UPDATE! We'll be going live in about fifteen minutes, so do get ready to fire off your questions via the comment form below. See you at the top of the hour. And to listen simply click the livestream feed.
Yes, it's me! Mark Steyn of that ilk - back in the saddle for another hour of questions from Steyn Clubbers around the planet, as the third week of a new era gets underway in Washington, and the energy in the executive shows no sign of flagging.
Yesterday, President Trump proposed making Gaza "the Riviera of the Middle East". No reason why it shouldn't be - it's on the Med, after all - and, in fact, I made a similar proposal in 2003, when I was motoring through Iraq's western desert towards Fallujah: this, I reflected, would make a great site for the Las Vegas of the Middle East, with whoever the Sunni Triangle's answer to Wayne Newton is headlining at Saladin's Palace. Unfortunately, in both locations, the available human capital is a bit of a problem. So Trump is also proposing to end Gaza's biggest problem - the Gazans - by moving them elsewhere.
At least it's not the tedious old wanker-expert fantasy of a "two-state solution" - unless by two states you mean the Zionist Entity and Saint-Tropez Est.
Meanwhile, in the largely Trumpless Rest of the West, the contrast between America and Europe seems to be accelerating the sense that in the latter it's all over bar the Islamo-supremacist ululating: In Britain, France and the Netherlands, it was the usual fatal stabbings of children, and in Sweden ten people were killed in the country's worst-ever mass shooting. For the purposes of comparison, in the whole of 2006 there were just eight gun murders. But the past is a foreign country, and the Sweden of twenty years ago is more foreign than most.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates says, hey, what's the big deal about all this "grooming"?
Bill Gates says he can't understand why Elon is "obsessing about this grooming thing in the UK." Bill was Epstein's close buddy so I'm not shocked that he doesn't understand why a person would speak out against grooming gangs and rape. Evil.pic.twitter.com/sfqTJ21vds
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) February 5, 2025
Happy to take your thoughts on any of the above. Whether or not you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, you can listen to our show live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: Club membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members, and especially appreciate those who are having such a great time round these parts that they've signed up a chum for a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Among the additions to our ranks in recent days are newbies from around the globe - from Washington to Waikanae, Bradenton to Brescia, Lincoln, Rhode Island to Lynge, Denmark. Whether you've joined this week either for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter, do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's show.
But, if you're not interested in joining, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in. So see you back here at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in London, 9pm in Paris, 10pm in Jerusalem,11pm in Moscow; half-past-eleven in Teheran; one-forty-five in Kathmandu; 4am in Singapore and Honkers (sorry about that); 7am in Sydney and Melbourne; 9am in Auckland, and an even more civilised hour for the kippers and kedgeree in His Majesty's Dominions eastward across the Pacific, where you're so far ahead I've probably already lost my appeal by now...
