World

Wednesday

Paul Wood

What will Michael Cohen tell the FBI now?

Donald Trump’s Twitter feed was oddly silent on Tuesday as the news came that his former campaign manager and his former lawyer were going to jail. Perhaps his staff have finally seized control of his Android phone. Perhaps his lawyers have convinced him that every time he reaches for it to tweet on anything relating to the Russia investigation, he is dancing on the edge of a precipice, with Robert Mueller just waiting to push him off. Whatever the reason, this was the equivalent of Trump entering a stunned, catatonic state, while his world spins out of control around him. The President merely tweeted to note that he was going to a Make America Great Again rally in West Virginia, slipping into a warm bath of affirmation from his most loyal supporters: ‘Thank you West Virginia!

what will michael cohen tell the fbi

Tuesday

Cockburn

How important is Christopher Steele’s libel win against the owners of a Russian bank?

Glasses are clinking in the London offices of Orbis Business Intelligence, home to the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele. Steele has learned that a court in Washington DC has dismissed a libel action brought by three Russian oligarchs over what he wrote about them and their company, Alfa Bank, in his dossier on Donald Trump, Russia, and the US presidential election. Steele is celebrating this as a major victory for the First Amendment and against what he views as an effort – backed by the Kremlin – to use the courts to muzzle him. The dossier did not actually say much about Alfa’s owners, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan.

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Leon Hadar

Why ‘we’ got Turkey wrong (and China. And Russia. And Iraq)

In addition to warning us of the growing tide of populism and nationalism, and bashing Donald Trump, Pundits in Washington and other Western capitals have been also spending also a lot of time, debating ‘How the West got China wrong,’ as The Economist put it, which was just another way of asking, well, ‘How The Economist got China wrong.’ The West – or to use the first person plural ‘We’– so favoured by the intellectually modest Washington ‘foreign policy expert’ – had bet that China would head towards democracy and the market economy.

Monday

Steerpike

Fact check: New York Times’s London foodie ‘knowledge’

The New York Times is at it again. It was only back in May that Spectator USA was forced to call into question the paper’s coverage of Britain, after a curious article on ‘Austerity Britain’ by one Peter S Goodman appeared, complete with a slew of glaring omissions. Well, now it seems that the NYT has staggered off its stool for another bruising round. A food review of London has been published in its Blighty-sceptic pages, and it can’t be said to be very much better than poor Mr Goodman’s.

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Monday

Cockburn

What if the dreaded ‘pee tape’ is real?

From the Telluride Daily Planet, founded 1898, published Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays in Telluride, Colorado, comes a local news item that may have wider significance. Last week, before a roomful of a hundred people at the Wilkinson Public Library, carried by Telluride TV and sponsored by the Telluride Ski & Golf Company, a former CIA officer called Bob Baer shared what he knew about Donald Trump and Russia. The newspaper reports that: Baer began digging after becoming privy to the Trump-Russia ties during the 2016 election cycle, when he received a tip from a current Democratic operative who asked him to reach out to an ex-KGB officer.‘I knew from the phone number from the FBI that it was a legit KGB guy,’ he said.

Monday

Omid Malekan

How blockchain can beat state censorship

The concept of blockchain is popularly associated with cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin in particular. But there is another function of the technology which could have huge repercussions for states which attempt to censure the internet – as well as improving inline security and even tackling fake news. It is called ‘Proof of Existence’ (PoE) – the least talked about but perhaps most powerful application of this nascent technology. Earlier this year, a blog post by a Chinese student documenting the intimidation she’d suffered from school officials trying to block her investigation into an incident of sexual assault went viral.

Thursday

Tom Ball

Why America’s détente with Putin makes Belarus nervous

The last time Russia held an international sporting event during a climate of détente with the United States, it annexed a significant portion of its neighbour’s territory several weeks later. As it turned out, Obama’s ‘reset’ years and the Sochi Winter Olympics, were the lull before the swift and subtle storm in which Ukraine lost the Crimea to around 20,000 Russian troops wearing face masks and bandanas. For the enthusiasts of historical parallelisms, the Soccer World Cup and President Trump’s near-fawning public proclamations over the Russian premier might very well chime a few early warning systems. Particularly if you happen to live in Belarus, a sparsely populated and foresty nation to the western edge of Russia.

