As well as all the numerous and dauntingly learned contributions on American empire, provoked by my post earlier this week, various people have asked me - "What have you got against Bono?"

This is a tricky question for two reasons. First, if I start explaining in too much detail, I will use all the material I am planning to save up for my column. (This is an inherent problem with this "crowdsourcing" exercise, that I’ll have to think my way around.) The second reason is even less creditable. Thinking about it, my objections to Bono are largely incoherent, and possibly indefensible.

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It being August, most of you have probably guessed that Gideon is on holidays. He’ll be back from mid-next week (Wednesday August 29) — so stay tuned.

This may not come as a massive surprise, but the West Bank is a pretty depressing place at the moment. Moderate Palestinians in particular are really worried, not just about the rise of Hamas, but also about how splits in the Palestinian ranks will enfeeble them ahead of international talks later this year.

I met a particularly eloquent pessimist in Ramallah yesterday. Mustafa Barghouti, ran second in the Palestinian presidential election and is now head of a big NGO. He sees three major risks in the current situation. The first is the “liquidation of the whole Palestinian cause”. This sounds so serious that I’m not really sure that you need to move onto points two and three. But, for the record, the second problem is the destruction of the democratic system built in the Palestinian territories. The third is popular disillusionment with both Hamas and Fatah.   

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The United States is meant to be a country that celebrates wealth. Making millions is part of the American dream, and only Europeans are meant to succumb to mean-minded envy.

I have often suspected, however, that Americans are much less relaxed about the "filthy rich" than they think. Conrad Black - who has just been found guilty of fraud in Chicago - may be about to feel the brunt of all that pent-up rage about huge salaries and perks for the super rich. Even though he was not convicted on all charges, he seems likely to get a long sentence - which could be a life sentence, for a man of 62.

The prosecution in the Black case certainly laid on the details of his opulent lifestyle with a trowel. This may have been because opulence is easier for a jury to grasp than the complicated technical details of a fraud. A colleague who reported on the trial says that two of the jurors were asleep for large
parts of the case. But everyone sat up and paid attention when the details of lavish Black parties and extravagant homes were laid out.

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"Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world" is one of those cliches that you often hear when people discuss world affairs. The basic equation is: unstable country + nuclear weapons + mad mullahs + base for al Qaeda = Big Trouble.

For the past few years, the west’s backing for President Musharraf has been based largely on the idea that,  for all his flaws, he remains a reliable ally in the "war on terror" and the best insurance against the radicialisation of Pakistan. It is a policy reminiscent of Hilaire Belloc’s advice to "Always keep a hold of nurse/For fear of finding something worse".

The storming of the Red Mosque will bolster Musharraf’s reputation as a bulwark against Islamist extremism. When I visited Pakistan a couple of months ago, western diplomats in Islamabad were clearly nervous about the development of a Taliban-style mosque just down the road. Many middle-class Pakistanis didn’t seem too delighted either.

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Yesterday evening I chaired a meeting at Chatham House with Carne Ross – a former British diplomat and “whistleblower”. Ross was in charge of the Iraq dossier in Britain’s UN delegation in the run-up to the Iraq war. It was his job to prepare the evidence on “weapons of mass destruction” and to negotiate resolutions on sanctions. But the more he worked on the issue, the more “exhausted and troubled” he found himself. In mid-2002 – about nine months before the outbreak of war – he took a sabbatical from the diplomatic service.

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The idea that Tony Blair is George Bush’s "poodle" is now so firmly established in the public mind that it would take a political earthquake to shake it. But, in fact, there is growing evidence that in his last months in office Mr Blair is quietly but effectively distancing himself from key aspects of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. There have been three important divergences in just the past ten days.

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Davos finished a couple of days ago, but I’m still banging on about it. After all, there is not much point in going to the World Economic Forum if you cannot boast about it for at least a week afterwards. Or as my colleague Martin Lukes put it: “The crush of business leaders, politicians, scientists and thinkers is so great I can hardly get my head around what I have seen and heard.” So true.

