The Social World

Category: Politics

  • Are the walls closing in on Emmanuel Macron?

    Are the walls closing in on Emmanuel Macron?

    French Prime Minister François Bayrou has recalled parliament for a confidence vote on September 9, betting he can outmaneuver a surging protest movement before it paralyzes France. The grassroots “Bloquons tout” campaign, echoing the gilets jaunes (“Yellow vests”) of 2018-19 and fueled by the hard left, plans to halt trains, buses, schools, taxis, refineries and ports. It is a general strike in all but name. Bayrou’s move aims to reassert control before chaos takes hold, but with the vote just two days before the open-ended strike begins, failure could topple his government and ignite a broader assault on President Macron’s authority. This morning, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) announced its plans to file a motion of destitution against Macron on September 23 if Bayrou falls, raising the stakes further.

    At the heart of this crisis is the economy. France’s debt has blown past 110 percent of GDP and the budget hole for 2025 stands at around $55 billion. Before the summer break, Bayrou proposed the deepest spending cuts in a generation, in a country where public spending accounts for nearly 60 percent of GDP. The unions are furious. The French are addicted to public spending and there’s a deep-seated mentality that the government owes people ever more. Mélenchon has turned the budget battle into a populist crusade against Macron’s “rich man’s government,” rallying the left and calling on supporters to shut the country down unless the cuts are scrapped. Gilets jaunes veterans have been readying to go back on the streets.

    Within minutes of the end of the press conference in Paris at which Bayrou announced the confidence vote, Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s LFI and others declared they would not support the government. It also appeared yesterday evening that the Socialists were leaning against Bayrou, an immediate slap in the face for him and indirectly for Macron. This morning, Mélenchon escalated the pressure, vowing to push for Macron’s impeachment on September 23 if the vote fails, blaming the president for the crisis rather than Bayrou.

    Bayrou’s move was designed to seize the initiative before the country slides into chaos, but the arithmetic is now completely against him. To survive, he needs 289 votes. His Macron-centrist alliance can deliver barely 165. The consensus yesterday evening among journalists and leading Paris-based analysts is that the government has almost no chance of surviving. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally was the only possible lifeline, and immediately after the announcement they made clear that they would not help Bayrou. A curt statement from the RN said it was “not inclined to support” the government. Bayrou and Macron’s gamble has almost certainly failed. It looks as though Macron and Bayrou completely miscalculated their move.

    Bayrou’s bold move was meant to buy Macron time. But it now threatens to blow up his presidency

    Le Pen no doubt very rapidly concluded that there is no need to save Macron’s prime minister to satisfy her own ambitions. Polls suggest she would emerge from early parliamentary elections as the largest force in the Assembly, even if personally she cannot run. Her party would still, however, fall short of a majority, making her refusal to back Bayrou cost-free and politically advantageous. If the government falls, Macron’s authority erodes further, and the RN’s narrative of “ordinary France versus Parisian elites” hardens. Mélenchon, meanwhile, is actively pushing for Bayrou’s downfall. LFI has seized control of the anti-austerity message and united Socialists, Greens and hard-left radicals behind him. For Mélenchon, an early election offers the chance to turn street anger into parliamentary power.

    Bayrou’s bold move was meant to buy Macron time. But it now threatens to blow up his presidency. If indeed Bayrou loses the confidence vote, Macron will face an impeachment process. He could try to appoint another sacrificial prime minister to preside over austerity and strikes, but no one credible will want the job. He could also call an early election, risking handing power to Mélenchon or leaving the country even more paralyzed. Or he could simply sit tight and let the blockades and market jitters spiral while he waits out the end of his term. If Bayrou falls, Macron may limp on in the Élysée, but the Fifth Republic itself risks a reckoning.

    As Bayrou battles parliament, the markets are signaling that France’s fiscal credibility hangs by a thread. Bond yields are creeping up. Somehow the ratings agencies haven’t yet let things slide. France has held on to its top-tier status long past the point of credibility. Perhaps this is only thanks to the assumption that the country, Europe’s second biggest economy, is too big to fail. But that indulgence has its limits. Come mid-September, when the numbers are on the table and the budget battle begins, a downgrade from the rating agencies seems inevitable. This will damage France and will certainly damage Europe. A downgrade would spike borrowing costs, potentially triggering a broader sell-off in European markets.

    For eight years, Macron’s political brand has rested on him outmaneuvering his opponents and keeping France just stable enough to get by. If the government loses this confidence vote, Macron’s authority breaks. He may cling on in the Élysée, but his presidency will be weakened beyond repair. France risks months of paralysis, street unrest and financial turmoil.

  • Will Virginia Giuffre sink Prince Andrew?

    There’s an old saying that revenge tastes best when served cold. The late Virginia Giuffre has gone a step further by serving up her final helping of vengeance against Prince Andrew by publishing her sure-to-be-revelatory memoir, Nobody’s Girl, from beyond the grave this October. Giuffre collaborated with the writer Amy Wallace on a 400-page book that is expected to divulge in no doubt excruciatingly painful and embarrassing detail, the various relationships that she had with the notorious likes of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and – of course! – the Duke of York himself.

    Announcing the book, her publisher Knopf claimed that it would offer “intimate, disturbing, and heartbreaking new details about her time with Epstein, Maxwell, and their many well-known friends, including Prince Andrew.” Although Giuffre died by suicide in Australia in April this year, at the age of 41, she sent Wallace an email expressing her wish that the book should be published in any event, saying that: “The content of this book is crucial, as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders. It is imperative that the truth is understood and that the issues surrounding this topic are addressed, both for the sake of justice and awareness.”

