Whether Israel or Hezbollah has been victorious in the last few weeks’ conflict will depend on how much of UN Security Council resolution 1701 is eventually implemented. Either way, Lebanon is the loser [More >>>]
Israeli opposition leader Bibi Netanyahu wipes the floor with a BBC interviewer on proportionality [More >>>]
Still paying our wartime debts to Uncle Sam, and other recent items [More >>>]
Bush and Blair are right about Israel and the demands for an immediate cease-fire. The humanitarian clamour for an instant end to the fighting is misconceived, however widespread. The Israeli response to constant low-grade aggression may yet open up an opportunity for some kind of interim and provisional settlement, but only if Israel is allowed time to build up pressure on Hezbollah to sue for peace. [More >>>]
As Owen has pointed out, the real objection to the US-UK extradition agreement is not that the US hasn’t ratified it or that it’s easier for the US to extradite from the UK than vice versa: it’s the agreement’s denial of basic rights and due process to those whom the US wants to extradite [More >>>]
Things are moving fast and becoming increasingly interesting in the affair of the book by Craig Murray, former ambassador in Uzbekistan, the passages deleted from or rewritten in it at the behest of the...
In a recent item in Ephems , I reported as a recent news item from the asylum that — A man called Steve Jago has been arrested in Whitehall for carrying a banner bearing...
At last a response to my invitation to contribute to a Blairversefest: limericks, clerihews, Haiku, anything about Mr Tony… More, please! [More >>>]
Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or-winning film, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, is a superb and subtle film with a vital contemporary resonance. Gutter press cries of ‘anti-British!’ should be ignored [More >>>]
Some more news items tending to demonstrate that either the whole world has gone stark, staring mad, or else I have (no comments, thanks: just contribute more evidence) [More >>>]