World

Saturday

The Spectator

Travel

The Spectator’s supplements on Travel, since June 2011 The Spectator’s supplements on Travel, since June 2011 The Spectator Guide to Cruises — Autumn 2011 View online version  |  View print version 17th September 2011 The very idea of a cruise holiday sends shivers down some spines — and not necessarily shivers of excitement. There’s something about the stereotypical swirly carpets and afternoon dance classes that puts a lot of people off. However, what many readers may not realise is that the cruise industry has come on leaps and bounds: newer, smaller ships, not a swirl in sight, and cruises to suit everyone — whether that’s a music voyage down the

Daniel Korski

Unseating Gaddafi

The pressure is being turned up on Colonel Gaddafi, but it may still take a while to have an effect. The Libyan dictator retains some form of power and has told the only person who has been granted access to see him, South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, that he intends to stay on in Libya. He wants a ceasefire before anything else is discussed. The rebels in Benghazi, meanwhile, want him to go before anything else is discussed. And so the bombing goes on. At the UN, people talk of negotiated settlement, fearing that chaos would follow Gaddafi’s killing. That may be true, but there has been little evidence so far

David Blackburn

Why wasn’t Mladic arrested earlier?

How did Ratko Mladic escape arrest for so long? Writing in this week’s issue of the Spectator (buy it here), Charlotte Eager remembers her nervous summers with the azure-eyed butcher, in the course of which she writes: “Why wasn’t Mladic arrested before? After all, British, French and US special forces wandered Bosnia freely for many years after the end of the war and he used to be spotted in restaurants, boils and all. The problem, according to some ex-SAS chums, was that our governments wanted Mladic to be taken alive. ‘That would not have been possible then,’ said one: back then, his thugs were still pumped up enough to die

David Blackburn

Flying into a known unknown

British Apache and French Tigre attack helicopters flew into action over Libya yesterday, the Ministry of Defence confirmed last night. As when news of the deployment first broke, parliamentarians and military talking heads have warned that this is an escalation of the conflict. Some MPs have called for parliament to debate the issue when it returns from recess on Monday. NATO commanders are at pains to stress that the scope of the operation has not changed. Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, commander-in-chief of Operation United Protection, told reporters at his headquarters in Naples. “It’s an additional capability to pinpoint these [military] vehicles that are much more difficult to see from aircraft at

Andrew Gilligan

Lost in Libya

Tripoli ‘We have some civilian martyrs for you,’ said the Libyan government minder, with the triumphant look of a Soviet housewife who has just found a bottle of Scotch in the state-controlled supermarket. He pulled aside a blanket to reveal a charred, twisted corpse, blackened arms fixed stiffly upwards, skin seared away to reveal the tendons. It was the kind of thing that stays in the memory — but mainly because that body, and another one next to it, were the first two that any western reporter in Tripoli had seen in weeks. Even they, it turned out, were journalists for Libyan state television — proud purveyor of news headlines

Friday

David Blackburn

From the archives – the Butcher of Belgrade

As Ratko Mladic faces his accusers at the Hague, it’s instructive to revisit the fallout from one of the atrocities he is alleged to have committed. The Srebrenica massacre was both a horrendous tragedy and a horrendous failure of internationalism – a point the Spectator made cautiously as news of the war crime emerged. No End of a Lesson, The Spectator, 22 July 1995 The tragedy in Bosnia is so harrowing, the United Nations’ failure so all-embracing, the West’s humiliation so total that it is difficult as yet to see beyond them. But for the Bosnians themselves, the worst may now be passed. Whether the defeated international powers stage some

David Blackburn

Not just a wily Fox, but a watchful hawk with time on his side

Liam Fox is fond of reminding us that he didn’t come into politics to cut the armed forces. A wistful look falls across his face when he says it – an indication of frustration as much as sincerity, a sense deepened by his letter of concern about the government spending so much more on international development. Opponents of Fox might characterise this as hypocrisy: he would reduce the size of the state without touching the armed forces, they say. His enemies in the Conservative party say that it’s typical of this “clever fool’s” intellectual indiscipline. Fox the military and fiscal hawk wants to “have it both ways”. The Economist has

Thursday

Matt Cavanagh

Where we are in Afghanistan

I wrote back in November that as we approached the July deadline when President Obama promised to start drawing down troops from Afghanistan, the tensions between politicians and military would re-emerge, as “the military ask for more time to get it right, and Obama tries to hold them to the deal he thought he made in late 2009”. This is now coming to pass, in London as well as Washington. I also argued that having some sort of public timetable for the troop drawdown was a reasonable solution, perhaps the only solution, to the politicians’ problem of balancing conflicting messages to different audiences in Afghanistan and at home. But the

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sarah Palin: Troll

Being a top-class troll takes time and effort. Not everyone has the patience to do it, far less derive quite so much pleasure from infuriating other people. Not for any great principle either but for the sheer devilment of it. As horses are entered for the 2012 GOP Disappointment Derby it’s not a surprise to see Sarah Palin, the grandest, most effective political troll of our time, back in the news. Nor, obviously, is it surprising to discover that she’s not actually done anything to merit this fresh burst of attention. Not unless you include a splendid photo op at Rolling Thunder in Virginia and DC and now some kind

Monday

David Blackburn

Gaddafi’s position weakens

As Noman Benotman predicted, Colonel Gaddafi’s relations with his military are disintegrating. Reuters is reporting that 120 loyalist officers have defected and arrived in Rome. Details are scant, but this is a major success for Britain and France’s attempt to effect regime change without intensifying their military deployment. There will be doubts as to how long the resilient dictator can survive without loyal military leadership. Gaddafi now has to choose how to respond to this treachery – rough justice may be tempting, but that might deepen the rebelliousness of his officers, increasing the likelihood of a coup. NATO will be trying to exploit this stroke of luck, encouraging further defections.

