Giving Thanks

I made a mistake, in the pages of a British magazine last month, by announcing the dawning of an era in which Giuseppe Conte, then the Italian prime minister, would become an essential national figure. This was a mistake in one obvious and chastening way – Conte failed to form another government, he no longer holds office of any kind – but wrong in another sense: one which may mean that, if anything, I undersold Conte’s stock.

China’s Media Empire

It has become increasingly clear that communist China is a world-spanning empire-in-waiting. More than this, its leaders are increasingly unwilling to wait.

The Trump Administration’s Parting Blows

As you will likely have gleaned from other sources, Joe Biden is now the president of the United States. He has begun his time in office, as presidents are wont to do, by making a show of being busy and in charge. Biden spent the first few hours at his desk undoing all the work of his predecessor that could be undone by executive order.

Covid and Contempt for Syrian Lives

Reading Syrian state media, you might be left with the impression that the country’s coronavirus outbreak was wholly steady and under control.

Resignationism

There is an unfortunate trend in Britain’s politics which has coagulated into a rhetorical device – the latter used so often that it has congealed into reflex. It’s behind a few unfortunate recent cases, each of which have, in their own way, served to confuse, and to excite anger at precisely the most bottled-up and contorted moment of my life time.

You Must Die That I Might Be Free

There’s a vulgar little thought that keeps intruding when I am trying to think about anything else.

It’s of a piece with other things that have impeded my ability to think and to sit still for many weeks. And it touches on the same themes. But it is motivated less by concern and more by spite.

China’s New Surveillance State

Authoritarian states do not respond well to crises. They deceive and conceal, and care little for human life when compared to the survival of the regime. But when a crisis settles in, and becomes routine, tyrannies can always be counted upon to capitalise somehow. They can turn the very worst that befalls a people to the state’s advantage.

Put ‘When This Is All Over’ out of Mind

A perennial and increasingly fevered subject of conversation in this fractured moment is what, precisely, each and every one of us expects to do ‘when this is all over’. By ‘this’, of course, people mean what they are slightly incorrectly terming ‘quarantine’ and not, per se, the disease which may yet still end the lives of millions.

As the Virus Spreads Across Iran, the Revolutionary Guards Pretend All Is Well

When Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addressed the country last week to mark Nowruz, he referred to the difficult time Iran is facing.

Between Two Stools

Four weeks ago, I was wide-eyed and crazy. I was accused by people who try to love me of isolating myself from society for no good reason, emerging periodically to talk in overexcited terms about this virus from China, and the duplicity of the Chinese state, and to be making entirely outlandish predictions about death tolls and the necessity of preparation for what was about to come.