International politics

Now look, as Tony Blair would say, homophobia is bad. Very bad. But does that mean we have to turn the Sochi Winter Olympics into a sort of global gay pride event, simply because Russia has passed a not very pleasant law against teaching children about homosexuality? Apparently it does. Every right-thinking hack on earth, it seems, has expressed their disgust at Putin’s bigotry. Politicians are also desperate to let on, though they can’t say so publicly, that they really don’t approve of Russia. And Progressive media companies are using the opening of the Games today to show off their moral superiority to those backward Russians. Google has turned its logo into a rainbow. The

And so to the winter Olympic Games which should not be hosted by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Sure, Putin’s Russia is not nearly as horrific as Stalin’s Russia but when that’s the yardstick for decency you know you’ve bankrupted yourself. Was anyone taken in by Putin’s decision to release a handful of political prisoners recently? Shame on them if they were gulled by such an obvious play. Again, it is better that the likes of Mikhail Khodorkhovsky and Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova freed but they should never have been in prison in the first place. The upside, as so often in Russia, is heavily qualified. The Pussy Riot girls

Almost no idea is rotten enough that it can’t or won’t be defended by some scoundrel somewhere. Even so, the equanimity with which some folk have greeted the proposed ICC coup is startling. Sure, the likes of Andy Bull, Mike Selvey and Simon Wilde each note that the ECB-CA-BCCI takeover is seriously flawed but, gosh, something needs to be done about the International Cricket Council and, by jove, this is at least something. Besides, Giles Clarke and his two pals say they wish to protect test cricket so we should take that assurance at face value and all will be well. Or something. I must say that seems an oddly credulous approach

January 2014, two years before the Iowa caucuses and already Chris Christie, the pugnacious governor of New Jersey, has been handed the Black Spot. His chances of securing the Republican party’s presidential nomination are already ruined. Or so the likes of Jonathan Chait would have us believe. Why? Because, well because Chris Christie is a New Jersey kind of politician. With all that entails. And because he’s a punk and a bully. Christie is guilty on each of these charges. Let’s rewind. Last September Christie, running for re-election, was keen to harvest endorsements from Democratic figures in the Garden State. This would make him seem a presidential kinda guy. The

The Commons was in congratulatory mode this afternoon when William Hague gave his statement on the deal with Iran. Baroness Ashton, not familiar with heaps of praise falling on her, came in for congratulations from across the House, particularly from Hague and Douglas Alexander. Both men also agreed that this deal is the first step towards what Alexander called ‘that more difficult and complex agreement’ that will secure long-term stability in the region. listen to ‘William Hague’s statement on the Iran nuclear deal: ‘This is an important, necessary and completely justified step’’ on Audioboo

The fiftieth anniversary of John F Kennedy’s assassination is, of course, an occasion for a fresh outbreak of the virulent hagiography that has corrupted the memory of his actual record. The New York Times, a paper that should know better by now, published an article this week that repeated the old lie that somehow right-wing hysterics in Texas were the people really responsible for Kennedy’s murder. A theory inconvenienced only by the fact Lee Harvey Oswald was a pro-Castro leftist. But never mind that. Better to reframe the assassination as a part of America’s culture wars. And we know who the guilty men are in those, don’t we? American history is a

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s decision to begin a hunger strike in protest against the conditions she and her fellow prisoners endure inside Russia’s modern gulag will, doubtless, be met with a measure of scorn or lack of sympathy by some. After all, there were plenty of people who thought Pussy Riot – the Russian band of which Tolokonnivoka is the most high-profile member – got what they deserved last year. Not all of these hanging judges live in Russia either. To recap: three of Pussy Riot’s members were imprisoned last year having been convicted of, essentially, embarrassing the Orthodox Church and Vladimir Putin. The band’s methods may not be to everyone’s tastes but some

Borders matter less than they used to. That’s not always apparent in this country protected as it is by the sea but on the continent frontiers are, once again, increasingly arbitrary and meaningless lines on a map. Modern Europe, in this respect, is beginning to look like an older Europe. Consider the new German invasion of the east. Invasion is, of course, too hysterical a term. Nevertheless, according to this fascinating Bloomberg report, (hat-tip: Tyler Cowen) increasing numbers of German pensioners are moving to Poland and elsewhere in search of more affordable care to ease them through their final years. Not quite lebensraum then but you get the idea. As many as one in

There’s little need for people opposed to launching any kind of attack on Syria to expend much energy doing so when those tasked with making the case for reminding Bashar al-Assad that using chemical weapons is not something the international community can or will ignore are making such a bloody hash of the job. Here, for instance, is John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, reminding us all that the Americans really don’t want to be taking action at all. They’ve been pushed into doing so, the result of both the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons (why assume Assad’s people are clever enough not to use them?) and by President Barack

What a nice host Vladimir Putin is. Shortly after world leaders gathered in his country for the G20 summit in St Petersburg, a briefing from the President’s official spokesman that Britain is ‘just a small island no-one pays any attention to’ made its way into the media. Nothing like rubbing the nose of one of your guests in the dirt as politicians in this country work out where Britain now stands in the world after rejecting intervention in Syria (more on this in James’s column this week). A Downing Street source has responded in the brittle manner of a slighted guest at a tense dinner party (think an international version of