Years ago in a community development project in Ramallah, when it was still just a sleepy, recently-occupied West Bank town, one of my fellow volunteers, a devilish Turk named Ali, gave me language lessons. In Turkish body language, said Ali, you have the nodding of the head up and down for “yes,” the shaking [...]
No need for me to chronicle or comment on the seemingly never-ending summit saga of President Obama. His procession through Europe - London to Strasbourg to Prague to… Istanbul, which has a foot in both Europe and Asia - has been documented amply, including by Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb, who wrote in Saturday’s New [...]
“NATO is watching us watching them.”
Such was the sentiment - confirmed by the impressive NATO presence, including several Assistant Secretary General (ASG)-level officials - at the end of this week’s two-day “NATO Shadow Summit.” The event, the first of the name, inspired in part by the new organisation “NATO Watch” (along with principal partners [...]
Irish, American, and Errant European, Gerald Loftus was a diplomat from 1979 to 2002, and worked in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Settled in Brussels, his blog “Avuncular American” looks at America and the world from Europe. more.
