World

As I write a siege is ongoing in a Kosher shop in Paris.  In France, Belgium and across Europe in recent years, Jews have repeatedly been the targets of Islamist attack.  They always are.  Last year saw the largest upsurge of anti-Semitic hate crime on record even in the UK. But it is the continent that has seen the worst and growing litany of attacks.  In 2012 Mohamed Merah killed three Jewish children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse.  In May last year three people were shot dead by an Islamist gunman at the Jewish museum in Brussels. During the twentieth century Judaism on the continent of Europe

The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo lambasts, attacks and lampoons absolutely everybody. Its targets include all religions, all identity groups, minorities and majorities. In recent years it has been most prominent for its refusal to apply different treatment to Islam. It knew that carrying on with satire, in the name of free expression, carried a real danger — its office in Paris was firebombed three years ago on account of this, and it still carried on with its irreverence. On Wednesday morning, two gunmen went into the magazine’s office wielding Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades. Within minutes, 12 people were reported killed. The gunmen’s identity was unknown when The Spectator went

I’m not one of those purists who shun Twitter. I often find it depressingly vacuous – but hey, I’m a journalist and a tart. So I tweet. From now on, though, I’ll avoid it in the hours following a terrorist attack. Facebook, too. Just look at what is now flooding the Internet, following the attack in Paris today. There is a tsunami of emoting and hashtaging about solidarity, free speech, not giving into intimidation. Everybody is saying that we must respond to this event, as if somehow it were up to them. Everybody reaches for the grand ringing truism — ‘Fear is the ally of the bully. #dontgivein’. That sort of thing

As oil prices continue to plummet, the rather sterile debate over Saudi intentions drags on. Some believe the Saudis are locked into a secret conspiracy with Washington to stiff Russia and Iran. Others prefer to take the Saudi oil minister at his word and believe that it’s all about market share. The truth is that the debate is founded on a false dichotomy: the Saudis are doing both things at once, and several other things as well. The best way to understand this is to try to step into the shoes (or sandals, rather) of a senior member of the al-Saud family. Your neighbourhood is convulsed in war and revolution,

Rio de Janeiro scared me at first. I landed at night in a rainstorm and from the airport took a taxi whose driver had no idea where I was going. I did not speak Portuguese; he did not speak iPhone. We drove through dark streets where the 7ft fences around each smart apartment block gave way to the concrete walls of the favelas. At the cocktail bar where we made our first stop, two burly men stood at the drive clutching machine guns. This didn’t calm my nerves. I suppose that partly I was overwhelmed by the scale of the city and its looming ambition. Publicity photographs of Paris or

Consider the odium Ukip attracts from right-thinking pundits – by which I obviously don’t mean right as in conservative – square it, and you’re getting close to the opprobrium that the anti-Islamisation movement, Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident), is attracting in Germany, not to mention outside it. For a group of demonstrators that number around 17,500 at the most in their most popular Monday gatherings in Dresden, it’s remarkable the breadth of the coalition against them: the churches, Angela Merkel (‘there can be no place in Germany for religious hatred’), the employers federation leader, Ulrich Grillo (‘we should welcome more refugees’) and obviously every anti-racism group

Déjà lu is a symptom that affects all Spectator subscribers after a while: the feeling that, when reading the newspapers, that you have read the story before. Long before. Four months ago, The Spectator ran a cover story about a crisis that hadn’t then hit the news: the meltdown in our ambulance service. Mary Wakefield’s investigation revealed how paramedics were leaving in droves and that ambulance chiefs were being forced into ever-more-desperate measures to try to replace them. The scandal has since hit the newspapers, in many instalments. Today, newspapers now report that they are recruiting from Poland. A spokesman for South Central Ambulance Service is quoted as saying:- “We have been carrying out some

The £31 million al-Sweady Inquiry is in. And it describes claims that up to 20 Iraqis were killed and mutilated by British troops after a battle in 2004 as “without foundation”: ‘Sir Thayne Forbes said Iraqi detainees who alleged they were tortured and abused – and subjected to mock executions – had given evidence that was “unprincipled in the extreme” and “wholly without regard to the truth”.’ The detainees in question were fighting as ‘insurgents’ at the time. But once they were detained they used the now familiar route of claiming they had been abused by their captors. This is not only an al-Qaeda tactic. The Iraqi insurgents (from the

It was a scene that Australians are hitherto unfamiliar with. Terrified civilians forced at gunpoint to press a black flag, bearing the shahādah – the Islamic declaration of faith, most notably used as a battle banner by Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s franchise in Syria – against the Lindt café window. The gunman, aside from a chat with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, requested a proper Islamic State flag, which, in fairness, would be hard to come by in Sydney these days. The perpetrator, Man Haron Monis, was well known to authorities. Facing more than 40 sexual and indecent assault charges, he had a conviction for sending offensive letters to families

Stuck with gift ideas for that slightly xenophobic, older family member this Christmas? Then look no further than the Ukip website. They are currently auctioning off a painting of their dear leader. Donate a fiver for the chance to win this horrific oil on canvas of Nigel Farage. No one mention Mr Toad…

On Thursday I was on the BBC’s ‘This Week’ to talk about the CIA and torture. It is, for many reasons, perhaps the most gruesome subject possible. And not just because of the hideous allegations involved, but also because it is one of those subjects which people wantonly lose their reason over. Like a small number of other subjects in our society at the moment, it is one which people try wilfully to simplify, usually in order to show the world what a moral person they are and, by contrast, what immoral people their opponents are. I will use this post to set out some of my own views and certain