World

Tuesday

Thomas Eaton

Indian Exodus: the Jewish population exits after 2,000 years

In December the Gate of Heaven synagogue in Thane, a city that links the peninsula of Mumbai with the Indian mainland, will light the Chanukah menorahs as it has annually since its opening in 1879. Among the initial members were Jews whose ancestors may have arrived in India during the time of King Solomon, when Middle East trade routes were established to exchange iron, peacocks, gems, ginger and other spices. Over the many intervening centuries, waves of Jewish immigration have washed up on the Indian shores from different ends of the earth. The varying groups came with separate traditions and practices and ways of living, but they shared prayers and faith, a distinct identity in a country where identity carries great importance.

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Daniel DePetris

Biden and Xi will resolve nothing in San Francisco

A year ago today, President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping shook hands with each other on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, in an attempt to reset the world’s most important bilateral relationship. The two men, who knew each other during their previous encounters at the vice presidential level, hoped to exploit their familiarity with one another to bring US-China relations onto a more productive plane. And for a moment, the Bali talkathon seemed to have that effect.

Friday

John Mac Ghlionn

Is California the new China?

Recently, Gavin Newsom, the greasy-haired governor who may or may not run for president, made a trip to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping. It went swimmingly, according to various reports.  When it comes to US-China relations, “divorce is not an option,” Newsom, who divorced from Kimberly Guilfoyle in 2005, told CNN on November 8. America’s answer to Justin Trudeau argued that the US and China must “reconcile our strategic red lines.” The idea of being cozy with China, a country that actively uses cyber espionage to undermine the US economy, may strike many as odd, even dangerous — but not Governor Newsom. In fact, according to reports, he is so inspired by his trip to China, that he now wants to bring a CCP-like “social credit system” to the Golden State.

california governor gavin newsom

Wednesday

Christopher Sandford

A hundred years on from the Munich Putsch

There’s a school of thought that says the events in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021 were the great communal wound of Western democracy, an outrage seen around the world when a retired cowboy dared put his boots up on an aide to the speaker of the House’s desk (he later got four-and-a-half years for his trouble), and the commander-in-chief tried to grab the steering wheel from a Secret Service agent to turn his SUV around in the direction of the mob so he could join them. “I did not seek the fight brought to this Capitol, but I will not shrink from it either,” President Biden announced through clenched teeth in a speech delivered just outside the House chamber a year later. “I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation.

munich putsch

Friday

Paul Wood

‘We must defend our territory’: on the frontline of Europe’s migrant woes

Lampedusa, Italy The motorcade carrying Italy’s prime minister is being held up by a wild-eyed pirate. With a bushy black beard, sun-blasted face, tattooed forearms and a single earring, he stands in front of the convoy of a dozen police cars, extending a flattened palm. Blue lights flash, engines idle and somewhere behind blacked-out windows sit Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, and her important guest, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The pirate is Giacomo Sferlazzo, leader of the protests that began on the island of Lampedusa after around 100 small boats carrying migrants arrived there on a single day in September. Really he’s a local musician, professional puppeteer and, as he describes himself, a Marxist-Leninist follower of Antonio Gramsci.

lampedusa

Wednesday

Juan P. Villasmil

Meet Maria Corina Machado: could she become Venezuela’s Margaret Thatcher?

In 2006, there was Manuel Rosales. In 2012, there was Henrique Capriles. In 2018, there was Juan Guaidó. All managed to capture the hopes of Venezuela’s opposition, but as hopes slipped away, so did their popularity. Now, there is a new opposition leader in town: Maria Corina Machado, an ideologically driven fighter and a woman who was not afraid to call former president Hugo Chávez a “thief” to his face. As Venezuelans often imprudently say, she “tiene las bolas bien puestas,” meaning that, although female, she “has her testicles in the right place.” That's something that millions of Venezuelans can’t say about the charming yet gutless men who have monopolized the country’s hopes in the past. In July, Dr.

maria corina machado

Tuesday

Peter Wood

The Sycamore Gap tragedy is one of a long list of tree killings

My ancestors presumably had something to do with trees — and true to my heritage, I enjoy some amateur forestry on my land in Vermont. The crack, the whoosh and the thunder of a tree coming down exactly where you aimed it thrills the Upper West Side me, chainsaw in hand.  But it grieves me when a good tree is blown down or uprooted. I cut only those that have to be removed because they are dying or might crush house or head if not tended to.  The Spectator reports on the murder of the Sycamore Gap, a 300-year-old tree along Hadrian’s Wall, chainsawed by a vandal when no one was looking. The culprit apparently is a sixteen year-old boy. It was an act of gratuitous violence. But not a singular act.

