World

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The case for Obama

Andrew Sullivan’s Atlantic essay making the case for Obama is well worth reading. His key point is this,  Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.  At its best, the Obama candidacy is about

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Rudy Giuliani, the Terrorists’ Worst Enemy?

Well, not always. From the New York Times, September 29th 1994, less than a month after the declaration of a (temporary as it proved) IRA ceasefire: Artfully casting off his old role as official outcast, Gerry Adams, the political spokesman for the Irish Republican Army, beamed from the steps of City Hall yesterday as New York politicians vied to be at his side and hail him as honored guest and newborn statesman… …A relatively small lunch-hour crowd of a few hundred cheered him, but the domestic political value of Mr. Adams’s official turnabout was demonstrated by the throng of local politicians who crowded about Mr. Adams. They pressed him to

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ron Paul’s Moment Arrives!

Ron Paul has just raised $4m today. I’ll repeat that: Ron Paul has raised four million dollars today. That’s four times what Mike Huckabee – the latest media darling – raised in the whole of the last quarter. Paul has now raked in more than $7m from bright-eyed patriots this quarter and now has the money to both make a run for New Hampshire and hang around for some time after that. Sure, he’s still not going to win the nomination, but this is going to be one hell of a ride. No-one’s going to be able to kick Paul out of the debates now. And admit it, anything that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ron Paul: This Land Is Your Land

OK, one other fun Ron Paul observation. You think he takes property rights seriously? Like all the other candidates Paul has an online store where supporters can purchase t-shirts, hats, buttons, yard signs and so on. As best I can tell, however, Ron Paul is the only candidate who warns his fans that:  Note: Campaign materials should never be placed on private property without the permission of the property owner and, because certain state and local laws limit the placement of campaign materials on public property,  please research local restrictions before placing campaign materials on public property or rights-of-way.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mbeki still in denial

Perhaps the most depressing story in the papers today is the one about how Thabo Mbeki remains an “AIDS dissident.” The Guardian reports how Mark Gevisser, a biographer of Mbeki, found that Mbeki regretted having withdrawn from the debate over the link between HIV and AIDS.  Here’s the key section: “Mr Gevisser recounts how Mr Mbeki phoned him late on a Saturday evening in June to discuss Aids. The president asked the respected Johannesburg author whether he had seen a 100-page paper secretly authored by Mr Mbeki and distributed anonymously among the ANC leadership six years ago. It compared Aids scientists to latter-day Nazi concentration camp doctors and portrayed black

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Obama views the world

This essay on Barack Obama’s foreign policy is well worth reading for an insight into the candidate’s thinking and his growing frustration with Hillary Clinton. One quote stood out to me as revealing how different Obama is from Hillary:  “ Ask Nye why Hillary’s paint-by-the-numbers foreign policy makes her more qualified to handle a crisis when for most of our history our crises have come from using force when we shouldn’t, not by failing to use force.” Personally, I think Obama’s analysis here is too simplistic but it is striking that he is prepared to say this given the emphasis that post-Carter Democratic presidential contenders give to projecting strength and

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Crisis in Pakistan

The news that General Musharraf has imposed emergency rule, effectively martial law, in Pakistan is extremely worrying. Musharraf has done this despite a full court press from the West and the consequences are potentially disastrous. If the protests that will inevitably follow are put down with violence or if Benazir Bhutto, who is reportedly sitting in a plane at Karachi airport having flown back into the country, is arrested the situation could quickly escalate bringing Pakistan to the verge of being a failed state.

Neil Barnett

Putin’s game in European energy: divide and conquer

Vladimir Putin’s efforts to divide the West may be on the back foot now that Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have decided to stop being beastly to the Americans, but his most effective attack dog — Gazprom — is gleefully setting EU countries against each other. For governments fixated on more immediate threats such as radical Islam, this might seem footling stuff. But the struggle by OMV, Austria’s biggest oil and gas company, to snap up its Hungarian counterpart MOL (pron. ‘mole’) provides a perfect insight into the underworld of the Central European energy business: all the more so because at first sight Gazprom’s hand is invisible. OMV has been

Merryn Somerset-Webb

The City’s fascination with farming

Everyone’s an expert on agriculture these days. Talk to anyone in the City: when they’re not boring you with how much copper wire it takes to build a satellite city outside Shanghai and what that means for mining shares, they’re telling you about soy bean yields in Brazil and the rising price of powdered milk. Fascination with food has been brought on by a sudden realisation in financial markets that there’s money to be made in farming. After several decades of stagnation, the prices of pretty much everything edible has started to soar. In Britain the price of wheat is up 90 per cent on last year and the price

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Intelligence2 debate report

‘It’s about my cappuccino.’ No one expected the great environmental debate — Capitalism can save the Planet — to be reduced to mere refreshments, but Tim Harford, leading for the motion, used the coffee he buys outside his FT office as a symbol of the global challenge. Our survival depends on consumer decisions at every level of industrial production. Let capital decide, he said. Keep government out of it. Otherwise we’ll end up, as we do now, with excellent biofuels like Brazilian sugarcane being taxed at 25 per cent. Nigel Lawson, against the motion, made a subtle, thoughtful, somewhat donnish and completely captivating speech examining ‘the disconnect’ between politicians’ promises

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

“The Politics of Parsing”

Here’s an internet ad from John Edwards campaign. It’s not pretty for Hillary. (And you gotta love that sly reference to it all depending upon what the meaning of “is” is) I still think that she actually performed better than Obama at the Drexel debate this week, but the media has decided that she came off worst.Well, whatever. Edwards is doing his best to do Obama’s work for him. This ad has the considerable advantage of being, well, true: Hillary will trim her sails to get the best from the prevailing wind, while being prepared at all times to tack if the breeze shifts. And yet, let’s say this for

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Just because Congress wants to forget the Armenians doesn’t mean you have to.

