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Brazilian politics is a soap opera that never runs out of plot twists: bitter rivalries, corruption scandals and colorful characters who keep rewriting the script. But Lula da Silva’s comeback was remarkable even by Brazilian standards. It brought an end to a dramatic cliffhanger, where the veteran left-winger won a fourth term as Brazil’s president.
For more than 20 years, the United Nations has been trying to impose some form of colonial rule on Haiti, without success. The problem has never been a lack of resources, much less a lack of demand from the Haitian people. Rather, it has been a lack of political will and leadership from an organization scared to death of being accused of promoting “neo-colonialism.” The recent action by El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele to send 100 troops to rescue four compatriots serving as technical workers who were kidnapped by gangs is a welcome sign. It shows that a successful recolonization of Haiti would require governments to drop the pretense of Haitian sovereignty and to organize a proper colonial force for the country.
In a dramatic reversal, Brazil’s 80-year-old president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, has secured a fourth term in office, defeating Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Flávio had finished first in the opening round of the election three weeks ago, and his political camp had performed strongly in congressional and gubernatorial elections. Lula’s victory, with almost 52 percent of the vote and a substantial margin of nearly 4.4 million votes, was decisive. But the election was marred by the badly managed extension of voting hours. Lula’s fourth term will begin in an extremely hostile environment, amid accusations of foul play on election night It was a night of confusão and emoção.
It was a peaceful weekend in France apparently. One broadcaster described the latest protests as “calm” and Le Monde said they unfolded “without serious incident.” Tell that to the 53 police officers who were injured in clashes with demonstrators, 1,513 of whom were arrested as trouble broke out across the country. Laurent Nunez, the Interior Minister, said that in several towns and cities the police had been subjected to an “extremely high level of violence.” This Saturday is Halloween and social media is full of threats and taunts about bringing terror to the Parisian bourgeoisie In Grenoble, for example, hundreds of far-left extremists were beaten back by police who resorted to tear gas and baton charges.
Some statistics are not just illuminating, they are downright shocking. Here’s one. At the University of Texas at Austin, one of America’s top universities, only 300 students graduated with a major in the humanities last year. That would be a big number if UT graduated 1,200 students, but it actually graduates about 12,000. That dismal statistic is replicated at universities across the country. While Texas certainly likes to think of itself as unique, in this case, it’s not. At every university, big and small, fewer and fewer students are studying English, History, Philosophy, Art History, French literature or Anthropology. Those dwindling numbers mark a striking change in higher education.
Next Tuesday, Israel holds elections for the first time since the appalling attacks of October 7, 2023. After such a sadistic onslaught, which happened on Benjamin Netanyahu’s watch, many pundits predicted his political days were numbered (though it’s worth noting that neither Roosevelt nor George W. Bush were expected to resign after Pearl Harbor and 9/11 respectively – indeed both were subsequently re-elected.) But Israel is tiny, and in per-capita terms, the loss of life on October 7 was 12 times worse than 9/11 was for the US; 89 times worse than the Bataclan massacre in Paris, 140 times worse than 7/7 in London.
This week marks 179 years since the first publication of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in 1847, something which will be celebrated in Great Britain with little more than a small London theater production. The occasion may be being noted more enthusiastically in China, where the book has been newly added to the national curriculum for 14- and 15-year-olds, with the strange aim of indoctrinating schoolgirls into becoming compliant brood-mares for the demographic good of the Chinese Communist party.
Given its corpulent government and inexplicably entitled populace, I’ve long been in awe of the fact that France functions at all. In the past four weeks, the verdict is belatedly in: it doesn’t. Early estimates of the riots: 1,500 shops damaged, destroyed and/or looted; 1,000 police officers injured; at least 1,800 arrests; innumerable cars burned; multiple architecturally irreplaceable public buildings set alight or vandalized. Two versions of the “unrest” have emerged. For the left-wing press, “mostly peaceful” minors protesting poor educational provision were joined by “mostly peaceful” adults protesting the cost of living – who were then infiltrated by masked outside “agitators” of totally unknown identity who looted and set stuff on fire.
Provence Lying awake at 3:30 the other morning, I thought about a V.S. Pritchett quote: “Once one has got used to the big wrongs of life, little ones wake up, with their mean little teeth.” These past few weeks “little ones... with their mean little teeth” meant another chest infection, laryngitis, baffling spreadsheets, a painting I couldn’t get right which was holding up studio work, two new tires, losing my glasses and almost daily migraines. But worse, with regret and a heavy heart, a few days before I’d ended for good an on/off long-distance and occasional, but fond, “situationship.” Horrible word but apt in this case. It was never going anywhere, neither of us wanted it to.
