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Cockburn stumbled into The Spectator’s New York office this morning afflicted with that annual January woe: the post-holiday blues. He was having a serious pout at his desk before he was chastened out of this gloom by his northern colleagues’ new neighbor: Nicolás Maduro. No one had a worse Christmas season than the deposed Venezuelan
On this occasion no one can accuse Donald Trump of hyperbole. The President praised the Delta Force team that seized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as “incredible.” The operation to capture Maduro – codenamed “Absolute Resolve” – was months in the planning, and Trump watched it unfold in real time. “They broke into places that were
The year just gone has hardly been a banner year for either the Duke or Duchess of Sussex, culminating in the humiliation of yet another publicist departing from their employment at its end. However, all of us hope that 2026 will be an improvement. Last weekend brought the potentially good news for Harry – although, perhaps, less so for the
One of the things I admire about Zohran Mamdani is his candor. You know where you stand with him. Mamdani, who was sworn in a few days ago by Senator Bernie Sanders as New York’s first Muslim mayor and also its first avowedly socialist mayor, makes no bones about his ambitions. He was elected as a “democratic socialist,”
The Vietnam war was the first Americans watched on their nightly TV news, the Gulf War the first that could be followed live on CNN, and the Global War on Terror the first documented online through the work of bloggers, citizen journalists and video-sharing sites like LiveLeak. Meme warfare is being used not only to
When the earthquake is big, the porcelain rattles far and wide. And that’s exactly what’s happening now… in Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and even Greenland. The plates are rattling after the Trump Administration’s swift, successful mission to capture Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who was allegedly a major figure in the country’s
The US military operation to track down, capture and fly Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro back to the United States for prosecution on drug trafficking charges went flawlessly. It was well-coordinated, meticulously planned and executed to a tee. Nearly two days after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken into U.S. custody, details of the
One of the few benefits of being an anthropologist is the uncanny exhilaration one feels watching novel current events as re-runs from previous episodes in the history of mankind. Donald Trump’s capture of Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, is no exception. Kidnapping Latin American emperors is a continental tradition. It’s simply the most practical method
During the early hours of Saturday January 3, an official statement from the White House, signed by President Trump, confirmed that the US had captured both President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and taken them out of Venezuela. At 2 a.m. sharp, thunderous sounds echoed through the capital city, part of what Trump
And just like that, the left loses interest in the Middle East. In 2025, they spoke of little else. They culturally appropriated Arab headwear, poncing about in China-made keffiyehs. They wrapped themselves in the Palestine colors. They frothed day and night about a “murderous regime” – you know who. And yet now, as a Middle
On the afternoon of December 28 in a Tehran electronics bazaar, shopkeepers (known as bazaaris) shuttered their shops and walked out, outraged at a planned gas price rise and crippled at the continuing slide in the value of the Iranian currency and the government’s powerlessness to shepherd Iran’s economy toward something better than corruption, unemployment
Donald Trump likes to start the new year with a bang – or better yet a series of loud bangs. On January 3, 2020, his first administration ordered the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Exactly six years later, his second administration has carried out a
Donald Trump’s undeclared war in Venezuela against the Marxist regime of President Nicolas Maduro has erupted into the open. Trump says the US has captured Venezuela’s leader and his wife. In a statement on Truth Social, Trump wrote: The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President
For years, Joe Biden’s handlers did their best to hide the fact from us that their boss was a senile, cancer-ridden mummy. This isn’t the case with Donald Trump, an equally aged President. We know everything, within reason, about Trump’s every bodily function. As a New Year’s gift to us, the Wall Street Journal called
Trump should stop all federal welfare funds to offending venues, and much of the “Somali community" should be repatriated
It was a performance worthy of an Oscar or maybe a Tony. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s address at his swearing in ceremony on New Year’s Day electrified the freezing crowd every bit as much as it shocked the Democratic establishment, and perhaps even the 50 percent of New Yorkers who didn’t vote for him. The newly-minted
It used to be said that you could walk from the west of Ireland to Nantucket on the backs of the cod, so thick was the Atlantic with the fish. But as readers of a certain age will remember, by the last decade of the last century, it was looking doubtful that the cod population
