Their case became an international symbol of the anti-apartheid struggle. What happened? In early September 1984 in Sharpeville (south of Johannesburg) township protesters angered at rent rises converged upon the house of […]
As readers of this website know only too well, the Kosovo case is fascinating and stunningly difficult on multiple levels simultaneously. Political, moral, precedental, timescale, ethnic, existential. The territory of Kosovo itself is smallish by international standards, ranking at 168th out of 249 countries listed in the CIA World Factbook – […]
Here is a circular going round from the London School of Economics:
The Advisory Opinion hearings at the International Court of Justice on the Serbia/Kosovo question have started. The curious thing about this one is the actual question which the ICJ is tasked by the UN General Assembly to address: Is the unilateral declaration of independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government […]
Here is a trenchant analysis of the tendency of Bosnia to split in two, written by Matthew Parish, a lawyer who has worked in the divided Bosnian city of Brcko and knows what he is talking about. His basic argument is that step by step Republika Srpska is heading towards […]
Patriarch Pavle (Paul) of the Serbian Orthodox Church died today at the age of 95. A tiny, mild mannered yet complex figure, Patriarch Pavle did his best to identify a principled way forward during the madness of recent decades in Serbia but found himself entangled in the politics of Serbia’s […]
