Mallen Baker: Faultlines

Many countries across the world have held inquiries into what worked and what didn't during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have been better than others, but none of them looked like the complete sham accountability exercise that saw Anthony Fauci required to testify to Rand Paul's committee. So what should we have been talking about, and why has the United States decided uniquely that it is determine...

Following Trump's reportedly successful meeting with Ukraine's President Zelensky, many reporters are talking about how various factors are 'turning' Trump, or 'warming him' towards Ukraine and against Putin's Russia. At this stage in the Trump presidency, with all that has happened in the last year and a half - such commentary is baffling at best. Only possible by those who have a problem underst...

President Trump was in talks to discuss all his options in massively escalating the war against Iran over the weekend. It turns out, they were a lot more limited than he had imagined. Now, confronted as he has finally been, with the enfeeblement he has brought upon the US military, he must surely understand how few options he really has, and how bad all of them are. So suddenly diplomacy is back i...

In this news round-up of the week on Friday July 24th 2026. President Trump is furious about the rapid leaks about all the mis-steps and u-turns he's making over the Iran war. But they are many, and serious, and reveal that his push for military escalation is based on a delusion. The Saudis are furious about Trump agreeing a nuclear deal with them and then AFTER it was publicly announced, tacked o...

President Trump's biggest triumph, according to some, was to get Israel and Hamas to agree to his Gaza peace deal. And then, to follow that up with the creation of the Board of Peace to oversee an astonishingly ambitious transformation of the territory from wartime disaster to thriving economic centre. Since then, it seems that the driving energy behind the plan has pretty much disappeared, leavin...

As Trump's attacks on Iran resume, and his rhetoric escalates, reports are emerging that officials in the Pentagon are just not telling the White House, and Pete Hegseth, the truth about how depleted the US arsenal actually has become. Why? Largely because Hegseth's purges of senior figures have trained everyone to understand that the bearers of bad news, or even just cold reality as it exists out...

Canada is having a wildfire problem - a huge wildfire problem right now. In the past, it has collaborated with its southern neighbour over such moments - a reciprocal arrangement that has had lots of activation in recent years. But this time it's different. This time President Trump is seeing the large amount of unpleasant smoke making its way across the border and afflicting US cities, and using...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday July 17th 2026. President Trump addresses the nation and declassifies documents to show just how vulnerable US elections are. The documents don't show what he says they do - but that won't matter for what comes next. The Iran war is back in full flow - analysts are detecting a new strategy in the US military operation, and Iran's factional infighting to...

President Donald Trump outraged much of the world yesterday when he announced his latest bold and audacious venture - a Strait of Hormuz protection racket. The US would promise to protect ships wanting to transit through the Strait, in the face of hostility by the Iranians, in return for a toll charged at a massive 20% of the value of the ship's cargo. The gulf states particularly were furious, an...

The Strait of Hormuz is the focus point once again. Iran has declared it closed. President Donald Trump has declared it closed to Iranian shipping with the reinstatement of the US blockade. But, this time, the US will escort ships out - for an extremely large fee. Seems like a return to how it was before, but it's different. This is no longer a war of economic attrition, it is a fierce fight over...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday July 10th 2026. President Trump floats what is obviously going to become his way out of the Iran war - and it's as bad as you would think. Far-right political leader Marine Le Pen has her sentence for embezzling reduced, meaning she can now stand as a candidate for president next year - a post the polls suggest she will win, which would transform France...

stir - but the real events of substance were coming once again from Iran, and from the Strait of Hormuz. The deal, the memorandum of understanding, is full-on disintegrating, amidst accusations on both sides of non-compliance by the other side. By the written document, it seems that Iran has the stronger case, although its way of dealing with that (attacking vessels going through the Strait of Hor...

The much-awaited NATO summit in Turkey has begun, and Trump went in firing off all the usual threats, statements and attacks that generated ... the usual headlines. But behind the Trump show, there are real stories to be told about what this summit is about. And they mostly come out of the quiet places where Trump isn't, where other NATO members are coming to realise the opportunity that a US exit...

Trump had the perfect term to make a difference as US president - the year of the 250th anniversary of the United States, and the hosting of the World Cup tournament. Having underwhelmed on the first of those, he found a way to completely poison the US team's standing in the latter, to show himself up as a cheater to the entire world, which is watching the tournament closely, and to throw FIFA, an...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday July 3rd 2026. The Ukraine war is intensifying just days before a big NATO summit where Trump has made it clear he will be going in fiery mood, to punish those who dare to deny him. This comes days after his administration prevented Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from heading back to her earthquake-stricken country, because it wouldn'...

President Donald Trump had one job in relation to the 250th anniversary of the United States. Hold a great big party to celebrate the founding mythology of America, focus on the things that bring people together, and remind them why they value their nation's remarkable experiment. Obviously that was out of the question. But now we hear that he is furious that crowds for his first rally were so sma...

We know that President Donald Trump really cared about the birthright citizenship issue - because he made an unprecedented in-court appearance at the Supreme Court when it was being heard, and talked about it often as being a top issue for his administration. But sadly for the power of wishful thinking, the blatant unconstitutionality of what he wanted won out, and the court handed him another hug...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday 26th June, 2026. President Trump is back on the tariff trail, as he announces that all countries that dare to implement digital services taxes will be hit by 100% tariffs. Europe has been hit by massive heat waves many degrees above what it would normally experience at this time of year. So of course that means everyone's arguing. Ukraine is hitting Rus...

When Trump came into office, everyone in public life across the world apparently started to mimic the nonsense, to talk as though Trumpian fantasy was real, even desirable. A process that one commentator has labelled 'farce politik'. But increasingly NATO's Mark Rutte is looking isolated as the only person left who seems to believe in such a process. Europeans, Gulf States, and even Trump's own pa...

For someone who really needs this deal to work, Trump seems to be going out of his way to sabotage it. It's a reflection of two things - one, he just can't help himself. Whether it's Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, President Zelensky, or the Iranians, he needs to be insulting someone. But, more importantly, two - it's a reflection of the deeply flawed deal that is the best he could ge...

In this news round-up of the week for Friday June 19th 2026. The backlash against Trump's ceasefire deal with Iran continues to intensify amongst the Republicans, and derision of the one-sidedness of it spreads worldwide. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is hearing the clock ticking loudly on his premiership as his chief rival, Andy Burnham, wins his by-election and enters Parliament next week....

Even as he was signing the Iran ceasefire deal, and talking more positively about Ukraine, Trump's first steps towards de facto walking away from NATO was being related to alliance defence ministers by Pete Hegseth. While berating the alliance for not spending enough, and not jumping to command on the Iran war, the US steps to reduce the forces committed to any action should Article 5 be invoked (...

When Iran sent over its first list of demands to the Trump Administration, it was reportedly treated with derision - hopelessly unrealistic. And yet, every time when revised versions were being swapped, the Iranian demands remained - exactly the same. Now we have the final memorandum of understanding text - an earlier draft published by CNN, and literally just a couple of hours ago, the official v...

President Donald Trump got his birthday deal - well, maybe. So far the text hasn't been released, so we only have the word of the two different sides, and their words sharply contrast with each other. Let's look at what we know, what we think we know, and why this seems far more a positive step for Iran than it does the United States. If Trump is celebrating, it is likely that, at last, he sees a...

Lots of us have observed the incompetence, the trashing of US constitutional norms, the undermining of democracy, and all the rest of it - and concluded that once Americans actually notice that this is all happening, they will obviously react firmly and fully against the administration of President Donald Trump. An article this weekend in the Atlantic, based on a piece of research into how conserv...