Was 2022 the Year We Reached Peak Scam?

The past few years have proven a golden age of fraud. Part of that is due to Covid. Pandemic times have always led to fraudulence. Con artists used to sell snake oil as a miracle cure, after all. The Covid pandemic was no different – with essential oils and unlicensed medicines making the unscrupulous rich.   

If Russia Wants Its Air Bases to Stop Exploding, It Can Stop Its War in Ukraine

Almost as soon as the war in Ukraine began, strange things started to happen in Russia. Buildings connected to the country’s military and its war effort caught fire, saboteurs were suspected – and occasionally caught, according to state TV – and recently, air bases quite far away from Ukraine have started to blow up.  

The Taliban’s Female University Ban Is Not Surprising

The Taliban has banned women in Afghanistan from accessing higher education. Women who turned up to university on 21 December were turned away. They will not be allowed back, the Taliban’s education ministry says.   

Netanyahu and Israel Must Learn to Quit Putin’s Russia

Benjamin Netanyahu is returning as Israel’s prime minister at a time of worldwide geopolitical crisis. Prices are still rising. Currencies are depreciating. The permanent revolution of Iran’s Islamic Republic is facing the most serious threat to its existence since its foundation. Afghanistan is collapsing under the weight of Taliban cruelty and incompetence, amid a growing and savage Islamic State insurgency. Refugee crises mass at the borders of the world’s rich countries. 

Japan’s Rearmament Could Be a Force for Good

Shinzo Abe, Japan’s murdered former prime minister, would this week be especially proud of his country. At long last, and after years of protests and strife during Abe’s time in power, Japan has announced a reversal of its uncompromising post-war pacifism. Japan, its current prime minister Fumio Kishida has said, will now begin to rearm.  

We Can’t Use the Army for Everything

Politicians, especially Tory politicians, love the army. They love posing with soldiers; they love talking up its virtues; and they love drafting the army in to deal with pressing problems caused by failures of other parts of the public sector.  

Can the EU Recover from the Qatar Corruption Scandal?

Four people associated with the European parliament have been arrested in what seems to be the beginning of a major corruption scandal. The political career of Eva Kaili, a Greek politician and one of the vice presidents of the European parliament, has already been derailed. She has been suspended from office by the parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola – and thrown out from her previous parties and affiliations.  

The West Must Choose Representative Democracy — Not Sortation

The founder of National Review and godfather of the American conservative movement William F. Buckley once said that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. 

Iran Steps up the War Against its People

Iran has announced the first execution of the current crop of protestors. Mohsen Shekari, who was just 23, was hanged earlier today after having been found guilty by a revolutionary tribunal of moharebeh, a crime which means ‘enmity against God’.  

Why Germany’s Aristocratic Coup Was Doomed From the Start

Twenty-five people have been arrested by German authorities on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. A failed coup attempt – and a series of raids involving hundreds of officers – seems like the sort of story that might happen in a far-flung part of the world, not the largest economy in Europe.