World

Painful birth of a new epoch of simplicity

An unpopular, costly war; a sliding dollar; high levels of US government debt; behind us, 20 years of growth; oil and commodity prices out of control… Remember the first oil shock of 1973? Or are we looking at 2008? Just as 1973 was the harbinger of a new political epoch — of individualism ascendant over social democracy — so 2008 will be. But this time, we’ll be trading failed liberal individualism for an epoch of restraint, regulation and simplicity. The seeds of each economic epoch spring from the understanding of the crisis that precipitates it. Social democracy came out of the Crash of 1929 because the Great Depression led us

Alex Massie

Bring Me the Head of…Michael Ballack

Even I, a fan of robust tabloid journalism, have to wonder if this might be going just a little bit far… The Guardian reports: Poland’s national football coach apologised yesterday after a tabloid newspaper ran a gruesome depiction of him holding the severed heads of Germany’s national trainer and team captain and demanded he slaughter them at the forthcoming Euro 2008 championships. The photomontage in Super Express of Poland’s Dutch coach, Leo Beenhakker, clutching the bloodied heads of Michael Ballack and Joachim Löw provoked outrage in Germany and threatened to overshadow the match between the two group B teams on Sunday. The picture ran alongside the caption: “Leo, Give us

Alex Massie

The Trials of Guantanamo

From a WaPo dispatch from the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed: Mohammed appeared to have equal disdain for the process, but he only briefly mentioned his “torturing” at the hands of U.S. officials, something he acknowledged he was warned not to mention in open court, lest a security official hit a button muting the audio to observers in the courtroom and at a media center nearby. That button was pushed at least a few times on Thursday when detainees appeared to discuss elements of their early captivity in secret facilities or the way they were treated. Embarrassing, yes? And doesn’t this “mute” button give extra credence to KSM’s claims, while

Alex Massie

Last Orders

At long last: Hillary will quit on Saturday. I think Nick Garland’s cartoon in the Telegraph a) sums it up well and b) is oddly affecting. UPDATE: In response to a commenter, there’s no caption missing. None is required…

Alex Massie

Question of the Day | 5 June 2008

Courtesy of Charles Moore in The Spectator: On the Tube recently, I saw advertisements for mass meetings to hear ‘one of India’s most highly regarded living Saints’. Is there a caste system of living sainthood? Could one be a living saint and yet be lowly regarded?

Alex Massie

Transatlantic Currents: Press Division

Dan Drezner thinks that the Clintons are probably right to suppose that the press has favoured Barack Obama this year. Still, he says, they probably shouldn’t read the UK papers and cites this piece by the Times’ Tim Reid which begins: Seventeen months after she sat regally in her New York living room and calmly declared: “I’m in and I’m in to win,” Hillary Clinton stands on a stage in a stifling hot shed in South Dakota, coughing and spluttering, as her daughter, Chelsea, grabs the microphone from her hand to take over the show. “A long campaign,” the former First Lady chokes out between sips of water. Her husband,

Alex Massie

The Rhetoric of War

Breaking News: George W Bush is not Henry V. Shocking, I know. According to former General Ricardo Sanchez: Among the anecdotes in “Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story” is an arresting portrait of Bush after four contractors were killed in Fallujah in 2004, triggering a fierce U.S. response that was reportedly egged on by the president. During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk: “Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell!

Alex Massie

What will she do now?

All sorts of speculation as to what Hillary Clinton will do once the primary season ends this evening and even her doughtiest supporters might begin to realise it’s unlikely she’s going to be the Democratic party’s nominee. Some of them doubtless want her to “fight on” all the way to the convention. For what little it’s worth I’d hazard that this is unlikely. Self-interest demands that she concede this week and that she does so graciously. At the risk of looking too far down the road (why bother with this election when we can have fun with one to come?) let’s just say that it’s all about 2012. Assume that

Alex Massie

Adventures in Marketing

Lots of good things come from China, but this is magnificent. Perhaps James Fallows can do a series of posts on counterfeit Chinese whisky? Via, here, here, here, here and here.

Alex Massie

Tales from the Security State

Great. Travelling to the United States from western europe (and other countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Programme) just got made more complicated and more of a hassle than it already is. Brace yourselves for horror stories starting in August… Note too that toddlers will also have to register online 72 hours before boarding their plane: Accompanied and unaccompanied children, regardless of age, will be required to obtain an independent ESTA authorization and determination of eligibility. True, you only need do this once (they say now) every two years, but still… Tedious.

Alex Massie

The new kings of Western Swing?

