November 12, 2007

Bush and Blair: sufferers from Hubristic Syndrome?

Through an interesting and happy concatenation of events, I ended up at a small-ish lunch yesterday along with former British Foreign Secretary David Owen. He recently released-- but only, alas,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:43 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

July 04, 2007

Mr. Blair discovers Palestine

I was reading Paul Rogers's latest contribution to Open Demcracy, at the end of which he considers the question of whether Tony Blair will be able to have any impact...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:37 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

May 10, 2007

Tony Blair haiku

Blair. What can we say? Dulce et decorum est NOT TO GO TO WAR....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:20 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

April 26, 2007

Britain's upcoming vote on Blairism

Britons go to the polls May 3 to vote in local elections that will have a sizeable impact on the way that Tony Blair's ten-year premiership ends. Blair, who has...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:40 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

April 19, 2007

'Great Britain' headed for velvet divorce?

On May 3, the voters of Scotland are headed to the polls to vote for the third Scottish Parliament since that body was created in 1999. There is apparently a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:14 PM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

April 06, 2007

Iran and Britain in the Gulf, contd.

The 15 British naval POWs arrived home yesterday, after having been freed by Iran late Wednesday night. But even as they were boarding their plane to freedom in Teheran, four...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:31 AM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

April 04, 2007

UK sailors released.... "stunning" ?

(5:05 pm. update: Gary Sick's G2k comments are now appended in the continuation) Iran's President Ahmadinejad has announced that "he" will be releasing the British sailors. The US airwaves are...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:31 AM | Fulltext link (29 comments)

March 28, 2007

Craig Murray: About that "Fake British Map"

I have been extremely displeased by the media reporting regarding the ongoing Iran-Britain "detainee" crisis. The boundaries questons surrounding the Shatt/Arvand River are hardly of recent vintage. They are instead...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:15 PM | Fulltext link (37 comments)

March 23, 2007

British mark bicentennary of their slave trade abolition

Here in London, many people are making a pretty big deal out of an Act passed by Parliament in March 1807 that outlawed the involvement of British ships in the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:49 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

March 07, 2007

Thoughts on traveling to London

Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:27 AM | Fulltext link (46 comments)

February 07, 2007

Influential Brit-tank urges US-Iran talks: the text

The Foreign Policy Centre, which is a relatively young but well connected British think-tank, earlier this week issued a significant report titled Time to Talk: The case for Diplomatic Solutions...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:02 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

October 19, 2006

Blair's general woes

Last week, the British Army's chief of staff, Sir Richard Dannatt, caused an uproar when he told interviewer Sarah Sands that, "we should get ourselves out [of Iraq] sometime soon...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:24 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

August 16, 2006

Good questions about Blair's claimed terror plot

Craig Murray is the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who lost his job over his refusal to go along with Blair/Bush plan to hide Uzbekistan's ghastly torture record. He writes...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:52 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

May 06, 2006

Blair and Bush both in big trouble

The two heads of the "coalition" of forces occupying Iraq are both in BIG political trouble. Blair was already foundering-- especially after Labour's disastrous showing in Thursday's local elections. Just...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:06 PM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

December 31, 2005

Craig Murray

I just want to bookmark the website of Craig Murray, the morally gutsy former British Anmbassador in Uzbekistan who quit in 2004 in disgust over the Blair government's continued support...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:14 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 08, 2005

Meyer's memoirs

I wish I'd been in London to grab the first copies of the Guardian's version of Sir Christopher Meyer's memoirs. Sure, I know I could have gotten them on-line just...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:11 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

October 23, 2005

Newsflash! US/UK troops unloved in Iraq!

The Daily Telegraph has been shown the results of a poll that the British Ministry of Defence recently (and secretly) commissioned in Iraq, which showed that: • Forty-five per cent...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:24 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

October 13, 2005

Maggie

Well, happy 80th birthday, Lady Thatcher. How about this intriguing Thatcherian utterance, described by Tina Brown in today's WaPo: The former chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, Lord...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:55 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

July 07, 2005

Thoughts of London

AP is now reporting (based on US sources) that the death toll in the London bomb blasts is "at least 40", and the number of injured more than 300. This...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:08 AM | Fulltext link (61 comments)

September 20, 2004

Britons regaining senses??

This, from Reuters: Most Britons want Prime Minister Tony Blair to set a date for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, according to a poll for the Guardian newspaper...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:41 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 28, 2004

Blair gets a pass from Hutton

Britain's Hutton Inquiry is supposed to be putting the whole text of Lord H's final report up onto its website sometime today. It hasn't happened yet. In the meantime, I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:48 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

October 22, 2003

Euros getting it together

One little-noted feature of the deal signed in Teheran yesterday between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany has been precisely the make-up...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:32 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 16, 2003

Hutton enquiry hots up

Lord Hutton's enquiry into the circumstances of British WMD specialist David Kelly's July suicide has been getting very exciting. This week, lawyers for the Kelly family and for BBC journo...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:18 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

September 11, 2003

Kelly/Hutton redux

Why do I find the Hutton Inquiry so addictive? Is it because I wish so much we had something similar here in the US? My engagement with it is a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:45 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 04, 2003

Setbacks for the monarchs of spin

Lots happening that I've been wanting to blog about. First, a good discussion about the utility of war developing on the Comments board under the next post down: check it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:16 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

August 22, 2003

Inquiries in UK and Oz

It's been a riveting week at the Hutton Commission of Inquiry in the UK, and next week promises even more fireworks with Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon called to appear next...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:26 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

August 20, 2003

Britain's important Commission of Inquiry

Those of you who are close observers of UK affairs will already know that the Hutton Commission, whose mandate is "urgently to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding [the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:00 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

August 18, 2003

Heathrow

Finally, I'm able to get a link to the CSM column of mine that ran last Thursday, that provoked so many expressions of anger and hostility in the Comments sections...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:28 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)