Grier's Notes: August 9, 2026
Spain's migrant crisis, Polish political split, Cameroon's missing President, thoughts on the state of public commentary
News from around the world
Spain deployed its military after tens of thousands of migrants entered Spain’s enclave in Africa from neighbouring Morocco. While the Spanish government has been notably pro-immigration against the broader trend in Europe, the government moved quickly to send the would-be migrants back to Morocco as it attempted to avoid a political crisis. This was not enough to reassure Italy, which has imposed border controls on Spain as it questions the Spanish commitment to secure borders.
Andy Burnham is floating the idea that the UK should adopt a written constitution. He raised the idea as part of his plans to significantly shift resources to local governments, which he has presented as a solution to deal with some of the populist sentiment in the UK. Though this decentralization has its limits, with PM quick to shoot down the suggestion of local Conservative mayors that they use the money to cut local taxes.
The Irish government maintained its commitment of refusing to buy products with Israeli-made items with the purchase of a new jet for the country’s leader. The downside of this stance is that the new jet is without the Israeli-designed system for landing in the fog meaning it could leave the Taoiseach stranded on foggy days.
Russian opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin has left Russia after he was designated a “foreign agent” and banned from running in parliamentary elections over his criticism of Putin’s war with Ukraine. Nadezhdin has tried to work within the Russian system despite the many challenges for opposition politicians, but the latest move has forced him to at least temporarily relocate to avoid the risk of being jailed or become latest Putin opponent to tragically fall out of a window.
Poland’s Law and Justice Party has splintered, with former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announcing plans to launch a new party of the right. Morawiecki has been feuding with the opposition party’s current leadership over how the party should react to the rise of populist competition on the right. But their attempts to rein him in by ordering him to dissolve his internal party group have instead led Morawiecki and his group of 40 legislators to leave altogether and form what is the third largest party in the legislature complicated the party’s hopes of a comeback in the next election.
Germany requires employees to submit a doctor’s note to claim sick days. The measure is part of the government’s efforts to boost productivity by cutting down on what it sees as abuse of sick days, though unsurprising many ill employees see it differently.
Germany’s Vice-Chancellor is endorsing calls that German legislators consider a ban on Germany’s most popular political party AfD. With AfD on the verge of a potential breakthrough in state elections, the party’s critics have ramped up pressure to ban the party under the law that requires parties to be committed to the democratic order. However, many politicians remain wary of such a maneuver, which, rather than quieting the AfD’s populist supporters, could rather hyper-charge their alienation from the mainstream.
France is banning all unsolicited telemarketing calls, with companies facing large fines for any calls made without the consent of the recipient. The rule is causing concern in Northern Africa, where tens of thousands of call centre workers face potential unemployment as their business model evaporates.
Zambia’s opposition has united behind Brian Mundubile, who has ended up as the main challenger to incumbent President Hakainde Hichilem by virtue of the fact that he managed to get onto the ballot, unlike other more prominent challengers who found themselves unable to register for the campaign.
Senegal’s President Diomaye Faye has launched a new political party. Faye plans to use his position as President to build up an alternative movement to his old party, which is led by his former PM and mentor Ousmane Sonko and which retains control of the legislature, setting up the two men for future clashes.
Questions are again being raised about the health of Cameroon’s 93-year-old President Paul Biya, who has spent several weeks out of public view in Switzerland. While the government insists Biya continues to be firmly in charge, the increasingly limited public profile of the elderly leader has raised issues about just how engaged the elderly leader actually is in the governance of the country he has led for more than 40 years and whether he is prepared to finally allow a succession process to take place.
In a cycle that calls to mind to the movie Groundhog Day (minus a photogenic rodent and the learning of valuable life lessons), the US and Iran have once again announced a ceasefire to allow them to negotiate a more permanent deal, but an actual deal remains elusive, with Iran issuing a sweeping set of demands, risking yet another breakdown and return to fighting.
As talks with Iran drag on, the Iranian government has stepped up its executions of protestors who were convicted over their participation in anti-government protests in January. The executions appear to be meant to send a message that the regime has no intention of relaxing its grasp on power despite the upheavals of the last several months.
The US-led Board of Peace announced a deal with Hamas to advance the long-stalled peace process. The agreement includes a commitment that Hamas will disarm, though disagreements over whether this will occur before or after Israel completely withdraws from the West Bank have already arisen, leading Prime Minister Netanyahu to reject the deal, arguing it does not guarantee a full disarmament.
As Israel’s fall election approaches, there has been a major shift among opposition parties with former general Gadi Eisenkot now topping the polls as the most popular opposition leader as the likely alternative PM to Netanyahu. Former PM Naftali Bennett had been seen as the most likely candidate to lead the anti-Netanyahu, but his decision to merge his party with Yair Lapid’s centrist party seems to have the political support of both men. Rather than Bennett bringing more right-wing voters and Lapid his centrist supporters, the union led both sides to look for alternative options, with Eisenkot’s new centrist party being the biggest beneficiary. However, while the opposition block has a lead over the government, it has not consistently been at a level that would ensure it would have a majority, raising the possibility that the election could end with no winner.
