45 min listen
In this episode of Americano, Freddy hosts a debate between Daniel McCarthy of the Heritage Foundation and Robby Soave of Reason magazine to examine whether libertarianism has effectively died as a vital political force or remains quietly triumphant through tech deregulation, AI innovation and unprecedented levels of individual freedom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The government of France held a crisis meeting yesterday afternoon as a school protest movement intensified in violence. On Wednesday, 625 people were arrested and 83 gendarmes and police officers were injured as youths protested outside hundreds of schools nationwide. Yesterday, a school in Nantes was severely damaged after being firebombed and a fire engine was destroyed in Marseille. In the city of Reims there were fierce clashes between protesters and police, and only the use of tear gas dispersed the demonstrators. In some cities, such as Rennes, it was reported that university students were protesting alongside the high school pupils. The government claimed yesterday that the movement has been hijacked “by LFI and its far-left proxies.
Coincidentally with the sad passing of Esther Rantzen, who spent her last couple of years campaigning for assisted suicide in the UK, there’s just been an interesting case of an assisted dying going wrong. The state of Tennessee kills prisoners sentenced to death by means of an injection of pentobarbital, the same substance used by the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland (only not usually by injection) where Dame Esther had considered going after she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. Pike has been executed once; that, even supporters of the death penalty must agree, is enough Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, a prisoner sentenced to death, Christa Pike, survived a double injection of pentobarbital and is now in hospital being resuscitated.
It’s now nearly nine weeks since tens of thousands of migrants poured across the Moroccan frontier into Ceuta. Most quickly returned to Morocco. But estimates of how many are still in Spain’s tiny North African exclave, which has a population of just 83,000, have varied alarmingly. At one point Madrid said that “only” about 5,000 remained. Government sources now accept that around 20,000 were still in Ceuta after July 30; last week Ángel Víctor Torres, the minister in charge of the crisis, put the current figure at around 18,000.
Each time I fly back to Odesa, my hometown, to see my family, I notice how things have changed since my last visit to Ukraine. Which is to say, how much worse they have become. Take the bombing raids, which used to happen only at night. Now they take place in the daytime as well and have grown much more violent and unpredictable. The Russians send over a cocktail of drones, ballistic missiles and guided aerial bombs. You never know where they’ll hit – residential buildings, shopping centers, pharmacies, trains, you name it (“Russian Roulette” is the new, blackly comic Ukrainian name for it). The war, all the time, is getting closer to you and your loved ones. It used to be happening in another part of your region. Then in another area of your city.
Should Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine, with its accompanying litany of horrific human rights abuses, disqualify it from a seat on the United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC)? That’s what Poland’s feisty foreign minister Radek Sikorski called for yesterday in New York. The UNSC was meant to be a "guardian of peace, not to give immunity to aggressors" like Russia, Sikorski told Polish television. More, he called the legal basis for Russia’s permanent seat at the Security Council table – with its accompanying veto over all resolutions – "questionable" because Moscow took over the USSR’s old seat without a vote. In moral terms, Sikorski has a point – and it’s one that the Ukrainians have been pushing for a while.
An important turning point has been reached in Russia’s war on Ukraine. But unfortunately for Kyiv, it’s not the “tide is turning” in Ukraine’s favor narrative that Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing ever since his long-range drone attacks began smashing oil refineries and logistics warehouses deep inside Russia and sinking dozens of ships in the Sea of Azov. Rather, last night not one of the 27 ballistic missiles fired by Russia at and around Kyiv was shot down. At least 17 people were killed and a series of huge warehouses and major Ukrainian retail outlets were devastated. No grain vessels have docked for almost two weeks as Ukraine's summer harvest season enters full swing By the terrible arithmetic of war, the casualty numbers were not in themselves game-changing.
The year is 2019 and, after almost a full term in office, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government of right-wing and religious parties heads to a general election. Opposing him is a former IDF chief of staff heading a new centrist party which quickly soars in the polls, making him the main challenger for prime minister. That challenger was Benny Gantz. Gantz formed alliances, fought elections and got caught up in the paralysis of Israel’s 2019-20 governing crisis in which nobody was able to form a coalition. Facing the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gantz agreed to a deal with Netanyahu where they’d take turns at being prime minister – with Netanyahu going first, of course. Nobody except Gantz believed his turn would come.
