21 July 2021 ‘Zeitgeist’ is a slippery word. At best it’s just a fancy German way of saying ‘the spirit of the times’; at worst it is only pretentious noise. So maybe we should say ‘inflection point’ instead. I think we are passing through an inflection point. People who have taken climate change seriously for …
16 June 2021 At the recent G7 summit, US president Joe Biden promised to distribute 500 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines free to the poorer countries by the middle of next year. That’s more than a drop in the bucket, but not much more. A tablespoon in the bucket, perhaps. And the other six ‘Gs’ …
Vaccines for the World: Charity or Self-Interest? Read More »
14 June 2021 “Lifting Trump’s sanctions, @SecBlinken, is a legal& moral obligation, NOT negotiating leverage. Didn’t work for Trump – won’t work for you,” tweeted Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif late last month. But what if US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (and President Joe Biden) have just decided that reviving the 2015 nuclear …
18 May 2021 The birth rates are falling fast in all the world’s more prosperous countries, but the generation now in their middle years have not yet grasped what that means for their later years. If they end up needing some sort of assisted living, either at home or in a care home, they will …
25 March 2021 In the early decades of the Cold War, this was the season when NATO defence chiefs would announce their spending plans for the next year, and they would almost always ‘discover’ some new threat from the Soviet Union to justify the money. In the United States, for example, the intelligence services traditionally …
22 February 2021 Texas puts out more carbon dioxide than any other US state, so there was some innocent amusement to be had from the indignation of Texans unable to boil their drinking water during the Big Freeze because the power was still out. Things like that are not supposed to happen in a modern, …
15 February 2021 The self-esteem of two-year-olds and nation-states is too fragile for them to admit they were wrong, which makes it hard for them to move on from blunders. That’s why the toys don’t get picked up and the broken treaties don’t get fixed, and why there may be a tantrum (in the case …
10 February 2021 It seemed innocent enough at the start: just a surge in the number of boys coming to school with notes from doctors saying they were excused from playing contact sports. But pretty soon high schools all over China were having trouble finding enough willing young men to make up a football team. …
The Proposal to Prevent the Feminisation of Male Adolescents Read More »
3 February 2021 China’s Xinhua news agency tactfully described the Burmese army’s seizure of power on Monday as a ‘cabinet reshuffle’. This suggests a possible new approach for Donald Trump’s legal team as he faces a second impeachment trial, but it won’t work, for two reasons. One, Trump’s coup attempt failed. Two, people got killed. …
13 January 2021 When defeated armies are retreating, they always lay mines behind them if they have time. The mines slow pursuit, they may inflict casualties on the victors, and they give the losers something purposeful to do amidst panic and despair. That’s what Mike Pompeo has been doing just before time is called on …