World

Why is America determined to pick a fight with Poland?

Until very recently it was hard to find more stalwart allies of America in Europe than the Poles. Poland was an early supporter of Washington’s policy to expand Nato and actively pushed for a stronger US role in central and eastern Europe. The Poles also stood up as an enthusiastic member of every US-led military coalition, taking leading roles in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was to Warsaw that US President Joe Biden traveled – twice – in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to give barnstorming speeches affirming that America would stand by Kyiv.  All the more surprising, then, that the recently-appointed US ambassador to Warsaw chose to pick

The Epstein scandal has morphed into a moral panic

That’s it, I’m out. I’m finished with the Epstein scandal. This morning I read about a man who is on the cusp of cancellation because he once sent a flirtatious email to Ghislaine Maxwell, years before her crimes were known about. This is getting ridiculous. It feels like MeToo on steroids. There’s a medieval vibe of finger-pointing and rumor-mongering The man is Casey Wasserman. He’s chair of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. And there are hollers for him to stand down. All because he once got digitally horny with Ms Maxwell. “I think of you all the time,” he wrote in one email. “What do I have to do to

Letter from Argentina

Buenos Aires, Argentina My last visit to Buenos Aires was a whistlestop assignment exactly 40 years ago. All I can remember was that the generals had gone, but the ache of the Falklands/Malvinas debacle had not yet subsided. Most memorable was the haunting story told me by my wealthy, upper-middle-class host about the loss of his twenty-something daughter. By his account, he was called sometime after midnight by a local police chief and told that she had been at a party of rowdy youngsters taken to the station to sober up. He was not to worry: she would be released in the morning. When she hadn’t returned by midday the

Can Russia’s shadow fleet be stopped?

Of all the weapons in Vladimir Putin’s arsenal, the most strategically crucial has proved to be not hypersonic missiles but the motley fleet of oil tankers that have allowed Russian oil to keep flowing to international markets. Oil dollars have been the lifeblood of Russia’s war economy during four years of conflict. And the West’s failure to shut that export business down has, so far, been the single most important factor behind Putin’s continued military resilience. Economic sanctions were supposed to be the West’s superpower to punish the Kremlin for invading Ukraine in February 2022. So how come Russia now exports more oil by sea than it did at the

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France

France has a nasty case of Trump Derangement Syndrome 

The French IT giant Capgemini has put its US subsidiary on sale because of its association with the work of ICE in America. All hell broke loose last week in France after it was revealed by the state broadcaster that Capgemini’s software was being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify foreigners on US soil and track their locations. According to the BBC, Capgemini multi-million dollar contract with ICE was agreed last December and was scheduled to run until 15 March. It has now been curtailed after the company found itself in the eye of a storm following the deaths last month of two anti-ICE protestors in separate incidents

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Why Emmanuel Macron has declared war on X

Investigators from the Paris prosecutor’s cyber-crime unit raided the offices of X in the French capital on Tuesday in what Elon Musk described as a “political attack.” The raid was part of an inquiry into whether X, which Musk has owned since 2022, has violated French law. In particular, the prosecutor’s office said it was investigating complicity “in possession or organized distribution of images of children of a pornographic nature… sexual deepfakes and fraudulent data extraction by an organized group.” X has denied any wrongdoing. Musk and the former chief executive of X, Linda Yaccarino, have been asked to attend hearings in April. Yaccarino, who left the company last year,

The Epstein files have exposed the extent of Sarah Ferguson’s greed

Since the latest tranche of the Epstein files was released over the weekend, the people who have been most embarrassingly affected by them include former British ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly styled Prince Andrew, Duke of York) and Bill Gates. Yet inevitably, attention has turned to Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, who is emerging spectacularly poorly from the scandal. This is thanks to a series of revelations that portray her as, variously, greedy, an appalling judge of character and someone seemingly willing to figuratively pimp her children, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, while she sought to obtain the money that she craved from Epstein. Many distasteful

Colombia can’t give Trump the cocaine crackdown he wants

When President Donald Trump hurled abuse at Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro last month, branding him a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” it was strikingly audacious. Trump leaned into bombastic provocation: there is no evidence to suggest Petro himself makes cocaine. And yet, Trump’s claim didn’t come as a shock – the two leaders have spent the past year locked in a volley of barbs with one another. Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing leader, likes to fire back with ideological, often sermonizing lectures on imperialism and US hypocrisy. But tangled up in the rancorous exchanges – many of them about drugs – is a

Why Turkey wants to help Iran

The Iranian regime remains firmly in the crosshairs of American bombers. As President Trump mulls whether to strike, Turkey is using every available channel to halt a military intervention. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has personally offered to mediate between Tehran and Washington. At the same time, Turkish authorities have tightened their grip on exiled Iranian opposition figures. Turkey’s sudden support for Iran is not born of friendship. Over the past two decades, the two countries have repeatedly found themselves on opposing sides. In the Syrian civil war, Iran sent Shi’a proxies to prop up the dictator Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey armed and trained Sunni rebel groups. Ankara’s push for dialogue

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The enigma of Melania Trump

To the question whether the Melania Trump documentary is as bad as the critics are saying, my answer would be: it depends what you’re looking for. My own view is that it’s pretty well what it is billed as: Melania’s take on Melania, with the lady herself in iron control over the direction. So, not a documentary in the normal sense, for better and worse. It’s her account of the 20 days up to and including her husband’s inauguration, with the emphasis exactly where she decides to put it. The benefit of this is that we see what she regards as important, not what other people do. She’s calling the

Can Syria’s Kurds trust Ahmed al-Sharaa?