In fact one of the novelties of Davos for me was an introduction to Lukes-style brain-banging at the two “CEO Series” seminars, on globalisation and talent. I realise that in previous postings I have made a number of sniping comments about the CEO Series, so I would just like to put it on record that they were quite interesting. And – for me – one of the most interesting aspects was the strange way these things are conducted.

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I am on a new platform this morning – or so they tell me. As I understand it, this means that there have been some changes made to the way the blog looks and operates. This should make it easier to read and respond to – and incorporates some exciting new features like trackback and permalink. Please don’t ask me to explain further.

I slightly regret the fact that I am in London not The Hague this morning. I had been thinking of going to cover the Dutch elections. But I kept reading that the Dutch crisis was over. After the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh, it was back to politics as normal. Naturally, that is excellent news – if true. But it has to be admitted that it made the election a less interesting story.

As it turns out, however, the poll results have shown that “fringe” parties are gaining in support – which hardly suggests complete contentment with the current status quo. The biggest gainer was the left-wing Socialist Party led by the charismatic Jan Marijnissen, who became something of a star by the leading the opposition to the EU constitution – in the Dutch referendum of last year. His party is now the third biggest in Parliament.

The Pim Fortuyn list, named after the murdered anti-immigration leader, has lost all its seats. But they seem to have simply transferred across to another Islam-allergic party, the Freedom party, led by Geert Wilders – who advocates an immigration freeze and a ban on the building of new mosques

I read in the FT this morning that Wilders is still living in hiding. It seems to me a disgrace that the Dutch government is unable to take the necessary security measures to ensure that its leading politicians are able to live in their own homes. I met Wilders a couple of years ago and he complained to me then that he was having to live at secret addresses  – and was being moved every night – for fear that he would be murdered by radical Islamists. Even then, it seemed extraordinary testimony both to the level of the threat – and to the Dutch inability to cope with it. This after all was the country which was once famous for the fact that its royal family cycled around town on bicycles.

Surely this swing from complete relaxation about security to complete paranoia is excessive. After all, British politicians were almost always able to live in their own homes throughout the period of IRA terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. My assumption was that the Dutch would have got their act together by now. Apparently not. Under the circumstances, it’s almost surprising that Wilders did not get a larger sympathy vote.

Finally, it struck me that the last two subjects I’ve written about – Lebanon and Russia – have a certain similarity. It is not just that in both cases an assassination or attempted assassination was at the heart of the story. It is also that they are both parts of the world which attract extraordinary conspiracy theories.

When it comes to poor Alexander Litvinenko – and the news on him this morning is not good – it has been suggested to me that it is way too obvious to suggest that friends of Vladimir Putin might be behind the attempted killing. On the contrary, some Russians suggest, the attempted murder of Litvinenko makes Putin look bad. Therefore, it must be Putin’s enemies who have done it – perhaps one of the London-based oligarchs.

A similar contorted logic is applied to the murder of Pierre Gemayel. Take a look at a posting on the subject in this blog and at this article in the Guardian. Once again, a knowing question is asked – cui bono? who stands to benefit? Because the finger for the killing is being pointed at Syria, clearly it must be Israel or the United States who are manipulating events. Well, call me naïve – but I cannot see that it is in either America or Israel’s interests to create another failed state in the Middle East.

It seems to be Islam and Europe week for this blog. I apologise if I appear like a monomaniac - partly, it’s just a reflection of the books that I’m reading as research for next week’s column. But it also reflects events out there in the “real world”. Take last night’s BBC news. The first item was about a request by Jack Straw, the leader of the House of Commons, for Muslim women not to wear a full face-covering veil, when they visit him in his constituency in Blackburn in north-west England. (He has no problem with a veil that simply covers the hair.) The second item was about a Muslim British policeman who - at his own request - had been excused from guard duty at the Israeli embassy. And then in the middle of the bulletin there was a long report about radical Islamists recruiting at British universities, which ended with a bleak prediction that - if nothing is done - some British students would emerge as suicide bombers. A certain poignancy was added to the story by the fact that the reporter, Frank Gardner, is in a wheelchair - after having been shot and paralysed by Islamists, while reporting in Saudi Arabia. (more…)