This is a fraught moment, perhaps the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War. Two major wars are being fought, one threatening European security, the other the world’s energy supply. In East Asia, China continues to threaten Taiwan, and North Korea is reportedly upgrading its military technology with Russian help. Put simply, the bad guys are on the march, fighting for their regimes’ survival, their malign domestic projects, and as much regional domination as they can achieve. Although the wars in Ukraine and Iran have remained largely separate, there have been several intersections recently and a gnawing fear they could merge into a global conflict. That grim possibility is still a longshot, but there is real danger because the coalitions fighting the two wars overlap.
As the 60-day period of negotiations stipulated by the Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the US gets under way, the issue of Lebanon is fast emerging as a central bone of contention. It is also revealing significant differences in the stances of America and Israel. Israel has sought throughout to detach its battle with the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon from the negotiations – and from the larger effort to settle the conflict between the US and Iran. The logic is as follows: Hezbollah intends to continue its war against Israel.
29 min listen
The next chapter in American politics has begun, but is it going to be any less crazy? The Spectator’s Americano podcast delivers in-depth discussions with the best American pundits to keep you in the loop. Presented by Freddy Gray.
On Sunday, three suspicious trucks were spotted speeding toward the Royal Air Force airfield in Fairford, England. Shortly after, five masked men, later identified as British nationals, were detained under the Terrorism Act of 2006 and the Explosives Act of 1875. Had a bomb attack just been foiled? If so who planned it, and to what end? Then, on Monday, the five suspects were abruptly released on bail. President Trump seemed nonplussed by the move. “I would not have released them,” he told reporters, but was full of praise for the conduct of the British authorities. The safety of RAF Fairford is a matter for the American President – it is operated by the US Air Force, the only airfield in Europe that can accommodate its heavy bombers.
“Prepare for war,” was the message from Estonian EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to the European Defence Agency last year. And Estonia has: its 2026 defense expenditure is 5.4 percent of GDP, the second highest in Europe. Citizens are advised by the government to keep an emergency supply of 21 liters of drinking water per person permanently on hand. A survival checklist has also been published, including ready-to-eat, high-energy foods, prescription medications, a bank card, cell phone with charger and a stock of ready cash. The country’s authorities don’t mince their words.
Last Sunday, Germany saw a tale of two election victories. The right-wing Alternative for Deutschland narrowly edged out the left-ish Social Democrats to come first in the backwater state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania north of Berlin. Massive media coverage focused on the AfD’s success, its allegedly extreme views on immigration and the danger it poses to Germany’s democracy. The next day, the huge media contingent that had camped out in Schwerin, the state capital, returned to the capital of Berlin. It’s where most domestic reporters are based and from where international reporters fly home. Most chose to ignore the results of the Berlin state election held on the same day in which Die Linke (The Left), the legal successor to the East German Communist party, also came first.
“The American Dream is the dream of the Americas," declared Bernie Moreno to the assembled at Trump Doral – a sprawling golf resort just outside of Miami. The Ohio Senator was there to collect the "Light of Congress" award, bestowed on him by Florida International University’s Adam Smith Center. "We have a window of opportunity right now to transform the Western Hemisphere into a Hemisphere of total prosperity and security," said Moreno, to an audience which included Dominican President Luis Abinader and FIFA's Gianni Infantino. The room rose for this native son of Colombia. Bernie Moreno was born in Bogotá in 1967 and was five when his family moved to Fort Lauderdale. He went on to build a car dealership empire in Ohio.
An armed drone conveniently located near a Ukrainian cargo aircraft at Leipzig airport in Germany. Russian drones breaching the airspace of Romania and the Baltics, forcing both to scramble combat aircraft. A Russian airstrike landing dangerously close to a checkpoint near Poland’s border with Ukraine. An assassination of a dissident in the Spanish city of Villajoyosa. Arson attacks from the United Kingdom and France to Estonia. The list of Russian-sponsored gray-zone attacks on the European continent is long and growing by the day, and nobody in Europe seems to have a good idea of how to stop them.
The failure of the British state is long-term and corrosive. It emerged this weekend that Mr. X, a former bodyguard of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, was allowed to settle in the UK and given British citizenship – before going on to allegedly coordinate a Hamas terror plot in Germany. He also faces separate terror charges in this country. The case of Mr. X was quickly followed by the news yesterday that Britain's Home Secretary plans to launch a new resettlement scheme which prioritizes Afghan women and girls, and Palestinians of both sexes. By the time Mr. X arrived, a succession of Hamas exiles had already made England their home The chronology as it has emerged so far is well worth examining. From 2006, Mr.
