World

Douglas Murray

Will we always have Paris?

Two worlds met in Paris last week. Thanks to the presence of Art Basel, some of the world’s most valuable art that wasn’t already in the city was shipped there. It arrived just in time for Paris to go up in flames. Most of the art fair went ahead as planned at the Grand Palais, but the final weekend was canceled. Parisian friends and those who were visiting the city described scenes of Dada-esque absurdity. They navigated streets filled with burning bins and rioting “youths” in balaclavas, before slipping into champagne receptions. Some who attempted to get out of the city spoke of Mogadishu-like scenes at Gare du Nord, where the country’s newest net-contributors were busily assaulting any available police and stealing the luggage of any tourist they could find.

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump will never be a lame duck

Of all the rotten clichés in American political discourse, “lame duck presidency” is arguably the worst. It ought to be dragged out back – perhaps by the former homeland security secretary and infamous animal-slayer Kristi Noem – and strangled to death. Yet commentators have to say something about the midterms. And since it is likely that President Trump’s party will lose on Tuesday night, expect all sorts of explanations as to just what a damaged duck Donald now is. A weaker position on the Hill will push him back towards his favorite role: the outsider raging against DC If (as most pollsters expect) the Republicans lose both chambers of Congress, he’ll have been “crushed” and “humiliated.

Ian Williams

Why the world bows to Beijing

Mao Zedong was certainly a dictator, French footballer Kylian Mbappé was right about that, but the label still feels inadequate for a man who was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese. He was a mass murderer, one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century, in a super-league alongside the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. When he died in 1976, after endless and barbaric campaigns and purges, his legacy was a traumatized and impoverished land of fear and paranoia.

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Alexander Munguía

The world will court Lula’s Brazil

On Sunday evening Miami’s Freedom Tower filled with Brazilian expatriate supporters of Flávio Bolsonaro, there for an election watch party. The headliners were Eduardo Bolsonaro, the candidate’s brother, and Paulo Figueiredo, a popular Brazilian YouTuber. Both men effectively live in exile in the United States, since going home would mean facing the courts.  For the Bolsonarists the setting was appropriate. In the 1960s the tower processed Cubans fleeing Castro, and for many in Miami’s Cuban community the building is their Ellis Island. The room was buoyant. Flávio had finished first in the first round, and he would surely pick up the dissident right who had backed smaller conservative candidates three weeks earlier. The early numbers favored him.

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Ukraine

Ash Bhardwaj

Ukraine is much weaker without access to Starlink

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.

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Daryna Bondarenko

Ukrainians are struggling to keep going

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.

Owen Matthews

The UN is no longer a forum for international peace

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.

Israel

Adam LeBor

Can Netanyahu cling on?

Israel looks set for a lengthy period of back-room deals, coalition negotiations and potential political instability after neither of the two main camps won a clear victory in Tuesday’s election, despite a record turnout. Partial results at 8 a.m. Israeli time on Wednesday, with 57.3 percent of the votes counted, gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud 27 seats, with 21 for Gadi Eisenkot’s center-right Yashar, reported the Times of Israel. Both sides fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a governing coalition in Israel’s 120 seat parliament Yashar’s “Change bloc” allies are the center-right Beyachad, the center-left Democrats and the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu.

Tom Gross

Can Netanyahu win again?

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.

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Arieh Kovler

The man who could topple Benjamin Netanyahu

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.

America

Europe

Tatyana Kekic

Students brought down Serbia’s president – but what happens now?

Serbs have been partying on the streets for two days after a leaderless student movement dethroned Aleksandar Vučić in a parliamentary election, ending 14 years of rule by his Serbian Progressive party (SNS). A movement without a leader or detailed manifesto has defeated a government with more money, media access and organization Few pundits expected the students to win, let alone by such a large margin. Yet within 90 minutes of polling stations closing on Sunday night, Vučić had conceded defeat. The SNS, which has dominated Serbian politics since 2012, was out of power. Vučić’s composed announcement suggested he had anticipated defeat and wanted an orderly transfer of power. The gendarmerie, deployed throughout the day, stood down.