    Knopf supposedly paid millions of dollars for the memoir, matching the rumored multi-million pound settlement that Giuffre reached with Prince Andrew in 2022 out of court, which allowed him to avoid the potentially disastrous – and legally hazardous – prospect of testifying in court in the civil sexual assault case that she brought against him.

    It was widely speculated that Andrew was informed by his family (or, at least, his late mother) that if he was not entirely certain that the case would go in his favor that he would have to pay up, but that if he was not cleared in a public forum that he would no longer have a place in the royal family. This has largely proved to be the case ever since, and although the Duke occasionally appears, embarrassingly and briefly, at set-piece events such as Christmas get-togethers at the royal country retreat of Sandringham, he has effectively become a non-person.

    Will the book be great literature? That seems doubtful

    Although Andrew might wish that his withdrawal from public life is enough, that seems unlikely to be the case. The rumors surrounding his behavior with Giuffre (and others) are sufficiently widespread and persistent firstly for a recent biography of him, Entitled, to be a number one bestseller in the United Kingdom (although some critics, including me, found the book to be a relentless hit job that grew wearying long before the end) and now for the publication of Nobody’s Girl to be one of the biggest literary events of the year, perhaps even the decade.

    Will the book be great literature? That seems doubtful, but it will, without any doubt, be essential reading for anyone who is interested in the downfall of wealthy and powerful men. It’s not even impossible that it might have some light to shed on that most vexed and controversial of issues, namely whether her tormentor Jeffrey Epstein really did repent of his sins long enough to commit suicide, or whether someone else stepped in during one of the convenient periods that the prison CCTV cameras were turned off.

    In any case, Giuffre’s book will be unmissable proof that, even with its author no longer present to point the finger, she is still wholly capable of causing reputational damage to the great and the not-so-good. Many of those surviving may have breathed a sigh of relief at her death. This news has proved that such an exhalation would have been deeply premature.

  • The devastating cost of cashless bail

    The devastating cost of cashless bail

    The President taking such decisive action to save lives this past week is bittersweet beyond words. For years, we begged and pleaded for help to stop the insanity that has spilled blood across our streets. We went to the media. We testified before Congress. We sat across from lawmakers, poured out our stories and prayed someone would care enough to act. But time and time again, our cries fell on deaf ears.

    Now, finally, something is being done.

    For those who have never stood in our shoes, it’s hard to explain what it feels like to bury someone you loved unnecessarily – to hold a folded flag or a photo instead of a spouse, child, sibling, or parent. We as victims went through the worst nightmare imaginable. And while we were trying to pick up the shattered pieces of our lives, politicians were busy patting themselves on the back for “social justice” reforms that only created more victims.

    We watched New York Democrats ram through bail reform, stripping judges of discretion and unleashing chaos. We watched elected officials like Kathy Hochul stand proudly on a stage and thank the families of killers as she signed legislation written by them – with no mention of the victims whose blood had been spilled, no acknowledgment of the grief their families will carry for the rest of their lives. Imagine the cruelty of that moment: to glorify those who destroyed lives, while erasing the memory of the ones they destroyed.

    Meanwhile, millions of taxpayer dollars have flowed into programs designed to support criminals – housing them, feeding them, offering them endless “second chances.” And what about us? The victims? We struggle day to day, financially and emotionally, often with no resources, no lifeline, no recognition. Families are left with empty chairs at the dinner table, mounting bills for funerals and therapy, and the haunting trauma that never goes away.

    This is the bitter reality we have lived with.

    And now, finally, there seems to be a light at the end of this dark, cold tunnel. President Trump’s executive order is a long-overdue acknowledgment that public safety must come first.

    For years, those in power denied there was even a problem. They told us crime was “down” while body bags piled up. They dismissed our stories as “anecdotes,” as if our dead loved ones were just numbers on a page. But we know the truth. Somewhere around 700 lives have been lost in New York alone because of bail reform. That’s 700 families destroyed, 700 names added to a list that never should have existed in the first place. And that’s only counting bail reform. When you add parole reform, when you add the revolving door for so-called “youthful offenders,” the number climbs even higher. Every one of those lives mattered. Every one of them had dreams, families, futures stolen in the name of “equity.”

    So yes, this moment is hopeful. But it is also painful. Because it never had to be this way.

    Imagine if leaders had listened when we first raised alarms. Imagine if victims’ voices carried the same weight as those of criminal justice activists funded by billionaires. Imagine if the grief of a mother burying her child mattered as much as the rehabilitation of the person who pulled the trigger. How many lives would have been saved?

    This executive order cannot bring back our loved ones. It cannot erase the trauma or fill the empty seats at holidays. But it can – and must – be the beginning of a long-overdue course correction. The vague language some critics point to could actually be its greatest strength, because it allows broad discretion to cut off taxpayer funding for any jurisdiction that uses it to release repeat offenders. Washington, D.C., for example, spent $88 million last year on programs that funneled offenders back onto the streets. That money should never have been spent on those who hurt our communities.

    Let’s be clear: this is not about vengeance. This is about prevention. This is about making sure no more families have to endure the pain we live with every single day. Recidivism is the heart of the problem in New York and everywhere these programs have been implemented – offenders being released over and over until someone gets killed. If this executive order helps break that cycle, then it is a step in the right direction.

    But let us never forget: every step forward comes too late for those we’ve already buried. Crime Victims are the only unwilling participants in the criminal justice system-everyone else chose their role, from Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement and of course the offender.

