Is demographic collapse a good idea?
Smart phones seem to be directly linked to a worldwide crash in the birth rate.
It is “quite plausible that the modern digital media environment has had profound effects on ...
Articles
How realistic are the fears of World War III?
A Politico opinion poll conducted in the four biggest Nato countries in February revealed almost identical popular expectations about the likelihood of a global war in the next five years. ...
Israel: The widening war
There are really two wars in the Middle East, and only one of them is paused. The US-Iran war has been stuck in a ragged ceasefire for more than a ...
Would Cuba resist?
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio should be careful what he wishes for. Donald Trump has speculated that Rubio could be “the next president of Cuba” after the US overthrows ...
Oil: the writing is finally on the wall
Eat your hearts out, Pablo Escobar, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzman and Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes. The richest cartel by far is still the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (...
Speaking English badly
It is a matter of chronic surprise that politicians, otherwise well-trained in saying just the right thing for the audience they are addressing, forget that whatever they say can be ...
Death Rattle of a Superpower?
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single ...
Hungary: is the tide turning for populists?
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent a message congratulating Hungary’s newly elected prime minister, Peter Magyar, for having evicted long-serving populist leader Viktor Orban (aka ‘The Viktator’) from power. ...
Fanatics, an obsessive, and a belligerent fool
We don’t have to look very far to find a useful historical analogy for the current crisis in the Middle East. In 1967 Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran to ...
Iran: Trump will have only three options
The Iranians know they have won, but President Trump doesn’t get it yet. He’s still at the stage of counting up the US and Israeli air-strikes and assuming ...
Orban has already faced divine justice
Viktor Orban has not aged well. When I met him in Budapest two months before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 he was a typical hyper-ambitious student leader. Anybody who ...
The war on Iran: A series of miscalculations
Still not four full weeks into the war, and already Donald Trump’s “short-term excursion” – decapitate the Iranian regime with a surprise attack and impose harsh terms on the defeated ...
Wily Netanyahu, Simple Trump
Donald Trump is not just Binyamin Netanyahu’s glove puppet, but it is remarkable how much influence the Israeli prime minister has over the American president. If you are seeking ...
Arrests linked to Epstein fail to touch America’s powerful
“It’s amazing how the arrest of a 66-year-old man in Norfolk has raised the spirits of the entire country,” remarked a reader on the letters page of the Guardian ...
Ukraine war: four years and counting
“Breathe deeply, calm down, and don’t go running to stock up on food and matches,” President Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians one month before the Russian tanks rolled across the ...
Nato 1.0 is dead. Long live Nato 2.0
Every year at this time the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), the world’s most powerful alliance for the past 77 years, holds a conference in Munich to examine its state ...
Surviving the population crash
“To them that hath shall (more) be given” is generally a reliable guide, especially in economic matters, but it doesn’t work if the beneficiaries are too stupid to take ...
Iran – pretending to have nukes?
The Iranian regime is brutal, fanatical and corrupt. It has just committed the mass murder of its own citizens in the city streets and in their own homes. But the ...
Inflection Point?
It’s too early to be sure, but it seems likely that we have just seen ‘Peak Trump’.
Last week Donald Trump arrived at the Davos conference radiating power and ...
Greenland: Trump vs. NATO
After the Danish and Greenland foreign ministers came out of a meeting in Washington on 14 January convinced that Donald Trump really intended to seize Greenland, things moved very fast. Except ...
Pretending to help Donald Trump
The alarming events of the past couple of weeks have made it clear that not one but several crises are likely to occur in the relatively near future. It’s ...
Greenland: maybe an invasion (and maybe a backlash)
The Crazy Gang are high on the ‘brilliant success’ of their Venezuela caper and looking for new targets. Like Alexander the Great, Donald Trump weeps because there are no more ...
What if Khamenei falls? Protests spiral as Iran’s currency collapses
The demonstrations began again in Iran last week, only two years after the ‘Woman! Life! Freedom!’ movement convulsed the country for months. However, the current protests are potentially much broader ...
Derzhavnost and ‘Respect’
The Russian word ‘derzhavnost’ is usually translated as ‘great power status’, but the real meaning is closer to the gangland concept of ‘respect’. The word was beyond the reach of ...