Jordan Bardella has described as “delusional” accusations that he railed against Jews at the start of his political career. The 31-year-old president of the National Rally appeared on television on Monday evening and declared the allegations were part of a left-wing wing plot to “destabilize” his party. Bardella will try and ride out the storm in the belief that most of the electorate will believe him and not the left-wing media In an article published on Monday morning, Mediapart alleged that Bardella had made numerous anti-Semitic remarks when he first joined the National Rally (the National Front as it was at the time). Mediapart claims it has seen dozens of private message sent by Bardella on a social media platform between 2013 and 2015, and several disparaged the Jews.
For several years already, every fall, Russia's finance ministry has performed the same ritual. It unveils a budget that looks sober, even responsible, with a shrinking deficit and falling inflation. Every year, it is ignored by reality. The budget for 2027, outlined at the end of last week, is no exception. The headline promise is a deficit of 2.2 percent of GDP next year, about 5.5 trillion roubles ($65 billion), down from roughly 3 percent expected this year. Revenues are to rise by 7.5 percent, which after inflation is barely 1 percent. Spending will grow by less than 6 percent, which after inflation is a cut of about 1 percent. For the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, the government even plans to start refilling the National Welfare Fund, the country's rainy-day savings.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is someone who doesn’t appear on Donald Trump’s radar. Since Trump’s return to the US presidency last year, Albanese has adopted a “don’t wake the bear” policy, hoping the erratic American President will leave him, and Australia, alone. But the bear needs a prod, now it has emerged that the Australian government's healthcare scheme Medicare was hacked by an autonomous agent from one of the world’s largest AI companies, OpenAI. OpenAI says “our models took actions we did not intend.” The firm told the Australian government that the hack was unintentional, and there is no reason to doubt its assertion. But Albanese is furious, and it is hard to blame him.
Twenty years ago, as America fought in the Middle East, a junior Democratic senator from the Midwest, a forty-something man with a Muslim name, decided he was going to run for president. Against the odds, Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois, who’d dabbled in Marxist academia and whose father was born in Kenya, went on to become the first non-white commander-in-chief. Two decades on, as America fights another war in the Middle East, an even more unconventional Midwestern Democrat is rapidly advancing. Dr Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, whose father was born in Egypt, is currently the favorite to win his senate race in Michigan in November – even as Republican campaigners spend millions of dollars branding him a terrorist sympathizer.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has today announced that the US has invited Vladimir Putin to an upcoming G20 summit in Miami, giving the Russian leader “an opportunity to engage not just with Trump, but with other world leaders.” In one sense, the invitation is an olive branch to Moscow from Washington, so far the only Western nation willing to engage in peace talks with Putin. On the other, it’s a poisoned chalice that the Kremlin has already signaled that Putin will probably not accept. For one, the summit will be held on Trump’s home turf – quite literally, as the venue is the Trump-owned Doral golf resort near Miami. When they met on a US Air Force base in Anchorage, Alaska, last year the two leaders were on more-or-less neutral ground.
Britain’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham yesterday cleared his first major diplomatic hurdle as his meeting with Donald Trump in Manhattan passed without serious incident. During a 30-minute encounter on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the President bestowed on Burnham two of his highest compliments, calling him a “natural businessman” and a “great prime minister.” Trump dialed up the niceties further by describing UK-US relations as “more up now than they were with your last prime minister.” Indicating that Burnham had impressed him personally behind closed doors, the President explained that “based on my relationship with your prime minister Andy, I think that we’re doing very well.
Many decades ago (or so it seems, it was actually January 2023, but things move fast in AI-world) I wrote a Spectator piece claiming that The End of Writing was coming, thanks to AI. In return for this favor, I got large amounts of angry and derisory scorn, mainly from writerly types, who banged on about the uniqueness of human creation, but also from techy people, who pointed out that as a mere hack I could not possibly know anything about AI, and anyway AI was just a glorified next-word-predictor. The French, being French, have responded with wise philosophy, or cowardly evasion, depending on your taste Now, I'm not the sort of cheap, mean-minded person who says “I told you so,” so I'll just say “I told you so.
Messages circulating in Morocco are calling for another mass crossing into Ceuta, Spain’s North African exclave, on Wednesday. Spain has activated preventive measures and Morocco has reinforced the frontier with security personnel, water cannon, military vehicles and extra road controls. Perhaps nothing will happen. A similar online call for Sunday came to nothing. And Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares says the latest messages have not acquired the momentum on social media that preceded the extraordinary events of July 30 and 31. Forewarned may prove to be forearmed.
