World

Thursday

Danielle Wall

Adventure on the menu

I think of myself as an adventurous eater. I’ve had kangaroo in Australia, crocodile in Cambodia, deep-fried Mars bar in Scotland… but not much could have prepared me for my trip to China. In the narrow, brightly lit streets of Beijing, street vendors start early, preparing the day’s delights: steamed buns filled with pork, prawns or vegetables (known as baozi); spicy lamb kebabs (chuan’r) cooked on roadside barbecues; and tanghulu, ‘fresh’ fruit on bamboo skewers covered in sugary syrup. The tanghulu sellers cycle their wares around the city, the fruit becoming steadily less fresh in the heavily polluted air, until by nightfall it’s best not to look too closely. Wangfujing

David Blackburn

Mali is a British concern because it is a European concern

Aaron Ellis makes a good point: the comparison between Mali and Afghanistan is flawed. But I disagree with him as to why. Afghanistan was a failed state long before al-Qaeda settled there (as a last resort). The pattern is slightly different in Mali: Islamists have further destabilised an already weak country in a strategically sensitive area. Mali has been wracked by unrest, both ethnic and religious, for some time. The country is so poor (as a glance at the CIA World Fact Book’s approximations demonstrates) that is precarious politically; so precarious that it threatened to undermine some of its delicate neighbours along the Sahel (the massive and growing strip where

Aaron Ellis

Mali is not another Afghanistan

Why should we worry if jihadists control a poor, landlocked country thousands of miles away? As the French push on with the ‘reconquest’ of Mali, there’s a feeling here that Britain must play its part in preventing a terrorist safe haven on Europe’s southern border. Some compare the situation to pre-9/11 Afghanistan. Back in May, Ian Birrell warned that we ‘have seen the damage caused by a broken, chaotic country – and how Islamist terror groups promising stability can fill the void.’ The ‘shockwaves’ from Mali ‘could be felt far beyond its own borders’ just as the ones from Afghanistan were felt in New York and Washington. Bob Carr, Australia’s

Aidan Hartley

What Africa needs now

Kenya: The Prime Minister has committed Britain to a struggle against the ‘existential threat’ of terrorism in Africa that he says will take ‘years, even decades’ of patience, intelligence and toughness. Well, there’s some truth in what he says, but not in the implication that this is a new threat to Africa — nor that our response should be a military one. In a way this same struggle was happening when the young Winston Churchill was covering Kitchener’s war against fanatical Muslim, Mahdist forces in the Sudan in 1898. ‘Year after year, we see the figures of the odd and bizarre potentates… It is like a pantomime scene at Drury

Patrick Allitt

Revenge of the Clintons

Republicans turn pale with horror at the idea that Hillary Clinton might be the next president. She is the screeching harridan of their nightmares, made worse by her penchant for centre-left social policies. But they had better face up to the fact that no woman has ever been better placed to take the top job. Sixty-five now, she will be no older in 2016 than Ronald Reagan was when he moved into the White House. In the next week or so, Hillary will stand down as Secretary of State. She tells interviewers that she’s looking forward a break from public life. But nobody who knows anything about her believes it.

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Travel: Timeless island

‘Hong Kong is the most Chinese city on earth,’ says my old friend Jo McBride, who has lived there for more than 30 years. That may come as a surprise to those who knew the place as a resolutely British enclave of colonial officers, traders and bankers — of whom, long ago, I was one — and to more recent visitors reassured by the hands-off regime of Beijing’s stooges in the 15 years since they took over from our last governor, Lord Patten. So hands-off, indeed, that most tourists still think of China as one destination and Hong Kong as another: a stateless stopover and giant shopping mall that constantly

Tuesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Israeli elections: first exit polls

The first story of the exit polls here in Israel seems to be the success of Yair Lapid, the charismatic and populist TV man, who looks set to win 19 seats. Lapid has appealed to a large swathe of the disgruntled secular middle classes, talking a lot about social issues, but not a lot about the peace process. It looks like it still could be good news for Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister. He polled at 31, which is weaker than last week’s polls suggested. But I’m told it should be quite easy – though of course this all early speculation – for him to bring Lapid into a broad

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Israel Votes and Hope Loses – Spectator Blogs

Today’s Israeli election does not, it is fair to say, take place in at a moment of supreme hope in the Middle East. Quite the contrary. This is an election whose result seems liable to depress most foreign observers. Bibi Netanyahu is no-one’s idea of a moderate but the fact remains that, presuming he is returned for a third term as Prime Minister, he may be one of the more left-wing members of the new Israeli government. Indeed, Netanyahu is liable to be one of the more liberal members returned on the Likud list. Daniel Levy has a very useful primer on the dispiriting ‘facts on the ground’. As Levy

Martin Bright

There is nothing new about Islamism in Africa

The Algerian hostage crisis is over and the Prime Minister has warned that the focus of the al-Qaeda’s franchise has shifted westwards. In his statement on the situation, he was channelling Tony Blair, which at least makes a change from channelling the Foreign Office. But the initial reaction from Downing Street was deeply unimpressive. The BBC’s Nick Robinson quoted a nameless, sneering voice, apparently exasperated at the Algerian response to the crisis. It would be interesting to know whether this patronising individual had ever spent any time working outside SW1 or had any idea that the Algerian people have lived on the frontline of the struggle with violent Islamists for

Monday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Sketch: Obama’s inauguration

It was like Narnia at today’s inauguration. Half a million Obama fans gathered in Washington to shiver as their leader was sworn in for the second time. (Or the fourth, if you count the fluffed effort in 2009, which had to be repeated later, and the mandatory ceremony conducted yesterday in a nicely heated indoor room.) Up on the raised platform, the hoary faces of former presidents exchanged smiles and handshakes. A stooge from Congress toddled out and addressed the crowd in sombre, prayerful mood. Then he changed gear and introduced cult folk legend, James Taylor, hailing him as ‘a renowned musical artist.’ This was a polite way of acknowledging

Jonathan Jones

Obama’s left-wing inaugural address

Obama’s second inaugural address was probably one of the most left-wing speeches he has made since the Democratic primaries in 2008. It hit all the liberal notes, from women’s equality to climate change and gun control to welfare. But thanks to the President’s trademark combination of poetry and weight, it didn’t come off divisive or aggressive. That’s because Obama pegged the political positions to principles that cut across partisan divide: chief amongst them, the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,

Sunday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Israel going green?

