Remember the Bonn Powers for Bosnia and Herzegovina – the supposed authority bestowed on the High Representative by the ‘international community’ to allow him/her to remove recalcitrant Bosnians from office or otherwise ‘move forward’ the ‘peace process’? The impressive thing was that as far as I could see the Bonn Powers […]
Fascinating and important piece by FT’s Clive Crook on the deep moral assumptions underpinning the USA’s latest public spending dramas: Prof Haidt finds that liberals are driven mainly by intuitions about fairness (who gets what) and harm to victims. Conservatives are guided by those intuitions too, but also by intuitions […]
Nosemonkey praises the energetic start of the Polish Presidency, not least a feisty speech by Polish PM Donald Tusk. The text of this important speech is not (as far as I can see) on the Polish Prime Minister’s official website, even in Polish. So we have to do with some […]
I have linked here before to Johann Hari’s deliberate/incompetent/negligent – who knows? – misreading of one of the key passages in Atlas Shrugged: Thus Johann: … her contempt for ordinary people extends so far that when a railway worker in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ decides to punish the wicked socialist government by […]
As Poland starts its EU Presidency, the long-awaited announcement is made: HM Ambassador in Poland Ric Todd is moving on, to a significant and sunny new posting. All is not (yet) quite lost. Lots of scope for transplanting modern progressive European values to the conservative locals – and flying that flag. […]
Poland now assumes the six-month Polish Presidency for the first time. Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski sets the scene: “EU success story” gets some 600 Google News hits. “EU crisis” gets 14,000 hits. What has gone wrong? Some people have a blunt answer: “Too much Europe!” EU structures and policies are […]
As the Greek Parliament votes another impossible-to-implement austerity package and the world’s financial centres and European banks hope for the best, have a look at these nice chess examples of ‘Greek gift sacrifices’ (if you click the buttons you can watch the moves unfold on the screen). The idea echoes the […]
Yesterday evening as I wearily wended my way home from Paris, I had to get the 2115 train from Paddington to Swansea. For some or other reason it was very full. I made my way to the front of the train to save time when getting off at Didcot, and […]
Check out this exchange where a Fletcher School graduate tries to correct a Reuters fact-blunder in a story, Reuters putting the School as part of Boston University (it in fact is part of Tufts University). What’s interesting is this part of their explanation: Regarding your request, please see the resolution […]
