World Archives

Thursday

June 11, 2026

Budapest is nice but it’s no Birmingham, Alabama

I am shocked by how serene I am since moving back to America – to Birmingham, Alabama – from Budapest. Everything I love about life in general is in Europe. But to my surprise and regret, it’s not home. I don’t know why I was wrapped so tight by anxiety in Budapest, but I was. I had a great life there, no complaints – except for no church community, which wasn’t Budapest’s fault, just a matter of my inability in local languages. Being back in the US, in a place where I have access to an Orthodox church in my own language – well, I can literally feel the anxiety uncoiling within me. I can’t explain it, but I’m not going to think about it, just be grateful. I went to church yesterday at St. Symeon, the Orthodox Church in America parish in town.

Gavin Mortimer

Should Europe shelter Sudan’s refugees?

The Sudanese man who is in custody in Belfast, Northern Ireland, settled in the city after traveling through Paris and Dublin. In 2023, he was given asylum by the British Home Office. That same year, Sudan descended into civil war, a conflict that continues to rage with appalling accounts of barbarity. On the one side are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and on the other the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Caught in the middle are civilians, particularly women and children, who are being abused by both sides. Earlier this year, the UN’s Human Rights Council accused combatants of displaying "utter disregard for human life.

Wednesday

June 10, 2026

Daniel DePetris

Trump can’t give up on diplomacy with Iran

The New York Knicks may have lost Game 3 of the NBA Finals, but President Trump was still in a somewhat buoyant mood. Negotiations with Iran were going swimmingly, Trump claimed to reporters as he was headed back to Washington, so much so that an agreement could be reached in two or three days. Two days later, though, and a deal remains just as elusive today as it was last week and the week before that. In fact, not only is diplomacy apparently stuck, but the United States and Iran are increasingly taking shots at each other. The April 8 ceasefire is still in effect but resting on weaker foundations.

Sam McPhail

FIFA aren’t the only ones to blame for rip-off World Cup ticket prices

The FIFA World Cup starts tomorrow, and soccer fans and news outlets are complaining that tickets are far too expensive. The England Supporters Travel Club says that following England all the way to the final would cost supporters more than $7,000 in tickets alone. Prices have more than doubled since the last World Cup and the cheapest standard ticket for the final is $4,185. But how much of this is down to FIFA’s greed? This year's World Cup is jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico across 16 cities. The United States is holding 78 of the matches, while Canada and Mexico have 13 each. When bidding for the tournament, the host nations used existing events as pricing benchmarks: boxing matches, hockey tournaments and the Super Bowl.

Edward Howell

Can China keep North Korea in check?

When Xi Jinping visited North Korea in June 2019 for his first state visit, he would not have expected nearly seven years later that the hermit kingdom would be in an alliance with Russia. As Xi concluded his second visit to the country yesterday, the Chinese president’s pledges to "strengthen strategic coordination" and "uphold regional peace and development" with his North Korean counterpart emphasized how Beijing wants to ensure that its northeastern neighbor does not cross any red lines. With Beijing having been Pyongyang’s largest economic partner for nearly two decades, Xi’s visit serves as a clear reminder to North Korea that China wants to maintain close ties and, crucially, ensure stability on the Korean Peninsula.

Monday

June 8, 2026

John Power

Sixteen times that Trump nearly ended the Iran war

Today marks a hundred days since America and Israel began launching strikes on Iran on February 28. The very next day, Donald Trump told the Atlantic that Iran’s leaders "want to talk," saying they should have made a deal sooner and that "they played too cute." Three days after Trump said this, Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz was closed. Since then, we have been told dozens of times that we are on the brink of a lasting deal between Iran and America, often in the President’s statements on Truth Social. At the end of last month, Axios reported that US and Iranian negotiators had reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum which would reopen the Strait, which simply needed Trump’s sign off.

Mark Brolin

Denmark and the myth of centrism’s reinvention

The European center’s favorite trick, when losing voters, is to explain that democracy is under grave threat and that power must therefore remain inside the circle of “sensible” centrists who know why voters are wrong. Starmer embodies the British variant of centrism: despite promises of real change, only managerial declinism has emerged Denmark has now provided the latest demonstration. Almost ten weeks after the election, Mette Frederiksen has secured another government. Her Social Democrats suffered their worst result since 1903, falling to 38 seats in a parliament of 179.

