Chapter 7 of Craig Murray’s book describes his first serious skirmish with the FCO, over a speech he makes about human rights. By the date of the speech he has been in Uzbekistan exactly 56 days. His nonetheless bold aim: … to fracture what I believed had become a conspiracy of silence by […]
Remember the Mark Steyn trials testing the limits of Free Speech in democratic Canada? He has been acquitted. Which he thinks is a cowardly decision by the Tribunal concerned: Because we spent a ton of money and had a bigshot Queen’s Counsel and exposed the joke jurisprudence and (at the […]
A phrase which these days is hard to eradicate from bureaucratic discourse is ‘positive feedback’. It is used in the sense of asking around for views on an issue/paper/person and getting views ‘fed back’ (positive views, or negative views). Quiet how this scientifically precise phrase came to acquire this trite new […]
A reader prompted by my Nagorno-Karabakh posting writes: I was interested in the part of this post where you refer to the negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and in particular the Russian negotiator’s cabinet of diplomatic curiosities and arguments over the placing of commas and use of the word ‘the’. (Reminiscent of […]
After a long break (exhaustion) we return to working our way through Craig Murray’s Murder in Samarkand. Chapters 5 and 6 give us a lively account of Craig’s first major foray deep into Uzbekistan (the Ferghana Valley), complete with accompanying local KGB-style minders. He stays in dirty, basic hotels ("I felt […]
Michael Totten has written a good piece about the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, albeit as seen from the Azerbaijan side of things. We tend to think that the Soviet Union broke up ‘peacefully’ (just as we inaccurately think that South Africa’s transition from apartheid was ‘peaceful’). This is because the vastness of the […]
Serbia’s ingenious ploy to play for time on the Kosovo question – and to muddy the waters of those countries contemplating recognising Kosovo’s independence – has paid off handsomely. Serbia today won the vote in the UN General Assembly to refer the issue to the International Court of Justice for an […]
If you had a camera that took pictures at a stunning 250,000 frames per second, what’s the first thing you’d film in ultra slow-motion? Yes, that’s right! Fungus plants on dung-heaps, shooting out spores. The ‘fastest thing in nature’. Now, at last, filmed. And set to opera.
Here, if you can face it, are some of the Weathermen, not so young now but yet burbling on about their wondrous contribution to world affairs.
Polly Toynbee’s volume rises in direct proportion to the slide in share prices. Her latest rather freewheeling thoughts open thusly: A remarkable 10,000 people marched on Trafalgar Square at the weekend to hold the government to its promise to end child poverty. This somehow reminded me of my visit back […]
