Peter Bach
New York
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Articles by Peter Bach
The Age of Suspicion
Each day, another revelation, another smoking gun. We scroll, watch, laugh, forward to a friend: our itsy-bitsy political thrillers, our pocket-sized Watergates, our bedtime stories for people who no longer believe in bedtime. Somewhere online, between the tofu ramen and Burmese cats, lurks another conspiracy theory. Here, byte by byte, more human suspicion. Some, of […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
At the Center of the Universe
Still from Possible Love. (Netflix) Even when the world seems bent on setting itself alight, the arts remain. A song played at a funeral can offer a kind of consolation that no explanation can provide. When I lost my parents as a child, I eventually found a way of approaching that loss by editing old cinefilm. The images could not explain what had happened, let alone undo it. But they allowed me to look again, recover something of the people who were gone and give the past a place in the present.
Europe’s March to War: How the Unthinkable Becomes Thinkable
Surely the danger is not simply that Europe may be drawn into war with Russia. It is that, step by step, direct military confrontation is being made to sound reasonable and manageable. British Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has just said that Britain must be ready for war in 1,000 days. Europe’s old certainties about the transatlantic alliance have been shaken, while Russia’s war against Ukraine continues.
Trump and the Beeb
Photograph Source: Alexander Svensson – CC BY 2.0 A poorly edited speech. Two senior BBC scalps. A $10 billion lawsuit. What began as a serious editorial error has become a test of whether a big-shot president can turn a legitimate grievance into a weapon against the press. The BBC got its editing wrong. It apologized and lost two senior executives.
The Cult of the Thick Skin
There is a curious fashion in British politics. People who have spent years telling the rest of us to toughen up seem remarkably keen to take offence themselves. Britain, we are told, has become too weak, too woke, too apologetic and too liberal. It is too dependent on foreigners, too hostile to its own history and, depending on the diplomatic weather, insufficiently enthusiastic about somebody else’s war.
The Diesel is Back
The diesel dried up on Tuesday. Mondays are meant for catastrophe. Tuesdays are supposed to be when you manage the consequences. At first, nobody bought it. Hope is a blinding business. There was still petrol, still electricity, still moolah in the banks, still the teasing glow of the TV, laptop or phone. The Prime Minister called the situation serious but governable. By Friday, the lorries had stopped.
The Enemy Within the Circle of Trust
From the alleged mishandling of German intelligence to Donald Trump’s uncertain commitment to America’s allies, the same uncomfortable question keeps coming up: what on earth happens when those we trust to protect us can no longer be relied upon to share our understanding of the threat? Few things are more disquieting than discovering that a breach may have occurred not at the perimeter, where an enemy is expected to test the defences, but within the circle of trust.
No Fallback But Land
“I love them,” the artist said yesterday, speaking of the worldly-wise and periodically world-weary couple, CC (Australian) and Given (American) O’Hanlon. “In a way they are truly living.” Never one to patronise, she meant her words well. I’d just shown her CC’s latest written update from Rome.
A Room for Sudan
Yasir Arman, 2018. Photograph Source: RomanDeckert – CC BY-SA 4.0 They had decided to make the gathering at Chatham House on the record. The Chatham House Rule—speak freely, but don’t identify who said what—would not apply, which meant I could write about what was happening in the room. “Creating the conditions for a durable end to the war in Sudan” was the theme. Guest speaker was Yasir Arman.
The Falklands: Why 1982 Is Unlikely to Happen Again
Unknown author – Revista “Radiolandia 2000” – Public Domain The Falklands are back in the political spotlight, with the rhetoric running hotter than it has for years. But rhetoric and military reality are two very different things—and any serious assessment needs to begin by separating the two.
The Discipline of Not Killing
Imagine the house. A man has entered it by force and occupied several rooms. Boots. Mud. Broken glass. A smell of stale cigarettes. The owner has fought him from the staircase, the landing, the kitchen, the garden. He has bloodied him considerably. He has somehow prevented him from taking possession of the whole house. But he cannot get him out. The intruder, meanwhile, cannot get any farther in. Doors are now boarded up. There they remain. A deadlock of hatred.
The Saudi Doubt
Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain It would be wrong to say that Saudi Arabia is turning against the United States. The relationship matters too much for that. In some respects, it may even have grown closer. The two countries signed a Strategic Defense Agreement in November 2025 and, only last month, Washington submitted their civilian nuclear cooperation agreement to Congress for review. America remains indispensable to Saudi Arabia, probably in ways that no other country quite is.