France seems to be witnessing more gratuitous attacks and stabbings. On the day after Christmas, in the middle of central Paris, a man went on a knife rampage through the metro. He struck out at random, stabbing women on station platforms at République, Arts et Métiers and Opéra. There was screaming. There was blood. One
Lucky subscribers to “As Ever,” Meghan Markle’s Pravda-esque newsletter, were given an exclusive insight this festive season into how the Duchess of Sussex would be spending the Christmas period. She wrote that “Last night, I was nibbling the remnants of our Christmas Eve feast (dim sum this year), wrapping a few last-minute gifts, and tiptoeing
The Bondi murders painted a picture constituted out of the contrast between shade and light. This was the chiaroscuro massacre. But, perhaps because we have become desensitized by endless dark descriptions of mass killings over the years, our attention was as much on the moments of brightness on that Sydney beach: the onlookers who grappled
On December 15, the White House was the setting for its own romantic holiday movie, though it didn’t involve amnesia or a big-city career gal moving to a small town to reconnect with her high-school boyfriend who’s now a lumberjack and handyman. Instead, President Trump “let the cat out of the bag” by announcing that
I hate to be the bearer of good news, but the US economy is doing quite well. A delayed government report shows that third-quarter GDP grew at 4.3 percent, hardly a record, but still healthy, the highest growth rate in two years. Last week’s inflation report showed a lower-than-expected number, and wage growth is exceeding
The new naughty list just dropped, as the kids say these days. The pre-Christmas release of the Epstein files, or at least some of them – elves heavily redacted – has brought much-needed good cheer to all of us. Not every red face on Christmas afternoon will be down to port and brandy this year.
Fresh off her appearance at the United Nations, where she spoke eloquently about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, pop star Nicki Minaj made a surprise appearance at this weekend’s Turning Point USA convention in Phoenix, leaving no doubt about where her politics lie. Of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, she said, “This administration is
Happy Holidays, friends. Think about that word for a moment. Hold it in your sacred space. Surely that’s what the Holidays are all about? Friends. Like family – only better. Friends – the family we choose. People who are respectful and loving towards us. Like Oprah. (Hi, Oprah!) Or like people who are proficient at hair and makeup
I can remember when I first realized that something strange was happening to white men in Hollywood. It was around 2014, and my younger colleagues in LA – often British writers, directors and actors who had moved to California to “make it” – began reporting, anecdotally, that their work was disappearing. By that I don’t
Each Supreme Court term typically includes at least one explosive case that inflames political passions and captures the public imagination. When the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, or when it greatly broadened presidential immunity, as it did last year in Trump v. the United States, or when it ruled against race-based college admissions
When I was a boy, Friday nights were time for a new episode of The Rockford Files, a show about a hapless ex con PI, played by James Garner, who lived on a boat in a California marina. Fifty years later, Friday nights are for a different kind of files: the Epstein Files. Usually, government
After four days of looking like a rabbit in the headlights, embattled Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, finally started to act like a national leader willing to do what’s right. Yesterday, Labor’s Albanese announced his government’s response to a plan to combat anti-Semitism proposed by his hand-picked special envoy on anti-Semitism, Jewish community leader Jillian
Russia started the war on Ukraine, so Russia should pay for the damage it has wrought. Such was Volodymyr Zelensky’s forceful message to European leaders last night as he pleaded for a “reparations loan” backed by the €190 billion ($222 billion) of Russian Central Bank capital frozen in a Belgian clearing bank since Putin’s full-scale
“On the tax front,” says Mitt Romney, “it’s time for rich people like me to pay more.” It’s always slightly annoying for regular Americans when squillionaires announce that people like them ought to be contributing more to the Treasury. (Nobody’s stopping you from writing a big cheque, Mitt!) But Romney’s intervention in today’s New York Times is
President Donald Trump has reopened the healthcare debate with a mix of ideas that do not align. He has pledged to “terminate” Obamacare, then signaled openness to extending ACA subsidies, then endorsed personal freedom accounts that would send money directly to individuals. These proposals represent very different diagnoses of what is wrong with American health
The 22nd Amendment leaves open several possible ways a two-term president could serve all or part of a third term without being elected. The text of that amendment, as ratified, prohibits a two-term president from “being elected” to a third term, but it doesn’t prohibit him from “serving,” “acting” or “holding” that office. Indeed, the
“Here ve go again” says Melania Trump to the camera at the start of the new trailer for MELANIA – a feature documentary on the First Lady from Jeff Bezos’s Amazon Studios. This House of Cards-style breaking of the fourth wall seems to promise a certain intrigue in the movie to come. The trailer, which is soundtracked an Amadeus-esque orchestral