Via Cato, comes this report from The Times: They turn out in their hundreds in Stetsons and boots as hits such as the Crazy Foot Mambo and the Cowboy Strut echo around their village halls. They are drawn by a love of American culture – although definitely not American politics – and a passion for line dancing… Now country and western has become so big in France that the country’s bureaucrats have decided to bring the craze under state control. The French administration has moved to create an official country dancing diploma as part of a drive to regulate the fad. Authorised instructors who have been on publicly funded training

Obama and McCain offer a choice, not an echo

In the Republican corner it is to be John Sidney McCain III, white, age 71. In the Democratic corner we have Barack Hussein Obama, black, age 46. No American election battle since the days of Franklin Roosevelt has attracted so much worldwide attention. A recent visitor to North Korea, a nation supposedly hermetically sealed from the rest of the world, tells me that the first question his ‘minder’ asked was: ‘Who will win the American elections?’ His concern is unsurprising: a President McCain would favour continuing existing multilateral pressure on North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapons, and might even give some meaning to the phrase ‘or else’. President Obama

Alex Massie

Shadowing the GOP

Ezra Klein asks if Jim Webb is “too good for the Vice-Presidency”. And perhaps he is. Or rather, he’d be more useful to Democrats if he remained in the Senate, uninhibited by the restrictions imposed by the Vice-Presidency. And perhaps that too is so. Nonetheless Ezra’s piece also demonstrates the extent to which Webb is by some way the most interesting but also, perhaps, riskiest choice Obama could make. Still, here’s another notion: Obama might consider naming some members of his cabinet this summer, creating a British-style shadow cabinet to act as spokesmen for his campaign during the general election. Clearly, all such nominees would remain subject to Congressional confirmation,

Alex Massie

The worst team in Europe?

Are Paris Saint-Germain the worst football team in Europe? This obviously depends upon how one measures or defines “worst”. PSG, despite another appalling season, would (thankfully) still be expected to defeat, say, Shamrock Rovers. But in a pound-for-pound sense is there a more pathetic club in europe? I’s not just that they only narrowly avoided relegation this season, it’s that they continue to squander resources. Even when they were owned by Canal Plus, PSG under-performed. Indeed, since the club was formed in 1970 they’ve only won the French championship twice (in 1986 and 1994), despite being one of the richest clubs in France and the only major club in Paris.

Alex Massie

The Che Chronicles

How many people really think of Che Guevara as a romantic, if occasionally headstrong, revolutionary? Outside Latin America, I mean. Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but does anyone under the age of 35 really give even half a damn about Che Guevara? Certainly, the anti-Che forces continue to write as though he remained a clear, present, danger to all things good and holy. Here’s John J Miller at The Corner, for instance: I have no objection to a movie about the life of Che Guevara. At least in theory. Yet it’s probably impossible for Hollywood to make an honest film about this awful man — case in point being the

Alex Massie

Hillary of Harare

In one sense there’s little point in writing about Hillary Clinton anymore. She’s lost. Still, if there is any truth to the notion, much-favoured by Washington reporters, that you can gain a sense of character and, indeed, governing style from the way in which a candidate campaigns then, by gum, we should be glad that Hillary Clinton is not going to be the next President of the United States. Her caterwauling about the perceived injustice of not counting the Florida and Michigan primary results on account of their determination to break DNC rules, has conquered many peaks of absurdity lately. Norm draws my attention to this one: People go through

Alex Massie

The Kennedy Empire

Remember: it’s a Republic, not a Democracy. From the New York Daily News: Ted Kennedy has made clear to confidants that when his time is up, he wants his Senate seat to stay in the family – with his wife, Vicki. Multiple sources in Massachusetts with close ties to the liberal lion say his wife of 16 years has long been his choice to continue carrying the family flame in the Senate. Kennedy won the seat in 1962; his brother John held it from 1953 to 1960. [Hat-tip, Eve Fairbanks.]

Alex Massie

Belgian BBQ in Memphis

American breakfasts are pretty good, or at least as fine as can be expected from a meal that doesn’t include black pudding. But there’s no doubting that the United States’ greatest culinary marvel is proper BBQ. It’s the finest American food there is. Porcine perfection. And BBQ is going international, according to this lovely piece in the Washington Post: It’s difficult enough for any new team to compete in the Super Bowl of Swine, which sends smoke wafting over downtown Memphis for three days every year. There are rules (written and unwritten) and traditions aplenty in this 30-year-old contest, which drew 125,000 spectators to one of the cradles of American

Alex Massie

If Hillary had skipped Iowa?

The Los Angeles Times’ Don Frederick claims Barack Obama has “disrespected” Kentucky by declining to campaign in the Bluegrass State. Does this mean he disrespected Guam too? More interestingly – if no more usefully – Frederick asks what might have happened if Clinton had, as her then deputy campaign manager Mike Henry urged, simply skipped the Iowa caucuses entirely? Well, yes, there’s something to that. At the risk of stating the obvious, Iowa was by some clear distance the most important state in the race. That seems clear now. But that importance is qualified: Iowa would not have been as significant if John Edwards had won. True, Edwards would presumably