sycamore gap tree

Friday

Ben Domenech

Zelensky forced to make an impossible sell

When Volodomyr Zelensky came to Washington last December, he inhabited a very different political environment than he does today. At the time, Ukraine remained a largely bipartisan effort. Polls found most Republicans supported sending continued weapons to Ukraine — just nine months later, the faction opposed to sending even one more dime to support Zelensky’s cause in the conflict has dramatically soured.  This is due in part to the very predictable slog of this war, but it’s also due to choices by Joe Biden’s administration. Much as they have turned on the spigot in a time of economic uncertainty and rising inflation concerns, the Biden team has even received criticism from their own party for dragging their feet on the weapon systems Ukraine claims it needs to win the war.

Wednesday

Cockburn

The radical mob is ruining Oktoberfest

Cockburn wouldn’t be so skeptical of the radical left nearly as much if they didn’t have an insatiable need to suck the joy out of holidays. First they replaced the Christmas tree with the Kwanzaa bush. Then they told us that tofurkey tastes just as good as the real thing. Now, they are attempting to crush Oktoberfest too.   The two-century-old German tradition, which kicked-off in Munich on September 16, is under attack for its skimpy costumes and environmental impact. The man leading the charge: Luitpold Rupprecht Heinrich, the seventy-two-year-old Prince of Bavaria whose great-grandfather was the last Bavarian king.   “When I see Chinese-made folk costumes made of plastic, pseudo-costumes with tight dirndls, then the whole thing becomes a carnival.

ccp Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech during a ceremony at Tsinghua University ceremony (KENZABURO FUKUHARA/AFP via Getty Images)
Cockburn

Democrats bring a CCP-tied witness to education hearing

A hearing about the Chinese Communist Party’s funding of American K-12 education took a surprising turn when the Democrats’ witness — and several members of the House Education and Workforce Committee — took pains to conflate opposing foreign investments in public schools with Asian-American hatred. Gisela Perez Kusakawa, the executive director of the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), kicked off her remarks by linking concern over the Chinese Communist Party’s investments in public schools to America’s incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. Warning the Asian-American youth could end up as “collateral damage,” Kusakawa repeatedly conflated opposing the CCP with anti-Asian-American racism.

Thursday

Matthew Foldi

Why is America is giving up our panda to China?

America is surrendering its native-born panda to the Chinese Communists, and the Chinese Communist Party — and a premier taxpayer-funded museum and a top defense contractor are helping to foot the bill for the goodbye party. Xiao Qi Ji, an American-born panda whose name means “little miracle,” will be shipped back to China later this month — and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo is having an entire panda-fest to celebrate this humiliation. “We are going big because they are going home,” the National Zoo boasted in its announcement of a nine-day celebration filled with screenings of Kung Fu Panda, yoga sessions and panda-themed items. “Tasty celebratory treats will be provided courtesy of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China.

panda

Wednesday

Elbridge Colby

World events are not going America’s way

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the world situation is grim for America. And it could actually get far worse. Why, then, are many of our national leaders acting as if things are going well? We need not doubling down but fundamental change. That starts with understanding that we are in serious trouble. The war in Ukraine, which is manifestly the Biden administration’s priority, is sadly likely to be protracted. While the Ukrainian counteroffensive is still ongoing, the best analysis indicates that the war has become a struggle of attrition. Russia is substantially mobilizing its economy and society for a long-haul war effort — and its armed forces appear to have at least partially adapted from their earlier failures.

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Daniel McCarthy

NATO’s post-Cold War strategy has been a disaster

NATO is fighting for its life — and dying. The alliance has only grown larger as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now Finland is a member — and Sweden is on its way to becoming one. Ukraine and Georgia would like to join, too. All this is a sign of failure, however, not success. Whichever way one looks at the picture, NATO’s post-Cold War strategy has been a disaster. Either NATO did not expand far enough, fast enough — to the point of including Ukraine and thereby preventing the Russian invasion — or NATO’s continual expansion gave Russians reason to fear that they were being boxed in.

