World

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

What will emerge from the ashes in Afghanistan?

On Monday, James drew attention to Dexter Filkins’ stark assessment of the situation in Afghanstan and of the strength of the Taliban. Today, the attack on a hotel in Kabul gives that assessment a fresh and tragic resonance. What we seem to be witnessing is the Taliban, or at least elements of them, flaunting their murderous intent as the West prepares to leave the country. From the assassination of General Daud to this Mumbai-style raid, their methods are becoming more ambitious, more headline-grabbing. Around ten innocents are said to have been killed this time around, along with six to seven of the Islamist militiamen. Every death, of course, raises doubts

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Lagarde three giant steps closer as Russia, China and the US back her IMF bid

The 24 members of the IMF board are meeting to see if they can agree that Christine Lagarde should be the organisation’s next leader without a formal vote. Lagarde has already gained formidable backing. 40 per cent of the membership had indicated its support before today’s meetings, while her closest competitor, Mexican Augustin Carstens, had mustered just 12 per cent of the IMF’s votes. The remaining 48 per cent is now concentrating behind Lagarde’s candidacy. Her popularity extends beyond Europe into the vital emerging markets.  Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin gave his signature today, saying that he hopes she will ‘secure reform of the IMF in the interests of developing

Daniel Korski

Egypt votes – on Facebook

While analysts and diplomats are wondering who will win the forthcoming Egyptian presidential election, the military junta (the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces, or SCAF) that runs the country has organised a poll on their Facebook page. More than 200,000 people seem to have taken part. And even accounting for the obvious deficiencies (e.g. the bias towards an unrepresentative, internet-savvy, and liberal electorate) and bearing in mind the near-certainty of fraud given that the SCAF’s FB site is run by military intelligence, the results are interesting nonetheless. Topping the poll is, not unexpectedly, Mohammed El Baradei, the former head of the IAEA, whose internet-connected supporters have put him on

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Afghanistan: The worries mount as the West prepares to drawdown

Dexter Filkins is one of the great war correspondents of the post 9/11 world. So it is particularly sobering to read his assessment of the Afghan situation as the West prepares to drawdown. Filkins reports that: “According to American officers, the level of violence in Afghanistan this year is fifteen per cent higher than it was at this time last year. The insurgents, far from being degraded, appear to be as resilient as ever. And their sanctuaries in Pakistan, where the Taliban leadership resides mostly unmolested, remain more or less intact.” Compounding this problem is that the levels of corruption in the Afghan government are continuing to alienate the population.

Daniel Korski

The danger of unbalanced trade with China

The Chinese premier seems to like cars; the Chinese in general seem to like cars. China has bought MG in Britain and Volvo in Sweden, to which it has just added Saab. If the Chinese can make European car companies viable, then what’s the problem? Theoretically nothing: trade will help the Chinese and Europeans alike. But, as Robert Peston made clear in his questioning of Wen Jiabao, trade remains unbalanced. For example, European companies are excluded from public procurement contracts in China. It is also worth noting that China’s purchase of Spanish and Greek bonds over the past year, coupled with their promise to buy from Hungary, have made it

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Britain’s future economic challenge

Wen Jibao’s performance at today’s press conference was typically diplomatic. He declined to say that the UK was going too far in Libya and was emollient on the question of human rights. But his honeyed words can’t obscure the true nature of the Chinese regime. But Wen Jibao’s presence here was also a reminder that the economic competition Britain is going to face in the future is going to come increasingly from the east. If Britain is going to thrive in this world, then it is going to have to produce a huge amount of intellectual property. It is in this context, that Michael Gove’s educational reforms should be seen.