    Yet nobody said pick me-pick me, I want to be a crime victim.

    So it’s the least our system can do is to offer a semblance of fairness and balance to the only unwilling participants: Victims of Crime.

    The victims are not here to thank the President, as grateful as our families are. They are not here to testify. They are not here to share their story. All we have are their names, their memories, and the responsibility to make sure their deaths were not in vain.

    This is the bittersweet truth: we are finally being heard, but only after far too much blood has been spilled.

  • Trump’s Squid Games with South Korean President

    Trump’s Squid Games with South Korean President

    “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA?” President Trump posted over breakfast. “Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there. I am seeing the new President today at the White House. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!”

    Trump wasn’t talking about the global box-office success of K-Pop Demon Hunters, and wasn’t warning about the proliferation of zombies on the Train to Busan. Instead, word had reached Trump of recent raids by the government of newly-elected liberal South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on some conservative churches, including the Unification Church. These were related to documents about the coup that embroiled the country last December and nearly toppled Lee’s newly-elected government.

    Trump was right to be concerned about this development, but wisely stayed out of domestic South Korean politics during his pleasant meeting with Lee in the White House this afternoon. They talked of trade deals, and how the US was ahead in them. But mostly, the meeting allowed Trump to adopt his favored posture in world affairs: Bringer of Peace.

    Earlier in the day, while signing an executive order that signals the beginning of the end of cashless bail, Trump had some things to say about the endless conflict over the Korean Peninsula. Of North Korean premier Kim Jong-un, Trump said, “I know him better than anybody. Maybe his sister. His sister knows him pretty well. And I liked him. I got along with him very well. I’m not supposed to say that because I’ll get killed in the fake news media, but I liked him. If Hillary Clinton had gotten elected, we would have had a nuclear war. Now we’re not going to have a nuclear war. If that happens, it’s over.”

    We thank you, President Trump, for preventing nuclear war in Asia. Lee took a similar tack, heaping praise upon a beaming Trump: “I would like to ask for your role in establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula,” he said, through a translator. “I look forward to your meeting with Kim Jung Un and the construction of a Trump Tower in North Korea and playing golf at that place. I believe he will be waiting for you… Engagement is not an easy thing. And the only person who can make progress on the issue is you Mr. President. If you become the Peacemaker, then I will assist you by becoming the Pacemaker.”

    Trump chuckled, beaming like a man gradually falling in love.

    “That’s good,” he said. “We can do big progress with North Korea.”

    A reporter asked, again, if Trump intended to meet with Kim Jong-Un. Trump, as he usually does, had a story to tell:

    “I’d like to have a meeting,” he said. “I get along great with him. You were there. We even had a press conference. Kim Jong-un had his first press conference. This was a little different press conference. I said, have you done a press conference before? No. And you know what, he did great. It was a great press conference. It was historic. I doubt he’s done one since. I said, would you like to meet the fake news? They came in, you’ve never seen anything like it. Then he said ENOUGH. And that was the end. It ended very rapidly. But I think he had a good time.”

    Did you remember, Trump said, when I went to North Korea? Some people in the room remembered. But Trump definitely remembered. “Remember when I went and walked across the line and everyone went crazy? Especially Secret Service. And I looked into those windows. And I saw more rifles pointed at me. There were a lot of rifles in that building. The two blue buildings on each side. The Secret Service was not happy with me. I walked up the middle and looked in that building and I saw more guns in that room than I’ve ever seen in my life. I looked at the other side and it was the same thing. And yet I felt safe because I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un.”

    Trump had managed to avoid the evil clicking eyes of the giant doll and made it to the other side of the arena. And now, with the good graces of President Lee (who appears to be a somewhat skilled diplomat), he has the green light to bring peace on Earth and goodwill to the Korean Peninsula.

    In the Squid Game of this life, there can only be one ultimate winner. And I think we all know who that winner is going to be: President Donald J. Trump. Peace will come, and the giant piggy bank will fill with money at last. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!

  • Will Trump meet British woman, Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for a tweet?

    Will Trump meet British woman, Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for a tweet?

    “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”

    Those 51 words earned Lucy Connolly – a babysitter from Northampton, in the East Midlands of England – the longest sentence ever handed down in the UK for a single social-media post. Last week, Connolly was released from prison, having served nine months of a 31-month term for “inciting racial hatred.”

    She will serve the rest of her sentence on probation. But she is not going back to a quiet life, it seems. Indeed, she is fast becoming a totem in the transatlantic culture war over Britain’s speech laws. Connolly is in touch with the Trump administration. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is spoiling to bring her to the US, to sit alongside him when he testifies to Congress next month about the parlous state of free speech in Britain – a stunt which will probably be scuppered by the travel restrictions imposed by Connolly’s early release.

    If that’s the case, Farage won’t struggle to find another mascot. Indeed, Connolly’s speech crime is almost unusual in that what she said was genuinely vile and inflammatory. You can be locked up for a lot less in the UK these days. At least 30 people a day are now arrested in the UK for what they post online. Said speech criminals include a feminist who dared to call a man a man on social media, and a prankster who posted a selfie of himself dressed like the Manchester Arena bomber.

    But Connolly’s case has undoubtedly struck a nerve, given the insanely harsh punishment she received and concerns that politics might have had something to do with it. Certainly, for the more Anglophile Trumpists, she has come to symbolize how far our two nations have drifted apart when it comes to freedom of speech.

    Connolly posted her life-ruining missive on X on July 29, 2024, hours after three young girls had been stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, a seaside town in the north-west of England. Misinformation had swirled online that the killer was an asylum seeker, one of the tens of thousands who have arrived in dinghies across the English Channel over recent years, and now reside in hundreds of hotels that have been requisitioned to house migrants while they wait for their asylum applications to be processed.

