The Fall of Faucism and the Return of Common Sense

To insist that grown adults lack the ability to make consequential life choices is to insist that they be infantilized for the rest of their lives.

Parents have every right to balance the costs of missed educational opportunities for school-aged children against the risks of illness. American adults are entirely qualified to judge for themselves whether masks, gloves, or full body hazmat suits are necessary for day-to-day existence. And individual Americans are intellectually capable of determining whether they wish to be injected with novel mRNA vaccines. To insist that grown adults lack the ability to make consequential life choices is to insist that they be infantilized for the rest of their lives.

America’s Strategic Oil Reserves

The Biden administration in April sanctioned the sale of our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the highest bidder. They have done so under the logic that putting more oil on the global market at a time when Russia has an energy stranglehold on Europe could force down the pump price of gasoline.

The Al-Qaeda Chief’s Death and Its Implications

What do we know about Zawahiri’s death?

On 2 August, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. had killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul on the morning of 31 July. The U.S. said it had discovered that Zawahiri had returned to the Afghan capital with his family in the spring of 2022, after more than two decades in hiding (as early as 1998, he was wanted for his alleged role in al-Qaeda’s bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that year). Much of this time, he was widely thought to be sheltering somewhere near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. U.S. officials said the CIA had been watching the safe house in an upmarket district of Kabul, where the al-Qaeda leader was staying for several months, before proceeding with a precision drone strike. The Taliban have not explicitly acknowledged Zawahiri’s death beyond stating that they had no information about his arrival and stay in the capital.

Political Volatility is Disrupting European Security

Political instability is harming the West’s ability to strategise. For the good of Ukraine and Europe it needs to be actively mitigated.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dramatically shifted the European security order. European countries, under significant political and societal pressures, have broadly done well to adapt to the pace of change and deal with the secondary and tertiary effects of the war. Countries have delivered extraordinary military, diplomatic, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Russia has been extensively sanctioned and significant steps have been taken to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas. NATO has invited two new members to join the alliance and has significantly strengthened its defence and deterrence posture.