Recent weeks have seen a political and military earthquake in Syria. Nearly 14 months after driving Bashar al Assad from Damascus, President Ahmad al-Sharaa is on the point of extending his transitional government’s complete control over the third of Syria east of the Euphrates. For all practical purposes, this will mean the end of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which had been the West’s allies against Isis. Time is being called on the semi-independent and self-declared autonomous Kurdish province of Rojava which has been created by the SDF during Syria’s civil war. In a swift campaign lasting only a few days, the Syrian army unexpectedly swept the SDF out

Why I’m in the Epstein Files

“Always knew you were a nonce.” That text, from a coworker in London, is how I learned my name appeared in the latest tranche of the Epstein Files. In the moments prior, I had been sweating profusely – unlike a certain former prince. I can explain. First off, “nonce” is British slang for “pedophile.” More important: at around noon today, the Department of Justice released a series of documents relating to the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex trafficker and financier. Among the documents: an email I sent in June 2020 to a number of senior figures who worked in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of

matt mcdonald epstein files
world health organization

The US has left the World Health Organization. What next?

At this year’s World Economic Forum America’s friends and enemies heard about what some are calling a new world order. In Davos, President Trump advanced his own version of Realpolitik. America has its particular interests and he doesn’t mind being fully transparent about them and the actions they portend.   He plainly said that NATO is not forever. His Board of Peace is described as a possible prototype that will displace the UN. Trump has no regard for Biden’s devotion to the “rules based world order” when it really means the US has to pay for everyone else to honor the rules.   This is the reason that while the good and great were

Chechnya’s looming succession crisis spells trouble for Putin

For years, we have heard rumors that Ramzan Kadyrov, dictator of Chechnya, is mortally ill. Unlike the lurid tales about Vladimir Putin, these rumors appear to be true, and the Kremlin is bracing itself for a potential succession crisis at the very worst time. This week, one of the official news agencies even quietly updated their canned obituary of him, just in case. This means Putin may soon face a fearsome dilemma: risk losing Chechnya or lose what momentum he has in Ukraine? Daudov won Ramzan’s favor by literally bringing him the head of rebel Suleyman Elmurzayev, who had claimed responsibility for the murder of his father Kadyrov has had

Dr. Oz’s war on Armenian medical fraud

As Gangs of New York showed us, those who’ve settled in America have a tendency to bring Old World grudges over with them. Judging by a recent video put out by Dr. Mehmet Oz – now serving as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services – one of these ancient feuds may now be playing out at the highest levels. American politics has been rocked by evidence of medical fraud to the tune of billions being committed by, inter alia, Somalis in Minneapolis. Naturally, the good doctor was sent to investigate. Then he made a second stop. Oz and his staff descended on the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles to investigate a similar

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world cup

Spare us Europe’s World Cup hypocrisy

Europe has come up with a way to hit back at Donald Trump. What began last week as a suggestion that the continent’s soccer nations should boycott this summer’s World Cup has grown into a popular campaign. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, the man who first floated the idea was Oke Göttlich, a senior member of the German Football Association’s executive committee and one of its 11 vice presidents. “What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic Games in the 1980s?” said Göttlich, referring to the US-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and the USSR’s retaliation four years later. “By my reckoning,

Could the Japanese economy crash out?

Is the Japanese economy about to crash? This once unthinkable prospect is now very much thinkable as concerns grow, and the cost of borrowing rises, in response to the bold but, to many, bewildering economic plans of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. It is a question of huge import, for if the Japanese economy collapses the consequences around the globe could be grave. Whereas with Truss there is at least some doubt about what exactly happened in her brief but turbulent tenure, with Takaichi things seems more clear-cut Takaichi, who faces an election on February 8 – where she will hope to boost her slender coalition dependent majority towards outright power – has pledged

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Facts, unlike opinions, are hard to come by in Minneapolis

19 min listen

Freddy is joined by Spectator US online editor Ben Clerkin to discuss the situation in Minnesota, where for a second time an ICE officer shot dead a protester. Freddy and Ben discuss how Trump’s team are divided on the issue, why this time Trump has not been quick to defend the ICE officers and the significance of the freezing cold weather in keeping protesters at bay.

xi

Has Xi Jinping fought off another coup?

According to unconfirmed reports, General Zhang Youxia, China’s vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), sent a company of troops (over a hundred or more) to the government’s Yingxi Hotel in western Beijing on January 18. Their mission was to arrest Xi Jinping. A few hours before, the Chinese president – alerted by an informant – set in motion countermeasures. Troops under the command of Cao Qi, head of Xi’s Central Guards Bureau, ambushed Zhang’s soldiers. In the ensuing gunfight at Yangxi Hotel, nine guards were reportedly killed along with dozens of Zhang Youxia’s soldiers. Throughout China, military movements have been banned and troops and officers have been confined to

david abulafia

David Abulafia was a rare, truth-seeking historian

Death arrives on a day just like any other, often rudely unheralded. We all know that, but it never ceases to shock. So it was with news that David Abulafia had died on Saturday night. Notwithstanding his lifelong fascination with the Mediterranean, David was a Brexiteer in 2016 Readers of The Spectator will know him as one of the shockingly small number of professional historians who care enough about the historical truth – and the public’s perception of it – to risk woke ire in exposing ideologically fabricated history for the corrupting trash it is. So, last June here he was, in these pages, debunking yet another attempt to make