• Pages

  • About us
  • Articles & publications
  • Contact
  • Reading List

• Authors

  • Alex Evans
  • Charlie Edwards
  • Daniel Korski
  • David Steven
  • Elizabeth Sellwood
  • Jules Evans
  • Mark Weston
  • Richard Gowan

• Topics

  • Africa (25)
  • Asia (52)
  • Asia Pacific (4)
  • Cities (15)
  • Climate Change (105)
  • Communication (79)
  • Conflict and security (114)
  • Cooperation and coherence (57)
  • Development (57)
  • Europe (62)
  • Food prices (50)
  • Global economy (73)
  • Influence (106)
  • Leadership (64)
  • Middle East (90)
  • Networks (54)
  • News (169)
  • Off topic (11)
  • Public diplomacy (41)
  • Religion in politics (18)
  • Resilience (56)
  • Scarcity (79)
  • Technology (28)
  • Terrorism (60)
  • UK politics (75)
  • US politics (118)
• 
  

• Archives

  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007

• Reading List

  • Military analysts named in Times exposé appeared or were quoted more than 4,500 times on broadcast nets, cables, NPR
  • Things younger than John McCain
  • Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors — HBS Working Knowledge
  • An Idea Whose Time Has Gone - School Vouchers
  • Bird flu pandemic risk just as real and probably growing
  • After the boomers, meet the children dubbed 'baby losers' | World news | The Observer
  • 13 Year Old Steals Dad's Credit Card to Buy Hookers
  • Kimmage fired: resource tradeoffs and the war on ideas
  • Obama's Consolidation of the Party
  • Resisting Authority: A Personal Account of the Milgram Obedience Experiments

• Links

  • Afghanistanica
  • Center on International Cooperation
  • Cooperation Commons
  • Dan Drezner
  • Dani Rodrik
  • Democracy in America
  • ECFR
  • Fistful of Euros
  • Foreign Policy Watch
  • ForeignPolicy.com blog
  • Gideon Rachman
  • Global Guerrillas
  • i on Global Trends
  • Institute for the Future
  • Kevin Drum
  • Many to Many
  • Mapping Strategy
  • Network Weaving
  • New Security Beat
  • Schneier on Security
  • Small Wars Journal
  • The Carpetbagger Report
  • The Interpreter
  • The Politics of Wellbeing
  • The Strategist
  • William Lind
  • Yorkshire Ranter

• Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

I’ve got a short piece about organised crime on the Guardian’s blog Comment is Free. From the intro:
The annual report from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, published yesterday, is a mix of self-congratulation and spectacular underachievement. While the rhetoric from politicians has been to get tough on organised crime, the reality is more humbling: we [...]

A post I wrote last week described a “push” approach to AIDS prevention - circumcise men, tell people to use condoms, encourage them not to sleep around too much etc. The World Bank is trying a different tack, using a “pull” method instead: pay people not to get infected and let them work out for [...]

Via Kevin Drum, this vignette from Johann Hari about his experience taking Provigil, which (we’re told) college students describe as “viagra for the brain”:
I picked up a book about quantum physics and super-string theory I have been meaning to read for ages, for a column I’m thinking of writing. It had been hanging over me, [...]

General Richard Dannat, the head of the British army, once remarked that the British Armed Forces are less understood and less honoured for their commitment and sacrifice by ordinary Britons than in comparable societies, like United States, and probably even less than in earlier periods.
But this is not unique to Britain. And it is part [...]

How much should people in Britain worry about food security?  Here’s a starter for ten, taken from a recent Guardian article by Harriet Green:
For three years, my husband has talked about taking to the hills. About buying a smallholding on Exmoor where, with our four-year-old daughter, we can safely survive the coming storm - famine, pestilence [...]

Earlier today, I noted George Bush’s cretinous and insulting claim that he had given up golf in solidarity with American soldiers who are dying in Iraq. The move, he said, was prompted by the death of UN envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello:
“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the [...]

Tomorrow the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) will publish its annual report/ threat assessment. It will make for uncomfortable reading at the Home Office and No.10. The Agency is not living up to the great expectations officials placed upon it in 2006. In the febrile political atmosphere of Westminster you can be sure the Conservative [...]

Last night I had dinner with a group of security experts and sat next to Chatham House’s Robin Niblett . We got to talking about the role of Ministers and how they seem to struggle with their role in overseeing today’s counter-insurgency missions i.e. operations like in Iraq. They shy away from detail, but are forced into [...]

No comment needed:
For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.
“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it [...]

Just back from ten gorgeous days on holiday in Cornwall - hence radio silence on the blogging front, and a much-needed break from frenetic activity on the food prices research front. 
(As I found, Cornwall is actually about the best place you could go to get some fresh perspective on food.  The Lost Gardens of Heligan have the [...]

After a period of silence on the “Iran file”, the P5+1 will present Tehran with a new incentive package to convince the Iranians to suspend their enrichment program and enter negotiations. This is the second time the five permanent members offer a package. The first time was in 2006, which was rejected by Tehran.
Nobody thinks [...]

Is the global economic situation having an impact on poppy eradication in Afghanistan? Afghan farmers are capitalising on soaring food costs by growing wheat instead of poppy crops, with the fall in heroin prices further fuelling the switch. This comes at a time when the price of a tonne of wheat in Afghanistan has almost [...]

John McCain’s out on the campaign trail today promoting his green credentials, but its clear that his climate change proposals would put a McCain administration on collision course with many, maybe most, of its international partners.
Here’s McCain’s headline promise on climate:
By the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission, by [...]

President Putin built up his authority by promoting mates of his from KGB to senior posts in the government and economy. Now president Medvedev is doing the same, but instead of promoting spooks, he’s promoting people from a legal and business background, like him.
In his first cabinet reshuffle, announced today, Medvedev began to promote [...]

According to the latest Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index (CFPI), 60% of Americans say reducing energy dependence would strengthen their nation’s security “a great deal.” The report shows that the public has begun to zero in on economic and energy issues, and believe that becoming less dependent on other countries for their supply [...]

…or so suggest the exit polls after today’s national elections - see why here.

From a piece on the credit crunch in the current London Review of Books, the sort of opening that you find yourself reading more than once…
Last November, I spent several days in the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, in banks’ headquarters in the City and in the pale wood and glass of a hedge fund’s St [...]

Exactly how bad has the first half of this month been for the UN? Where does one start? You could choose Burma, where the international organization’s ability to deliver aid in a hostile climate has been hurled into doubt. Or Sudan, where Darfuri rebels sallied forth to attack Khartoum, demonstrating exactly what [...]

Yesterday I was at a roundtable on Europe and climate change, hosted by Jim Murphy, the UK’s minister for Europe, with his French counterpart, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, as the main speaker.
France is about to take over the EU presidency and will play a critical role on the road to Copenhagen. Two questions stand out:

Can the [...]

keep looking »