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Jonathan Miller

Macron’s summer of discontent

‘It could be argued that getting out of the office to beat up some leftists is a good way to work up an appetite for lunch,’ one of France’s more cynical millionaires tells me, admiring Alexandre Benalla, 26, a recently fired security aide to President Emmanuel Macron. Benalla had rushed from his office at the Elysée Palace to brawl with members of La France Insoumise, the tattered remnants of the French left, who were demonstrating outside. Tally-ho! Right on. Except that you really are not allowed to do that, especially in the age of camera phones. And the more that comes out about this story, the weirder it becomes. What did Macron know and when did he know it? Who protected Benalla? Who leaked the story to Le Monde?

Wednesday

Dominic Green

America, meet Tommy Robinson – if you must

There is a long tradition of British chancers making good in America, from the Mayflower to Piers Morgan. Imagine the golden age of Hollywood without those south Londoners Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, and Archie Leach, whose extended performance as Cary Grant established a lasting benchmark for masculine style. Unfortunately, the quality of the exports varies. As a British chancer, allow me to apologise unreservedly for Gerry & The Pacemakers, Freddie & The Dreamers and all the other chancers who caught a ride on the Beatles’ coat tails. And also for Piers Morgan. Should I apologise preemptively for Tommy Robinson? You may not know who he is but, the way things are going, you may well know soon. He has already turned up on Donald Trump Jr.

Tuesday

Cockburn

‘Has mom been tested for STDs?’ The Manaforts’ home life and why it matters

Tolstoy wrote one of literature’s most famous opening lines, in Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The peculiar unhappiness of Paul Manafort’s family life is described in excruciating detail in 285,000 text messages from an iPhone belonging to one of his daughters. The messages were posted by hackers on the darkweb last year and provided several damaging stories about Manafort. He goes on trial today, charged with evading tax on tens of millions of dollars from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine. Now, the texts have been published in their entirety on the ordinary internet, where they can easily be searched and read.

paul manafort manaforts manafort family daughter

Monday

Madeleine Kearns

Father Morris won’t be the last priest expelled from campus for having the ‘wrong’ beliefs

In her column in this week’s Spectator, Mary Wakefield writes about Father Mark Morris, who was fired from his post at Glasgow Caledonian University for having a prayer meeting in response to a recent gay pride march. Wakefield points out that there is more to this story than meets the eye. She’s not alone in wondering: how can a priest be dismissed for stating the Catholic Church’s position (and off-campus besides)? And why have we returned to the days where clergymen are expelled from campus on ideological grounds? The case of Father Morris is worth examining because he’s the first clergyman to be caught up in the new campus intolerance.

Thursday

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson: Why we sent the jihadi Beatles for trial in America

Surely there is a bit of humbug in this outrage about the two remaining jihadi Beatles, Kotey and Elsheikh, and Sajid Javid’s difficult but correct decision to send them for trial in America. Suppose the grisly pair had been located a couple of years ago in Raqqa. And let’s suppose there was a Reaper drone overhead, and that British intelligence could help send a missile neatly through their windscreen. Would we provide the details — knowing that they would be killed without a chance for their lawyers to offer pleas in mitigation on account of their tough childhoods in west London? Would the British state, in these circumstances, have connived in straightforward extrajudicial killing? Too damn right we would.

Tom Switzer

Australia’s choice: Chinese trade – or American security?

 SydneyFor decades, Australia has been known as ‘the lucky country’. At the end of the world geographically, we are separated from the global troublespots by vast oceans. We have recorded 27 years of uninterrupted growth, partly because of a surge in exports of commodities to China. At the same time, our tough border protection policies boost public confidence in, as John Howard put it, ‘who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’. As a result, our politics have not been profoundly affected by the kind of populist forces dismantling established parties across Europe. Nor have we witnessed an anti-globalisation backlash. Not for us any Trump- or Brexit-like insurgencies.

Rod Liddle

The more extreme the left’s screeches, the greater the populist surge

The latest exciting news is that it may very soon be possible for surgeons to perform uterine transplants, so endowing a man who has ‘transitioned’ into being a strange approximation of a woman with the ability to gestate a child. And to give birth, after a fashion. The benighted child would need to be hacked out of the man’s midriff, because there’s not enough room down there for a child to come out naturally (yes, because he’s a man). Sweden — the world leader in uterine transplants — is anxious to reclaim the title of the world’s most batshit crazy nation, which the Canadians and that simpering idiot Justin Trudeau currently have in their grasp. The uterus stuff will undoubtedly help.