    In truth, the culprit was Axel Rudakubana, a depraved 17-year-old, the British-born son of Rwandan parents. He had long had a fixation on murder, terrorism and genocide. Connolly, having lost a child to medical malpractice, says she was left in a state of rage by Southport. The tweet was up for a few hours, and had been viewed 310,000 times, before she deleted it. Apparently, she thought that would be the end of it.

    But then violence erupted across the nation. Scumbags began throwing bricks at mosques, tried to set hotels on fire and rampaged through minority areas, smashing windows and screaming racial slurs. Amid the worst anti-migrant riots Britain has seen in modern times, the message rang out that a firm hand would be shown not only to those engaging in racist violence, but also to those “whipping up this action online”, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer put it from the Downing Street podium.

    Of course it is absurd to blame this horrific unrest on a single tweet posted in Northampton. In the US, Connolly would have never seen the inside of a cell, given the hard-won protections of the First Amendment, under which incitement to violence is tightly defined, as speech both likely and intended to cause imminent violence.

    But Brits enjoy nothing like the same protections. Connolly was convicted of a far more nebulous crime of “stirring up racial hatred”. She was held in police custody and denied bail. She pleaded guilty, she claims, because she wanted to get back to her family as soon as possible, hoping for leniency. As it turned out, she received a heftier sentence than some of the rioters did.

    You need not believe Connolly is a political prisoner, as she and her supporters have dubbed her, to see the murky waters that surround her case. At the time she was hauled in by police, the words “Think before you post” were being blared out from government social-media accounts. Attorney General Richard Hermer, who has to sign off on all “incitement to racial hatred” prosecutions, issued what he called a “stark warning that you cannot hide behind your keyboard.”

    The decisions of cops, prosecutors and judges will obviously have been shaped by this climate. Indeed, just before sending down Connolly, Judge Melbourne Inman at Birmingham Crown Court took it upon himself to perform a paean to multiculturalism. “It is a strength of our society that it is both diverse and inclusive”, he said. Connolly was later denied temporary leave, which would have granted her a few nights at home each month, even though she was a first-time offender and, by all accounts, a well-behaved inmate. Internal documents suggest this was due to “media interest”.

    Above all, questions hover over why Connolly was denied bail, which swayed her towards pleading guilty, fearing she would be in custody for months before trial. Ricky Jones, a Labour Party councillor, was acquitted earlier this month of encouraging violent disorder. Jones had addressed an “anti-racist” demonstration in London in the wake of the Southport riots, telling a whooping crowd that far-rightists should have their throats slit. He was bailed, and pleaded not guilty. The jury agreed.

    Connolly returns to a changed nation. Mercifully, the bigoted riots of last summer haven’t been repeated. In their place, peaceful protests have been held outside of migrant hotels, with mothers and grandmothers to the fore. In the Essex town of Epping, the Bell Hotel has just been ordered by a judge to close its doors to asylum seekers, following a string of charges brought against migrants in its care, including sexual assault and arson. Meanwhile, England and Union flags are being hoisted on lampposts by locals across the country, as part of a campaign calling itself Operation Raise the Colours, only for them to be ripped down by local councils. While Connolly’s ghastly tweet hardly spoke for the peaceful, patriotic majority, a sense of being silenced lingers.

    As Mr. Farage goes to Washington, with or without Ms. Connolly, Britain’s free-speech wars are going global. And no wonder. Once the cradle of liberalism, the UK is now a warning to the rest of the freedom-loving world. The UK’s decades-long experiment in policing hate – real and imagined – has produced nothing but fear, loathing and authoritarianism. Locking people up for tweets. This is what you get when you take a match to your liberties.

  • Zohran’s embarrassing scavenger hunt

    Zohran’s embarrassing scavenger hunt

    I still look back fondly on my 10th birthday party – a cute little scavenger hunt through the landmarks of Central Park. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to waste a peaceful Sunday afternoon reliving those glory days 20-odd years later. 

    Zohran Mamdani is cut from a different cloth, it seems. New York’s socialist soon-to-be mayor hosted his very own campaign-themed “Zcavenger Hunt” on Sunday, and thousands of over-worked (or unemployed?) New Yorkers seemingly had nothing better to do than embrace their inner whimsy. 

    Mamdani announced the event on Saturday in typical fashion – a highly produced video clip poking fun at his opponents. “You’ll solve a series of clues all related to a particular theme in New York City history,” Mamdani explained, “each of which will take you to the next location.” 

    Each clue hinted at a past NYC mayor, leading participants to a historical location associated with them. By Sunday afternoon, a dense crowd had converged outside the answer to the first clue, Tammany Hall, where the scavengers received an official campaign punch card. Those who made it through the subsequent clues by 5:30pm won a special prize: a meet and greet with Mamdani himself at Little Flower Cafe in Astoria. 

    The scavenger hunt was an undeniably brilliant publicity stunt. It drew attention to Mamdani’s signature issue, New York’s suffering public transport system, as participants were encouraged to train and bus between clues. Each clue highlighted Mamdani’s adopted persona of reformer and outsider in comparison to past mayors. Tammany Hall, for example, has been associated with Democratic Party corruption for centuries, while Mayor Fiorello Laguardia is remembered for both his anticorruption campaign and love of Little Flower Cafe. Neither Andrew Cuomo nor Eric Adams would have had the star power to draw thousands out for a quirky afternoon romp – and the hunt brought Mamdani’s already magnetic social-media-based campaign to new heights of engagement. 