In yet more Middle Eastern diplomatic news, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan announced a mutual defence agreement. The deal reflects Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to loosen its reliance on the US and deter Iran from further targeting the Kingdom for attacks.
Turkish prosecutors have requested that opposition leader Özgür Özel have his parliamentary immunity removed to allow him to be charged with bribery charges. He is the latest in a series of prominent opposition leaders who have faced charges in recent years.
Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is pledging to return home despite the fact that she faces a death sentence in Bangladesh. Hasina has been living in exile in India since her government was forced out by protests in 2024, which allowed her to avoid imprisonment after she was charged and convicted following her overthrow, but she appears to believe she still has enough support to overcome the conviction if she returns.
The Pacific country Nauru has changed its name to the Republic of Naoero. The new name is meant to better reflect the pronunciation used by locals rather than the old name, which had been chosen as easier for foreigners to pronounce.
With former President Jair Bolsonaro banned from campaigning for his son Flavio in Brazil’s Presidential election as he serves his sentence, the Bolsonaro campaign has started using a holographic Jair at campaign events. This has led to a lawsuit over whether the appearance of this virtual ex-President violates this ban.
President Javier Milei has proposed sweeping changes to the role of Argentina’s central bank with a new set of rules that would give the bank the single mandate of preserving the value of the currency. If followed, these rules would prevent the bank from playing its traditional role of financing government shortages, which has produced large cycles of high inflation, though if Meili fails to win re-election, the new regime could be short-lived.
Mexico and Peru have re-established diplomatic relations following a breakdown during the previous Presidential term when Mexico gave asylum to former Prime Minister Betssy Chavez, much to the anger of Peru’s legislature, which wanted Chavez to stand trial. The ascension of Keiko Fujimori as the new President has allowed the two countries to reset their relationship, though with Fujimori as a champion of Latin America’s right, there is lots of potential for things to fall apart again with Mexico’s increasingly isolated left-wing government.
The state of public commentary
This weekend, the New York Times ran Ross Douthat ‘s final column before he leaves the newspaper industry to join CBS’s 60 Minutes.
As someone who first started reading Ross Douthat when he was a somewhat obscure blogger at The American Scene, I have mixed feelings about his move. Douthat is a skilled interviewer, as he demonstrated as host of the Interesting Times podcast, which saw him have fascinating conversations with a large range of people who are shaping the world we live in. There is every reason to think he will do interesting work as a TV journalist for a larger audience then he reached at the Time.
But on a personal level as someone who prefers the written word, the end of his column is a loss. The value that Douthat brought as a Times columnist was captured in a recent post by Aaron Renn on “The New Trustees,” in which he how in age of institutional failure it is individual public intellectuals who are stepping up to lead the discussion on the big issues of today.
As he notes, the thing that characterizes these thinkers is that they show their work. While they come from specific points of view they don’t take for granted that readers will agree with them. In contracts as the media has become increasingly polarized, so much public commentary seems to be a style of polemic more focused on raining down fire on the enemy than helping the reader understand why the writer thinks that way. While this style is enjoyable when you agree on the evils of the opponent, it does basically never to actually engage with the views of people on the other side of the issues making any real dialogue rather challenging.
In contrast, Douthat, writing as a conservative Christian for an audience he knew largely did not share his views, was characterized by columns that thought through issues showing how he had come to conclusions with no sense that he ever started with deciding what the “right” side was and then working backwards to justify the conclusion as often seems the case in other writers.
Unfortunately, Douthat was an exception in our modern media. It’s perhaps no surprise that none of the other “Public Trustees” mentioned by Renn were mainstream media columnists. The reality is that in this age of metrics, publications know in minute detail what their readers want, and what they seem to want is to be told that they are right and their opponents are wrong.
This does not mean, of course, that there is no space for writers who are more focused on trying to understand the world. The joys of the Substack-enabled media eco-system are that there are people offering content for any possible perspective one might want, including the various writers noted by Renn in his post (and Renn himself) who are doing serious work. But given Substack’s leaderboards this seems likely to remain a bit of a niche part of the commentariat.
However, despite the lack of mass appeal, it’s an approach which has influenced me personally quite a lot, and if reflected by my attempts to use Grier’s Notes as a vehicle to explore the world rather than offer the sorts of endless hot takes which would likely make this newsletter more shareable but less intellectually satisfying to write so readers should not expect change (though everyone should still feel encouraged to share Grier’s Notes frequently)
Links
150 years overdue library book returned
Scientists find an insect-eating plant
Lost civilization found in the Amazon
Quote of the day
“Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants, comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache and their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things.”- Winston Churchill