Russiagate was, famously, something of a damp squib. Donald Trump was never a secret Kremlin asset. Moscow did not internet-brainwash the American public into electing him. It was mostly mad bunkum, which the desperate and deluded media pushed relentlessly for months just because they could not accept the idea that a brash, rude real-estate television tycoon was now their Commander in Chief. But now, with the midterms upon us and a Democratic majority in Congress beckoning, we’re about to have what could be a far more explosive sequel. My working title is Gulfgate: This Time It’s Serious! Yesterday, Vanity Fair published what appears to be a huge story about Jared Kushner, the US President’s son-in-law.
Is Britain becoming an army with a country, instead of a country with an army? Who is actually making national policy on Ukraine and war in general? The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Roland Walker, delivered an astounding speech to soldiers last week. He said, as if he were prime minister: “Our citizens have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritize defense and security.” And then he told the soldiers: “Ultimately, we’re going to need them to back us, to back you, to do the one thing that you do, that nobody else gets to do, and that is to take the fight to the enemy.” It was surely not his job to put the case for sacrifices by the voting public. Nor was it for him to tell politicians to explain this to the public.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the chief instigator of the recent riots in France and leader of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI), is currently ranked second in most presidential polls. Marine Le Pen remains the favorite despite her continuing legal problems. But the polls do not reveal Mélenchon’s strategy, his organization, his coherence or his ruthlessness. It has become fashionable to dismiss his chances. He is too radical, they say, too inflammatory. As if that has not benefited other modern underdogs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z44ZraRn35w Born in Tangier in 1951, the former socialist schoolteacher became a senator at 35 and briefly served as a minister under the former PM Lionel Jospin. Mélenchon has spent the past 18 years building a party in his own image.
The news, when it broke last night, was undeniably eye-catching. Thomas Markle, the estranged father of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, was reported to have been in the possession of thousands of images of child sexual abuse, which were discovered at his home in the Philippines. His son, the imaginatively named Thomas Markle Jr., told the British newspaper The Sun that “When I found this material, I was horrified and I had no option but to report my dad. I have supported, cared for him and helped him for years – but that stops now. I won’t speak to my father ever again unless I’m called to give evidence against him.” Meghan herself went further.
The full-scale war in Ukraine began with fast, armored advances that covered hundreds of miles in weeks. Then drones began finding tanks and other vehicles in their hideouts, destroying them before offensives could get going. By 2024, both sides had largely given up on armored warfare. A 19-mile-wide “kill zone” now straddles the front line, with drones spotting and striking anything that moves. The front line has barely shifted. Ukraine recently found a way to get tanks back into the fight, raising the prospect of a new phase in the conflict. But those innovative tactics could be under threat, following interruptions to Ukraine’s use of the Starlink satellite network.
Paris The wonderful thing about electric bikes, if you are fighting with French riot police, is the way they burn. You skid your Lime or Vélib’ into the middle of the Boulevard de Magenta, which leads from the Gare du Nord down to the Place de la République, and set it alight along with a pile of ordinary bikes, and soon you have a conflagration of rubber and battery chemicals. During the weekend’s street protests, the fires provided cover for rioters breaking into mobile phone, vape and jewelry stores and the money-transfer shops which serve the many immigrants who work in eastern Paris. By Monday morning, a vicious guard dog stood outside an Intermarché supermarket, snarling at customers coming in one by one.
“Facciamo come in Francia!” shouted the masked and hooded rioters on Sunday in Milan and other major Italian cities, notably Turin and Bologna. “Let’s do like in France!” By far the worst violence was in Milan around the Duomo where about 3,000 rioters fought running battles with police and sacked and looted countless high-end shops. Most of the 200 rioters arrested in Milan on Sunday, plus the 70 odd on Saturday during similar though less destructive scenes, were Italian citizens who are the children of immigrants, according to media reports. They are known in Italian as “di seconda generazione.” Around 60 of those arrested were foreign nationals. Eighty percent were teenagers under the age of 18, some as young as 12. Far-left white activists were a small minority.
Vivek Ramaswamy is unpopular. Particularly so this week, over a malicious attack ad against his Democratic opponent for the Ohio governorship, Amy Acton. The ad, which surfaced online on Monday before eventually being claimed by the campaign, features Acton’s estranged mother, Dorothy, decrying her daughter as a liar and mentally unwell. It was already a matter of public record that Acton and her younger brother have been estranged from their mother after Acton was allegedly raped by her stepfather at age 12. As National Review reported, “Court records confirm many key parts of Acton’s account of her life,” including contemporaneous accounts of the abuse.
