As a chess fan I decided to use my time in Moscow to get to know some of the world’s top players. This was at the time when the world of chess was in turmoil because of Garry Kasparov’s ambitions to make the game more accessible – and more lucrative. […]
Too much Murray v Crawford, eh? Well how about all of us starting a new round of religious riots, this time with Christians and Muslims joining forces against a common cartoon enemy. Meet Jesus and Mo. Then keep clicking. Different.
My earlier posting on Craig Murray’s telegram to the FCO recording serious human rights abuses in Uzbekistan dismissed the response he won from HQ, namely that the UK would press for an ‘EU demarche’. Why? It sounds grand and important. Not an easy question to answer simply. What is a […]
Crawford v Murray (if that is what it is) has reached the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary (alas not available on their website): Mandarin puts knife into FO’s loose cannon UNCIVIL war has broken out at the Foreign Office. Charles Crawford, the retired former ambassador to Warsaw, has broken ranks […]
Moving on to the substance of Craig Murray’s book. Chapter One opens with a description of Craig leaving the Embassy in Samarkand (seemingly early in his posting) to attend a dissident trial. …out I went, still feeling pretty uncomfortable at people calling me ‘Sir’… Part of Craig’s self-presentation lies in […]
Because it allows massive direct hits on Utter Fatheadedness, and then documents carefully the attempts of the fatheads to cover their tracks, giving millions of people hours of amusement watching it all. Never thought I’d say it, but the time has come to vote SNP. Anything but this.
I was a great fan of the Balkan ‘yellow press’ in all its exotic glory. Presumably these strange papers and magazines have a non-trivial readership otherwise they would not be published in such profusion. So as Ambassador wanting to develop insight into the thinkings of society as a whole, I […]
This is an elegant analysis from my former US Ambassadorial colleague in Belgrade Bill Montgomery about the current state of mind of Republika Srpska, the ‘Serb’ Entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bill argues that RS led by Prime Minister Dodik is pursuing a Montenegrin-style war of attrition aimed at making an eventual […]
Craig cheerfully writes: Much enjoyed your commentary on the Kristina episode. But at some stage you have to face the real question. Nobody now doubts the CIA’s use of torture, by proxy as in Uzbekistan or even direct. And as you know very well, the UK government gets the CIA […]
The fantastic hopelessness of Craig Murray’s Uzbek local staff colleague as described in the previous posting (she did not know whether guests were coming to the Ambassador’s key dinner party, so she just guessed!) made me recall an episode back in Sarajevo. I was down to meet a senior Russian […]
