November, 2007
Above all else, safeguard the civilians
Whatever else Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and all the others at Annapolis seek to achieve, there is one important thing they can do.
Howard on the nose, Labour by a Ruddslide
Poor John Howard. Reckless on Kyoto, clueless in Iraq, fickle on civil liberties, mean to migrants and minorities, ruthless towards the workers - and now jobless. He has lost his own seat, which he has represented since 1974, the first sitting Prime Minister since 1929 to do so.
No nukes, no proliferation
The rising anxieties about nuclear weapons are rooted in two major and parallel developments: a renaissance of nuclear power and a resurgence of old-fashioned national security threats that supposedly had ebbed with the end of the Cold War.
Musharraf cannot be part of the solution in Pakistan
Clearly, a general election in Pakistan is free and fair if it delivers the election to the general. Pervez Musharraf's mastery of Orwell-speak is unmatched among contemporary leaders beyond Burma. Benazir Bhutto is under house arrest for her own safety.
The general's on his last legs? Think again
For outsiders, as for Pakistanis, the choice is between worse and the worst: a militantly Islamic, 165-million strong, nuclear-armed failed state at the strategic crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. President Pervez Musharraf has been triangulated ever more tightly by the jihadists, Islamists and judiciary.
War in our time: the myth of appeasement
The European backing for "tough" American policy towards Iran suggests that the age-old instinct for appeasing the predatory propensity of the great and powerful is alive and well.
Amb. Mokhtar Lamani - My lost year in Baghdad
"I only know of one duty. That is to love." One particularly threatening day in April 2006, I had this quote by Albert Camus printed in large capital letters and hung over my desk in my new office in the Red Zone of Baghdad.