Every now and again one sees a Balkan story of truly excellently bewildering folly. Take this one: The latest portion of benefits for war veterans paid on May 12 has left the two Bosnian entities with a budget crisis, FBiH Finance Minister Vjekoslav Bevanda said at a press conference on […]
Back from Brussels to an email from former colleague FCO Craig Murray: Your blog has been discussing me rather a lot lately. May I very politely suggest that you really might look at the book if you are going to give quite such detailed views? It is, of course, only […]
An elegant analysis of some of the existential ‘national’ questions for Moscow’s policy-makers. How to play up Russian-ness while making non-Russian citizens of the Russian Federation feel welcome? Thus: “it is impossible to demand from a Chechen that he recognize himself as a citizen of the empire and at the […]
More from a reader on Craig Murray and all that: On the subject of Craig and the FCO, I haven’t read his book, or all the documents, but I understand some nasty and unsubstantiated allegations featured prominently. What’s your view on what they mean? To me the whole saga suggests […]
Reading this article about ethnicity and adoption (via Tim Worstall) I recall the apartheid era in South Africa. At one point in my career I was under strict instructions to do work hard to end apartheid racist rule in South Africa, since it compelled the iniquitous legalistic but spurious intrusion of […]
Every now and again one sees an interview of such vigour, insight and directness that one wants to shake the hand of the speaker, even if one does not agree with everything said. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Major General Raul Cunha, Chief Military Liaison Officer of UNMIK, giving his views on the success […]
Yesterday’s Wimbledon final left me thinking about the Oxford Exams Finals joke: "Your answer in that paper was excellent!" "So was the question!" Nadal’s play soared to new heights, because Federer’s did too. As they say these days, awesome.
A reader not unreasonably draws attention to a link in my previous post to a fascinating original FCO document reporting a conversation with Craig Murray. He wonders whether diplomats who ‘temper’ their reporting themselves create the impression that others who report more passionately are the only FCO people with a conscience. In […]
Croatia’s legendary publication Feral Tribune has closed for financial reasons. Feral was an outstanding and courageous source of scurrilous but hard-hitting attacks in the 1990s on Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and his close associates, who strove mightily to close down the paper. In 1997 Robin Cook flew from Banja Luka […]
My former colleague Craig Murray posts at some length about Andrew Mackinlay MP including the allegedly shocking FCO libel against him that he frequented Warsaw strip clubs. This, says Craig, shows the perfidy of how MI6 and the FCO in alliance with New Labour are attacking Andrew Mackinlay for his robust […]