If you happen to be in New York City this evening and feeling in the need to get your protest on, might I suggest you join Jewcy’s Michael Weiss et al and cause merry havoc outside the Anti-Defamation League’s HQ:: The ADL National Meeting is in town from Nov. 1st though Nov. 3rdJoin the good folks at Jewcy and No Place for Denial for a hastily organized, totally spontaneous demonstration in front of ADL Headquarters on Thursday, November 1 @ 7 p.m.: 605 3rd Avenue New York, NY Youthful representatives of two ancient peoples will hit the pavement in front of the ADL offices to demand that the ADL come

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obama gets angry! Or, rather, no he doesn’t…

So the first question in tonight’s Democratic debate at Drexel University goes to Barack Obama who is asked – as he must have known he would be – to outline the differences between himself and Clinton. And his response? Meh. He flubs it, delivering a nervous-sounding, meandering, indecisive, confused answer that goes precisely nowhere and gives no indication that he’s really wanting to take a shot at Clinton. Quite a let-down and, surely, dispiriting to his supporters. Talking about taking a more aggressive approach and then declining to do so when given the opportunity is not the way to win an election. Does he actually want to win? Because his

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11

Best* line of the Democratic debate? It’s not even close. Joe Biden on Rudy Giuliani: “He only uses three words in a sentence: A noun, a verb, and 9/11.” *By “Best” I mean, of course, “Only”. UPDATE: At The Corner K-Lo crys foul! Maybe the 10 P.M. hour has killed what little sense of humor I’ve ever had, but that 9/11 sentence line was a low, crass line. And it’s disturbing it got laughs. I’ll believe they were nervous laughs. No, not nervous laughs. It’s funny because it’s true.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Media Disappointed by Hillary’s Clear Victory…

OK, so Hillary was all over the place on whether illegal immigrants should be allowed driving licenses and, sure enough, that’s what Chris Matthews and co focus on immediately. But that’s because Hillary won the debate by a mile and a half and it’s very important for the media to highlight anything that can be used to keep alive the impression that the race is nerve-janglingly close… hence the discussion on Clinton’s admittedly poor response on drivers’ licenses. Still, I’d give her some props for not demagoguing the question as tendentiously as the rest of them. This is also why no-one is talking about Obama’s embarrassingly lame response to the

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Local Interest

Lots of talk about taxis in Washington DC and, more particularly the Mayor’s announcement that DC will switch to a meter system, abandoning the current fare tariff which is based upon a zone system that seems, frankly, arbitrary* in the extreme and unlike any other system I’ve encountered in any developed city anywhere in the world. The prevailing view is that switching to meters is good news – especially for tourists who may be less likely to be ripped off by cabbies claiming they’ve crossed three zones rather than two etc etc. Too bad for tourists if you ask me; voters get ripped off in Washington all the time and,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ron Paul: the Housewife’s Choice?

Isaac Chotiner issues a provocation: British coverage of the United States must be really bad if William Hill have been persuaded that Ron Paul is a 12/1 shot to become the next President. This is, I admit, strange. Since Paul had previously been available as a 66/1 chance my suspicion is that, given the likely smallness of the market so far, one mad punter has plonked a couple of grand on Mr Paul, causing Hills to rein in their price in short order. Quite why they should feel the need to do so however, is a mystery. My hunch is that some computer algorithm has gone to work. On the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What values do we share with Saudi Arabia?

First we had the Saudi King declaring that Britain had not done enough to tackle the threat of terrorism which may be true but considering Saudi Arabia’s continuing role in exporting extremism, the King might want to consider the log in his own kingdom before going looking for specs in other countries. Now we have an even more breathtaking quote from the Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells: Mr Howells told a conference ahead of a state visit by Saudi leader King Abdullah that the two states could unite around their “shared values”. I can see the national interest case for the relationship with Saudi Arabia but I really can’t see

James Forsyth James Forsyth

It is no surprise that the government’s numbers don’t add up

There is much upset over the news that the government underestimated by 300,000 the number of immigrants working in this country. Yet, this is hardly surprising considering the appalling quality of official statistics when it comes to migration. The International Passenger Survey, one of the key metrics that the governments uses, was based in 2004 on interviews with just 2,801 people entering the country and 755 people who left. Britain is set to be a mass migration country for the foreseeable future. Good quality statistics are an essential part to making sure that this transition runs smoothly.

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Media Training 1980s Style…

Jim Hacker, immortalised forever in the classic BBC comedies Yes, Minister and Yes Prime Minister prepares to deliver a Prime Ministerial televised address to the nation. But what, if anything, should he say? And how should he say it? Plus, reflections on media management, clothing, make-up and much much more in this classic clip. Verily, the more the times change, the more they remain the same…