World

Monday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Trump’s Great Firewall

29 min listen

Cash is no longer king in China. Much like Sweden, the country’s young and old opt for digital payments, made possible by an app called ‘WeChat’. While sometimes compared to WhatsApp or Facebook, WeChat is much more. On the latest episode of Chinese Whispers, my fortnightly podcast, China tech expert Duncan Clark describes how it’s designed to be ‘a digital Swiss army knife’. As well as payments for everything from rent to groceries, the app’s ubiquity means that the Chinese now ask for each other’s ‘WeChat IDs’ instead of phone numbers. It’s designed for technophobes with functions like voice messages – as Duncan points out, this is particularly helpful for

Saturday

William Cook

The battle over a German town’s black patron saint

At first glance, the pretty German town of Coburg seems an unlikely arena for the latest skirmish in the culture wars. The birthplace of Prince Albert (and one of Queen Victoria’s favourite holiday spots), it’s a quaint and tranquil place which miraculously came through the last century virtually unscathed. Yet now this historic backwater finds itself at the centre of controversy, on account of its patron saint, St Maurice, aka the Coburg Moor. St Maurice is a ubiquitous presence in Coburg. His profile adorns the town’s coat of arms, and numerous public buildings. It’s even on the manhole covers. Now Alisha Archie and Juliane Reuther (who live in Berlin but

John Keiger John Keiger

France is furious at Boris’s quarantine decision

The French gently mocked the pop-singer Petula Clarke on French media in the 1970s for her contortions about her heart being English but her soul French, or was it the reverse? But however much the British metropolitan classes may cloy to France as a mythical ‘world they have lost’, the French perceive the Franco-British relationship very differently. Competition is the watchword. And it is sharp. General de Gaulle the most acute of politicians and contriving of historians remarked, when French policy in the 1960s called for Britain to be rejected from the Common Market: ‘Our hereditary enemy, it was not Germany, but England.’ Leaving aside the centuries old clichéd rivalry

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

What lies behind the Japanese obsession with face masks?

If there is one country where the wearing of face masks in response to the coronavirus outbreak has caused no controversy whatsoever, it is Japan. There is no debate about face masks here, and it often seems as if many Japanese would be happy to don the flimsy cloth coverings all year round, regardless of risk. To understand why, it is necessary to consider the history and the culture rather more than the science.  The Japanese have been wearing masks of one sort or another for many centuries. The origin may have been the covering of the mouth with leaves to prevent unclean breath soiling holy artefacts in Buddhist temples

Friday

Ashis Ray

India-Pakistan relations have reached rock bottom

Seventy-three years ago on 15 August, the nation of India awoke, in the immortal words of its first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘to life and freedom’ after 190 years of British rule. It was a truncated triumph. Before its departure from the subcontinent, Britain conceded to demands for a separate homeland for Muslims and carved out significant swathes of India into Pakistan. Vocal and influential land-owning Muslim elites were convinced they would be unbearably subjugated in an independent India where Hindus were hegemonic. If the partition of India was intended to usher in reconciliation, this is yet to materialise. The two South Asian neighbours have since bloodily engaged in three

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Was Sweden’s refusal to lockdown a gruesome mistake?

Was there ever a jury destined to spend so long over its deliberations as the one considering whether Sweden made a terrible error over its refusal to go into lockdown? Just when you think the data points in one direction, another piece of data nods in the other. The case against Sweden rests largely on its death toll being significantly higher than that of its Nordic neighbours: 572 per million compared with 107 for Denmark, 60 for Finland and 48 for Norway. But then it also happens to be lower than several countries which had especially severe lockdowns, such as Spain (612), Britain (609) and Italy (583). But what of

