Global conflict 

China’s persecution of its Muslim citizens

I am pleased to see that the plight of the Chinese Uighurs, which I noted last year here and again here, is now finally on the public agenda having been ignored for so long. On Sunday’s BBC Andrew Marr Show, China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, tried to claim the Uighurs were not being abused, even as he was shown video footage of shackled members of that community being herded onto trains. It is astonishing (or at least would be in any sane universe) that so-called progressives, who denounce…

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Coronavirus Global conflict Israel 

Both hero and zero: Israel’s strategic incoherence

While Israelis are increasingly alarmed by the government’s loss of control over the coronavirus crisis, different events suggest that the country may have pulled off a spectacular advance in the battle against another intractable foe. Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a succession of mysterious explosions in Iran. At the end of last month, there was a major explosion in the Khojir missile factory near Tehran and at a power plant in Shiraz, which plunged the city into darkness. There has also been an explosion at a…

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Britain Coronavirus Global conflict 

We didn’t learn the lessons from Salisbury

The subject of the current BBC three-part series, The Salisbury Poisonings, was always going to unsettle an audience. Against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, its effect is even more frightening. The drama reconstructs the events in 2018 after a Russian double agent for MI6, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok at his house in Salisbury. It’s remarkable that this series was largely made before the Covid pandemic erupted. For the parallels are astonishing. It focuses on Wiltshire’s director of public health,…

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burning Britain Global conflict 

The opportunity to develop a United Democratic Nations

Before Covid-19 struck, Boris Johnson had decided to invite the Chinese tech giant Huawei to provide parts of Britain’s 5G communications network. Now, with China condemned for causing the pandemic through its reckless behaviour and then behaving like a gangster state in resorting to lies, threats and manipulation, the government is proposing an alliance of ten democratic nations to develop alternatives to Chinese technology. This “D10” would be composed of the G7 nations — the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — plus Australia, South Korea and India.…

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virus Coronavirus Global conflict Israel 

Israel still suffers virus of hate even as it saves Arab lives

While countries around the world struggle to get on top of the Covid-19 crisis, Israel’s achievement so far has been remarkable. Its mortality rate from the virus has been vastly smaller, in proportion to its population, than the rate in countries such as Britain, Sweden or the United States. That’s largely because it tackled the virus with the kind of bold, strategic approach with which it defends itself against its physical foes. This week, with new cases reduced to a few dozen, it started to lift a wide range of…

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Cina coronavirus Coronavirus Global conflict 

West can no longer turn a blind eye to China

The coronavirus pandemic is the direct outcome of appalling behaviour by the Chinese communist regime. Yesterday, the Commons foreign affairs committee reported that the fight against the virus has been hampered by China’s lies. The committee’s chairman, Tom Tugendhat, said China had “manipulated vital information about the virus in order to protect the regime’s image”. Despite all this, it has been posing as a humanitarian superpower by sending medical supplies to desperate countries. Britain is accordingly importing from China ventilators and virus test kits. But will they work? Numerous countries…

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Culture wars Global conflict Israel 

How the virus exposes magical thinking and short-term greed

The coronavirus emergency has affected virtually the entire world. In the west, it has brutally exposed the effects of a cultural characteristic that is as amoral as it is self-destructive. There is a refusal to face reality and the difficult choices it often requires, taking refuge instead in magical thinking and short-term greed. It’s a characteristic that has made victims of Israel and the Jews, along with many other people. In the current crisis, the west is paying the price of pretending that China’s communist regime does not represent a…

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Coronavirus Audio Global conflict USA Videos 

Moral responsibility in the time of pandemic

I was very struck by observations about the coronavirus pandemic made this week by the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, on both BBC Radio’s Moral Maze and BBC TV’s Newsnight. What was so arresting was his optimism about the long-term effects of this global emergency on people’s behaviour. He repeated more than once that the crisis was encouraging the best out of people, that it was bringing us together, that it was eliciting innumerable acts of kindness which would continue to multiply, and that when it was all over we…

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Iran Britain Global conflict Israel USA 

Will a microbe seal the fate of Iran’s virulent regime?

The point about events that catch us unawares is that we are never prepared for the unexpected to happen. Who would have thought that the entire world would suddenly be destabilized by one microbe? It will take some time before people grasp the likely social, political and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. But it is already altering the landscape and knocking previous assumptions off-course. Until a few days ago, attention in the United States was focused on whether the Democrats could find a plausible candidate to beat President Donald…

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nazanin Britain Global conflict 

It’s all about the narrative. Who controls it, wins

Are we seeing a crack developing in the hitherto impregnable “human rights” dogma which has helped emasculate Britain’s defences against terrorism? In the wake of the latest Islamic terror attack last Sunday in London, in which two people were stabbed by a terrorist who had recently been released from jail and was actually considered so dangerous he was being shadowed by armed police, the government has indicated it will scrap automatic early release for such prisoners. It may also re-introduce control orders and other more draconian sentencing options for terrorists,…

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