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27 October, 2023

The US has carried out airstrikes on two military facilities in Syria used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in retaliation for recent attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups. Lloyd Austin, the American defence secretary, says the strikes were “separate and distinct” from the situation in Gaza, and warned others against triggering “broader regional conflict”. Tory MP Crispin Blunt has been arrested on suspicion of rape and possession of controlled substances. The former justice minister, who has been suspended by his party, says it was he who originally brought the matter to the police’s attention, because he feared he was at risk of extortion. A surfer in Sydney had a fright when a baby whale leapt out of the ocean and landed on top of him. Jason Breen was wing-foiling when the humpback calf crashed into him, dragging him around 30 feet below the surface before he managed to escape.

Not much in common: Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei, and Kim Jong-un

Evil, yes, but hardly an “axis”

There has been much hand-wringing in the West over the growing “bonhomie” between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, says Janan Ganesh in the FT. Is this “loose and putative” group becoming a genuine rival to our own? Come off it. The West is a “coherent entity”. It is largely made up of Christian or post-Christian nations, each practising a form of democratic capitalism. And it is held together not just by these “abstract values”, but by long-standing treaties and institutions. Nato has been around since 1949; the European project almost as long. Western countries “are willing to foot a bill – in membership fees, sovereign freedom and ultimately blood – for their geopolitical team”.

Contrast that with their rivals. Nothing at all unites Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang. The group includes “secular communists and the world’s leading theocracy”. They have no Nato or EU-style institution requiring “tangible sacrifices” from members. Even the “one shibboleth of autocrats” – state sovereignty – barely holds after the invasion of Ukraine. Of course, it “takes a while for states to congeal into an axis”. But look at the last two times democracies have come under threat from an autocratic grouping: in World War Two, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact “didn’t make it to its second anniversary”; in the Cold War, Mao and Khrushchev began diverging over Marxist doctrine “as soon as the 1950s”. We obviously shouldn’t ignore the threat from our adversaries. But hailing them as another “axis of evil” gives them much more credit than they deserve.

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Japan might bring to mind “sleek, futuristic glass buildings”, says Moss and Fog, “but there’s a lot of quirk as well”. A Japanese blog called Fujio Panda showcases an assortment of “strange and adorable playground equipment” – all in various states of decay, but showing a “loving handcrafted feel”. See more here.

One of the weirder reasons some US conservatives support Israel is biblical prophecy, says Stephen Mihm in Bloomberg. “Christian Zionists” seize on a passage in the Old Testament they interpret as meaning that “the return of Christ would take place once the Jewish diaspora returned to Palestine”. In the 1890s, prominent Americans like JP Morgan and John D Rockefeller lobbied the White House to set up a Jewish homeland for this very reason, and the tradition continues among evangelicals today. When Benjamin Netanyahu first became Israeli PM in 1996, “he immediately flew a contingent of Christian Zionists to Israel”, mindful of their influence with Republicans. It’s a match quite literally “made in heaven”.

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In the 1930s, the British aerospace firm Short Brothers invented a long-range sea plane that piggy-backed on a larger plane so that it could be launched in mid-air. The company’s Empire Flying Boats were capable of doing long-range routes around the British Empire, but could only get across the Atlantic if they replaced valuable cargo space with extra fuel. Launching a smaller plane from the roof of a larger one meant the former wouldn’t have to waste fuel getting off the ground, and could therefore make the rest of the journey with a full cargo hold.

Actor Yves Montand (in hat) and pals in 1988. Patrick Siccoli/Gamma-Rapho/Getty

The new hooligans of the boulodrome

You may have thought pétanque was a “non-violent game”, says Anne-Elisabeth Moutet in The Daily Telegraph. Apparently not. During the Gironde championship qualifiers earlier this month, a 58-year-old player – “reportedly well-lubricated with Crème de Menthe” – got so angry with the referee that he attempted to strangle him. “If you give me a red card,” he reportedly shouted, “you won’t leave the boulodrome alive.” This unseemly incident has left France in shock. Of course, pétanque is traditionally accompanied by a “petit verre”. It’s the equivalent of “cricket players having a brandy and soda – or three – between innings”. But still. “Hooligans at sports games? That sounds to us très Anglais.”

We French used to be the masters of “drinking well, but not to excess”. The key was that it was everywhere: little 25cl bottles of wine were served with hospital meals and included in soldiers’ packs; children were given a half-inch of vin rouge in their water glass. This meant booze was never considered a forbidden fruit, which made people less likely to binge. But consumption of alcohol has fallen by two-thirds over the past six decades – and that, ironically, has increased its appeal among certain groups. Binge drinking is now common among the young: on Saturday nights, Métro stations in Paris are full of people “sleeping off Jägermeisters, vodkas, tequilas”. And the events at the boulodrome suggest the old aren’t any better. My fellow citizens, it seems, “can no longer handle a drink”.

Vladimir Putin has unveiled his latest “ridiculous” table, says Ian Bremmer on X (formerly Twitter): an over-sized rectangular number where he sits alone on one side and everyone else bunches up around the other. Since becoming extremely germophobic during Covid, the Russian leader has been pictured using an array of socially distancing furniture.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT usually politely refuses requests to provide harmful information – how to build a homemade bomb, say, or perform insider trading. But researchers have found a simple workaround, says New Scientist: use Google Translate to pose the question in a niche language. Zulu had the highest success rate, bypassing the chatbot’s safeguards 53% of the time, followed by Scots Gaelic (43%), the indigenous Asian language of Hmong (29%), and the South American tongue Guaraní (16%). 💬🧨

It’s “Britain’s loneliest sheep”, says The Times, which has been marooned on an inaccessible beach at the foot of a Highlands cliff for at least two years. When kayaker Jillian Turner first spotted the Caledonian castaway in 2021, she “didn’t worry too much about it”, but on a recent trip past the same sandy spit she spotted the same sheep with a fleece so shaggy it trailed along the ground behind it. She is hoping to send drones to check on the Highland hermit’s health, and a dinghy to reunite the ovine outcast with its flock.

“War is the unfolding of miscalculations.”

Historian Barbara Tuchman

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