Wednesday

W James-Antle-Iii

How significant are Trump’s trade talks with the EU?

President Trump’s announcement Wednesday of a trade breakthrough with the European Union was like the summit with North Korea but on a much smaller scale. It was a step back from the ledge after Trump himself contributed to the ratcheting up of tensions. Whether it translates into anything substantively remains to be seen. No, we’re not talking about nuclear weapons as was the case with North Korea. And the trade war with China is more consequential than the haggling with the EU. But just as Trump was seen as risking conflict with “Little Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un, he’d described the EU as a “foe.

Michael Tracey

Trump betrays the elite sense that the US is always pure and democracy-loving

Now that the all-consuming, head-exploding media meltdown over Donald Trump’s performance in Helsinki has subsided somewhat, it is worth attempting to examine what, exactly, inspired the frenzy. Virtually the entire elite press corps and large swaths of the political class united in denouncing the sitting president not just as incompetent, but as an active, knowing traitor. Given the interminable quality of the Trump/Russia saga, such furor is likely to bubble up again in the near future. So what’s at the root of it? In the popular telling, Trump’s subservience to Vladimir Putin— coupled with his rejection of his own Intelligence Community’s conclusions on purported Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election — caused the apoplexy.

Monday

Bill Kauffman

How NATO became the most sacred cow in the barn

Outcasts in a party disoriented by Trump Derangement Syndrome (under which “down to you is up,” as Lou Reed once sang), the peace wing of the Democratic Party has been reduced to a corporal’s guard in the House of Representatives, its eminence the admirably nonconformist surfing Hawaiian Tulsi Gabbard.Peace Democrats are even scarcer in the U.S. Senate. (Where have you gone, Frank Church? Harold Hughes? George McGovern?) Anticipating the Tweeter-in-Chief’s recent blunderbuss European tour, the Senate approved by a near-Soviet margin of 97-2 a resolution expressing what sponsor Jack Reed (D-RI) called “ironclad” support for NATO.

Saturday

Cockburn

Sheriff David Clarke’s Russian connection

Sheriff David Clarke was paid $6,000 by jailed Russian activist Maria Butina. An organisation founded by Butina, an alleged Russian agent currently being held without bond, covered Clarke’s expenses as part of his trip to Russia with the NRA in 2015, Fox 6 in Milwaukee reported on Tuesday. (Cockburn has contacted Sheriff Clarke’s office for a comment – but not received one yet.) On Wednesday, Butina was deemed a flight risk and sent to jail until her trial. Today Clarke is slated to emcee an event with Vice President Mike Pence in Tennessee and another one Tuesday in Montana. Earlier this month, Pence and Clarke appeared together in Kansas City.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Steve Bannon: ‘We have to end the Cold War with Russia’

Yesterday, in central London, I spent an interesting hour with Stephen K. Bannon, discussing the fall out from President Trump’s Helsinki summit. We recorded a podcast which you can listen to here: https://audioboom.com/posts/6936042-steve-bannon-why-china-is-a-bigger-threat-than-russia I asked Bannon whether he felt the media were right to be working themselves into such a lather over Trump’s apparent siding with Russia over American intelligence services over the 2016 election – this was before the Commander-in-Chief’s peculiar ‘double negative’ volte-face in the afternoon. In reply, Bannon reiterated the now fairly standard – nonetheless fair – point that the media conflates Russian meddling with Russian collusion.

Dominic Green

Two out of three ain’t bad: Jetlagged Trump’s European roadshow, reviewed

Remember William of Occam? He was the medieval English monk who invented the razor. Not the one that kept his tonsure bare and shiny, but the one that he applied to the confusion of evidence. Bearded philosophers still use Occam’s Razor, the principle that when all else fails, the simplest explanation is the likeliest explanation. Apply William’s logic-chopper to Donald Trump’s Helsinki performance, and you’re quickly down to two possibilities. One is that Trump, as John Brennan frothed on Twitter, is ‘treasonous’ and ‘wholly in the pocket of Putin’, presumably because of unspecified but urine-scented kompromat.