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Martin McCauley writes from London: The world is involved in a new game of brinkmanship. It’s called ‘Taming China’ and it is all about one thing: how to stop the inexorable rise of China? Resorting to pressure or using military force against China is unthinkable. So a ‘gentle’ approach is needed by projecting influence that would not anger the Asian giant. The more China is involved in international organisations, for example, the less likely it is to engage in irrational [...]

Now that the terrorists, who had brought death and destruction to Mumbai, the leading financial centre in India, are wiped out or captured by the security forces, it is time for reflection. You may say that it is too early to learn from the lessons of Mumbai and that the terrible tragedy is still too vivid in people’s imagination: blood stains have not been wiped off the street payments and carpets in hotels and the collective shock has not yet [...]

Andrew Rose writes: An alien with an interest in EU politics might be puzzled by the excistence of mutual Anglo-French suspicion. He or she or it would reflect that yes, the two nations have fought in the past, but it happened so long ago. They can’t really continue to squabble with each other over things that no one really remembers any more. The alien would be wrong, of course. The feeling of suspicion remains. The French have the edge in [...]

It is getting crazier by the day: in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding the obscene messages, left by those great masters of comedy, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, on the answering machine of a retired actor, Andrew Sachs, the BBC has launched a campaign of assuring the public that it is going to cut down on the swearing in its programmes. Get it? Not ban or banish, but cut down. So the message coming from the BBC is: swearing [...]

Martin McCauley writes: Taiwan is desperate to modernise its armed forces and has been asking the US to supply it with new weapons. But its requests for new military hardware were frozen by President George Bush’s administration in December 2007. However, there was some good news for Taipei last month: Washington finally agreed to upgrade Taiwan’s defence forces. The bad news was that systems as diesel powered submarines and Black Hawk helicopters were not included. The reason is quite simple: [...]

So, while the hotels in Mumbai were still burning after the terrorist attacks and the security forces were still searching for the attackers in the city, Indian Prime Minister, Manmoth Singh, came on national television and said that the group behind the outrage was based ‘outside the country’. He did not say where exactly these terrorists, who call themselves Deccan Mujahideen, were based but everyone figured that Singh was talking about Pakistan. Where else could they have come from? The [...]

Christopher Lee writes: We demand that our politicians react to outrages like the one that has taken place in India, with appropriate language, and then our instincts tell us that they are simply mouthing platitudes. We scorn them for not saying the right thing, but deep down we know that there is no right thing to say.This is part of our universal contempt for the political class that is aggravated because we understand how powerful they are when deciding our [...]

Sorry to be banging on about Jonathan Ross and the scandal surrounding his and Russell Brand’s disgraceful escapade on radio with those obscene phone calls to former actor Andrew Sachs but every day brings some new twist in the shameful saga, as it is gradually becoming clear that the corporation is run by people who seem to be living on a different planet all together.It has transpired yesterday, for example, that all senior BBC producers have been told by the [...]

Martin McCauley writes: First it was the United States; then Britain. China followed suit by producing it own ‘fiscal stimulus’ that is supposed to kick start the recovery of the Chinese economy. In case you did not know, China is also suffering from the world recession. True to form, the Americans went for broke and have undertaken the largest injection of state cash into the economy in their history. Britain, true to form, did not have the courage to do [...]

So now we know: Gordon Brown’s government is only keen to save itself and safeguard the interests of big banks and retailers. Because that is what the so-called Pre-Budget Report, unveiled on Monday by Chancellor Alistair Darling, is all about. The scale of borrowing announced by Darling (I wish he’d change his name or something!) is astronomical – £120 billion projected only for the next year and £300 earmarked for the next three years – and betrays gross mismanagement of [...]