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The bear and the euro

Wen Jibao’s comments to the BBC about the euro crisis dramatise the shift in economic power from west to east. Jibao remarked that: “Trust is more important than currency and gold and now, during the debt crisis, we again bring trust to Europe. I have total trust in Europe’s economic development”. But China’s role in the euro crisis is far less problematic than Russia’s. As Stratfor has highlighted, if Russia — or one of its effectively state controlled companies — were to buy a considerable stake in Greece’s gas company DEPA when it is privatised (as it will be as part of the bailout package)  it could render irrelevant the

David Blackburn

Badgering Spelman

The stars must be crossed for Caroline Spelman. First came the forests, then the bin collection fiasco, then the circus animals and now the FT’s Jim Pickard has news that the Cabinet will meet in mid-July to discuss whether to start a badger cull in the south-west. Badgers are one of those perennial issues of contention. As Pickard says: ‘It’s one of those classic issues where both sides have a highly convincing argument. The farmers (who have, I’m told, offered to underwrite the killing) believe that badgers have caused bovine TB among cattle herds and are pushing hard for the cull. But the animal welfare people want vaccination instead. They say

Jerry Hayes

The Zionist and the Zealot

If anyone wants to attempt an understanding of any conflict they should study history. And if anyone wishes to understand the roots of the problems in the Middle East, and in particular Israel and Palestine, they should read Geoffrey Lewis’s beautifully researched and scholarly Balfour & Weizmann: The Zionist, The Zealot and the Emergence of Israel. Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and midwife of the Balfour Declaration was the Zionist, while Chaim Weizmann, a distinguished chemist whose efforts help shorten World War II, was the Zealot and its father. For its time, 2nd November 1917, the declaration is quite remarkable: ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in

Friday

Christopher Fildes

9 March 2002: What though the spicy breezes blow soft o’er Buenos Aires, incompetence messes it up

As the world braces itself for the inevitable Greek default, and investors look nervously at potentially exposed banks, perhaps it’s worth recalling Argentina’s implosion a decade ago. Here is what the Spectator made of it at the time: The missionary Bishop Heber wrote a hymn about Ceylon: ‘Where every prospect pleases And only man is vile.’ On being told that this was unfair to his converts, he corrected ‘Ceylon’ in the second edition to ‘Java’, but his point stands: there is no prospect, however pleasing, that is beyond the power of human and governmental incompetence to mess it up. We have seen the Heber factor at work in our own green and pleasant

Dominique Lazanski

How to regulate the Internet?

This week, the Open Rights Group launched a campaign against the proposed website blocking scheme between copyright holders and Internet Service Providers.  The campaign was launched on the back of a leaked document suggesting that a voluntary code for industry website blocking be introduced. The document was presented to Ed Vaizey, the relevant minister. Vaizey meets regularly with internet stakeholders to debate digital issues, including net neutrality, parental controls, and, of course, web blocking. These meetings are a vast improvement over the last government, which made technology policy decisions behind closed doors without much – if any – input from outsiders. Stakeholders want a new structure for reviewing gross copyright

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Parliament and Mob Rule

You’d need a closed heart not to feel great sympathy for the family of poor Milly Dowler. Her killer Levi Bellfield is a vile, appalling creature and one can understand why the Dowler family would wish him executed. Many will share their sentiments. Among them is Guido who writes: The political class complains that the public is disengaged, could that be in part because there are a number of issues where the political class refuses to carry out the wishes of the people. All polls since 1965 when hanging was abolished show that there is majority support for capital punishment, yet there is no majority for it in parliament. It

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Too Modest, Too Sane To Be President

As Presidential no-hopers go, Gary Johnson continues to demonstrate that he’s a refreshing change from – and cut above – the actual front-runners: “Presidential candidate Gary Johnson took a slightly unorthodox approach regarding job creation on Thursday. “I didn’t create a single job,” said the former Governor of New Mexico. His statement came in response to a National Review article that complimented Johnson on his record as governor, saying that when compared to the other governors running for president, the rate of job growth was highest under his watch. “Don’t get me wrong,” Johnson said in a statement. “We are proud of this distinction. We had a 11.6 percent job

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A nation of shareholders?