Israel’s PR electoral system annoys mainstream politicians because it encourages a plethora of fringe parties, who waste their time and prevent them from doing what they want. The governing Likud-Beiteinu came together on a promise to overhaul the system. The proposals include raising the threshold for entering the Knesset from 2 to 6 per cent, thus removing some the smaller parties from the picture. Diversity is often numbing. But the prospect of Israel’s leaders revising the rules for their benefit invites suspicion, especially now that Avigdor Liberman, who led the push for reform, has had to stand down following charges of corruption. Moreover, reform would make things less funny. Take

Saturday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Israel is sleepwalking to election day

Maybe it’s the unconscious effect of the Sabbath, but here in Tel Aviv a soporific atmosphere hangs over next week’s Israeli elections. Among the Israelis I have spoken to (mostly secular Tel Avivians), apathy prevails. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to win whatever happens, it seems, and he is going to have to come to some agreement with the hard right-winger Naftali Bennett. ‘The television wants to make it exciting,’ an old Labor voter told me earlier today. ‘But it is not. Everybody knows.’ His wife nodded from behind her sunglasses, and smiled. Another elderly fellow told me that he would only vote for the ‘least bad one –

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can the West solve a problem like Mali?

I fear that we are all going to have to learn a lot about Mali and the Sahel—and fast. It is rapidly becoming the latest front in the war on terror. Or, to be more precise, the West’s attempt to prevent the emergence of ungoverned spaces that can be exploited by Al Qaeda and its offshoots. The New York Times today has a good primer on the challenge facing the French in Mali: “The French are fighting to preserve the integrity of a country that is divided in half, of a state that is broken. They are fighting for the survival of an interim government with no democratic legitimacy that

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Syria exposé shows the BBC at its best

Superb piece of journalism on the BBC News from Lyse Doucet. A horrible story, of some appalling mass murder in Syria – told calmly and bravely; unpartisan, questioning and undoubtedly exposing the team to danger, for our benefit. The very best of journalism. You can see it here. Actually, the piece which followed Doucet’s wasn’t bad either – a fine report from Damian Grammaticus on the Chinese economic slowdown as seen from the ghastly city of Wuhan. I mention this because the corporation isn’t simply a handy base for collective noncing, overpaid middle managers and political bias. I write about that stuff often enough, probably too often, because if the

Thursday

Peter Jones

Socrates on career advice

Young girls are constantly being told that they will have failed unless they get a top job as prime minister, CEO of a Footsie company, rocket scientist or cutting-edge TV presenter, preferably all four together. Plato would not have objected, arguing in his Republic that men and women possessed exactly the same innate abilities for running his ideal state. But Socrates has some wise advice, arising from the famous saying inscribed in the forecourt of Apollo’s temple at Delphi: γνῶθι σαυτόν (gnôthi sauton), ‘Know thyself’. Socrates is conversing with the young Euthydemus, who wants to go into politics. The assumptions he makes about it are all too simple, which leads

Shiraz Maher

Mali could be the gamble that defines Hollande’s presidency

The crisis in Mali is yet another unintended consequence of the Arab Spring. Specifically, they are a result of the revolution in Libya, where Tuareg rebels who supported Gaddafi were forced to flee after his downfall. Heavily armed and regrouping in Mali, they created the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) which effectively ended the government’s control over the north. Jihadist groups aligned with al-Qaeda then swooped in and established a semi-autonomous Islamic state in the north. As they pushed south it looked as if they might capture all of Mali, prompting interim President Dioncounda Traore to ask for French assistance. Francois Hollande responded by launching Operation Serval with overwhelming

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Pacific President

On Monday, as Barack Obama is sworn in again as President, his allies in the West will ask themselves the same nervous question they posed four years ago: how much does he care about us? The British, in particular, are worried. War looms in Mali, yet Washington seems happy to let the French take charge, showing even less interest than it did in Libya two years ago. Cheerleaders for the ‘special relationship’ accuse Obama of taking a back seat, of failing to show leadership and even of betraying his country’s oldest friends. They look back to that much-discussed episode when the new President removed a bust of Winston Churchill from

David Prycejones

Chávez’s useful idiots

In the ranking of dictators, Hugo Chávez is in the welterweight class. President of Venezuela these past 14 years, he is supposed to be holding a ceremony of inauguration for yet another term of one-man rule and demagoguery. In anticipation, his supporters, the Chávistas in their uniform of red shirts, are singing and dancing in the streets of Caracas. But rumour has it that Chávez is on the point of death after surgery for cancer in a hospital in Cuba. Caution! The apparent popularity, the sympathy, the tenterhooks, the pseudo-Mandela image of the man, is largely the work of those strange modern-age political publicists known as fellow travellers. A fellow

Wednesday

Jonathan Jones

Briefing: Obama and gun control

‘We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society. But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town from the grief that has visited Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before