David Blackburn

The spectre of jihad in Libya

While Britain agonised over deploying attack helicopters to Libya, the conflict seems to have escalated of its own accord. Noman Benotman, a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, has described the current dispositions for the Times this morning (£). He has learned that many of Gaddafi’s military leaders are planning a coup to save their skins; Colonel Gaddafi is reluctant to arrest their nascent treachery for fear of triggering open rebellion. Other officers are following the example of civilian administrators like Moussa Koussa, feeling that now is the time to cut and run. News of Gaddafi’s withering power will please NATO, even if it is exaggerated. However, Benotman’s

Saturday

The Spectator

Barometer | 28 May 2011

Irish quarter Is there any such thing as a US president without Irish roots? The US genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts has researched the origins of all US presidents and concluded that 20 of the 44 US presidents had some Irish family connections. Half of these, however, have been within the past 50 years. — Until the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961 only 11 out of 34 presidents had had some Irish blood. Since then, nine out of ten presidents have had some Irish ancestry, although it is tenuous in the case of Bill Clinton, in spite of his claim: ‘I mean, I’m sort of… I look Irish’. —

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Peevish Pedantry

A small series: 1. I was annoyed but not surprised when Barack Obama referred to Westminster as “The Mother of Parliaments” on Wednesday. This was not a surprising error for a foreigner even if his speechwriter should have been expected to know and do better. It is England that is the Mother of Parliaments, not Westminster. (Though the Icelanders have a legitimate grievance about this.) If Obama, being a poor foreigner, can be forgiven this what is Amanda Foreman’s excuse? I’d have thought an “historian” would know better but there she was on the BBC’s This Week making the same ignorant blunder. Not good enough. 2. Canute. A long-standing peeve. Canute

Thursday

Daniel Korski

A joyous day in the Balkans

The day started out looking bad for the Balkans, with the Serbian president boycotting a meeting with Barack Obama in Poland because the Kosovo president was attending. But things look rather better now. After a decade-long man-hunt, Serbian police arrested Ratko Mladic in northern Serbia. He was living under the name Milorad Komadic and had grown a beard like his former boss, Radovan Karadzic. A plane carrying Mladic is said to have left for The Hague, where he will soon be arraigned before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Foreign Secretary William Hague has rightly called the arrest a “historic moment” for the western Balkans. General Mladic is

Alex Massie Alex Massie

HMQ & BHO

A lovely picture of Her Majesty with the Obamas. Captions please! (Also, what joke is Prince Philip keeping to himself?) Meanwhile, I’ve a piece on Obamamania at the Daily Beast and a grumpy take on the “Special Relationship” at Foreign Policy.

Daniel Korski

Yemen implodes

Sometimes you wait and wait for an event, and nothing ever happens. Pakistan is always said to be teetering on the brink of collapse but never quite edges over the precipice. The same used to be the case with Yemen. In fact, Coffee House predicted that Yemen would implode last year, but Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh managed to hold the country together in the face of terrorism, irredentist movements, insurgency and, recently, pro-democracy protesters demanding his resignation.   Now, however, the wily leader may finally have run out of road. Heavy clashes have erupted in the capital Sanaa, a day after Saleh again refused to sign a Gulf-brokered power-transition.

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Two Kingdoms Divided by a Common Ignorance

I’m indebted to the gallant Peat Worrier for reminding me of some of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous reflections on this Kingdom. To wit, what with the seperate legal systems being much in the news lately: [I]n all countries; perhaps in all, men are most ignorant of the foreigners at home. John Bull is ignorant of the States; he is probably ignorant of India; but considering his opportunities, he is far more ignorant of countries nearer his own door. There is one country, for instance – its frontier not so far from London, its people closely akin, its language the same in all essentials with the English – of which I

Daniel Korski

The X Factor

They say power is shifting from the United States, but I’m standing outside of Westminster Abbey having joined an enthusiastic surge of people keen to see the US president. People of all ages have snuck out of their offices to catch  a glipse of Barack Obama. And here he comes: 30-odd cars, with his big-windowed limousine in front, zip pass the Speccie offices and we get a wave from the President and the First Lady. I never see the Chinese president getting this kind of rock star treatment. In fact, I don’t see many people getting kind of reception, except the Queen and maybe Justin Bieber. This matters. The US

David Blackburn

An especially businesslike relationship

The ash cloud nearly claimed its first victim last night: Barack Obama had to leave Ireland early in order to fly to Britain. The Palace’s insistence on protocol has been upset and the President’s entourage has been advised not to risk the tap water; other than that, all is well. However, the visit has set sceptical tongues wagging. Some diplomats wonder why the President is here. Afghanistan, the Middle East, joint national security and the world economy are on the agenda, but there is no unifying theme to discussions. Some ideologues fear that the eternal bond between Britain and America is relaxing into a union of convenience. On the other

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tomlinson Officer Faces Manslaughter Trial

On the other hand, there’s some good news today. The policeman who hit Ian Tomnlinson during the G20 protests two years ago is to stand trial for manslaughter. As I wrote at the time: [M]istakes happen. But the police are, rightly, supposed to be held to a higher standard. Yes, they have a difficult job. That’s why we expect them to do it well. The assault on Ian Tomlinson can’t be excused simply because the police were fed up. I can imagine that people in other countries might wonder what the fuss is. I mean, Tomlinson was hit with a baton once and then shoved, albeit violently, to the ground.