Who did better from the spy swap? Some say the Americans: “I don’t think there’s any doubt — I think the U.S. won,” NBC National Security Producer Robert Windrem said Friday. He said the four freed by the Russians were coming "with real information and there’s no evidence the guys […]
Now that Cuba has agreed to release – and exile – a goodly number of political prisoners, Spain expects the European Union to ‘respond’ and be more flexible. I have written here on various occasions about Cuba. Maybe the most astonishing thing about this run-down Cold War relic is not […]
Is the US/Russian likely spy swap a good idea? Ron Radosh thinks not: Both the Putin government and the Obama administration, however, are signing on to this charade. The Russians get back their would-be sleeper agents, while the United States avoids an embarrassing trial that might turn U.S. public opinion […]
Slowly but surely, I feel myself moving from happy to uncomfortable to annoyed with our squeaky clean new government. Not only is it hard to reconcile the ambitious pronouncements of William Hague for a "clear, focused and effective" foreign policy with the major cuts now looming for the FCO as […]
This material is whizzing around the web – an exchange of letters in the Times from way back in 1932 between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek on how best to respond to huge economic problems. The clarity of their respective arguments is striking. I go with Hayek, who warns […]
Are we about to see a major ‘spy swap’? "Why waste time on all those tedious legal processes and prisons? We get our spies back, and so do you." Hard for me at least to see why the Russians would want to do this unless the illegals/sleepers rounded up in […]
My recent observations on the arrest of the network of Russian sleeper/illegal spies in the USA have been noticed and commended by Boris Volodarsky: Finally, out of a wall of stupid and totally unqualified media reports, including two articles in The Sunday Times (July 4, 2010) not to mention the […]
In my eccentric Left phase as a student I got very depressed by a popular book by a young David Horowitz, a prominent American Leftist who railed at great length (460 pages) against the iniquities of Amerika and its unforgiving anti-communist foreign policy machinations. Not only was the USA surrounding the […]
Fascinating interview with Clay Shirky at the Guardian website, where all sorts of issues dealing with the impact of the Internet (especially on old-style media outlets such as newspapers and TV) are covered elegantly. Examples: When we talk about newspapers, we talk about them being critical for informing the public; […]
Remember the attempt by Serbia to get former Bosnian leader Ejup Ganic extradited from London to Belgrade on war crimes charges dating back to the early days of the conflict in Bosnia? After a flurry of media interest when Ganic was first arrested, it all went quiet after BH Presidency member […]