When Earl Spencer was interviewed by Larry King in 1997, he had nothing but words of praise for the-then Prince Charles, in the aftermath of Diana’s death and funeral. When Larry King asked if the Prince of Wales had had anything to say about Spencer’s fiery eulogy, his guest replied, “Not about the speech, no, but he was perfectly polite all day,” and went on to stress that, “Nothing nasty has ever been said about it by him to me.” Spencer attempted to claim that he was drawing a distinction between Charles as king and Charles as unpleasant brother-in-law.
44 min listen
In this episode of Americano, Freddy speaks with former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci about his new book All the Wrong Moves, breaking down the systemic failures driving American populism, the economic fallout of foreign conflicts and rising national debt and his sharp critique of Donald Trump's political strategy and economic policies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
After the counting of the ballots comes the number crunching to identify the level of fraud in this weekend’s Russian elections. The Kremlin has claimed a crashing victory for Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, but preliminary analysis paints a picture of voter disillusion and frantic electoral manipulation. The more blatant the rigging, the less plausible the fiction Putin had framed these elections to the State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian legislature, as a referendum on his rule and the war. In a TV address on Wednesday, he told his people that “your choice and your will shall once again demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our soldiers, that we are a united people bound together by shared values, historical memory, and love for our motherland.
Friedrich Merz is the most tragic chancellor in the young history of the reunified Germany. It is time for him to step down. This was made very clear, when he faced the cameras after yet another election that was lost by his party, the CDU. After losing Saxony-Anhalt and then Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) – while Berlin fell to the socialist far-left Die Linke – everyone here in Germany expected a speech with consequences. Would he declare the “Brandmauer” – the firewall, that would prevent the CDU from ever even getting majorities on bills through in parliament with the AfD – to be over? Would he step down and make way for a new chancellor? Painstakingly, nothing of the two happened: Friedrich Merz stated simply that he will stay.
The way US prosecutors tell it, Huawei is a bunch of racketeers whose crimes range from stealing technology to evading sanctions against Iran. The company allegedly ran what it called a "competition management group," whose purpose was to award monthly bonuses to employees who stole the most valuable information from competitors. Staff were invited to submit entries via a special encrypted email box. "The entire business operated through a pattern of theft, lies and cover-ups," according to Taylor Stout, a federal prosecutor in the Justice Department, as he laid out the government’s criminal case to jurors.
Ben Delo, the source of one half of Reform’s £72 million mega-donation, wrote in The Spectator last year about being diagnosed with Asperger syndrome as a child. The self-confessed geek, now 42, was socially awkward. He did not fit in and he did not care to. His condition would shape the course of his life, making him very good at math, very rich and hellbent on getting involved in politics. Christopher Harborne, the crypto billionaire who has matched Delo’s donation, we know much less about. Despite being a billionaire many times over, the 63-year-old has the air of a chemistry teacher and an aversion to interviews. Like Delo, who until recently lived in Hong Kong, he also forged his way in the Far East, living in Thailand.
"GREAT NEWS," hollered @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social yesterday. "Thanks to the bold leadership of my friend, Karol Nawrocki, President of Poland, major progress is being made toward establishing a US Army base in Poland." A lot is going on on Europe’s Eastern Front. The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared around the same time that Russia is planning "hybrid strikes using drones and missiles against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland.
Just two weeks after the Alternative for Germany's (AfD) victory in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, two more state elections are taking place in Germany this Sunday. Friedrich Merz's government, already under pressure, is in for more bad news. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin are both heading to the polls this weekend. The former could see yet another win for the AfD, though it remains a head-to-head race between the anti-immigration party and the Social Democrats (SPD). In Berlin, polls suggest that a total of four parties are in the running for the most votes on Sunday, with the socialist Left (Die Linke) leading the Christian Democrats (CDU), AfD and the Greens.
This is how I became a Canadian nationalist. I did it on the rebound. I never wanted to, and it is a strange experience to find myself pounding the arm of my chair when Mark Carney, of all people, defies the Almighty Trump. But it is so. Once, like that poor man who speaks the first lines in The Godfather, I believed in America, arsenal of liberty, land of the free, inheritor of Magna Carta and so on. Then, after a couple of years in Moscow, I went to live in Washington, DC. And it was there that I was wooed and eventually seduced by the land of maple syrup. To begin with, it was the discovery that soppy British sentiment about the US was not in practice returned. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t like us as that they had barely heard of us. Legally, Britain didn’t seem to exist.
