World

Sunday

Max Horder

The long history of kidnapping Latin American chieftains

One of the few benefits of being an anthropologist is the uncanny exhilaration one feels watching novel current events as re-runs from previous episodes in the history of mankind. Donald Trump’s capture of Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, is no exception. Kidnapping Latin American emperors is a continental tradition. It’s simply the most practical method for breaking the chain of command in the region. It triggers succession chaos, enables the extraction of resources and keeps the rest of the hierarchy more or less intact. In earlier centuries, it was Spain and Portugal. Today, it’s the United States. In the colonial era, the objective was to secure enough gold to beat European rivals.

latin american

Saturday

Freddy Gray

What is the Donroe Doctrine’s plan for Venezuela?

The US launched a military operation in Venezuela, targeting the regime in Caracas and detaining President Nicolás Maduro, who has been transferred to New York where he faces charges of narcoterrorism. Donald Trump has described the move as a decisive defense of American interests, but critics point point to the double standards when it come to Trump's "America First" doctrine. Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest, joins Freddy Gray to discuss the strategic importance of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the role of socialism in the country’s collapse, and how Trump may seek to manage the risk of regional backlash and a counterinsurgency.

Carlos Flores

Can the ‘Donroe doctrine’ really change Venezuela?

During the early hours of Saturday January 3, an official statement from the White House, signed by President Trump, confirmed that the US had captured both President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and taken them out of Venezuela. At 2 a.m. sharp, thunderous sounds echoed through the capital city, part of what Trump called today “an assault not seen since World War Two… one of the most stunning displays of military might and competence in American history.” It was certainly an attack unlike anything ever seen in Venezuela. Within two hours, all of Caracas looked like a massive fireball, communications were down and areas were without power.

donroe doctrine
keffiyeh
Brendan O’Neill

The keffiyeh crew’s curious silence on Iran

And just like that, the left loses interest in the Middle East. In 2025, they spoke of little else. They culturally appropriated Arab headwear, poncing about in China-made keffiyehs. They wrapped themselves in the Palestine colors. They frothed day and night about a "murderous regime" – you know who. And yet now, as a Middle Eastern people revolt against their genuinely repressive rulers, they’ve gone schtum. It is especially electrifying to see Iran’s young women once again raise a collective middle finger to their Islamist oppressors What is it about revolts in Iran that rankle the activist class? These people love to yap about "resistance" and "oppression.

iranian
Charlie Gammell

Maduro’s fall could galvanize the Iranian opposition

On the afternoon of December 28 in a Tehran electronics bazaar, shopkeepers (known as bazaaris) shuttered their shops and walked out, outraged at a planned gas price rise and crippled at the continuing slide in the value of the Iranian currency and the government’s powerlessness to shepherd Iran’s economy toward something better than corruption, unemployment and inflationary cycles. Tehran’s Grand Bazaar was quick to follow suit. A day or so later, several of Tehran’s most prestigious universities staged demonstrations.

Freddy Gray

Why Trump captured Maduro

Donald Trump likes to start the new year with a bang – or better yet a series of loud bangs. On January 3, 2020, his first administration ordered the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Exactly six years later, his second administration has carried out a large-scale regime-change operation in Venezuela, blowing several sites to smithereens and capturing the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and flying them out of the country. This after a series of military strikes against Venezuelan and cartel targets in recent weeks and months. There had been strong rumors in Washington that Trump would order the operation in the run-up to Christmas. But he’s waited until the start of 2026 before pulling the trigger.

Nigel Jones

Trump says the US has captured Venezuela’s Maduro

Donald Trump's undeclared war in Venezuela against the Marxist regime of President Nicolas Maduro has erupted into the open. Trump says the US has captured Venezuela's leader and his wife. In a statement on Truth Social, Trump wrote: The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Why is the West ignoring Jimmy Lai?

15 min listen

Father Robert Sirico joins Freddy to discuss the imprisonment of Jimmy Lai – the British passport holder and Hong Kong media tycoon facing life in jail for opposing the Chinese Communist party. Sirico reflects on Lai’s rise from poverty, his Catholic faith, the collapse of freedoms in Hong Kong, and why the West has failed to mount a serious campaign for his release.

Tuesday

James Tidmarsh

France is becoming used to gratuitous violence

France seems to be witnessing more gratuitous attacks and stabbings. On the day after Christmas, in the middle of central Paris, a man went on a knife rampage through the metro. He struck out at random, stabbing women on station platforms at République, Arts et Métiers and Opéra. There was screaming. There was blood. One of the victims was pregnant. There was no argument, no robbery, and no apparent motive. The attacks were entirely indiscriminate. Random violence has become part of the background noise of public life After each assault, the attacker didn’t run, he boarded the next train. Passengers recoiled. Doors closed. The train moved on. Station by station, through some of the busiest metro stations in the city, he continued.

Monday

Stephen Reicher

Why you are probably a hero

The Bondi murders painted a picture constituted out of the contrast between shade and light. This was the chiaroscuro massacre. But, perhaps because we have become desensitized by endless dark descriptions of mass killings over the years, our attention was as much on the moments of brightness on that Sydney beach: the onlookers who grappled with the shooters, the lifeguards who sprinted towards danger, those who shielded strangers with their own bodies. These acts of heroism seemed all the more remarkable because of all we have been led to believe about how people act in emergencies.This can be summarized in one word: panic. When the going gets tough, ordinary people fall apart.

Bondi

Tuesday

Sam Leith

What binds the celebrities featured in the Epstein files

The new naughty list just dropped, as the kids say these days. The pre-Christmas release of the Epstein files, or at least some of them – elves heavily redacted – has brought much-needed good cheer to all of us. Not every red face on Christmas afternoon will be down to port and brandy this year. And the cast of characters – Mick Jagger, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, Richard Branson and all the rest – sounds like the guest list for the worst televised Christmas Special ever. The release of the files as they stand, though, seems to me to add fuel to all sorts of conspiracy theories. In the first place, they really do seem to confirm what many of us normies have long suspected.