Roger Kimball

Why America is sounding the alarm about Britain and Europe

Back in November, the State Department warned that “mass migration poses an existential threat to western civilization and undermines the stability of key American allies.” In February, in his address to the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio expanded on that theme. After the Berlin Wall fell, Rubio noted, many in the West thought “the end of history” had finally arrived. Utopia was nigh. Western nations opened their borders, forsook spending on defense in order to bolster the welfare state and “outsourced” their national sovereignty. This was, Rubio warned, to ignore both human nature as well as the lessons of “over 5,000 years of recorded human history. And it has cost us dearly.

Ben Clerkin

Is the US-Israel alliance breaking down?

This morning at 5.53am, air raid sirens sounded across Tel Aviv. War-weary locals largely went about their business as usual unfazed by the eerie wail, while out of towners headed at speed to the nearest bomb shelter. The ballistic missile was fired from Yemen and intercepted by the IDF. At 7.02am, again, mobile phones buzzed with warnings to take shelter. Iran had fired a barrage of ballistic missiles. The beach volleyball game being played outside my hotel didn’t stop. The missiles "disintegrated” or fell harmlessly. Israelis hardly batted an eyelid, yet regional experts say that this could be the start of a new war between Israel and Iran, the third of the year. While Iran claimed it had ended its military operations against Israel.

Saturday

June 6, 2026

Freddy Gray

Why is Cenk Uygur banned from Britain, really?

50 min listen

Freddy is joined by Cenk Uygur after he and Hasan Piker were banned from entering Britain. They discuss free speech, debate Cenk's position on criticizing Israel, Britain’s censorious turn and what the Henry Nowak case reveals about policing and anti-racism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Why is Cenk Uygur banned from Britain, really?

Thursday

June 4, 2026

Ruaridh Nicoll

Cuba is next on Trump’s hit list

It’s hot in Havana. The summer’s electrical storms have arrived, lighting up the sky, while down on the ground we’ve been without power for 16 hours, meaning no sleep. The four-month-old US oil blockade is biting, but Cuba’s government still refuses to bend the knee to Washington, so surveillance aircraft are circling. An aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, has arrived in the neighborhood. We expect an attack at any moment. Donald Trump has made it clear that after Venezuela and Iran, Cuba is next on his list for decapitation. His administration wants a change of government and the economy opened up. Cuba’s 95-year-old ex-president Raúl Castro has been indicted for murder, opening the way for an abduction like the one in Caracas in January. "I do believe I’ll be...

Tim Shipman

Revealed: the missing Mandelson messages

Darren Jones has become the UK government’s Walter Model, the general known during World War Two as "the Führer’s fireman" for his deployment to shore up any position which appeared lost. In that capacity, Britain’s first Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister had the thankless task of presenting the government’s case to the House of Commons on Monday following the publication of 1,500 pages of documents relating to Peter Mandelson. Jones himself was spared direct embarrassment because none of his exchanges with the disgraced peer came to light in the trawl of memos, emails and WhatsApp exchanges.

Wednesday

June 3, 2026

Cockburn

Andy Ogles goes both ways: congressman flip-flops on ‘homosexuality’ post

Andy Ogles, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, chose an unorthodox way to mark Pride month yesterday: by tweeting, “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.” The backlash was swift and came from all quarters, even Ogles’s fellow Republicans. "The behavior of consenting adults is their business," Senator Ted Cruz said. "Andy, you have family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and constituents who are gay and lesbian," tweeted Representative Mike Lawler. "What an absolutely idiotic statement to make.” Some of those colleagues include Trump appointees such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg, as well as the President's top pollster Tony Fabrizio. Then came the climbdown.

