When Israel-Palestine merits not a word from a president, you know the United States is turning inward.
Roger Cohen, New York Times, 28 January 2010, “Exit America“
The same Cohen op-ed indicates that only nine minutes were devoted to international affairs in President Obama’s first State of the Union message last month. And now we hear [...]

I certainly hope so, since I played a small part in helping the man get elected last year. But a recent trip to the US makes me pause. This appeared first in my other blog, Avuncular American.
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Les culottes à l’air, or airing the Unmentionables
Cheapskate that I am, I am milking the Financial Times [...]

Large sums promised to developing countries to help them tackle climate change cannot be accounted for, a BBC investigation has found. Rich countries pledged $410m (£247m) a year in a 2001 declaration - but it is now unclear whether the money was paid. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing [...]

Brussels was the venue of a very important human rights conference this past week, but it took place in an academic setting, out of the spotlight but hopefully not entirely unnoticed.
ULB’s conference on 20 October, “Terrorism Lists, Executive Powers, and Human Rights,” organised by the European Centre for Constitutional & Human Rights” (ECCHR), aimed very [...]

Europe is in Eurasia…
It wouldn’t be autumn in Brussels without its slew of conferences to welcome the city’s “policy wonks” back from a long summer of frivolity. This week’s all-day conclave devoted to “The New European Parliament: What Priorities for Foreign Affairs, Security, and Defence?” covered a lot of ground, especially when the subtitle [...]

24 hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Middle East peace is “impossible” and, especially helpfully in case that message appeared overly pessimistic, that many countries “have learned to live with” a permanent state of war, the Nobel Committee has awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama.
The President’s personal honor [...]

The 8th annual Transatlantic Trends survey of European and American attitudes is out. I must first qualify “European,” which includes non-EU Turkey (which is not even in Europe, according to many), but does not include a number of EU countries. No Scandinavians, no Baltics? Likewise, “American” is just that: the US’s North [...]

NDLR: Voici mes remarques lors d’une conférence à Bruxelles organisée par GRIP, pour présenter leur nouveau livre, “Qui Arme Israel Et Le Hamas?”
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La politique américaine au Moyen-Orient et Obama : quels changements possibles ?
Je me présente aujourd’hui comme ancien diplomate américain au Moyen-Orient et en Afrique du Nord. Durant la campagne présidentielle américaine, j’agissais [...]

Gluttons for punishment can check out the Guardian’s special page on the furore over parliamentary profligacy in the UK. There’s everything from toilet seats to televisions.
Others, recognizing the utility of parliamentary democracy as long as it does not go the way of the Roman Senate, might want to check into the “Parliament Hotel,” my [...]

NDLR: Voici le texte de mes remarques hier soir lors de la présentation du nouveau livre du Professeur Irnerio Seminatore, Directeur de l’Institut Européen des Relations Internationales (IERI) et de l’Academia Diplomatica Europaea (ADE), deux institutions Bruxelloises. Son livre, publié chez l’Harmattan, s’intitule “l’Europe entre utopie et realpolitik.” La conférence a eu lieu [...]