The great sleeper issue in British politics at the moment is what to do with the state owned bank shares. The money that could be generated by a sale of these bank shares is massive. The state’s stake in RBS is bigger than all the privatizations of the 1980s combined. Nick Clegg’s proposal (£) that everyone in the country be given shares in the banks is one option. But I suspect that would overly depress the value of the shares and would reduce the amount of money that the government would have in its pre-election war-chest. A more likely option is still a scheme where these shares are sold at

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Wages of Appeasement Are Paid in Foolishness

On the other hand, some policy retreats are simply depressing. One of the telling and therefore ignored scandals of our time is the apparent veto the Sun newspaper has over large parts of criminal justice policy. When the Tories were in opposition the paper demanded Dominic Grieve’s head on a platter as a price for its support and was duly so treated; now it and its reactionary allies have forced the government to retreat from sensible plans for rewarding early guilty pleas with reduced sentences. Alex Deane has a splendidly clear piece explaining why this was a mistake:  We already reward guilty pleas in the court system, on a sliding

Peter Hoskin

Obama draws down his forces

It is as Matt Cavanagh predicted in his article for Coffee House, a few weeks ago. Barack Obama has decided to pull 10,000 of the 30,000 American “surge” troops out of Afghanistan this year. The remaining 20,000 will be outtathere by next summer. “Drawdown,” is the word that the US President used in his address last night, and it is happening at quite a pace. He presented this approach as a victory, suggesting that America has already achieved most of its goals in the country, and that “the tide of war is receding”. But there were one or two revealing notes of concession. “We will not try to make Afghanistan

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

You Do the Fighting, I’ll Do the Talking

You can imagine, I think, the outrage there’d have been had Tony Blair or, god forbid, Gordon Brown slapped down the service cheifs in this fashion. But there was the Prime Minister, exasperated by repeated complaints from the heads of the Army, Royal Navy and RAF that their resources are perilously close to snapping-point, telling the press he sometimes feels like saying “I tell you what – you do the fighting and I’ll do the talking.” As I say, the Tory press would have torn poor Gordon to shreds had he dared suggest any such thing. As it is, the Telegraph’s editorial yesterday was relatively restrained but still sided with

Peter Hoskin

America and Britain turn their minds to the (fiscal) cost of war

Five-thousand, ten-thousand, or fifteen-thousand? That’s the question hanging in the air as Barack Obama prepares to clarify his withdrawal plan for Afghanistan this evening (or 0100 BST, if you’re minded to stay up). And it relates to how many of the 30,000 “surge” troops he will decide to release from the country this year. Washington’s money appears to be on 10,000, with half of them leaving this summer and half in December. But no-one outside of the President’s clique really yet knows. His final decision will say a fair amount about his intentions in Afghanistan, or at least about just how fast he wants to scram out of there. What’s

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Yes, There Is A War on Drugs. Part XIV.

On the one hand, it’s good that Ed Vulliamy is in the Guardian today highlighting the appalling miseries of the Mexican Drug War; on the other it’s unfortunate that his piece is so very desperately confused. But this is not just a war between narco-cartels. Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy – the cartels, acting like any corporation, have outsourced violence to gangs affiliated or unaffiliated with them, who compete for tenders with corrupt police officers. The army plays its own mercurial role. “Cartel war” does not explain the story my friend, and Juarez journalist, Sandra Rodriguez told me over dinner last month: about two children who

Monday

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

Political intrigue and Romance at the Donmar

Something is rotten in the state of Württemberg. Well, not quite Württemberg, because the young Frederich Schiller didn’t quite dare to express directly his criticisms of his first patron, Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg. Instead, he set this searing attack on whoring, machinating despots in an unnamed, ‘fictional’ German principality. The result is a drama of sweeping scope and universalist aspirations, but one that can’t hide the deeply personal anger of a young writer confronted with the world’s corruption. In Michael Grandage’s deftly handled production at the Donmar Warehouse, Luise Miller is gripping and beguiling, thanks to translator Mike Poulton’s mellow touch and an ensemble of consistently superb performances.

 Much of the