World

Wednesday

The Spectator

Trump’s indictment and the trouble with the law

The latest charges against Donald Trump will do nothing to deter his many supporters within the Republican party. On the contrary, his indictment by a grand jury set up by special counsel Jack Smith plays into the former president’s narrative of victimhood and makes it even more likely that he will be chosen as a candidate. And that, curiously, is exactly what many senior Democrats want. To his electoral opponents, Trump seems reliably toxic – millions of Americans will turn out to vote against him.  It is a depressing development when legal processes are used as a political tool Even if he is convicted of the latest four charges –

Steerpike Steerpike

‘Do you not speak English?’: Trump ally blasts BBC’s Chris Mason

Poor old BBC political editor Chris Mason got a rude awakening during his interview with Donald Trump’s former aide this morning. Sebastian Gorka blasted Mason for putting ‘words in his mouth’ in a fiery appearance on Radio 4’s Today programme. Gorka, who served as Trump’s former deputy assistant, defended his former boss who was charged overnight with attempting to overturn the 2020 US election. But when Mason suggested Gorka was ‘talking down’ the US’ reputation as a ‘rich and vibrant democracy’, with no one being above the law, Trump’s ally was not impressed. ‘Why are you putting words in my mouth? I’m talking about the absolute opposite. Do you not

Robert Tombs

The rise of conspiracy history

Readers would doubtless find it hard to believe that the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh kidnapped and killed indigenous children while on a state visit to Canada in 1964. Yet this story circulated for years in Canada along with other horror stories of the rape, torture and murder of indigenous children at the hands of depraved priests and nuns. The bodies, it was said, were thrown into furnaces or secretly buried at dead of night. These accusations were linked to boarding schools run by various religious bodies first established in the 19th century and finally closed in the 1990s. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

You think British trains are bad? Try German ones

I found Jean-Pierre standing at a half-open window gulping down lungfuls of stale Dutch air as our night train chuntered, unseeing, through an expectoration of towns: Zutphen, Eefde, Gorssell. He was 79 years old, he told me, and returning to Berlin for the first time in 61 years for a meeting with an old friend. Our steward made it absolutely clear he couldn’t give a stuff that there was no buffet car Back in 1962, Jean-Pierre had been a very young Belgian Jesuit employed in smuggling hard currency from West to East Berlin, which he did by stuffing the notes inside a plaster cast which covered his right leg. There

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

A Saudi-Israel peace deal would be a game-changer

It emerged this week that the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, slipped quietly over to Washington in July to hold secret talks about the prospect of an Israel-Saudi peace deal. This was part of a drip-drip of stories suggesting that an agreement may be back on the cards after an Iran-Saudi deal brokered by China complicated things in March. Israel is far from finished as a beacon of hope in the Middle East In another significant development, the respected Saudi newspaper Arab News published an editorial this week selling a possible deal to its readers. This followed a study finding that Saudi Arabia has scrubbed ‘practically all’ antisemitism and

Anshel Pfeffer

The increasing irrelevance of Benjamin Netanyahu

Jerusalem The most tedious question in Israeli politics is: ‘Will this be the end of Benjamin Netanyahu?’ It has come up again in recent weeks as Israel has found itself on the brink of chaos over his coalition government’s attempts to pass laws weakening the independence of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. And while the civilian unrest is unprecedented in the country’s history, anyone who has spent even a moderate amount of time observing Israel in the past decades should know by now that the answer, as long as Netanyahu is still breathing, is ‘no’. Netanyahu can’t discipline or sack his ministers. To do so would almost certainly cost

Owen Matthews

The Ukrainian war is coming to Moscow

A few hours after Ukrainian kamikaze drones struck the proud towers of the Moscow City business centre, a Muscovite friend received a cold call from her insurance company. Would she like to upgrade her home insurance to include drone attacks, a chirpy salesman asked. Another couple of friends, out for a walk in the woods not far from Vladimir Putin’s country residence at Novo-Ogaryovo, were surprised to discover a pair of Pantsir-S1 mobile anti-aircraft batteries parked by the edge of a field, their warheads pointing warily towards Ukraine. A Muscovite journalist shares a new listing for bed space in an underground garage that he has converted into a bomb shelter.

Aidan Hartley

A farewell to alcohol

Laikipia Some are saved by Jesus and they are sober. For others, drunkenness is as natural as love-making, roasted meat and weekend football. In northern Kenya we brew a honey mead called muratina; then there’s a millet beer and strongest of all is a moonshine, changa’a, which you can smell from several huts away and it tastes like battery acid. Our neighbour Gilfrid produced an alcohol so pernicious the hangover hit as soon as it crossed one’s tongue Booze soaks into the corners of life in the village or the slum. I’ve been in places, on paydays for example, where the scenes resemble Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s tableaux of peasants

Taki

Greece’s age-old obsession with fire

Patmos While green Rhodes and greener Corfu burn away, arid Patmos remains fireproof because rock and soil do not a bonfire make. The Almighty granted some islands plenty of water, and other ones no H2O whatsoever. Most of the Cycladic isles lug in drinking water from the mainland, and make do with treated unsalted seawater for planting. The Ionian isles have springs and rivers and also fires, some of them started by firebugs who hope to gain – I have never figured this one out – from the blaze. It’s all very confusing, especially as the temperatures are rising and the energy to party diminishes by the hour. Everything was

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump can run but he can’t hide from his 6 January indictment