Sabrina Philip

The madcap effort to ban farming, fishing and hunting in Oregon

What happens when something you do every day becomes illegal? If animal rights activists in Oregon have their way, the state’s hunters, fishers and farmers may be about to find out. A sweeping new initiative potentially headed for the November ballot targets the legality of farming, hunting, fishing, ranching, animal sciences, or even killing a mouse that has scurried in your house. Initiative Petition 28 (IP28) would make Oregon the first state in the US to ban such practices. Initiative Petition 28 proposes the enforcement of the PEACE Act, or the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions. The act states animals should be cared for “in ways that minimize their pain, stress, fear, and suffering.

Andrew Doyle

Henry Nowak and the politics of deflection

While Britain is still reeling from the horrific murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, an astonishing article has appeared in El País, Spain’s largest national newspaper. Rather than focus on the failures of the police officers, or the institutional bias within the force, the headline steers its readers away from the case and towards the outlet’s own obsessions. The headline translates as "Farage’s far right stirs up hatred in the UK after a young man is stabbed to death by a Sikh man." As Alejo Schapire (an Argentine journalist based in France) has pointed out, this is the first and only article produced by El País on the subject of the Nowak killing. Instead of an image of the victim, the newspaper has opted for a photograph of Nigel Farage.

Charles Cornish-Dale

France’s hidden immigration reality

A people was there, stable, occupying the same territory for fifteen or twenty centuries. And suddenly, very quickly, in one or two generations, one or more other peoples substitute themselves for it. It is replaced, it is no longer itself. Those are the words of Renaud Camus, France’s most controversial living intellectual. They describe a process he’s called “the Great Replacement.” He coined the term in 2010. Since then, the term has been bitterly disputed. Now, though, it’s becoming harder and harder to deny.

Tuesday

June 2, 2026

Mark Galeotti

Has America been hacking the phones of Kremlin officials?

In 2014, Vladimir Putin notoriously described the internet as originally a "special project of the CIA" that "is still developing as such." He is also averse to mobile phones, not using or owning one himself and banning them from his offices. These two concerns have come together in today’s announcement by the Federal Security Service (FSB) that it had uncovered a massive "multi-level operation" to hack the smartphones of Russian officials. The FSB’s official announcement states that: Using the technical capabilities of large international IT corporations and mobile communications, representatives of foreign intelligence agencies carried out the covert, unauthorized collection of various types of information from the devices of cyberattack targets.

Jane Stannus

Canada is misremembering the Komagata Maru incident

Another day, another act of national self-abasement from the Canadian government. On May 23, it was all about the Komagata Maru incident, "a moment where Canada failed to uphold our values, with horrific consequences," according to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Pierre Poilievre chimed in, calling it "a dark and shameful chapter in our history and a painful injustice." The official version is as follows: on May 23, 1914, 376 passengers of the SS Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver, hoping for a better life. But because of racist Canadian immigration policy, most were denied entry. They waited for two months in the harbor with limited access to food, water and medical care, but were eventually forced to leave.

Joshua S. Treviño

How the US is taking on Mexico’s narco-politicians

Soberanía is non-negotiable. That’s what Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum repeats time and again, at her mañaneras, at speeches, at rallies, on television and in person. She says it, her government says it, her political party says it, her apparatus says it. The agents of the United States of America must never, ever set foot on Mexican soil in any operational capacity. The sovereignty of the nation comes first – even before the security of the nation, even before the nation’s own capacity to police itself, even before the safety and lives of its own citizens. As Sheinbaum herself has noted, the first American intervención in Mexico cost the country half its territory.

Monday

June 1, 2026

Arnout Nuijt

Belgium has a free speech problem

The conviction by a Belgian court of far-right activist Dries Van Langenhove has alarmed both the country’s right and left. Van Langenhove – let there be no doubt – belongs to some of Belgium’s darker far-right movements. He has previously been convicted of racism and Holocaust denial. Yet he has now been fined €4,000, for what the judge described as "apparently having the intention' to incite hatred and violence, rather than for a crime he was clearly proven to have committed. Bart Eeckhout, chief commentator of Belgium’s left-leaning daily De Morgen – certainly no friend of Van Langenhove – unexpectedly described the conviction for incitement to hatred, violence and racism as an injustice.