The judg­ment in the case of Mohamed, R (on the applic­a­tion of) v Sec­ret­ary of State for For­eign & Com­mon­wealth Affairs [2009] EWHC 152 (Admin) (04 Feb 2009) isn’t just another reminder of why head­line writers might make court tran­scripts more fun.

[You can read more about the case of Binyam Mohamed here.]

No, it’s a pain­ful reminder of the inad­equacy of global gov­ernance. Wit­ness a shared Anglo-Norman tra­di­tion of law, and a com­mon adher­ence to rep­res­ent­at­ive gov­ern­ment boil down to a couple of Brit­ish judges ask­ing the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to kindly release some information.

There is no supreme court, no appeal. It’s — how might I put it? — a little dis­ap­point­ing. Con­tinue read­ing →

I have a new busi­ness model for news­pa­pers. Pub­lish pro­voc­at­ive, but pre­ma­ture obit­u­ar­ies of the super rich — and then explain how they can redeem them­selves by leav­ing their badly-gotten bil­lions to — yes — a news­pa­per.

I call it the Nobel strategy, after the inventor of dynam­ite. When Alfred Nobel’s brother, an oil mag­nate, died in France, local papers con­fused the two men and instead pub­lished obit­u­ar­ies of Alfred — “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by find­ing ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yes­ter­day.” Con­tinue read­ing →