The Politics of Getting Around Things
Friendships in and around politics are probably far more interesting when the personal trust within them opens up what bureaucracies, parties, even countries often resist. Sometimes that trust—the simple groove of a bond—can, when lucky, even reduce danger. Something like this has been happening in miniature with the rupture involving American rapper Macklemore. Ed Sheeran […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
What the Heart Already Knows
Jackson Browne performing at the Unsung Heroes tribute to Eleni Mandell, January 2017. Photo: Justin Higuchi.
The Burnham Window Monologue
Photograph Source: Number 10 – OGL 3 It was one of those hot and sticky British summers that might have been penned by a Liverpudlian Tennessee Williams. Or by Lancashire-born dramatist Jim Cartwright. Sticky heat, sticky inflation and, according to the financial press, increasingly unstuck millionaires. And now Andy Burnham—Scouser, Evertonian, Catholic—was Prime Minister.
Mounting Evidence of Chemical Weapons in Sudan Demands International Action
Chemical weapon canister in Sudan. (Screen capture from video posted to Instagram.) Mounting evidence that chemical weapons may have been used in Sudan is raising an increasingly urgent question: not simply what happened, but whether the international machinery created to investigate such allegations is capable of acting before crucial evidence disappears.
Peter Thiel Gets Lost in the British Museum
The arrow in Harold’s eye, Bayeux Tapestry (detail). Last month, the British Museum gave shiny-faced tech billionaire Peter Thiel a private viewing of the Bayeux Tapestry. This was before the exhibition had even opened to the public. Staff reportedly had concerns. Not only about Thiel getting special access, but about Thiel himself. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of ordinary people were queuing online for tickets. You could say Thiel had discovered a more efficient allocation mechanism.
The AfD’s Friends Abroad
Photograph Source: PantheraLeo1359531 – CC BY 4.0 The AfD no longer looks like a protest party rattling the presently spiky gates of German politics. In Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday it won a gothic 43.8 per cent of the vote, more than twice its share five years ago, inflicting a spectacular defeat on the Christian Democrats and becoming the first far-right party to win a German state election since the end of the Second World War.
When the World Stops Dreaming in American
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair I was in a low-key New York bar on Seventh Avenue in the mid-80s when I became aware of the steely eyes of American playwright and actor Sam Shepard—who didn’t know me from Adam—watching me buy a drink. I was stuffing the change into my wallet when he slapped a hand on my arm. “Not like that,” he said. “Like this.” He took the cash back out and placed it on the bar.
Who is the Enemy Now?
Photograph Source: Russian Presidential Executive Office – CC BY 4.0 There is a very real and increasingly noisy meeting point between parts of the American MAGA right, several European far-right parties, and positions which, whatever their motivation, increasingly favour catering to Moscow.
The Curveball President
Image Source: How to play baseball, a manual for boys – Public Domain Last week, in a fit of blue-suit pique, Donald Trump threw a curveball, reversing his take on ideologically indoctrinated North Korea and flicking signals at Kim Jong Un with the glee of a kid discovering a laser pointer. Remember Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a very different sartorialist—more dark commando chic than preppy shine?
Warships, Watchers and the Riddle of the Sands
It is the latest chapter in a long-running battle with NATO, now including undisguised threats by Moscow to retaliate against British and EU ships intercepting Russia-linked vessels, such as Royal Marine Commandos did this June when they boarded and seized the Smyrtos during a six-hour raid off the UK coast. After Russia threatened yet more […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
The Retreat Goes On
Ad for Yoga Walks in the Wye River Valley, Wales. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Away from the heat, there must be some winds that wish to cool the earth. Some that carry the scent of wet stone and violet. Some that reach the Welsh mountains still fresh. As a friend wrote last week, “This is why I build in the mountains with my own water sources and plenty of wind and solar.” In Wales, I gather people have their yoga mats at the ready again.
Sudan Defies Simple Explanations
Image Source: ElijahPepe – Own work, derivate of Template:2023 Sudanese Clashes detailed map This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. The original can be viewed here: Sudan adm location map.svg – CC BY-SA 4.0 There is now strong evidence of closer ties between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Iran. Yet almost every aspect of it is still disputed.
Artificial intelligence for urban ecosystem restoration: reshaping social–ecological–technological interactions
Abstract Ecosystem functioning enabled by urban ecosystem restoration (UER) contributes to sustainable cities. We examine how artificial intelligence (AI) supports integrated UER approaches by linking monitoring, simulation, and participatory processes within a social–ecological–technological systems framework, forming an AI-integrated UER feedback cycle.