Sunday

Cockburn

Treachery! Americans rank Britain the world’s best country

It turns out the Revolutionary War was fought in vain. According to a US News and World Report survey, most Americans prefer the United Kingdom to these United States. In Cockburn’s estimation, this a betrayal, a national embarrassment and the least patriotic thing an American could say. We might as well join the Commonwealth.  According to the US News annual Best Countries ranking released on Wednesday, Americans believe the UK is the best country in the world. The report, which aggregates data from respondents worldwide about cultural influence, quality of life and power among other categories, ranked Switzerland first for the fifth time in eight years. America came in fifth, falling one spot since last year.

nigel farage britain united kingdom country

Tuesday

Meghan Murphy

The lack of Indigenous mass graves in Canada

In May 2021, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the remains of 215 children had been found buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation band had confirmed the story, they claimed, quoting Chief Rosanne Casimir. “To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” she said. “Some were as young as three years old. We sought out a way to confirm that knowing out of deepest respect and love for those lost children and their families, understanding that Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc is the final resting place of these children.”  The outcry was enormous.

kamloops mass graves

Thursday

Alina Poliakova

Renewed hope on Ukraine’s Independence Day 

Kyiv Because I was born on the same day as Ukrainian Independence, there were always fireworks on my birthday. Until I was eight, I thought these rockets were in my honor. I even asked my mother to bring a bag so that I could catch a “firework” and it would keep shining for me all night long.  In addition to fireworks, there were concerts and cotton candy, and the fountain on the main square would be transformed from ordinary to multi-colored. It was like the Fourth of July in America, only on August 24 in Ukraine. But my childhood is over, I’ve become an adult and this year after eighteen months of Russia’s full-scale war, I’m not expecting fireworks. I’m hoping there won’t be Russian rockets or Iranian drones either. War forces us to adjust.

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Friday

Zoe Strimpel

Fear and complacency in Taiwan

On a recent trip to Taiwan as a guest of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I knew that war with an increasingly belligerent China is a daily possibility. Chinese ships are in constant circulation in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese aircraft unceasingly fly near the island, getting close to Taiwanese air space. Beijing’s increasingly threatening language about forced “unification” seems to bring a catastrophic attack closer. Genuine fear fluttered in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit in August last year when China launched three days of drills that paid no regard to what they called the “imaginary” median line, which divides Chinese from Taiwanese territory.

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europe museum america
Ben Judah

Europe is not a museum

The temperature, at last, is starting to drop — and for Europeans that only means one thing: peak season is over. The crowds in the piazzas and on the beaches are starting to thin. And in the tavernas that were TikTokked you can finally think about getting a table. It’s time. Like the clockwork of migrating swallows — the Americans are going home. And knowing you can finally count on a breeze and far fewer strong-dollar spenders than a few weeks earlier, a stingier tipping class of European grande bourgeoisie in West London or the 8ème arrondissement — that has long since given up on July and August for the Mediterranean — is now contemplating a holiday. It’s still, however, at least conversationally, Europe season in the United States for a few more weeks.

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John Pietro

Why Taiwan’s defense is in the American national interest

Just 38 percent of Americans “support deploying US troops to defend Taiwan from a military attack by China” according to a Reuters/Ipsos released this week, with 42 percent opposing and 20 percent unsure. Vivek Ramaswamy, among the top contenders for the 2024 GOP nomination, also recently said that the US should only defend Taiwan until “we have semiconductor independence.” Add to this the Biden administration’s unwillingness to spend what is needed to build up the Taiwanese military and its failure to adequately support Ukraine — and anyone who values a safe, free, prosperous and stable world should be concerned. Because defending Taiwan from a revanchist, imperialist and brutal Chinese Communist Party is at the heart of America’s national interest.

Thursday

Jerry Dunleavy and James Hasson

The Biden admin was prepared to leave our Afghan allies behind

The administration’s utter failure to plan for the inevitable Afghanistan evacuation meant that it had barely enough resources to focus on getting (some) US citizens out of the country. If the government was the only actor calling the shots — normally standard procedure in war zones, to say the least — then the tens of thousands of Afghan allies who had risked their lives based on years-long US promises of loyalty would be on their own.  Colonel Seth Krummrich, a twenty-two-year Green Beret who served as the chief of staff for Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) during the withdrawal, told us that US special forces had had just enough capacity to rescue Americans stranded across the country, but evacuating SIV applicants was simply beyond their bandwidth.

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