Yes, it's me! Mark Steyn of that ilk - back for another hour of questions from Steyn Clubbers around the planet. The fun starts at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in the British Isles and 9pm in western and central Europe.
Lots going on, as always:
A "Defund the police!" Muslim is about to become although Mayor of New York. I guess 9/11 really was the day everything changed. The FBI has launched a criminal investigation into three of America's biggest children's hospitals (Boston, Los Angeles, Colorado) for the genital mutilation of minors. And remember those J6ers Trump pardoned? DC juries are now sticking them with half-a-million in civil damages because a policeman committed suicide nine days later.
However, there are one or two spots on the map where there is much less going on than there was a day or two back - the Middle East, for example. The recent intra-right ructions - Cruz vs Carlson, Levin vs Bannon - have been mirrored among Mark Steyn Club commenters. It is surprising to me how many people so want it to be 2002 all over again that they're prepared to take Lindsey Graham and Bill Kristol seriously. As I wrote twelve sodding years ago:
The American way of war is to win the war in nothing flat, and then spend the next decade losing the peace.
That's true: see Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Next sentence:
The American people have digested that to the point where they assume that, no matter how 'unbelievably small' (as Kerry promised of Syria) the next intervention is, it's a fool's errand.
Trump's genius this last week (if it holds) has been to detach the shock'n'awe phase from the Three Cups of Tea phase - not to win the war or lose the peace, but to bring the whole thing juddering to a halt. If the Trump Doctrine is "Catch my eye and I'll drop a bunker-buster down your ventilation shaft", well, it has the advantage of simplicity, and it can hardly work out worse than the last quarter-century of Warmongering for Wankers.
I think there's a reason for that, and we'll try to break it down on today's show.
Elsewhere, Allison Pearson has a disturbing report on how Keir Starmer's political prisoner, Lucy Connolly, is being physically ill-treated in prison. The corrupt government has also "updated" its Covid vaccine "adverse events": "officially", there are now 3,000 dead and 400,000 seriously injured. Kathy Gyngell is reporting the story; not a lot of interest from the court eunuchs of the "mainstream" media, who bear some considerable responsibility for those numbers, God rot them all.
As for Britain more generally, it is tempting to laugh Sir Keir off as a joke because London's entire vast bloated Ukrainian male-model community has it in for him. But, in cold reality, he is a wicked man who is prepared to kill you for a Tweet. As he seems prepared to do to Mrs Connolly.
So Britain's descent into evil is accelerating. If this is a time for picking a side, then I'm with the Ukrainian male models. Apparently the agency's a bit short-staffed right now, so I've sent them my new eight-by-tens.
Happy to take your thoughts on the above or any of the other topics we've discussed in recent days. Whether or not you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, you can listen to our show live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: Club membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members, and especially appreciate those who are having such a grand time around these parts that they've signed up a chum for a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Among the additions to our ranks in recent days are newbies from around the globe - from Tennessee to Tyne and Wear, Regina to Rotterdam, Canberra to Cape Town. If you've joined this week either for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter, do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's show.
But, if you're not interested in joining, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in. So see you back here at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in London and Dublin, 9pm in Paris and Berlin, 10pm in Kiev and Jerusalem; half-past-ten in Teheran; midnight-forty-five in Kathmandu; 3am in Singapore and Honkers (sorry about that); 6am in Sydney and Melbourne; 8am in Auckland, and an even more convivial hour for the kippers and kedgeree in His Majesty's Dominions eastward across the Pacific, where you're so far ahead Michael E Mann's probably lost his appeal by now...