Beyond the Wretched Algorithm: Seeing Ukraine First-Hand
A shopping center in the city of Kremenchuk, Ukraine after a Russian rocket strike on June 27, 2022, which killed 18 civilians. Wikimedia. Few episodes better illustrate the strange politics of today’s Ukraine debate than Laura Loomer’s journey from one of the loudest voices of the anti-Ukraine movement to a self-described convert after witnessing the war first-hand.
The Ceuta Crisis
Photograph Source: Mario Sánchez Bueno from Ceuta, España – CC BY-SA 2.0 The political reaction to the Ceuta migration crisis showed just how quickly border events become vehicles for much broader themes. At a time when some Europeans have grown weary of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and JD Vance dismissing or belittling Europe, it was easy to interpret the episode as another attempt to portray European governments as weak and divided on migration.
When Gloucestershire Appeared on Iran’s Map
Image Source: Nilfanion – Ordnance Survey OpenData – CC BY-SA 3.0 There was something oddly disorientating about hearing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps mention RAF Fairford last week. Fairford is hardly a place that intrudes on the world’s imagination. I spend Christmas not far from there. That is my only connection.
The UK’s AI Crossroads
Every generation thinks it’s living through the biggest technological revolution in history. Sometimes it’s wrong. But sometimes it’s absolutely right. Steam power changed everything. Electricity changed everything. The internet changed everything. Artificial intelligence belongs in that company. The question facing the UK isn’t whether AI will transform the economy. It’s whether the UK will help […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
Turn and Face the Change
Photograph Source: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street – OGL 3 As Keir Starmer left British politics, with the last of the summer light catching his spectacles, I found myself wondering what comes next. Perhaps a pint of his favoured IPA (India Pale Ale) while reading about his beloved Arsenal in Isaac Khan’s forthcoming “22 Years: The Inside Story of Arsenal’s Title-Winning Season”? Or a secluded family holiday in France where he has already been so feted?
Waiting for the Lead Pipe
“I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare—or, if not, it’s some equally brainy lad—who says that it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping,” wrote P. G. Wodehouse in Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest. There seems to be a great deal of pessimism about these days.
Several Truths at Once
Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0 Ask what ordinary Iranians think about the recent escalation and you’ll find little reliable information. Even a young Iranian in London may lower their voice and glance around. The difficulty is that many Iranians appear to hold several truths at once: they oppose the Islamic Republic, fear foreign military intervention, resent sanctions, and long for ordinary lives. These positions are not contradictory.
World Cup Wonderwall
Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis performing in San Diego on September 18, 2005. Photo: I am going to have to eat some of my words about the World Cup for this one. Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you By now, you should’ve somehow realised what you gotta do I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now England football fans just can’t stop singing Wonderwall.
The Dictator's Dilemma
Photograph Source: Russian Presidential Executive Office – CC BY 4.0 As I travelled on the London Tube to meet CounterPunch writer and esteemed art historian Stephen Eisenham, I read journalist Owen Matthews suggesting Putin “lives in a parallel reality, a sealed bubble of disinformation where all the data he receives confirms the wisdom of his choices.” It got me wondering what else on leaders and protected bubbles was out there. Did it include Donald Trump?
The Forgotten Brits Who Lived Among the Cherokee
A Delegation of the Creek tribe meets with the Trustees of Georgia by William Verelst. Public domain. It took a single sentence in Ken Burns’ documentary series The American Revolution to change the way I thought about the American Revolution. It was a passing reference to British agents living among the Cherokee. The documentary quickly moved on, but I couldn’t. Who were they? Were they soldiers, diplomats, or traders? Did they wear uniforms? Did they speak Cherokee?
Bring Me Your Neglected Crises
Female refugees in Pakistan. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0 A family arrives at a camp in Sudan carrying everything they still owned. A few cooking pots. Some blankets. Perhaps a plastic bag of clothes. They expect to stay a few weeks before returning home. Instead, they are displaced again. And again. And again. The war that unsettled them has become one of the largest humanitarian disasters on Earth. Tens of millions have been uprooted.
Global Water Bankruptcy and Other Things I Thought About in the Bath
Los Angeles aqueduct, Owens Valley, California. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. The water in my bath had gone lukewarm before I noticed. The book was balanced on my chest. The traffic outside the window had disappeared. Even the condensation spreading across the glass seemed irrelevant. I was concentrating. Then I read a phrase I couldn’t stop thinking about: global water bankruptcy.