Could it happen here? I suppose that’s the underlying thought many of us have had as we watch France burn. And the immediate response is, why wouldn’t it? I am old enough to remember in the early 2000s when people used to say France was a model of integration. Then in 2005 the suburbs went up in flames, followed by parts of the center of Paris and other major cities. The Citroën flambé became a national dish and suddenly talk of “the French model of integration” disappeared. That same year, eight home-grown terrorists of foreign origin attempted to blow up the London transport network, four succeeded and a little bit of that blasé British attitude that we know better than the French disappeared too. In 2011 our own cities started burning, but we learned nothing from that.
In his failed 2020 presidential campaign, "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg famously scored 0 percent with black voters in multiple polls. Abdul El-Sayed, in his bid to be senator for Michigan, is not doing quite so badly. But the evidence suggests he does have an issue with African-American voters, who make up around 12-13 percent of his state’s electorate. In the Democratic primary, his opponent Haley Stevens carried the black vote by large margins, and a Fox News poll suggested he enjoys only about 75 percent support among black voters, which is weak compared to, say, the 87 percent of black Michiganders who voted for Kamala Harris. In a very tight race against Mike Rogers across the state, these numbers could make all the difference.
The news is full of speculation that we are about to see a bursting of a “bubble” in AI. “Will the AI bubble pop?” asks the Sun. The New York Post predicts that the entire market is about to “burst,” with a market correction to follow. But it isn’t just tabloids getting carried away – the IMF is concerned about an AI correction, as are luminaries from the financial world such as Ray Dalio and Michael Burry. Burry, who famously predicted the 2008 financial crisis, has denounced Anthropic and OpenAI (the creators of Claude and ChatGPT) as “bubble companies.” And there is already some evidence in the stock market of worries about AI infrastructure spend.
Hundreds of thousands of private emails from Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have been hacked and published online, exposing the inner workings of the party and raising the possibility that members could be harassed. The party has confirmed that unidentified hackers had accessed their private information, which allegedly consists of 421,179 emails, amounting to 281 gigabytes of data, according to the tabloid newspaper Bild.
Marine Le Pen is the political winner from the anarchy that erupted in France at the weekend. A poll conducted in the 48 hours after the nationwide riots found that the leader of the National Rally is the only figure whose approval rating has increased. Le Pen is now up to 38 percent, a popularity not seen since Francois Mitterrand enjoyed widespread support in the 1980s. According to Frédéric Dabi, one of France’s leading political scientists, Le Pen is regarded as “the representative of the party of order, the party of those who can no longer tolerate the chaos.” Her nearest rival is Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the far-left La France insoumise, the party that much of the country holds responsible for stoking disorder in recent weeks.
When I read that Sandi Toksvig, the British television presenter, is raising money for an alternative to Wikipedia, my heart soared. It’s “deeply biased,” she told the Cheltenham Literature Festival, explaining that her new version – to be called Mappa Mundi – would be produced in collaboration with Cambridge University. It would be “a home for the vast amount of knowledge that is currently sidelined or deleted,” she said. She’s absolutely right. Wikipedia has long suffered from a left-wing bias, something documented at length in a report by David Rozado for the Manhattan Institute in 2024.
Wangaratta is a busy regional town in northern Victoria. It’s a place to stop and take a break on the day-long drive between Melbourne and Sydney. For locals, “Wang” serves the region’s agricultural and cattle-farming communities, a town where produce is bought and sold, and families come from miles around to shop and catch up with each other. The Wangaratta outrage highlights how vitriolic Australia’s political discourse is Monday, sadly, was different. Wangaratta witnessed an act of brutal violence against the local member of Australia’s parliament, Helen Haines, run down by a man in a Toyota four-wheel drive vehicle. Victoria Police have confirmed the driver rammed Haines, and then U-turned to strike her again.
J.D. Vance is clearly trying to thread a needle as he prepares to run for the Republican presidential nomination next year. On the one hand, the Vice President doesn’t want to appear too eager for the job. He insisted last week he might choose not to run because “we’ve got four little kids” at home. On the other hand, he told 2WAY's Mark Halperin Monday, “I think if I run, the President will endorse me.” But he left himself an out: “Because the President’s endorsement is so dispositive, you could absolutely see a scenario where the President says, ‘You know what? We need to let like this race play out and not preemptively prejudge the results.’” Vance himself has to perform a balancing act.
