When a four-ship Russian flotilla sailed into the port of Havana on Wednesday, US authorities were quick to downplay the event’s significance. We were reminded that Russia’s deployments were part of routine naval activity and that it’s not uncommon for …
The narcissism of liberal gods
By now it’s a cliché that liberalism in the Anglosphere has become a religion, whether or not its adherents know it. But less often remarked is a fact somewhat in tension with this claim: namely, that its worshippers get to …
Biden’s secret support for Iran
This past Memorial Day, as Americans honoured their war dead, the Biden administration was running interference for an Iranian regime whose Supreme Leader has described “death to America” as his official state policy. A report in the day’s Wall Street …
The aristocrats who martyred Trump
I have no wish to add to the existential howl attendant on Donald Trump’s conviction in a Manhattan courthouse for a crime that I, like most Americans, would be hard pressed to explain. I don’t like Trump as a politician …
Trump is Hillary Clinton’s spirit animal
Sometimes, I feel a little bit bad for Hillary Clinton — and not just because she missed out on a history-making presidency by a paltry 80,000 votes. It’s because she’s a feminist icon who will nevertheless always be remembered for …
Trump’s conviction is an assault on democracy
Whatever you think of Donald Trump — and I for one think very little of him — his conviction as a felon for what would ordinarily be a minor misdemeanour by a biased jury is a grim day for democracy …
‘I was offered assisted dying over cancer treatment’
Two years ago, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Allison Ducluzeau started to feel pain in her stomach. At first, she assumed she had eaten too much turkey, but the pain persisted. A couple of weeks later, she saw her family doctor …
The ghost who haunts the MAGA revolt
Over the past half-decade, few intellectuals have undergone a renaissance like Christopher Lasch — and few renaissances have been quite as startlingly heterodox. After the 2016 election, Lasch’s posthumous 1994 book Revolt of the Elites was cited as a key …
The Republican’s foolish war on the ICC
It’s not hard to understand why the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, took the unprecedented decision to seek an indictment of Israel’s prime minister and defence minister. To borrow from Bob Dylan, the times have changed, and sometimes …
Why progressives want to forget George Floyd
Leonard, the hero of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, cannot form new memories. This poses something of a problem when you’re trying to find the guy who killed your wife. Her brutal murder is the last thing Leonard remembers, and he has …
Why we still believe in gold
Gold, which John Maynard Keynes called the “barbarous relic”, has become so eagerly sought that even Costco has got in on the business. Perhaps this newfound fascination shouldn’t surprise us. For those looking to build nest-eggs, gold is easier to …
Why China is winning the weapons race
In 1949, Chinese-born scientist Qian Xuesen (1911-2009) drew a diagram on a blackboard at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that would change the course of military history. It showed the path of a projectile rising elliptically up into the …
How Hamas became radical chic
Any thinking Jew today hears the alarm resounding like a shofar blast in days of old, announcing rising floodwaters or marauding Cossacks. Confronted with a worldwide, increasingly violent explosion of antisemitism, the mind turns to dark mysteries. Why have radical …
The Portal has revealed the best of mankind
This, as some will say, is why we can’t have nice things. The Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys has set up an installation that creates a “portal” between a street in Dublin and one in Manhattan. A giant sculpture containing an …
Ozempic has shrunk the American Dream
Much has been made of Ozempic face. The eponymous visage resulting from monthly injections of a weight-dissolving amino acid has generated endless fodder for social media and the tabloids, which have revelled in the grotesqueries of John Goodman, Robbie Williams …