    Still, it’s all more than a little embarrassing. Pictures from the meet and greet show about exactly who you’d expect to dedicate their Sunday afternoon to a political game: lots of blue hair, facial piercings and performatively hipster outfits on millennials who could certainly benefit from a socialist-backed gym membership. A landmark-based scavenger hunt would have been great fun for some nerdy, history-buff tweens – but do these overgrown theater kids really have nothing better to do than live out childhood nostalgia? 

    The event was fitting for Mamdani, himself a member of the theater-kid demographic. The label doesn’t necessarily denote an obsession with musical theater, but instead an immature flare for living performatively; every little mannerism, accessory and life choice becomes a prop in the dramatized performance of one’s own life. Mamdani uses this to his advantage, as every knowing wink and cheesy smile becomes a curated part of his happy-go-lucky campaign persona. For others, it’s just plain sad: unable to secure any meaningful foundation for adult life, they cling to a stunted grade-school irony and lose out on forming any real identity. So of course they jumped on adult scavenger hunt, which sounds more like the plot of a bad Friends episode than anything you’d encounter in real life. 

    For all the talk of radical change, Mamdani’s campaign cannot escape its theater-kid irony. What he’s selling to these disaffected New Yorkers is pure childhood nostalgia: free this, subsidized that, a morally simple vision for New York’s good guys and bad guys where everyone gets the care they need and deserve. Don’t worry, just have fun, the campaign seems to say – the carefree whimsy of childhood filtered through a political program. But those on board will be shocked to discover how this program, in practice, will deliver little more than the bad governance they’re already used to. 

    The cracks are already showing, as naive lefties discovered during the hunt itself. Given the large turnout, participants noted how campaign staff quickly ran out of punch cards, leaving the bulk of late arrivals to participate unofficially without the opportunity for a meet-and-greet. This left participants “ticked off” as staffers got “catty” and hid rather than explaining the situation at Little Flower. 

    It seems the law of finite resources still applies – no matter how good the performance. And if a campaign built on fun and whimsy can’t even deliver on punch cards, then the administration stands little chance at solving New York’s many real issues. 

    Leave scavengers hunts for children, and let the adults govern. 

  • J.D. Vance: proconsul to Britain?

    Vice President J.D. Vance’s family vacation in Britain was disrupted by protesters who insisted that he was not welcome in the country. In the Cotswolds, an area northwest of Oxford and the British equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, ultraliberal white protesters huddled together on August 12 to make their meager numbers look large for the cameras, wielding signs bearing such slogans as “End Genocide!” and “Stop Fascists!” One participant quoted by the Guardian explained: “I’m most worried about his environmental policies. They risk eliminating the whole of humanity, all the creatures on the Earth.” 

    Coming the same week that President Donald Trump asserted greater control over Washington, DC, by taking over the city’s law enforcement, the Vance visit highlighted the tensions between local democratic rule and its frequent deviation from the public good. In both instances, the American leaders are saving localities from too much self-rule run amok.

    Of course, the British government – despite being a Labour ministry – encouraged the Vance visit, including his sojourn in the Cotswolds. As with the “Nixon to China” playbook, it is Labour politicians who have traditionally played the role of transatlantic mediators because they are trusted to protect the national interest, as opposed to the often-slavish Tories. Nor did the gentle farmers of the Cotswolds as a whole necessarily disagree with the visit. The village where Vance stayed belongs to a legislative district held by Labour, but the region’s two other districts are held by a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat. It is fair to say that the median voter in the Cotswolds probably took the visit to be an acceptable exercise of diplomatic bridge-building by the central government.

    Rather, the real debate over Vance’s visit, and the reaction to it, was to do with who speaks for the Cotswolds in a longer-term, intergenerational sense. Like Trump’s check on DC’s home rule, Vance’s return to the ancestral mother country less as a visitor than as an envoy of Anglo civilization is a check on the home rule of a wobbling British nation. That, more than anything else, is why the leftist luminaries of British cultural destruction took to the grassy commons with their signboards and saucepans.

    The Cotswolds region contains much of what is important in British history. I have walked over its excavated Roman settlements and through the remains of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, which resisted Viking control. The region also played a central role in the development of the English ecclesiastical and constitutional traditions, which were the basis of American colonial success. It played host to the first battle of the civil war between Charles I and Parliament (Powick Bridge, in 1642), as well as the last (Stow-on-the-Wold, in 1646). 

    In microcosm, the Cotswolds is the British civilization that the Americans have been called upon to rescue time and again. The American rebellion against George III was heralded by many English Whigs as a welcome tonic for their decaying democracy, where the voting franchise had shrunk to a mere 15 percent of adult males. The “special relationship” between the two countries based on their common culture and history emerged in the Victorian era when the US offered critical support to the liberal imperialism of the British empire. Britain, for its part, chose not to interfere with America’s Civil War. Winston Churchill’s famous Dunkirk speech of 1940 – looking forward to the moment when “the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old” – was merely reprising an old theme.

    Vance’s rescue mission began with some fishing alongside the British foreign secretary and then moved through several pubs before decamping to Scotland. When a country, like a city, has lost its way, its external guarantor may be called upon to impose home rule. Like the long-suffering residents of DC, the British people will welcome their liberation and rescue.

  • Will Trump go to war with the cartels?

    Will Trump go to war with the cartels?