It’s the third week of the student-led protests in Lyon, and the second that my university has been blockaded “in solidarity.” When clouds of tear gas drift onto my street on Saturday, it’s an almost routine sight. My neighbor across the road is sitting by his window, eating potato chips, pointing out some of the more family-friendly placards to his toddler. Smartly dressed shoppers move through the crowds with scarves as improvised gas masks. I decide to make myself some porridge. I am interrupted by a series of heavy thuds. Out of my window I see a group of balaclava-clad men taking turns to launch themselves at my neighbor’s front door. It eventually gives way, and they rush into his stairwell. The toddler begins to cry. Time to leave.
Given that the French-speaking world gave us the science of semiotics, they would be the first to recognize that the Palestine flag, as it is being hoisted and brandished across the French republic at the moment, has come to signify something far more than the aspirant state of Palestine. You don’t have to be Ferdinand de Saussure to appreciate that this signifier has become unmoored from its original meaning. You don’t have to be Roland Barthes to see that this emblem has now assumed a wholly mutated significance: in short, it has become an all-encompassing symbol to denote hatred of the West and of European civilization.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia executed a Bangladeshi man and woman over an “indecent act” inside a mosque in Mecca. While the Saudi interior ministry hasn’t specified the “indecency,” and some reports suggest that the two had kissed within the parameters of the Islamic worship place, the kingdom mentioned “adultery” as the offense in its prisoner list sent to the Bangladeshi consular general. Nonetheless, for any extent of “indecency” to be deemed a crime worthy of capital punishment is a barbaric affront to humanity.
France experienced its first night of calm since the weekend on Monday evening after the imposition of curfews in several cities and towns. The Prime Minister, Sebastien Lecornu, said he is “absolutely determined to restore order” in the wake of the weekend’s urban warfare that stunned the Republic. Lecornu delivered his promise after a crisis meeting in which a series of measures were discussed. While the Premier held back from declaring a state of emergency – for the time being – Lecornu said the curfews in cities such as Paris, Nice, Lyon and Lille were necessary. Rioters are rarely jailed and so far the sentences given to those arrested on Saturday have been derisory “The French get the impression that it's chaos everywhere,” said Lecornu.
We recently learned that Donald Trump has been taking guidance from Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot best known for enabling nude images of real women. As TIME magazine reported: In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy… He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the US captured Maduro… the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.
May 1958. After 12 years, France’s Fourth Republic was ungovernable, with cabinets lasting barely seven months on average. Four years of worsening war in Algeria culminated in the army’s Algiers putsch of May 13, demanding stronger political authority. General de Gaulle – Resistance hero, France’s savior in 1944 and now the army commanders’ choice – stepped forward. Exploiting the insurrection, he demanded the premiership, temporary rule by decree and six months to draft a constitution for approval by referendum rather than parliament. President René Coty agreed. On June 1, 1958, de Gaulle became the Fourth Republic’s last prime minister; six months later, he was the Fifth’s first president.
Donald Trump has staked a big chunk of his political credibility on finding peace in Ukraine – and by doing so in partnership with Vladimir Putin, and on the Kremlin’s terms. But is Putin ready to play ball and help save Trump’s backside, politically and economically? The answer is yes: Putin will probably play along with small gestures like partial ceasefires and prisoner releases. But when it comes to the big stuff like actually stopping what Putin calls his "special military operation," the Kremlin is likely to stick to its guns and ignore Trump’s special pleading while it continues pulverizing Ukraine’s cities.
Now that Meghan Markle has successfully – in her own estimation, at least – once again won the battle for hearts and minds in Britain after her trip to Nottingham with Prince Harry, her thoughts have turned once again to her resumption of her former profession. I refer, of course, to acting, and to the rumors that she was to be given a plum starring role in the third series of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, in which she was said to be reading for an unspecified but pivotal part. A fly-on-the-wall documentary following their return to Britain would have been a guaranteed ratings hit These rumors have now been shut down. And, true to form with all things involving the Duchess of Sussex, there is a spat about who is telling the truth.
Here’s an update on the state of Trumpism in America: last month, the richest man in world history threw $158 million into a last-ditch attempt to rescue the worst candidate for US Senate in American history. It’s part of what one US media outlet is calling “Elon Musk’s massive Texas rescue mission.” But even a trillionaire’s fortune may not be able to rescue the execrable Ken Paxton from defeat on November 3. That $158 million donation followed a $10 million gift in August from the “Elon Musk Revocable Trust” to a political action committee closely tied to Paxton. If Paxton, the sitting Texas Attorney General, loses to Democrat James Talarico, historians will remember it as a massive defeat for Donald Trump and Trumpism. Why?