DAILY MAIL COMMENTS: Scobie’s shaky defense is lost in translation

Whenever the royal family has come under attack, it has adhered to one enduring principle: “Never complain, never explain.”

After Charles and Kate were criticized in Omid Scobie’s book for raising ‘concerns’ about Prince Archie’s skin colour, they will find it hard to bite their lip.

After all, some accusations are so cruel, so unfair and so damaging that it is almost impossible to remain silent.

Anyone who knows the royal family will find the accusation of racism ridiculous. The King and Princess are tireless champions of diverse communities.

Equally unedifying is the fact that there is not even a coherent account of this alleged incident. Harry and Meghan themselves cannot get their story clear.

If Charles and Kate had asked about Archie’s skin color before his birth, wasn’t that just out of curiosity and not out of malice? Expectant parents across the country often have conversations like this. But such is their sense of resentment and resentment towards the House of Windsor in the Himalayas that the Sussexes must have assumed the worst.

Scobie blames translation errors on the names ‘accidentally’ appearing in the Dutch edition of Endgame

The Mail knew the book identified Charles and Kate but felt it was unfair to report what was in fact little more than unsubstantiated Windsor-bashing gossip.

Scobie blames translation errors on the names ‘accidentally’ appearing in the Dutch edition of Endgame. But can he be believed? Last night the translator told the Mail: “The names were there in black and white.”

The Mail knew the book identified Charles and Kate but felt it was unfair to report what was in fact little more than unsubstantiated Windsor-bashing gossip.

But after they were featured on TV by Piers Morgan and then by countless newspapers – from the New York Times to The Times of London – we decided to publish them. Given the wide distribution of the names, it would be ridiculous not to do so.

The book quotes a letter Meghan wrote to the king outlining her grievances. So the great mystery of the cosmos is: how did Scobie get the information? The Palace would not have leaked it, that much is certain.

When Meghan sued The Mail on Sunday for printing details of an earlier letter she had sent, she claimed it had breached her privacy. If she or Harry were to leak details of her correspondence with Charles (and we are not for a moment saying that this is the case), it would be seriously hypocritical.

It would also mark an escalation of hostilities with the royal family. If they hate the monarchy so much, why don’t the Sussexes give up their titles? Presumably because it would affect their earning capacity.

A giant of diplomacy

The extraordinary life of Henry Kissinger reads like the story of the 20th century.

He was a child of the Holocaust and fled Nazi persecution to America with his Jewish family. Yet he became the most powerful diplomat in US history, and an important figure during the turbulence of the Cold War.

American diplomat Henry Kissinger died Wednesday at the age of 100 at his home in Connecticut after playing a key role in United States foreign policy.

The ex-secretary of state advised twelve American presidents and knew every Chinese prime minister since Mao. It’s hard to imagine anyone on today’s political scene ever having his vast experience… or an excellent address book.

To his supporters, Kissinger was a master negotiator whose guile and intellect created détente with the Soviet Union, thawed relations with China and ended the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict.

To his left-wing enemies he was a ‘war criminal’. His role in intensifying the conflict in Vietnam, and his willingness to eschew democratic values ​​if it meant halting the advance of communism, provoked disgust.

But his motivation was to protect Western freedoms. As a child of Nazi Germany, he understood the darkness of totalitarianism.

His greatest intellectual achievement was his deep commitment to realpolitik. According to him, foreign policy, driven by emotion, invariably ended in disaster. Tony Blair’s catastrophic war in Iraq underlines his point perfectly.

For all its shortcomings, Kissinger’s foreign policy legacy continues to shape the world we live in today. Without his influence, it would definitely be more dangerous.