My piece at Telegraph Blogs boldly asserts that yesterday was the worst-ever day for Western diplomacy: Think about what will happen if the Russian initiative starts to fly. Chemical weapons are relatively easy to make and store (and fire), but much harder to dismantle safely. The chemicals themselves are fiendishly […]
A well turned piece from John O’Sullivan at National Review on Syria: As the debate on Syria ricochets along, I am struck by a contrast between the internal conservative debate on the crisis and the wider political, diplomatic, and media debates. By and large the conservative debate is both civil […]
A sad case. Victoria McClure was sentended to 18 months’ imprisonment for causing death by dangerous driving. She had been adjusting her satnav gizmo and lost her driving concentration, thereby knocking over a cyclist who tragically was killed: Judge Nicholas Wood, sentencing McClure at Reading Crown Court, said she should […]
Here is a major piece I have written for Aeon on the way states emerge or de-emerge, and the specific case of Kosovo/Serbia. Thus: Miloševi? had some good points, but his willingness to use violence against his neighbouring republics repulsed those Western nations that might have accepted his logic. In […]
Readers here are too senior and subtle to spend too much time commenting on what appears. I also spare you the ravings of what seem to be new generations of Spam comments that are computer-generated to appear as if they might have been written by real people, and with the […]
My Commentator piece about the notable developments last night in Parliament, noting three reasons why all is not (yet) lost: First and foremost, we risked ending up helping President Obama wriggle off an embarrassing immediate hook (the Syria regime boldly stepping across his own half-hearted ‘red line’) but without really […]
Here’s my piece at PunditWire in honour of THAT speech. I thought I’d not say much about the speech as it speaks for itself, but instead look at the legal background to it. Notably Plessy v Ferguson, a case with far-reaching bad outcomes decided by the US Supreme Court in […]
Non-US readers may have missed the resignation speech by the energetically groping Mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner (Democrat). It’s not often that a speech by someone leaving office in high disgrace features ‘seal poop’. But this one does! Here is the full text: What I would like to leave […]
Following my BBC Newsnight appearance last night re the prison sentence given to Bradley Manning, Riaz Ahmed has been in touch to make a strong point: Do you believe that the crew of crazy horse 18 (who murdered those people in Iraq – including two children – 7 year old […]
An elegant piece by James Taranto over at WSJ looking at arguments that libertarian-minded solutions to the supposed problem of ‘soaring inequality’ may do more harm than good, and that conservatives just don’t get what ‘public’ issues really are: Further, even the idea that equality of income is just flies […]
