I wrote here about the risks of drawing comparison between al-Qaeda and the IRA. An article arguing something similar from Henry McDonald is on the Guardian politics blog; I recommend reading it. xD.

Jonathan Powell has indicated that we should talk to al-Qaeda, making a comparison with Northern Ireland. In Ireland, it was fairly straightforward, if not to identify, to delimit the people who controlled the IRA. The brass was known and there were contacts throughout the eighties between the governments of both sides of the Irish Sea [...]

Viktor Bout has finally been not only caught but arrested. There is plenty of background on Viktor Bout – probably the world’s leading arms trafficker – on the Yorkshire Ranter’s blog. According to the UN, he has illegally shipped arms to Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Congo-Brazzaville, [...]

Prince Harry (or Cornet-2/Lt Wales or possibly Widow-Six-Seven, depending on who you ask) has fulfilled his wish to fight for his grandmother and country. It would seem that this was a sop to him for not resign his commission because he hadn’t been allowed to fight in the manner he had been trained – commander [...]

The BBC World Service turned seventy-five yesterday. It started broadcasting on 19th December, 1932, as the Empire Service. Since then, the world has changed greatly, but the World Service continues broadcasting; part of its Imperial legacy remains with the periodic declarations in RP that ‘This Is London’ so you’d better pay attention. I started listening [...]

BHP Billiton is proposing to buy Rio Tinto for US£120bn. They are the two largest mining and commodities companies in the world, with turnovers for 2007 of US$32.2bn and US$25.4bn respectively. Combined, that is US$57.6bn, which would, if it were a state, put it 59th out of 180 countries, between Vietnam and Slovakia, by GDP [...]

Those missing CDs Apart from providing endless fodder for fake eBay auctions and amusing photos, one thing that I hope comes out of Revenue-gate is a desire to keep tabs on data protection, privacy and computer security in all public bodies. To that end, I think the Government should cause to be published, all in [...]

The King of Spain, Juán Carlos I de Borbón y Borbón, recently told Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela to, in no uncertain terms, shut up, after the latter called the former Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, a fascist. Now, I am no fan of Aznar, but Chávez’s comments are not just mistaken but actually [...]

I agree with Ewan Watt that the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Relations Committee should not have recognized the Armenian Genocide as such, but perhaps for slightly different reasons. Ewan is, in foreign policy terms, very much a realist and I do agree that the results of the Committee’s decision have already been profoundly negative [...]

Russia does come across as an old aristocrat, now living in greatly reduced circumstances, that feels the desperate need to maintain appearances. If we can call Russia a person, it does seem to have moved on from communism by selling not just the family silver, but the estate’s mills, mines and factories. A lot of [...]