Mallen Baker: Faultlines

NATO is realising that the hybrid warfare being waged against it by Russia, via sabotage, airspace incursions, disinformation and hacking attacks, are too serious to continue to be shrugged off. So today one of NATO's top military leaders put it out there that NATO should be taking more aggressive and proactive action, and that such action would count as a defensive measure in the current situatio...

According to the Washington Post, President Trump's defence secretary Pete Hegseth ordered specifically that there should be no survivors from the first of the US military strikes against boats in waters close to Venezuela. This meant that when two people survived the initial strike, the US navy carried out a second strike specifically just to eliminate those survivors - an act that would be consi...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday, November 28th 2025. President Trump faces a major legal backlash as analysis shows hundreds of judges have ruled his latest actions on deportations to be illegal - and now a class action is coming that may force a change in policy. Taiwan shows how it is coming to terms with the unreliability of its greatest ally. Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff shows the...

This week, we saw the Trump Administration trying to blackmail the EU with steel and aluminium tariffs to get it to dismantle its regulations on big tech. We saw scandal in Switzerland over the donations to Trump of a Rolex clock and a gold bar to get tariffs reduced there. And we saw Trump declare that, as the host of the next G20 meeting in 2026, he is going to bar South Africa from attending be...

A couple of weeks ago, Michelle Obama said that America wasn't ready to vote for a woman as President. Today, in the UK - which has had three women Prime Ministers and counting - another woman in a top position - Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, got to hold the centre of attention of the country for a couple of days having complained about misogyny and 'mansplaining' that she has to dea...

We've talked before about the two sides of MAGA - the personality cult / ideological part, which is noisy and enthusiastic at times, and perpetually confused with Trump's frequent inconsistencies - and the tech billionaire part, with their views on the post-democracy AI future they think they should be left to bring about. Earlier predictions that these two might not be the best of room-mates are...

As expected, European and Ukrainian leaders have been locked in urgent talks with the US as they try to negotiate down the Trump Ukraine Surrender Plan to something more acceptable. As they do so, Trump is plumbing new depths in his public expression of contempt for Ukraine, saying that it's leaders have not been sufficiently appreciative of everything he has done for them. For some reason, he fai...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday, November 21st, 2025, we examine the text of Trump's Ukraine surrender plan and the attempt to force Ukraine to sign it, with the threat of letting Putin win the war if it doesn't. We also look at Japan's new Prime Minister facing a massive confrontation with China over Taiwan, and the UK's detailed COVID-19 inquiry report.

It's just been revealed that Putin's Russia has been working in secret with the Trump administration to agree what is described as a 28-point plan, based on the Gaza peace plan. One thing is clear - if such a plan is taking shape, it is doing so very much according to Putin's desires which, by definition, means an extremely rough deal for Ukraine. It seems that President Trump retains the belief t...

With one abrupt and astonishing U-turn, President Trump has removed all doubt that he's prematurely entering the lame duck phase of his presidency. Faced with a massive revolt by Republican lawmakers to vote for the Epstein files to be released, he used the masterful arts of a confused toddler in seeking to persuade them that, contrary to everything said and done so far, he really wants them to vo...

Lots of questions for this video to celebrate my long-delayed YouTube silver button! Lots on the United States and democracy, what the Trump administration end game is, whether the US will be able to recover its democracy after Trump's term is over and more. Also, what did Putin hope to get out of threatening to give Venezuela weapons to use against the US? And then a few questions about me. Let's...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday November 14th 2025 - An announcement by Trump's War Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to signal a completely new focus for how America uses its military power in the future, and it's not great news for Latin America. Trump is mired once again in the Epstein files - but what is at the heart of the weird contradiction we're seeing play out before our eyes? And...

Boycotts rarely work, and even the ones that do, rarely stick. But Canadians are making themselves the exception. Ten months in, they are still avoiding travelling to the US in significant numbers. They are still shunning American brands in the stores in significant numbers. And while they're doing that, they're looking with new eyes to many of the potential other partners - including Trump's bigg...