    President Donald Trump has signed off on a secret directive that, if activated, would let the US military hunt Mexican drug cartels the same way it once hunted al-Qaeda. Cartels branded as Foreign Terrorist Organizations could suddenly find themselves in the crosshairs of US drones, special forces and the full arsenal of counter-terror laws. Sinaloa, CJNG, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and even Nicolás Maduro’s own Cartel de los Soles are on the list.

    In Washington, the move is framed as a clean break with decades of failed “law enforcement” tactics. No more just DEA stings or financial sanctions, this is now a national security war. Marco Rubio put it bluntly: “We can’t continue treating these guys like local street gangs. They have weapons like terrorists. In some cases, they have armies; in many cases, they control Territory.”

    But here’s the catch: while the US postures about cartels as if they were ISIS, it’s also quietly negotiating with them.

    Courtrooms in New York and Chicago have told a very different story from the one emerging from the Pentagon. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán was given life in prison without the death penalty because prosecutors promised Mexico he wouldn’t face execution. His sons, the Chapitos, are brokering plea deals that shave decades off potential sentences. Remarkably, some of his family members have received visas to live in the US.

    Other traffickers – men Washington brands as “terrorists” in press releases – end up in federal court trading testimony for lighter sentences, sometimes slipping into witness protection with new names and safe suburban lives. Washington will tell the public it doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. The reality? It does, when the terrorists happen to move cocaine and fentanyl instead of flying planes into buildings.

    President Claudia Sheinbaum insists: “Our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale.”

    It’s a defiant stance rooted in history. US military interventions in Latin America rarely end without scars. But Mexico’s political class has another reason to keep Americans out. The cartel-politician nexus runs too deep. If US counter-terrorism teams start digging, they won’t just find stash houses in Sinaloa, they’ll find politicians fronting shell companies based in the US. For now, Sheinbaum’s drawing a hard boundary: They stay in their territory, we stay in ours. But Trump’s move shifts the power dynamic. Mexico is now being asked to cooperate in a framework that gives the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies more direct access to cartel Targets.

    Sheinbaum is drawing a line in the sand, but Trump’s directive shifts the power dynamic.

    Washington can now apply military, legal and financial pressure without formally crossing the border. Mexico is being cornered into cooperation, whether it admits it or not, leaving a wide-open back door for American intelligence operations.

    Once Washington slaps the “terrorist” label on a cartel, the rules change. What was once a cat-and-mouse chase run by the DEA turns into open season under the Pentagon’s counter-terror mandate. Suddenly, US special operations forces can treat cartel figures like battlefield targets.

    Surveillance drones circling over Baja California would no longer be limited to intelligence-gathering; they could be armed, authorized to strike. Special forces raids, once reserved for al-Qaeda camps in Yemen or ISIS safehouses in Syria, could theoretically land in the mountains of Sinaloa.

    The courtroom becomes another front line. Under the Anti-Terrorism Act, families of victims are given the right to sue cartel bosses in American courts even decades later. The family of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, the DEA agent kidnapped, tortured, and killed in 1985, is already pushing such a case forward. The precedent is powerful: cartel leaders could now find their fortunes tied up in endless litigation, with victims’ families clawing at the offshore accounts and front companies that have shielded their wealth. What once looked like impunity shifts to exposure.

    The financial arena is just as critical. Washington has long wielded the Kingpin Act to sanction traffickers, but the terrorist designation broadens its reach. Now, entire financial ecosystems can be dismantled from shell corporations in Panama, to real estate holdings in El Paso neighborhoods, even US banks that turned a blind eye. The US has already tested this kind of economic warfare against Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela, sanctioning Cartel de los Soles figures and seizing assets tied to the regime. Now, cartels don’t just risk arrest anymore; they risk having their political patrons and money men dragged into the open.

    Perhaps the most consequential shift is reach. Once branded as terrorists, cartel leaders are no longer fugitives ducking DEA indictments; they have become international targets. US law now follows them wherever they go. If a Sinaloa lieutenant turns up in Spain or a CJNG broker tries to do business in Canada, extradition isn’t just a matter of slow diplomacy; it’s counter-terror enforcement. The precedent here is Panama in 1989: Manuel Noriega, a sitting head of state with deep ties to cocaine trafficking, was captured by US forces in a military operation and hauled into a Miami courtroom. The message was simple then, and it echoes now: no corner of the globe is beyond reach when Washington decides to treat a trafficker as an enemy combatant.

    What Washington is signaling with the terrorist label is that the gloves are finally coming off.

    The cartels are no longer just drug syndicates; they are enemy networks, and the United States is prepared to dismantle them piece by piece, even if it means rewriting the rules along the way.

    But the contradiction is unfortunately glaring. In public, the US says cartels are terrorists. In private, prosecutors strike deals that let cartel lieutenants keep their lives, their families, sometimes even pieces of their fortunes.

    El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel, convicted of helping run his empire, served just three years before walking free in Los Angeles. Compare that to Guantanamo detainees who have been rotting for decades without trial. Who gets treated like a terrorist?

    The hypocrisy isn’t lost on Mexico. When Americans talk about hunting cartel leaders like jihadists, Mexicans see the headlines. When Americans cut sweetheart deals with those same leaders’ families, Mexicans see the footnotes in court documents, and, coupled with the immense loss these very figures have inflicted on Mexican society, it is a blatant slap in the face for the countless victims.

    This war is no longer just about fentanyl or border security. It’s about what happens when the US decides to treat a criminal empire like a terror network but still plays by the old backroom rules of plea bargains, immunity and political convenience.

