Witty Ivor (sneaking past my comment box defences without leaving an email address) piles on the pressure: This is splendidly comical. On one side, the United Nations, the OAS, the United States government and, apparently, most informed opinion worldwide. Lined up against them, someone who spent 12 months as Honduran Minister […]
Knowing next to nothing about Honduras I am forced to rely on perusing the world’s media. Ousted President Zelaya is cranking up a lot of international pressure in his favour: The Organization of American States has suspended Honduras in protest at the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya. The rare decision was […]
Here is a striking story of a young Bosnian (Bosniac/Muslim) woman who fled Sarajevo during the war there and ended up in London. Where she now is doing rather well. As is Arminka Helic, another young Bosniac who is a foreign policy adviser to William Hague and so gets in […]
The appointment of Sir John Sawers as head of MI6 continues to give the public shock and awe. Their care-free former lifestyle which my family and I once joined at their luxury penthouse holiday pad high on a Cornwall cliff is no more.
Have we just had a vast new shift in the way the European Union is to be run, with we dopey Wimbledon- and Michael Jackson-obsessed Brits utterly missing the story? Germany’s top Constitutional Court has taken a view on the Lisbon Treaty and come up with some far-reaching conclusions. Which […]
I’d never heard of the bestselling r’n’b’n’movie star until her Cessna crashed just after takeoff a week ago. But that’s okay. Nobody’s that popular any more: Popular culture is more accurately characterized these days as a lot of mutually hostile unpopular cultures. So let us take Rochelle Riley, writing in […]
Chris Bryant, the new Foreign Office minister, who is gay, has started writing personal letters of congratulations to British diplomats who show public support for gay rights. He is praising them for such support even if it draws anger from national governments or local homophobic groups… In a letter to […]
e-Diplomacy in action? Or e-Diplomacy inaction? Here is a version of the piece I wrote for the latest issue of DIPLOMAT magazine on how I invented e-Diplomacy and tried to put it into effect in a nervous FCO, too many years ahead of my time… e-Diplomacy: Who Isn’t My Neighbour? Where Julius […]
Diplomatic manoeuvrings go on as London and EU partners ponder how best to respond to the Iranians’ bullying of British Embassy locally employed staff: European Union governments summoned Iranian ambassadors to protest against the detentions. An EU official told the BBC that, in addition, visas for Iranians holding Iranian diplomatic […]
What’s happening in the world? In my part of the UK, nothing much. It’s too hot. But in a more general sense we are seeing something Important. The end of an Idea. Namely that government can grow indefinitely without consequences. California has been trying to achieve this for years and […]
