While we were in Groningen, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, head of the recently defeated Neo-Liberal WD, (a political party for free markets, social freedoms like euthanasia and same-sex marriage, the EU, and support for Ukraine) became NATO’s Secretary General. The New...
I attended the Third International Conference on Environmental Peace Building, in The Hague, The Netherlands, in June 2024. I will keep adding to this post until I finish making a narrative from my notes. My commentary in italics Session 7:...
Brussels, like Paris, unfolded as a mash-up of old and new. While Paris was a hard 24 hours, Brussels was an inviting and fun three days. The difference was serendipity, not a true reflection of these two venerable places. This is the problem with short...
“I accepted the story I heard on foreign media: that the [1997] Albanian civil war could be explained not by the collapse of a flawed financial system but by longstanding animosities between ethnic groups… its plan could be disrupted only by outside...
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken came to Tirana, Albania. He did not stay long. Not long enough for a state dinner. He would eat in Munich, his next stop. The Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama chastised him for this diplomatic slight. While Blinken was in...