Mariya Asipenka

Europe’s shameful silence on Belarus

I last saw Minsk, my home town, in June 2019. There was no hint of what was to come: Belarussians old and young have become used to dictatorship, and elections have long been treated with a weary cynicism. This time, suddenly and joyously, it is different. What is happening on the streets of towns and cities across my country is not an organised uprising; opposition politicians have been jailed and independent media squashed for decades, so that would be impossible. What the world is witnessing is a spontaneous urge for freedom from ordinary people: my fellow citizens. These are not activists; they are nurses and businesspeople, housewives and lawyers. I

Andrew Foxall

Putin’s ‘Black PR’ has arrived in Britain

Christopher Steele, the author of the (in)famous Trump dossier, is right to say Britain has been ‘behind the curve’ when it comes to combating the threat posed by Russia. The UK’s political parties are being targeted by the Kremlin, he told Tory MP Damian Collins on his ‘Infotagion’ podcast, in a bid ‘to create great polarity, great partisanship, and divisions within political life’. But while dodgy donations and cyber-hacking of our parties has been well covered, Steele also touched on a lesser-know but equally malign influence Russia is playing in Britain. ‘Black PR,’ he said, has ‘grown and spread like a contagion’ from Russia ‘out into Western Europe, and into the Western

Matt Drake

A divided nation: the true cost of New Zealand’s lockdown

Jacinda Ardern did a ‘little dance’ and thanked her ‘team of five million’ when she was told coronavirus had been eliminated from New Zealand. But her celebration now appears somewhat premature. A sudden spike in cases has forced Auckland back into lockdown and revealed the flaw in the country’s strategy for tackling the virus.  In its effort to make New Zealand covid-free, Adern’s government has taken drastic measures. The country’s borders have been almost entirely locked down and the few visitors and expats who do arrive are forced to stump up for their time in quarantine. But even these policies – as the cluster of cases to emerge in Auckland shows – are not enough to completely defeat the virus.

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The joyous Israel-UAE peace deal

There is a time for war and a time for peace, Ecclesiastes tells us. Joyously, in the middle of a joyless year, a time for peace is upon us. For only the third occasion since 1948, Israel has secured a deal for peace with an Arab state. The United Arab Emirates will put an ambassador in Israel and accept one in Abu Dhabi. Relations will reportedly go beyond formalities and include economic and scientific cooperation, in particular on developing a vaccine for Covid-19. The normalisation of relations with the UAE follows a courtship at first clandestine but in recent years open and candid. Israel and the Gulf states share a

Thursday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Here’s Nicola: can Boris Johnson stop Scottish independence?

36 min listen

Poll after poll is showing the surge in support for Scottish independence – so what can Boris Johnson do about it? (00:35) Plus, how many more pandemics does nature have in store for us? (13:20) And finally, is it time to bring back the British holiday camp? (28:00). With our Scotland Editor Alex Massie; commentator Angela Haggerty; author of The Pandemic Century Mark Honigsbaum; ecologist Peter Daszak; Reverend Steve Morris; and historian Kathryn Ferry. Presented by Cindy Yu. Produced by Cindy Yu and Sam Russell.

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

The Israel-UAE peace deal was made in Iran

The last time I was in Israel people were preparing for the worst. ‘This crazy bastard is going to annex the West Bank and then we’re all screwed,’ my Israeli friend bemoaned to me. It turns out he was wrong. The United Arab Emirates and Israel have just agreed to normalise relations. In return, Israel has agreed to suspend its plan to annex large chunks of the West Bank. Make no mistake: what has happened is historic. The UAE has been politically hostile to Israel since even before it gained independence from Britain in 1971. There has not been a single day in its existence where it has not officially

Paul Wood

The mood in Lebanon is for revolution

When 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate left in Beirut’s port exploded last week, a three-year-old girl named Alexandra Najjar was torn from her mother’s arms as they ran inside from their balcony. In the same instant, every-thing in the apartment was flying through the air — doors, window frames, shards of glass, the air-conditioning unit, the family’s piano — and something hit the little girl. She died later from her wounds and on Lebanese social media she has become the ‘Angel of Beirut’, a symbol of the innocent people ‘murdered’ by their government’s negligence and incompetence, as her father, Paul, put it. He gave a restrained and dignified interview to

Jack Clover

Is this the end for Europe’s last dictator?

