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‘Your account has been compromised.’ This was how I was informed that my Twitter account had been hacked and that somebody had started sending messages on my behalf. I changed the password and solved the problem, but this incident made me think of the use of the word ‘compromise’. If linguistic unfairness exists, it could […]
August 18, 2012
Julian Assange has spent the last few months in the Ecuadorian embassy in London awaiting a decision about his request for diplomatic asylum, which Ecuador granted earlier this morning (16 August 2012). A few days ago, the United Kingdom warned Ecuador that Assange could be arrested by force. But can he? Can UK authorities enter […]
February 27, 2012
Ambiguity in diplomacy came in useful again last week. On Friday, Serbia and Kosovo reached an agreement for Kosovo representation at regional fora. Till now, Serbia, who opposes Kosovo’s independence, was blocking Kosovo’s participation in regional meetings. According to this agreement, Kosovo’s representatives will sit behind the plate ‘Kosovo’ with an asteriks pointing to the […]
February 13, 2012
Last weekend, thousands of people took to the streets of freezing European cities to protest against ACTA. Typically, especially in sub-zero temperatures, only critical issues such as wars and social injustice could bring so many out of doors. Why did this issue, with its rather bureaucratic acronym (ACTA: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) have such a public […]
February 8, 2012
One year ago, the global visual space was dominated by the image of a clenched fist, used as the main symbol of the Arab Spring. The clenched fist has long been used as a symbol of resistance. In the 1990s, it was used as a visual symbol of the anti-Milosevic movement in Serbia and subsequent […]
February 2, 2012
Twitter has introduced a new policy allowing the possibility of filtering tweets at the request of local governments. This major departure in policy has triggered an avalanche of tweet-style protests. ‘It is a supercomplex issue’, complained Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo in a recent interview. He continued: ‘When the news came out, people tried to distil […]
January 31, 2012
If I did not know Aldo, I would completely skip his text “The Medium is Twitter” as another – justified – warning about techno-hype. The more media pushes techno-hype, the more it triggers techno-pessimism (or realism?). The dialogue between techno-optimists and techno-pessimists dates back, at least in written history, to a dialogue between Theuth, the […]
January 15, 2012
If a new law is adopted, South African independent weather forecasters who get it wrong could face imprisonment. Although, according to the Daily Telegraph article, the law has specific local context of reinforcing the state’s monopoly in weather forecasting, it opens many questions….. What about the responsibility of government weather forecasters for their mistakes, especially […]
Reflections on Diplomacy 
August 26, 2012
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