    For Washington, it’s a double game: sanctions and indictments for some, green cards and plea deals for others. For Mexico, it’s a nightmare. If the US ever stops negotiating and starts treating the cartels like ISIS, the fallout will be catastrophic. If it keeps playing both sides, the hypocrisy will eventually boil over.

    One way or another, sparks are starting to fly. And this time, they won’t just land on cartel strongholds in Sinaloa or Jalisco. They’ll land in the halls of power in both Washington and Mexico City.

  • Will Germany actually send troops to Ukraine?

    Will Germany actually send troops to Ukraine?

    As Donald Trump presses on with his breathless efforts to secure an end to the war in Ukraine, the leaders of Europe face a task of their own. In the event of a peace deal with Russia, how will they – in place of an America that can’t be trusted as a reliable ally – provide Kyiv with the security guarantees against Russian aggression that it craves? And even if they are willing, are they capable of delivering them?

    The idea of sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine at some point in the future has split Germany down the middle

    Stepping out of the White House following Monday’s hastily arranged summit with Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders, German chancellor Friedrich Merz signaled that yes, his country was willing and able to provide Ukraine with security guarantees.

    “It is clear to me that we, as the Federal Republic of Germany, also have a strong interest and a strong responsibility to participate in this,” he said. He caveated his declaration of intent by saying he would be discussing everything with European allies and that any final decision regarding German boots on the ground in Ukraine would be put to a vote in the Bundestag as per German law.

    In what is increasingly becoming a pattern of this fairly new Chancellor’s governance, Merz’s comments stirred the political hornets’ nest in Berlin within hours. By the time he had landed back in Germany, a full-throated debate on the Bundeswehr’s potential support for Ukraine was under way.

    The idea of sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine at some point in the future has split Germany down the middle. According to a poll conducted by the research institute Civey, 51 percent of Germans think including the Bundeswehr in a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine is a bad idea. Just 36 percent of respondents think it is a good one.

    Russia’s invasion feels much closer to home for the average German – with just one country, Poland, separating them from the conflict. As such, right from the start of the war in February 2022, there has been a lingering sense of unease about politicians in Berlin dragging Germany into a war it did not start. The country’s Nazi past – still very much at the forefront of the national consciousness – makes the idea of proactively sending German troops into territory its predecessors did their best to annihilate barely 80-odd years ago sit uncomfortably with many, even if the circumstances are now vastly different. A survey from May showed that 64 percent of Germans were at least “very worried” about the return of war to Europe.

    Both the German far right and the far left have jumped on Merz’s comments as an example of what they want to portray as his warmongering credentials. Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party branded his words “dangerous and irresponsible.”

    By Tuesday, the AfD had mocked up an unnerving new post for their social media. Sending soldiers to Ukraine “would not be peacekeeping, but a permanent escalation against Russia,” it reads. Accompanying this was a sepia-toned image showing five frowning youths being loomed over by Merz, his smile fixed in a maniacal grin and the tips of his fingers touching in a steeple. Underneath, the slogan: “Merz wants to send YOU to Ukraine? We don’t!”

    While superficially the image makes Merz look like a cartoon villain, it has prompted disgust for how evocative it is of the anti-Semitic propaganda distributed during the Nazi era portraying Jewish people as power-hungry villains. Many have seen this as yet further confirmation of how the AfD is growing increasingly comfortable flirting with the symbolism and rhetoric of Germany’s National Socialist past.

    Sahra Wagenknecht, the far-left leader of the eponymous Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) also hopped on the bandwagon. In a video posted to social media on Wednesday, she warned: “Your father, your brother, your son could soon be fighting Russia in Ukraine.” Merz’s willingness to consider sending troops to Ukraine is “dangerous” and “completely oblivious to history.” “Should the conflict break out again, Germany would immediately become a party to the war,” she added. She has called for a “peace rally” in Berlin on 13 September 13 to “stop the federal government’s war course.”

    If such warnings of escalation in the conflict sound familiar, that’s because they are. Following the Ukraine summit in Washington on Monday, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry Maria Zakharova addressed Ukraine’s allies in a statement. Reinforcing the Kremlin’s rejection of any NATO troops being sent into Ukraine to keep the peace, Zakharova said “this risks uncontrollable escalation with unpredictable consequences.” The AfD and BSW have made little effort to distance their messaging from that of Moscow’s.

    Despite sitting on opposite sides of the political spectrum, both the AfD and BSW have, over the years, acquired reputations for being pro-Russia. They are both in favor of dropping sanctions against Moscow and restoring diplomatic relations. Both oppose sending weapons to Ukraine. But their calls for peace are also tinged with cynicism: the largest voter bases for both parties are predominantly located in the former East Germany, where cultural memory of the GDR means distrust of NATO and likewise a fear of Russian aggression are higher. Both the AfD and BSW are quite comfortable using the debate around a peacekeeping force in Ukraine to stoke fear with their voters.

    Merz has had little help from his own cabinet in backing up his commitment to Ukraine. As the Chancellor was flying to Washington, his foreign minister Johann Wadephul unhelpfully declared that sending German troops to Ukraine would “probably overwhelm” the Bundeswehr alongside its commitment to creating a new brigade of 5,000 in Lithuania – expected to be operational by 2027. The German army has been chronically under-resourced for years: it is currently approximately 20,000 soldiers short and is struggling to replace much of the vital equipment donated to Ukraine over the past 3.5 years. While Merz eased the country’s state debt rules on coming into power, which will allow a huge boost for military spending in the coming years, it will nevertheless take a while for the full benefits to be felt.

