Author: |Posted: 7:32 pm on 17/11/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
David Miliband’s speech on Afghanistan marks an important moment in the downgrading of expectations for what kind of Afghanistan NATO will leave behind it.
It acknowledges that Afghanistan works for the most part on “sub-national government” and will do for the foreseeable future. In one intriguing paragraph, which bears the hallmarks of much mandarin crafting, Mr Miliband says:
“Our role should not be to prescribe exactly how those (ancient) traditions (of sub-national governance) evolve, or how the systems which reflect them are implemented … but to provide the resources without which none of this (stability) would be possible, and which will be far less expensive than trying to suppress the insurgency by conventional military means.” read more
Author: |Posted: 6:40 pm on 05/11/09
Category: World News Blog
The Obama administration have all but admitted that their attempts to re-start the Middle East peace process have failed.
The State department are now advocating a new tactic – where both sides take “baby steps” toward lower level talks because they know there is no chance of getting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to sit down with Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu for meaningful discussions anytime soon.
There has been a bit of fuss about whether Hillary Clinton made an error at the weekend when she described an Israeli offer to partially freeze settlement building as “unprecedented” even though it was far short of what the US had originally demanded – a total freeze.
But that wasn’t the real mistake. read more
Author: |Posted: 4:18 pm on 28/10/09
Category: World News Blog
The problem with Afghanistan is that every prescription has a noxious side-effect; every answer raises more questions.
The Taliban is trying to disrupt the second round of the Afghan elections, hence today’s attack on UN staff in Kabul. Having risked death to vote in the first round, and seeing how the government tried to cheat to stay in power, it seems likely that many Afghans won’t bother to vote on 7 November. Who can blame them? read more
Author: |Posted: 12:21 pm on 01/04/09
Category: Snowblog
This G20 exists at so many levels. Take Brazil’s President Lula. Fearless campaigner against the carbon footprint. But having flown from Brazil to Doha and Doha to Paris, today he abandoned his plane, sending it empty to London while he took the train.
But the high spot thus far has been the Obama-Brown press conference. Brown, nervous and reading tightly from a script, Obama relaxed. The “One” has a cold. read more
Author: |Posted: 6:05 pm on 16/03/09
Category: World News Blog
As you’re reading this, a young Iranian-American journalist called Roxana Saberi is alone in Evin prison in Tehran, waiting to find out her fate.
I met Roxana Saberi a few years ago – dynamic and full of enthusiasm, she was just the kind of person who wouldn’t give up despite the myriad obstacles the Iranian government likes to cast in the path of any reporter. read more
Author: |Posted: 3:08 pm on 22/02/09
Category: World News Blog
SHANGHAI, CHINA – How is it that the country with one of the poorest populations in the world is the biggest lender to the richest? How can it be that apparently one of the prime agenda items for Mrs Clinton’s Chinese visit was her indebtedness to her country’s indebtedness. Well, welcome to Chimerica.
It’s the relationship that some in America say was the ultimate cause of the credit cataclysm. If it’s got right, soon the world could rebound from recession. If it’s got wrong, there lies a dark abyss of trade wars and even currency wars. read more
Author: |Posted: 6:33 pm on 18/02/09
Category: World News Blog
WASHINGTON DC, USA - Hillary Clinton has landed in Jakarta and she says it’s no accident that it is one of the countries she is visiting on her very first trip abroad as US Sec of State. She specifically mentioned the fact that Pres Obama lived in Indonesia as a child.
Which will increase speculation about why Clinton is there at all. read more
