In the absence of any original content, here’s a duplicate of Dan Hardie’s highly worthwhile plea to ensure we don’t abandon the Iraqis who helped us in Basra to be murdered for their collaboration. Dan’s words below. I’ve not added a fold, since there’s sod-all else content for it to get in the way of…
Since [...]

“The fact that an Iraqi has just tried to blow us up proves that Islamist terrorism has absolutely nothing to do with the war in Iraq. Also, we hate Ken Livingstone.” - here.

It would be nice to live in a world where the [note: fictional, written by me for the purposes of this post] piece below was a representative sample of the London media. It’d be even nicer to live in a world where it was a representative sample of the Tehran media - but ‘getting your [...]

One of the speakers at the Enough! launch rally lat night was Sharif Omar, a Palestinian farmer. He told the familiar tale of repression, of how the stringent permit laws and officious permit-issuing authorities prevent his sons from gaining free access to his own farm; of how a man of his sixty years needs [...]

After a postponement due to Iraq’s airports being closed in the aftermath of the bombings last week, Iraq’s President, Jalal Talabani, has now been able to visit Iran. Today he met Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As Supreme Leader, Khamenei is the real power when it comes to Iranian foreign policy.

It is not a fact which pleases me in any way, but: Yes, actually, we did “tell you so”.

Dear Terry,
Many thanks for your letter. If you would be so good as to look behind you and use your binoculars to scan the horizon, there is an outside chance that you might locate the point.
The letter I refer to was printed in last week’s Economist, and relates to the Iraq war (yes, I know, [...]

Water wars in the Promised Land

In August 2002 Craig Murray set off to Uzbekistan as HM Ambassador. For those of us a bit vague about the aftermath of the USSR, it’s bordered by Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kirghizstan, Kazakhstan, and what’s left of the Aral Sea after the appalling ecological impact of its massive cotton industry. Alongside cotton it produces natural [...]

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do? - John Maynard Keynes
If you wanted to encapsulate in a single incident the reasons why the voters in just about every major democracy are losing faith in their politicians right now, you could do worse than to go back to Washington University, St [...]

A while back, I had cause to wonder whether right-wing libertarians were just cleverer Tories, on the matter of inheritance tax. The new war for the Litani makes me ask the same question.

Much has been said about the recent Israeli attacks on Lebanon and blockade of that country, with the apparent intention of putting back the Lebanese economy by 20 years.

[Israeli] Army Chief of Staff Lt-Gen Dan Halutz said the Israeli military would “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years” if the soldiers were not returned.

Here I intend to approach the subject from a point of view of European (and especially European Union) foreign policy

I hesitate to add to the thousands of words already written about the Euston Manifesto. We had two good posts here yesterday, but the best so far is probably this one. Anyway, I hesitate essentially because I only read it today, and the damn thing is deathly dull, a collection of anodyne pronouncements, platitudes, and [...]

The Euston Manifesto, officially launched today, proclaims itself as a way forward for “the left” - and is again defended by one of its writers, blogger and Manchester University Professor Norman Geras, over on the Guardian’s website.
Fine - a laudable aim. The British left has needed a way forward ever since the gang of four [...]