Friday

Terry Barnes

Is Australia finally taking anti-Semitism seriously?

After four days of looking like a rabbit in the headlights, embattled Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, finally started to act like a national leader willing to do what’s right. Yesterday, Labor's Albanese announced his government’s response to a plan to combat anti-Semitism proposed by his hand-picked special envoy on anti-Semitism, Jewish community leader Jillian Segal. Albanese has had Segal’s report since July. His response yesterday, which effectively accepted the envoy’s 13 recommendations, was tardy but substantial.

australia
zelensky loan ukraine
Owen Matthews

Europe has left Ukraine living on borrowed time

Russia started the war on Ukraine, so Russia should pay for the damage it has wrought. Such was Volodymyr Zelensky’s forceful message to European leaders last night as he pleaded for a "reparations loan" backed by the €190 billion ($222 billion) of Russian Central Bank capital frozen in a Belgian clearing bank since Putin’s full-scale invasion. "Just as authorities confiscate money from drug traffickers and seize weapons from terrorists, Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks," Zelensky told his European allies. "It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal." But after negotiations that went late into the night, Europe ultimately shied away from grabbing Russia’s money.

Thursday

Alan Dershowitz

How Donald Trump could serve a third term

The 22nd Amendment leaves open several possible ways a two-term president could serve all or part of a third term without being elected. The text of that amendment, as ratified, prohibits a two-term president from “being elected” to a third term, but it doesn’t prohibit him from “serving,” “acting” or “holding” that office. Indeed, the framers explicitly rejected broader exclusionary language that would have made it constitutionally impossible for a two-term president to get anywhere near the Oval Office. Instead they accepted a compromise that created a loophole bigger than the new ballroom in the East Wing of the White House.This doesn’t mean that President Trump will actually run for a third term. He has told the media that he won’t.

Donald Trump
Terry Barnes

Anthony Albanese has failed to step up after the Bondi beach attack

It’s been three days since the jihad against innocent Jews at Sydney’s Bondi beach. A nation’s grief is swiftly turning to anger and Australia’s prime minister is floundering. As more is learned about the father-and-son killers who took 15 lives and wounded many more, questions are piling up. How did the father enter the country? How did security agencies lose track of the son, who not only imbibed his father’s Jew hate, but may have been further radicalized by reportedly studying with one of Sydney’s most notorious Islamist hate preachers? How did they manage to go to a militant area of the Philippines as recently as a month ago? How did the father manage to hold a gun license, given his own history and that of his son?

Wednesday

Ani Chkhikvadze

Boris Johnson: will cowardly Europe betray Ukraine again?

Boris Johnson has urged European leaders to hand $247 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets to Ukraine – but says he fears they “lack the courage” to do so, in an interview with The Spectator. The former British prime minister also warned that Trump is at risk of “morally polluting” himself if he caves to Putin’s demands in peace negotiations and encouraged his negotiating team to stop the “nauseating deals” they are discussing about joint business ventures.“I think Europe is at a very difficult point because Europe has got to do the reparations alone,” Johnson said. “And I'm worried that they lack the courage. They must do it. I think that's the only way to get the Americans to take Europe seriously.

Boris Johnson
Avi Loeb

The scientific case for the existence of intelligent alien life

The foundation of science is based on the humility to learn, not the arrogance of expertise. When comet experts argued that the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS must be a familiar water-rich comet as soon as it was discovered in July, they behaved like artificial intelligence systems: only able to reflect the data sets they were trained on. For decades, the data set that established comet expertise largely comprised icy rocks in the solar system. My counterpoint is simple: humanity launched technological objects into space, so we must conclude that alien life forms could do the same. This possibility must be added to the training data set of comet experts when studying interstellar objects.

european leaders
Christopher Caldwell

European leaders have changed their tune on war

Ten days after Thanksgiving, news watchers were exposed to one of the more culturally incongruous images in recent history: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron beaming in front of the British Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street, giving each other the locked-thumbs handshake familiar to African-American jazz musicians and professional athletes of the 1970s. Right on, brother! At that moment, according to Ukrainian media, thousands of Zelensky’s soldiers had been encircled by Russian troops near the city of Pokrovsk (or Krasnoarmiisk, as it may well soon be renamed). Large gaps were appearing in the Ukrainian front, desertions were rising and Russians appeared to be opening a new front east of Kharkiv.

Owen Matthews

Only the US is taking peace seriously in Ukraine

What exactly is the "platinum security guarantee" that Donald Trump is pushing Volodymyr Zelensky to accept? While the full details remain confidential, the deal is described as an "Article 5 style" guarantee after the clause in NATO’s charter that states that "an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against all members" and triggers "an obligation for each member to come to its assistance." Sounds reassuring. Except that little weasel word "style" covers an abyss of real-world back-pedaling and caveats. For a start, NATO’s charter does not oblige members to actually take military action if one is attacked but instead leaves that decision to individual states.

Rod Liddle

The West has become ungovernable

My favorite opinion poll of recent times was the one which showed that Donald Trump is disliked by more than 90 percent of Danes. This is a glorious achievement and one of which the President should be proud, and perhaps boast about from time to time – averse though he may be to boasting, of course. This was the lowest favorability rating for Trump anywhere in Yerp and I suppose is partly occasioned by his determination to pry Greenland from the grasp of these ineffably smug Scandis because they have no idea what to do with it and have mismanaged its meager affairs for decades. A personal admission: I cannot stand Danes.