This Libya business gets worse. Now the UK government is tangled up in explaining what it did or did not to to help victims of IRA terrorist bombs get compensation from Libya, source of the IRA’s Semtex explosives. Here is a piece about the basic legal claim involved. To my long-lost […]
Remember my struggling with a paper on how best to deal with failing/fragile states? Thanks to all those who sent ideas. Here is an extract from the finished product, which lists some of the grisly dilemmas which arise at the practical and policy levels alike: There will be no consensus […]
A certain Van Jones, influential Marxist activist cum President Obama’s senior adviser on so-called green jobs, has resigned. A direct hit on the Obama Administration by some of its opponents. Why? The New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CBS will have been all over this one explaining the background and assessing what […]
My latest article for DIPLOMAT magazine is out (not currently available online, alas). It is all about HOBGOBLINS AND OMELETTES: WHERE DIPLOMACY MEETS ETHNICITY It starts thus: A vital date in the history of the modern world is 1648. That was when the Treaties of Osnabrück and Münster were signed. […]
There I was yesterday evening, busy tidying the main room to welcome our guests after dinner. I laid a wood fire organically collected from my garden, and placed my LP of the Roomates in a handy position near my Linn deck, ready to charm said guests with my exquisite and […]
In the margins of an FCO Leadership Conference (gathering of Ambassadors and top brass) a couple of years back a presentation on world economic trends was made. In it a Big Point was made by a passing expert. That a colossal new process was unfolding with great speed, namely the […]
To get that fine award you need to be really smart. And never contradict yourself.
Once upon a time telephone calls went down specific lines; a ‘switchboard’ was a large, er, board at which an operator sat switching plugs to and fro into holes to connect individual people. That got automated. Calls became cheaper and cheaper. Then along came computers. Then the Internet. Based on (very cool) packet-switching […]
Talking of education, President Obama’s idea of exhorting America’s children to work hard via a nationwide address to schools is (of course) encountering resistance as did a similar initiative by President Bush in 1991: … Critics are particularly upset about lesson plans the administration created to accompany the speech. The lesson […]
Remember the stirring if eccentric song by Nick Lowe, Nutted by Reality ..? Well I heard they castrated CastroI heard they cut off everything he hadWhat a dirty low down thing to doTo mess him up like that They dumped him in the jungleIn the land of the sugar caneEver […]