The UK's Prime Minister Keir Starmer has gone to great lengths to stay on the right side of President Trump since he was re-elected. All the usual flattery, plus an unprecedented second state visit, with all the pomp and pageantry. But it was always obvious that sooner or later, Donald Trump would cross a line too far, and push the 'special relationship' into crisis. We learned this week that the...

On one level, the BBC made some pretty evident mistakes on impartiality - and most damagingly on a documentary on Trump, the echoes of which quickly reverberated across the Atlantic. And as a result, Tim Davie, the Director General had to resign. But there's a lot more to the story than that - and the truth is that the institution has been under attack for the last few years as political polarisat...

President Trump just unleashed a barrage on social media where he railed against the Supreme Court, against anyone and everyone who is against tariffs - and then he, apparently by-the-by, said that everyone would be getting a $2000 payment. It's not the first time such things have been suggested as a result of the income from tariffs - but it was a very specific promise at this very specific momen...

In this news round-up of the week, Russia considers giving Maduro its latest hypersonic missiles to use to defend himself against Trump's America, even as China is protesting about his threats to its strategic partner Nigeria. The administration has begun a charm offensive to persuade its supposed allies that it really CAN be trusted when it comes to intelligence sharing. And Elon Musk is granted...

Political fortunes can turn on a dime. One second, a major figure can seem immovable, all powerful - then suddenly something shifts and they're left trying to hold it all together as it slips from their grasp. This week has seen a series of failures for Trump that has dented his projected image of power, and reminded Congressional Republicans that politics-as-usual probably still applies, and in t...

The lower courts have both ruled that the bulk of Trump's tariffs are plainly unconstitutional. Now it has come to the Supreme Court, and it's arguably the moment the Conservatives on the court have been dreading. The case seems legally very clear that Trump has no case. The hearing that took place today sounded very much like a majority of them were sceptical of the arguments put before them. But...

The Trump MAGA base - with its mix of personality cultists, conspiracy theorists and uneasy traditional Republicans - is in uproar right now as Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Nick Fuentes was seen by many to breach the line. The fight over what can, or cannot, be normalised is an early sign of the fight for the future soul of MAGA for the post-Trump era. Meanwhile, the other part of MAGA -...

Two stories came out today. One - it's becoming clear just how aggressively the Trump administration threatened delegates to the International Maritime Organisation to push them not to vote for the net zero carbon tax on international shipping. Two - we have Trump threatening Nigeria with an armed incursion by American forces in the face of what Trump rather absurdly suggests is an 'existential' g...

In this news round-up of the week, Trump orders a resumption to nuclear testing - a move that would have major global consequences, and apparently he did so on a complete misunderstanding of reality. The Netherlands election shows that far-right populism can be reversed where it is taking hold in Europe. A MAGA-friendly major German influencer is the first to take up Trump's invitation to seek asy...

President Trump's much-anticipated summit with China's Xi Jinping has confirmed what was already obvious to all but the most MAGA-faithful - Trump lost the trade war he picked with China. The threat of crippling restrictions on strategically essential rare earth minerals will be held over America's head to be reviewed every year. Donald Trump thought he held all the cards, but it turns out he badl...

Headlines are on all the major news sites - Bill Gates just did a major u-turn on climate change. He now says it's NOT the end of the world. He says the United Nations needs to pivot. And he says all this just a week before the next COP climate conference is due to start in Brazil. What's going on? Well, the headlines - most of them - are not telling the accurate story. And few of them are tracing...

We know that Trump would LOVE to run for a third term - not least because he keeps telling us so. And now some of his people, such as Steve Bannon, are saying that it's all possible, although they won't yet say how. It could well just be trolling, but let's say for a moment that they're right. It's possible. There's a pretty good rationale for why it would potentially wreck their movement, and des...