Alexander Lukashenko, labelled by the Bush administration as ‘Europe’s last dictator’, was never going to go down without a fight. In his final public address before Belarus went to the polls he offered a thinly veiled warning to those who wish to remove him from power: ‘[Our Belarus] is rather naive and a little bit fragile but she is beloved and when you love something you do not give it up.’ On election day, Lukashenko delivered on his grim campaign promise. Official exit polls gave the incumbent an implausible 80 per cent of the vote: his fifth landslide in 26 years at the helm. The lion’s share of presumed electoral

Wednesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Kamala Harris ticks all Biden’s boxes

With his selection of Kamala Harris, Joe Biden bowed to the inevitable. Harris ticks all the boxes — Bay Area progressive who pushed a lock ’em up policy, senator with no apparent skeletons that haven’t already been pulled out of the closet (see: Willie Brown), and a woman and minority who relishes political brawls. She once bashed Biden for his busing policy. Now she will be busing him. Harris has it all over the other candidates. Karen Bass of El Jefe and Venceremos Brigade fame was a disaster waiting to happen. Susan Rice is a creature of Washington elite institutions with no real political constituency. And Stacey Abrams would have

Tuesday

James Chater

Can Taiwan pull off its China gamble?

When Alex Azar, the US health secretary, arrived in Taipei on Sunday, he became the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan since the United States began diplomatic recognition of Beijing in 1979. In both Washington and Taipei, the significance of the visit has been rightly emphasised. Still, the visit has not been met with unequivocal praise in Taiwan. After all, while visits of this nature are undoubtedly important, they risk generating instability in cross-Strait relations. Could a closer relationship with the US spell trouble for Taiwan? In one editorial published in Taiwan’s United Daily News on Monday morning, the trip was described as ‘a new wave of attack in the

Monday

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

Lebanon’s existential crisis

It had to happen. On Monday evening, just under a week after 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at Beirut’s port exploded and killed over 160 people, the entire Lebanese government resigned. This was not a surprise. The blast resulted from negligence of the grossest kind. Three cabinet ministers and seven members of parliament had already quit. And frankly, in these times: who would even want the job? Prime Minister Hassan Diab made the announcement in a national TV address. It came after days of protests in which demonstrators hung effigies of Lebanese President Michel Aoun, and even Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. That anyone would dare to

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Belarus’s regime is nearing collapse

It’s hard to believe Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko will retain his half-affectionate, half-exasperated nickname ‘Batka’ (Dad) after his re-election yesterday in a presidential vote rigged beyond the point of farce, which led to violent street protests across the country. Despite claims he had fled the country, the ‘last dictator in Europe’ made it through the night – but his regime is now nearing its end. Lukashenko has been more-or-less firmly ensconced in Belarus since 1994, and under his rule the country has remained a strange Soviet-capitalist hybrid. There are still streets named after Marx, the political security police are still called the KGB, and large state enterprises still dominate much of

Saturday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Biden blowing the election?

17 min listen

The polls are tightening, meanwhile Joe Biden is on the back foot over another gaffe about African American voters. Is the Democratic challenger blowing the election? Editor of the National Interest Jacob Heilbrunn joins Freddy Gray, editor of Spectator USA.

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The Vatican’s sinister deal with Beijing

24 min listen

Next month, the Vatican will talk to Beijing about renewing its 2018 deal with the Chinese Communist Party that effectively allowed President Xi to choose the country’s Catholic bishops. He has used this power to force Catholics loyal to Rome to join the puppet Catholic church set up by Chairman Mao in the 1950s. They can no longer refuse on the grounds that they recognise only the Pope’s Church because Francis himself has validated the orders of Xi’s party stooges.  But the Holy Father has done more than that: he has ostentatiously failed to condemn China’s savage assaults on human rights, the worst of which is its attempt to eradicate