The War in the Feed
One recent early evening, airstrikes hit southern Lebanon. In the hours that followed, videos purportedly showing this circulated on TikTok, Telegram and X. Had it not been real, it might have resembled a scene from a war film: jets overhead, explosions echoing across hills, smoke rising fast, hidden forces exchanging fire across a frontier. But […] To read this article, log in here or subscribe here.
The Country That Chose to Be Smaller
Recruiting station for the British Army in London. (No lines evident.) Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Over the breadth of the ocean and all the way from a noisier Murica, politics in Cuppaland once ran on instantly recognisable machinery. You could hear the engine from streets away and know precisely what was coming. Ever since Doomchoice ten years ago—though not entirely because of it—Cuppaland has looked increasingly like a place that has lost its political bearings.
The Beautiful Game Meets the Border Guard
Somali World Cup soccer referee, Omar Artan, who was banned from entry into the US. Photo: Omar Artan’s Facebook page. I know Pete Hegseth put his foot in his mouth and took his eye off the ball on a beach in Normandy the other day when, during a D-Day anniversary gathering, he declared: “Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.” Critics described the speech as grotesque and inappropriate for such a solemn and commemorative occasion.
Under the Flight Paths
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair I lie in bed listening to the birds in the trees. Living with a true artist means no art on the bedroom walls, only in the studio. In the background is the hum of London traffic. Above all this, the first passenger jet of the morning. I have recounted this before—the birds, trees, traffic and planes of London. London is home to as many as 1.5 million wild birds and more than 300 species. Even in the eaves above the bedroom window they nest.
On Seeing Will Self Again
Will Self on Question Time. (Screegrab.) I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed hearing Will Self until he reappeared. While I was sorry to learn he had been unwell, I found myself unexpectedly delighted by two recent TV appearances: first in an interview filmed at his south London home, the window open for health reasons; then on a Sunday morning broadcast, where his independent trains of thought darted about like sticklebacks through the mossy rocks of everyone else’s Sunday consensus.
The Invention of Cultural Intelligence
Cover photo for the book The Arab Bureau: The Story of Britain’s Most Ingenious Intelligence Unit by Eamonn Gearon Many years ago, Eamonn Gearon returned from an epic camel journey across North Africa. He nearly died along the way, surviving in isolation until finally rescued by a radio crew. Having known solitude in difficult places myself, I understood the psychological weight of such experience.
Watching Ebola Return
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Ebola virus particles (green) both budding and attached to the surface of infected VERO E6 cells (orange). Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID. As I write, news is breaking of at least six Americans exposed to Ebola.
As Though It Mattered: Hollywood, AI and the End of Original Ideas
Theatrical advertisement from 1950 – Public Domain I am not entirely up to speed on what the feature film business in London is like these days, but I do remember a production meeting for 28 Days Later. There were department heads around a large table, Andrew Macdonald at the helm. There is a particular atmosphere to those meetings—everyone present, but not entirely there, each waiting for their moment to speak, or not to, as though something important were taking place.
Only Four Weeks to Go
From left, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, U.S. President Donald Trump, Mexico president Claudia Sheinbaum and Canada Prime minister Mark Carney during the FIFA World Cup 2026 official draw at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., December 5, 2025.
Picnic on a Receding Glacier
Eliot Glacier in retreat, from Cooper’s Spur on the eastern flank of Mt. Hood. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Instrument records and long-term observations show that Alpine glaciers have been retreating and thinning significantly since the end of the Little Ice Age from approximately 1300 to 1850. Hold that thought. Now imagine someone bringing sandwiches. Not metaphorical ones—actual ones, wrapped in that lovely wax paper, tucked into a backpack beside crampons and thermos flasks.
Between Order and Upheaval
Photograph Source: College of Arms – Public Domain “In my beginning is my end,” wrote T. S. Eliot. Every so often—after writing nearly a dozen articles on this subject—I return to the same question: where, exactly, are industrial relations in the UK right now? There are no easy answers—or so I have found. Not least because it is a question so rarely asked by a largely indifferent press. This, despite the increasing noise from the union camp.
Buckingham Palace’s Draft Folder (Do Not Send)
Houses of Parliament, London. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
A Single Field of Grief: American and Iranian Anti-War Voices
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair I have sought out the following to show that peace can be mutual across warring sides. The key is not to drift into maudlinness or sentimentality. Across both American and Iranian poetic traditions, anti-war poetry leans towards a few core themes. The dehumanisation of conflict. The grief of survivors. The illusion of glory. And the long and often inescapable shadow of memory.
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