World

The latest news should obviously have you feeling Very, Very Afraid: Mexico has revised down the suspected death toll from swine flu from 176 to 101, indicating that the outbreak may not be as bad as was initially feared. Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova told the BBC that, based on samples tested, the mortality rate was comparable with that of seasonal flu. You don’t say! Will this be reflected in the media coverage? Don’t be silly. I mean, the hospitals are sending people home even though they don’t have swine flu…

As part of an excellent back-and-forth with Daniel Larison on the question of patritism, Noah Millman asks: Can one hold that both Marsall Petain and General de Gaulle were French patriots? I think the answer to this one has to be “yes.” You can’t hold that both were right, but you can believe that both were acting sincerely out of patriotic motives – that both were doing what they felt was best for France as France. I rather agree with this, but would go further and argue that you can hold that both Petain and de Gaulle were right. That is, if one imagines onself as a Frenchman in the

Good lord, it’s like the last thirty years never happened: the Irish government wants a new law to prohibit blasphemy. If passed then, astonishingly, the courts will be asked to decide if the supposed victim has been sufficiently outraged for there to have been an offence. Remarkable. And expensive too since it could cost you up to €100,000 and a visit from the Gardai Siochana to confiscate the “offensive material”. As Carol Coulter explains: For that to happen, a court will have to be satisfied the matter published is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of

No-one would argue that Barack Obama is without ego. Then again, that’s also true of most politicians. Mark Steyn, however, objects that Obama “seems to see himself as Nelson Mandela and the previous regime as the old National Party”. This seems a stretch given that the evidence proffered is Obama’s quip that We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be okay. Steyn suggests the offence – or the arrogance – of this was made worse by the fact that Obama was speaking in Strasbourg at the time. But itsn’t it obvious that, on this occasion at least, Obama is

Sometimes it seems as though the British appetite for nostalgia can never be satisfied. On the other hand, it seems there are in fact limits to our willingness to recreate the past, albeit often as pastiche. Announcing plans for new prisons, Jack Straw reassured/disappointed us by promising: “These new prisons will be neither Victorian replicas nor large warehouses,” Mr Straw said. Does this mean they’ll be modern and bijou instead? Perhaps not, since rather than build three huge prisons, they’re planning to construct five very large ones. And then again, the government is missing a trick here: recreating Victorian prisons might be quite popular…

Paeans of praise are being heaped on US President Barack Obama for being able to speak well in public, while commentators trace his skill back to the rules of rhetoric invented by Aristotle and Cicero. Plato would be spitting. The main difference between our orators and the ancient Greek rhêtor in democratic Athens is that the ancient rhêtor had no political power whatsoever. He was trying to persuade an Assembly of citizens (males over 18) to do what he wanted, but it was they who made the final decision whether to act on his advice or not. In our system, an Obama or Brown can speak well or badly, intelligibly

So, as expected Barack Obama has reneged upon his campaign promise to call the Armenian genocide, er, genocide. Instead it’s “slaughter”. Such are the prosaic demands of office. As Mike Crowley suggests this is not a defining moment in the Obama administration, but nor is it a particularly edifying spectacle. Memo to politicians: be careful what you promise! Memo to voters: Don’t believe the promises! Today’s statement in full here; reaction from Turks and Armenians here. UPDATE: Courtesy of Ben Smith there’s this video in which Samantha Power argues that: “What is amazing about Barack…[is]…his willingness as president to commemorate [the genocide] and certainly to call a spade a spade

Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal today: In New York this week, I asked a former Eastern European dissident who spent time in prison under the Communists: “If you were sitting in a cell in Cuba, Iran or Syria and saw this photo of a smiling American president shaking hands with a smiling Hugo Chávez, what would you think?” He said: “I would think that I was losing ground.” Fair enough. Hugo Chavez isn’t my cup of tea either. But it’s hardly that unusual for American presidents to be photographed with autocrats and dictators. More importantly, however, if I were to ask a former Soviet dissident: “If you learned

Of all the many reasons to be wary of bombing Iran, one of the best is also one of the simplest: it won’t work. Or, rather, whatever advantage there may be in delaying Iran’s nuclear ambitions by a year or two is unlikely to be worth the unfortunate consequences involved, merely increasing the risks of a nuclear Iran further down the line. As Deence Secretary Robert Gates says: Using his strongest language on the subject to date, Gates told a group of Marine Corps students that a strike would probably delay Tehran’s nuclear program from one to three years. A strike, however, would unify Iran, “cement their determination to have