America

The West is failing to rise to the challenge of coronavirus

Having apparently shaken off the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine is now in full swing. One of the more preposterous conspiracy theories they are peddling is that the spread of the disease was a deliberate attempt at subterfuge from the American government. As in the middle of the tragic Aids epidemic in the 1980s, geopolitical conspiracy theories are running rife, and overwhelmed national governments are desperate to find someone to blame for the crisis. The notion that the United States somehow contrived to unleash such a contagious and pernicious virus on its economic rival, however, is simply absurd. In a globalised world, with

When will Joe Biden accept it’s all over?

In Iowa, Americans had to wait the entire night before a caucus winner was declared. Today in Nevada, the wait was much, much shorter – with barely four per cent of the state’s precincts reporting, Bernie Sanders was announced as the victor. That the result was declared so decisively and so early on, was a fitting illustration of how superior the senator’s get-out-the-vote organisation was on the ground. Democratic voters in Nevada know Bernie, and they like what they see. While MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was comparing a Bernie Sanders victory in the Democratic primaries to the fall of France in 1940, Bernie’s supporters were jubilantly celebrating a big win in