A good and subtle Middle East piece in the Times by David Aaronovitch who (I seem to recall) had a Tough Left reputation at Oxford when I was there in the early 1970s but now offers deft analysis. He swipes aside a now modish comparison between Israel and the Nazi villains who […]
The latest round-up is here. Liberal England genially hosts. The Roundup feminist entries seem to my admittedly less than sympathethic eye unrelentingly cross and strangely limited in their cultural ‘reach’, as if only current Western female angst counted. See eg this agitated one by Me and My Army on body hair, […]
Have spent most of the morning grappling with online and other HM Government services. Thus we can not enroll for Corporation Tax services until we have had our registered company address changed. This problem arises because the soon-to-be-mighty global corporation CGC reSolutions Ltd took over another defunct company. The registered address […]
This piece by Jonathan Freedland offers the classic liberal-minded analysis of the Israel/Hamas conflict: Both sides point at the other with equal vehemence, a Newtonian chain of claimed action and reaction that can stretch back to infinity. So perhaps a more useful exercise – especially for those who long for […]
I have never understood the rows that go on about the teaching of evolution in schools. Both God and the Big Bang are phenomena far beyond our puny understandings. The task of a good teacher surely is to explain these different views in an calm, interesting way and so help […]
Samizdata folk are having a lively exchange over Perry de Havilland’s ringing call for Disunity in conservative ranks. His core demand: I am not calling for the ‘libertarianisation’ of the Republican party along the lines I would actually like, just for the party’s rationalisation. I am in essence calling for […]
One of my theories of personal advancement has things thus. Imagine a room packed full of inflated balloons. One of the balloons has the ability to self-inflate. It does so. It expands. The other balloons squeeze themselves in to accommodate this growing companion. Some may eventually pop under the growing […]
The BBC notes that the legacy of the Cuban socialist miracle is ‘complex’. This is just what Serbian Communist leader Draza Markovic used to say about the problems in Kosovo in the early 1980s: "the situation is still complicated, even complex!" The BBC on Cuba: Fifty years on, the legacy […]
The New Year’s Honours List in the UK sees an OBE awarded to Dr John Hemery. John for many years has worked as Director of the Centre for Political and Diplomatic Studies, developing sophisticated training modules for the new Diplomatic Services emerging across the former communist world, plus latterly different courses […]
Back in November I wrote about diplomatic negotiating, including a passage on the Middle East: In the Middle East there is an existential negotiation going on over the very existence of Israel. Either Israel exists, or it doesn’t. The Iranians under current management are contriving to give the impression that Israel […]