    There is, of course, also the question of what Germany’s role in any peacekeeping force would look like in Ukraine. The defense minister Boris Pistorius has kept his cards close to his chest, saying “what a German contribution to the security guarantees will look like has not yet been determined.” There is every chance that, should opposition to boots on the ground prove too fierce for Merz to push through the Bundestag, this could be watered down to see the German army simply provide Ukraine with, for example, reconnaissance data and intelligence, further arms deliveries or training for its soldiers.

    With little prospect of a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine any time soon, Merz has time to rally his government, prepare the army and fight off his opponents on the political fringes. But if the first seven months of Trump’s second term have taught the Chancellor and his fellow European leaders anything, it is that predictability and caution don’t come naturally to the American president. A peace deal with Moscow could be foisted on Kyiv by Trump at a moment’s notice. Merz has his work cut out ensuring Germany is prepared for that moment when it arrives.

  • Netanyahu is getting desperate

    Netanyahu is getting desperate

    As the IDF announced the imminent mobilization of some 80,000 reservists in preparation for the decisive battle to seize Gaza City, the prospect of a negotiated deal with Hamas – one that could secure the release of the 20 hostages believed to still be alive, along with the remains of 30 others presumed dead – appears to be slipping further out of reach.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to political and diplomatic sources within the far-right coalition that has dominated Israel’s government for nearly three years, is “resolute in pursuing the war, even at the grave cost such a course is expected to exact.” For him, the campaign has become not merely a matter of policy but of survival.

    Yet even within the military’s top brass, doubts run deep. The mobilization order was issued by Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, despite his opposition to the plan. In a tense cabinet meeting, Zamir warned that entering Gaza City – a densely populated urban labyrinth that is home to nearly 1 million Palestinians, half the Strip’s inhabitants – would be nothing less than a “death trap.” His estimate was that at least 100 soldiers were likely to be killed (adding to the 1,000 who have already been killed since October 7, 2023) and that some, if not all, of the hostages would perish as well, either in IDF bombardments or at the hands of Hamas in revenge.

    Netanyahu, his government, and even the chief of staff are all wagering on one crucial assumption: that most Israelis – including former top IDF and security chiefs who oppose Netanyahu and his rule – will stop short of calling for outright refusal to serve. This stands in stark contrast to the United States during the Vietnam War, or even Israel itself during the First Lebanon War, which dragged on from 1982 until 2000.

    And yet the hypocrisy is glaring. The ultra-Orthodox public – whose parties form an indispensable pillar of Netanyahu’s coalition – continues, under rabbinical edict, to refuse sending their sons into uniform, let alone into the line of fire.

    Where refusal does exist, it is expressed in quieter, grayer forms. Tens of thousands of reservists have simply failed to report for duty, cloaking their absence in explanations that are, in reality, acts of passive resistance: that they have already served 200 to 300 days, that their families are suffering, their businesses collapsing, their lives falling apart. Add to this some 15,000 wounded and traumatized veterans, and the picture becomes even starker. The army is also grappling with a sharp rise in suicides among soldiers.

    The IDF, fully aware of the phenomenon, prefers to turn a blind eye rather than confront it head-on, tacitly accepting these “explanations.” What makes this tolerance possible is money. The government has been compensating reservists generously, sometimes lavishly, to the point where service becomes not only bearable but, for some, financially profitable. The line between patriotic duty and mercenary work grows disturbingly thin.

    Meanwhile, the families of the hostages – and the public that stands with them against Netanyahu – are sinking into despair. On Sunday, nearly a million and a half Israelis once again poured into the streets, paralysing wide swaths of the country, even as the trade unions, tightly controlled by Likud, refused to lend their support. But exhaustion is palpable; the Israeli public is weary.

    Among the anguished voices, Einav Zangauker – whose son Matan is among the captives – delivered perhaps the most searing indictment yet. “If my son and the hostages die, their blood will be on your hands,” she declared to Netanyahu, “and I will haunt you for the rest of your life.” But if her words stung, Netanyahu showed no sign of it. Once again, he displayed an almost clinical indifference to the hostages’ fate, choosing instead to double down on the belief that this time, unlike so many times before, his military gamble will succeed and Hamas will be crushed and expelled from Gaza. His record of broken promises makes such confidence ring hollow, yet he remains undeterred.

    The Gaza war is part of a larger design

    Political analysts across the spectrum – including some who have long been sympathetic to him – increasingly agree: Netanyahu’s overriding motive is not national defense but political survival. For him, the war itself has become a kind of insurance policy, a means of diverting public attention from the crises metastasizing at home: economic strain, deepening social fractures, and Israel’s accelerating international isolation.

    The war will likely grind on for as long as it serves Netanyahu’s political interests – and for as long as Donald Trump continues to give him a free hand. This, despite Trump’s repeated lips service and rhetorical nods to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, and despite the fact that his own special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was the one who crafted the framework for a deal: the release of ten hostages and 18 bodies in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and a two-month ceasefire.

    But what is happening in Gaza cannot be understood in isolation. It must be seen in the broader context of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, without whose support he has no government. Ministers in that camp now speak openly of their intention to expel Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians and to plant Jewish settlements in their place – a replay of the West Bank project Israel has pursued since 1967. There, settler violence and terror against Palestinians are on the rise, with the Israeli military largely turning a blind eye.

    The Gaza war, then, is not merely a military campaign; it is part of a larger design. It is inseparable from Netanyahu’s wider effort to engineer a religious-nationalist regime change – a slow-motion coup aimed at dismantling Israel’s liberal-democratic order.

    What began as a justified response to a brutal terrorist attack has become, above all, one man’s desperate crusade for power.