The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump was indicted. It’s that it took this long. After Attorney General Merrick Garland dithered for two years, Special Counsel Jack Smith is making up for lost time. He’s been on something of a judicial tear, indicting Trump whenever and wherever he can. Smith’s latest move is a forty-five-page indictment assailing Trump for attempting to obstruct ‘a bedrock function of the US government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.’ Bedrock, shmedrock. Trump’s followers are depicting the indictment as a new instalment in the Deep State’s prolonged attempt to prevent Trump from returning to the White House. The indictment

Michael Bachmann

Donald Trump charged with bid to overturn 2020 US election

Former president Donald Trump has been indicted, again, by Special Counsel Jack Smith — this time over his efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent January 6 riot. Trump faces four counts: Molly Gaston, a prosecutor affiliated with Smith, submitted an indictment on Tuesday evening. The forty-five page document can now be read here. In a statement, the Trump campaign described the indictment as ‘nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponised Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by

Jawad Iqbal

Modi’s cheetah rewilding project is coming unstuck

Political vanity projects come in all shapes and forms but invariably turn out badly. One such is India’s ‘Project Cheetah’, a madcap scheme to reintroduce cheetahs to the country after an absence of just over 70 years. It has the personal backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has made it an issue of national prestige, which means it is all but impossible for anyone in authority to acknowledge that things are not quite going to plan. So far, eight cheetahs have died out of a total of 20 imported from Africa and questions are growing about the reasons behind the deaths. There are even claims of an official cover

Tuesday

Benedict Rogers

Burma’s generals aren’t really pardoning Aung San Suu Kyi

The brutal generals ruling Burma – or Myanmar as they officially call it – seem to take us for fools. Today the junta issued a ‘partial pardon’ for the country’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi and reportedly transferred her from prison to ‘a more comfortable state-owned residence’. By doing this, they hope to score a propaganda win, creating the impression of leniency. It is vital though that the international community does not fall for this nonsense and sees through the regime’s lies.  Aung San Suu Kyi should never have been arrested and jailed in the first place. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) – which is

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Why is China purging its nuclear missile force?

The top commanders of China’s nuclear forces have been targeted by President Xi Jinping in his latest purge, adding an extra layer of intrigue to the unexplained disappearance of Qin Gang, the country’s foreign minister. China’s rocket force will have been of special interest to western intelligence agencies On Monday, Chinese media announced that Wang Houbin, a former deputy commander in the navy, has been appointed head of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, which oversees China’s conventional and nuclear missiles. This is the first time in 40 years that the top job has gone to somebody outside the unit. Li Yuchao, the previous head of the force, has been

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The drone attacks on Moscow are only just beginning

A drone has hit a tower in Moscow’s financial district – just two days after the building was targeted in another attack. In the early hours of this morning, the 21st floor of the IQ-Quarter building in Moscow City was hit by an unmanned drone, marking the second time in just over 48 hours that Russian governmental offices have been successfully targeted.  These attacks are bringing the idea home that Moscow is not the infallible fortress many have long believed it to be The building is home to several Russian government offices, with the 21st floor making up part of the ministry of economic development. The area damaged by the drone is said to have been

Terry Barnes

Sydney’s cocaine wars are spiralling out of control

The illicit moment of surreal euphoria from snorting a line of cocaine comes at a heavy price of misery and death for so many others – a dreadful toll that is plain to see on the streets of Sydney. The competition between criminal gangs for the city’s drug users has become deadly on a scale not seen in Australia for years. The latest victim, David Stemler, died in a hail of bullets in the early hours of Thursday. Stemler was the 23rd person to lose his life in Sydney’s drug wars over the last two years. Just why demand for cocaine has skyrocketed in Australia isn’t clear. It’s not as

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is France’s loss Russia’s gain in Niger? 

France is preparing to evacuate its citizens from Niger following the coup d’état in the west African country on 26 July. The French embassy in Niamey – the capital of Niger – said in a statement that the air evacuation ‘will take place very soon and over a very short period of time’. Last week’s coup, in which general Abdourahamane Tchiani of the elite presidential guard seized power from president Mohamed Bazoum, is the latest turmoil in a region that has become dangerously destabilised in the last three years. There have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso which, like Niger, were former French colonies but have turned against their

Monday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Will Italy leave China’s ‘atrocious’ Belt and Road Initiative?

For some time now the world has being growing increasingly wary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but rarely has any member of the scheme launched a broadside quite like that of Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, who described his country’s decision to join as ‘improvised and atrocious’. In an interview at the weekend, he said that the BRI had brought little benefit to Italy and one of the most pressing question his government now faced was how best to escape its clutches. The BRI is often described as an international infrastructure project, through which the world will be blessed with Chinese-built roads, railways, ports and power stations. In

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Zelensky’s drone warning to Russians

Hours after Moscow was once again attacked by unmanned drones in the early hours of Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky has declared that the war is turning back on Russia. Speaking in his daily video address, the Ukrainian president stated that ‘Russian aggression had failed on the battlefield’. ‘Ukraine is getting stronger,’ he continued. ‘Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centres and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.’ This is the sixth drone attack on the Russian capital in three months and the latest incident appears to mark a significant departure in tactics for Ukraine. Until now, Kyiv

Nigel Jones

Why can’t the AfD work out where it stands on Europe?

Members of Germany’s AfD (Alternative fur Deutschland) party gathered in the eastern city of Magdeburg this weekend. The party’s aim during its conference was to choose candidates for the upcoming elections to the European parliament and thrash out policies on such thorny topics as immigration, and Germany’s place in Europe, including a possible ‘Dexit’. But their presence – as ever with the AfD – sparked a storm of protest. Thousands of people took to the streets of the city to demonstrate against the ‘Nazis’ in their midst, but the ideological position of the party – on exiting the EU for instance – remains unclear: alternating between its moderate official policies