Back to Gideon RachmanThe most important thing happening in the world at the moment is the Pakistani army’s assault on Waziristan. Here is a good account by Anatole Lieven of what is at stake, and what is likely to happen. He is very cautiously optimistic about the fight against the Pakistani Taleban, but believes the Pakistani army will not take on the Afghan Taleban. My only quibble with Lieven’s piece is that his summary of Pakistani attitudes to Afghanistan is based on a single quote from an “old shopkeeper in Peshawar”. This is the kind of thing I do, but aren’t professors at King’s College meant to be a bit more rigorous?
Another really interesting read this morning was Boris Johnson’s savage attack on bankers’ bonuses. I have also been wandering around - contemplating the prospect of higher taxes for the next decade or so - and feeling vaguely outraged that the people responsible for doubling the national debt, are currently rewarding themselves with vast bonuses. Boris Johnson (Mayor of London, lest you forget), has been one of the last defenders of the City - calculating presumably that they remain a useful source of income and employment in the capital. But even Boris has had enough now. When people like the boss of Barclays threaten in this morning’s FT that they will leave London, if we deprive them of their bonuses, I hope they will now find a rush of people holding the exit door open for them.
In the next few weeks, we will be inundated with Berlin Wall anniversary pieces. Tom Friedman has decided to get in early - although his article fairly swiftly veers off to Afghanistan.
Finally, do please read this splendid obituary of Ludovic Kennedy, a British broadcaster - from the Daily Telegraph. It is worth reading, even if you have never heard of the man. The Telegraph pioneered the new style of obituary - not exactly “warts and all”, but which acknowledge the flaws and above all the eccentricities of the person being profiled. Kennedy sounds like a foreigner’s idea of a screwed-up upper-class Brit. Educated at Eton, where he dallied with both sexes and injured himself trying to spy on a housemaid,as she got undressed, he was emotionally crippled by his relationship with a cold and ferocious mother - so much so that, in later life, he “burst into tears every time a woman kissed him” (which must have been a bit disconcerting for the women involved.) He was an excellent broadcaster and a brave campaigner against miscarraiges of justice. But the Telegraph notes that he also wrote an early volume of memoirs, with the appalling title “One Man’s Meat”, which was condemned by reviewers for its “leaden banality” and for reading like the “memoirs of a septageneurian postmaster”. I think that’s the kind of review that you hope would be forgotten by the time you died - some sixty years later. But not in the case of poor Mr Kennedy.
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.
