My site’s ratings for March soared to new heights with lots of interest from Malta. It is not easy to follow the fusillades of insults between rival tendencies there. According to Daphne Caruana Galizia, her political opponents (primarily Malta Labour supporters) have set up a website to attack her as […]
Remember the world scoop/poop of Sarajevo newspaper Dnevi Avaz, featuring what was said to be fascimile copy of a letter from Prime Minister John Major to FCO Minister of State Douglas Hogg, back in May 1993? In the so-called letter Prime Minister Major says a number of nasty things about […]
Instapunk is in a feisty mood as Easter approaches, looking at how conservatives and liberals deal with religion: Socialism, fascism, communism are all attempts by human pretenders to the throne of Christ to fill what they perceive as a vaccuum. Their mistakes are all attributable to the fact that men […]
As any fule kno, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski is married to Anne Applebaum, seriously distinguished writer/commentator/historian. So when Radek failed to get selected as Citizens Platform candidate to run for Polish President later this year, what else could Anne do but write a short piece about what it’s like […]
My latest piece in DIPLOMAT magazine looks at different territories round the world which do not fit into neat and tidy state categories. Or do not want to do so. Turns out there are quite a few of them. Nice drawing!
Leader of the Bosniac SDA party in Sarajevo Sulejman Tihic has made a very measured response to the Serbia Assembly Resolution on Srebrenica, calling for a similar resolution in the BH Assembly apologising for crimes against Serbs and Croats. He also expressed the hope that the Declaration in Belgrade would […]
The adoption late yesterday by the Serbia National Assembly (Narodna Skupstina) of a Declaration on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia has been hitting the headlines. See eg the BBC. And RFE/RL. The EU has welcomed the move. Others in the region including various Serb liberals have strongly criticised it for not […]
I twice have written on this site about one of the most remarkable nights of my FCO career. This posting – my first ever published on this site – described how I single-handedly as FCO Resident Clerk crushed press freedom in Scotland late one night. And then this more recent […]
Here is a brisk piece I wrote over at Business and Politics, denouncing Labour schemes to loot football clubs to promote the ‘mutualisation’ of public services and the ‘democratisation’ of football club ownership. This is so repulsive and insane an idea that one scarcely knows where to start. OK, I’ll […]
My posting on the film Storm and its setting – the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) – quoted two lines from the movie: Two powerful lines from the film stand out: "What are these trials for?" "This (ie ICTY) is not therapy…" Some thoughts. What is ICTY’s mandate and jurisdiction? […]
