Back to Gideon RachmanWith half of Britain under water after heavy rain, it is now clear to me what Tony Blair should have said when he left Downing Street a few weeks ago: "Apres moi, le deluge."
Now - onto the main business of the day. I see that PL is worried that I am blurring the line between the column and the blog. I must admit that it is rather odd maintaining two personalities and two voices - one for the newspaper and one for the blog. But I have decided to go for a bit more line-blurring. Specifically, I wonder whether readers of the blog might help me do some research for my newspaper columns. I did hesitate before making this suggestion, since it involves dropping the pretence of omniscience which is an important part of the persona of any newspaper columnist. But I’m not sure I can even spell omniscience - let alone claim it - so what the hell. Anyway, the people who run the website tell me that what I’m proposing to do is called "crowdsourcing" (rather than laziness, as some might have it) and is extremely cutting edge. So that is some consolation.
The idea of outsourcing my column actually occurred to me after one of my recent posts on oil and war. I pointed out that a book I’d been reading contained an intriuging Wolfowitz quote - but no footnote. I wondered, as I wrote this, if somebody would point me in the right direction. But even I was startled and gratified when the citation came back within a couple of hours. This reminded me of a previous incident, after I had been to a security conference in Israel and remarked that the things that Jim Woolsey was saying about Iran were strikingly similar to his previous arguments about Iraq. Again, a reader of the blog came up with the killer quote. And that gave me an idea for a whole column, which I thought came out quite well. (I use quite in the English, not the American sense.)
So let me explain what I’m upto at the moment. I’m currently toying with two ideas for next week. The first is conspiracy theories. This is the kind of topic I like, since it has an element of humour - but there is also a serious issue. I am working on a rough general theory of the kind of societies and people that come up with conspiracy theories. The second subject that I might write about is Afghanistan. My starting point here is that while policymakers increasingly accept the idea that Iraq has gone seriously wrong, they are sticking to the idea that the west can succeed in Afghanistan. I am beginning to wonder whether this is right. Might the west have to accept the idea that both the wars that were started after 9/11 will end in failure? (Depends partly on the definition of failure, obviously.) I had been hoping to delay writing about Afghanistan until I had actually been there. But a proposed trip has fallen through. And I think the issue is too urgent to ignore for much longer.
It seems to me there are several ways that readers of the blog might help me out:
1) General views on the topics above.
2) Specific suggestions of interesting things to read or look at - any good conspiracy web-sites; any particularly insightful articles on Afghanistan etc.
3) Killer facts or quotes - In the past (see the Woolsey example), this has been particularly useful
Obviously, I may well end up not using much of the material. This could be because I don’t agree with the points made, or don’t find the material as useful as I’d hoped. Just as likely, it will be because one of the things I do when I write a column is discard a lot of perfectly interesting stuff - in an effort to narrow the topic down and come up with a clear and focussed line. I am not proposing to turn my space in the FT into a sort of wiki-column, in which the readers do all the work (although the implications for my own work-load are appealing.)
It is, of course, perfectly possible that this whole experiment will be a hopeless flop, in which case we’ll just pretend it never happened.
This blog covers a variety of topics from US foreign policy to European politics and the Middle East - and whatever else happens to be in the news or catch my attention. I joined the FT as chief foreign affairs commentator in 2006, after a 15-year career at The Economist which included stints as a correspondent in Brussels, Bangkok and Washington. I write a weekly column on foreign affairs, which appears in the paper on Tuesdays. Occasionally my FT colleagues contribute posts to this blog.
Geoff Dyer is the FT's China bureau chief. He has been a correspondent in Shanghai and in Brazil and has also covered the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries from London.
Roula Khalaf is the FT's Middle East editor. She has worked for the FT since 1995, first as North Africa correspondent, then Middle East correspondent and most recently as Middle East editor. Before joining the FT, she was a staff writer for Forbes magazine in New York. 
James Blitz is the FT's defence and diplomatic editor. He has been the FT's political editor, based in London, and Rome bureau chief. James is a former Moscow bureau chief for the Sunday Times.
Alan Beattie is the FT's world trade editor. He has previously been economics leader writer and spent two years in Washington DC as chief US economics correspondent. Before joining the FT, Alan was an economist at the Bank of England. 
Victor Mallet is the FT's Madrid correspondent. He is a former Asia editor of the FT, and, in more than 20 years at the organisation, has also worked in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. In 1990 he escaped from Kuwait after being one of the few foreign correspondents there when Iraq invaded. 
Stefan Wagstyl is the FT's eastern Europe editor, co-ordinating coverage of the region. He has also been the FT's bureau chief in Tokyo and New Delhi.