Alan Bekhor

What Spinoza got right – and wrong

The scrupulously maintained traditions of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation in London, where I worship, still forbid the rabbi from pronouncing the name “Spinoza” from the pulpit. London, as the sister Jewish community of Amsterdam, inherited the same customs, and in both congregations, Baruch Spinoza continues to be regarded with a lingering sense of abhorrence on account of the herem, or excommunication, pronounced against him in 1656. In secularist philosophy, that excommunication has acquired an almost mythical status. Along with the trial of Galileo and the excesses of the Inquisition, it is often seen as one of the great episodes in the battle to emancipate western thought from religious obscurantism and intolerance.

Gavin Mortimer

The specter of civil war haunts France

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.

Wednesday

Melissa Chen

Kylian Mbappé and Mao-Maoing the Flak Catchers

It’s been a bad couple of days for Kylian Mbappé, the French soccer superstar and Real Madrid forward who was, until yesterday, still being tipped as the heir to Messi and Ronaldo. First he lost the Ballon d’Or to Harry Kane – must be hard losing to the English once again – and then an old clip from the French talk show The Bridge was mysteriously resurfaced, where in response to a question about his favorite meme, Mbappé said the funniest is “the one where they put my face on a guy, a Chinese dictator I think.” The Chinese dictator in question was Mao Zedong, who till today, still smiles down serenely from his giant portrait above Tiananmen Square.Once it started spreading on Chinese social media, the fallout was swift and massive.

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Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

Kylian Mbappé is right about Mao. So why has he apologized?

Kylian Mbappé, one of soccer’s biggest stars, has made an abject apology after being dropped by Chinese brands for apparently joking about the country’s former ruler Mao Zedong in an online video. Mbappé, who plays for Real Madrid and captains the French national team, is a big name in China: his face features on Chinese train station billboards and posters, as well as a range of products. He made the mistake of appearing to refer to the revered Mao in less than complimentary terms. You don’t need to be a historian to know that Mao was mad and bad, a dictator whose oppressive rule led to mass starvation, but his Communist party successors don’t like anyone pointing this out.

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Matthew Lynn

Brazil has voted for economic chaos

The shift to the right across South America has been stopped. One of President Trump’s key regional allies has been defeated. The global left, and most of the center, has been celebrating the victory of President Lula over Flávio Bolsonaro in a closely fought election this weekend. There is just one problem. As the brutal sell-off of financial assets demonstrated, Brazil has also voted for economic chaos. That rarely ends well. The election may tip Brazil into a full-scale crisis While the left were toasting victory on Monday morning, investors were furiously dumping Brazilian equities and, more importantly, debt. On Monday the Bovespa – Brazil’s main stock market index – fell by over 15 percent.

Monday

Catherine Ellis

Is time up for Brazil’s Bolsonaro dynasty?

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. Just three weeks ago, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva looked vulnerable. His rival Flávio Bolsonaro had beaten him in the first round, raising the prospect of a right-wing turn in South America’s largest country. Brazil looked set for a shift towards tougher security measures, tax cuts and closer ties with Donald Trump’s administration.

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Haiti
Bruce Gilley

It’s time to colonize Haiti

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.

Lula
Arnout Nuijt

Lula has broken Brazil

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.

Friday

Lionel Shriver

Can we be surprised that France has descended into nihilism?

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.

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Peter Hitchens

Why is Britain stoking conflict with Russia?

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.

Louis Sarkozy

Who’s who in Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s revolutionary guard

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.

Alexander Larman

What is going on with the Markle family?

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.

Thomas Markle

Thursday

Philip Delves Broughton

The riots are driving French politics to its extremes

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.

Nicholas Farrell

What do Italy’s rioters want?

“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.

Wednesday

Elisabeth Dampier

Is this email hack an attempt to destroy the AfD?

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.

Gavin Mortimer

The dark horse who stands to benefit from France’s riots

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.

Terry Barnes

Australian politics is becoming increasingly toxic

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.

Tuesday

Patrick West

The Palestine flag has become the symbol of anti-West hatred

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.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Who will condemn Saudi Arabia’s Islamic barbarism?

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.

Gavin Mortimer

France is far too soft on crime

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.

John Keiger

Could this be the end of the French Fifth Republic?

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.

Monday

Owen Matthews

Putin can smell Washington’s desperation

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.

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