Merkel is all topsy-turvy over Oxford vaccine

I don't think Angela Merkel knows whether she is coming or going. She's all over the place with the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccination programme. First she took fright when it was suggested there had been insufficient data checks on the over-65s during the trials and so she banned any German over 65 from getting the Oxford jab, including herself. Then there were all those reports/rumours/scares about a tiny number of people suffering blood clots after getting the Oxford jab, some of them fatal. So she suspended the jabs, along with most of Europe. But the EU regulators said the blood clots were not linked to the vaccine itsef, and so she, as well as her European counterparts, reversed that suspension. Now, for heaven's sake, she has banned giving the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to anyone UNDER 60 because of more scare stories about it causing blood clots among younger people. The EU regulators are still saying this is nonsense. But Merkel is suffering so much from political wobbles that she can't make up her mind which way to turn. Meanwhile, millions of German nationals are being prevented from getting the Oxford vaccine which is cheaper and easier to deliver than any of the others. Instead she has started talks with the Russians to buy their Sputnik vaccine. What a farce. All she has to do is listen to the experts who say the Oxford vaccine is fine and effective. But she is panicking, never a good sign for a politician, let alone the leader of the country. Throughout her long reign as Chancellor, she has been a stalwart, strong, resolute leader and Germany has thrived under her leadership. So has the European Union. But her stewardship of Germany's vaccination programme has been hesitant at best and incomprehensible at worst. Whether she has taken against the "British" vaccine for political reasons, we don't know but there's a good argument to be made that her disapproval of Britan's exit from the EU is playing a part in her opposition to the vaccine. It's a sad way to end her otherwise distinguished chancellorship.

Afghanistan is doomed to Taliban control

Joe Biden clearly doesn't know what to do about Afghanistan and in particular about the Taliban and the 2,500-3,500 US troops still stationed there. He made what I thought was a bizarre statement the other day. He said it would be difficult to get all the troops out by the deadline of May 1 in accordance with the Qatar deal signed on February 29 last year but he fully anticipated they would all be home by the end of this year. As has always been the case, the Taliban just have to wait their time and when all the American and other international troops have gone they will shout victory and march on Kabul. In fact they are already shouting victory. They don't care what Biden is thinking about in Washington. They don't care a hoot about US politics. All they care about is ratcheting up the violence and killing to remind everyone who wants peace that there will be no such thing as peace unless and until they are back in charge and every infidel has left the country. All these fancy talks in Qatar have been about public relations candy floss. Meaningless verbiage. It matters not that their negotiators have signed a deal with the Americans.That was only about getting the US to agree to leave the country. They have flouted all the other clauses in the agreement about stopping or at least reducing the violence, and despite condemnation by Biden and his military commanders, the Taliban have shown they couldn't care less. It's not like their leaders are going to be summoned before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague for killing civilians wholesale. They will never be on trial for anything. Their top-tier leaders were held in Guantanamo for years as "enemy combat detainees" but then released and hey presto they turned up in Qatar as the main negotiating team. So of course they had no interest in obeying anything the US wanted, whatever the Qatar deal says. The Taliban were overthrown twenty years ago and driven from Kabul and in the not too distant future they will be reigning supreme once again. This is the most appalling news for the Afghan people and in particular for Afghan women. Biden knows all this but he is not going to be the president to start the war all over again. So, as he said, all US troops will be withdrawn but maybe not by May 1. The Taliban will denounce this as a violation of the peace agreement. Hollow laugh!!!!

Do you miss me, asks Trump? It seems they do

If you read the American big-cheese newspapers every day, as I do, you will see Donald Trump's picture still all over the place. His picture with the hair peers out at you on the front pages and inside. He left the White House two months and ten days ago but there's still a thirst, it seems, for any Trumpery. The reason of course is because Trump is teasing everyone with his "will-I-won't-I" stand for the presidency again? This situation is unique. I don't think any other president who was kicked out after only four years tried to come back for another go. Trump has the Republican party so wrapped up under his thumb that if he does decide to try again in 2024, there is probably not much point in other Republican hopefuls standing against him. It's an invidious situation for them and for the Reublican party as a whole. Knowing that Trump's looming figure is waiting in the wings, all other potential candidates can do is hint that they might stand in 2024 but only as a pro-Trump candidate. Mike Pompeo, the Big Man who seems to burst out of his too-tight suit, has seemingly given his first hint at wanting to stand in 2024 although without actually saying so. It's early days but election fever is something that never really goes away in the United States, and Pompeo wants people to know that he's around and is someone to be reckoned with. Well, there isn't a person on the planet who doesn't know that Pompeo has ambitions to be president. But Pompeo is stuck with the Trump Factor as much as anyone else. He will have to play his cards very carefully. He cannot upset his old White House boss for starters. If he does then he will upset the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in the 2020 election. Poor Nikki Haley discovered that the hard way. Once one of the potential golden stars of the Republican party and a definite maybe for the 2024 nomination she dared to criticise Trump by saying his rhetoric definitely led to the riotous attack on the Capitol on January 6 and said she was disgusted by his conduct. She also predicted Trump had no future as a political figure. Wow, the backlash could be heard across the Atlantic. That was brave of her but foolish if she wanted to stay as a 2024 candidate AND have a chance of winning the nomnation. Many of those 74 million voters must have been very annoyed by her disloyalty to the 45th president. Haley is out of the running unless there's a miracle. Trump asked an assembled crowd whether they missed him and judging by the roars, there are a lot of people who do. So it looks like the Trump face is going to appear on the front pages of American newspapers all the way to 2024! Pompeo will not be happy.

The ship stuck in the Suez Canal is like the world right now

We are all stuck in this Kafaesque pandemic world. The giant Evergreen container ship stuck across the Suez Canal has become a symbol of our lives, the way we all feel, that feeling of being cemented into a routine that never changes from day to day. We've been stuck for a whole year with our horizons reduced to four walls and a front door. In some countries, such as Brazil and parts of Europe where a new wave of the virus is taking control, the coronavirus nightmare seems to be getting worse. At least here in the UK the speed of the vaccine programme and the lifting of some of the restrictions starting tomorrow have increased hopes of a better 2021. Yet there remain doubts if only because we have been given optimistic predictions by the government before and they have failed to materialise. Foreign holidays are on. Foreign holidays are off. Politicians say one thing. Scientists say the opposite. So it's back to that container ship. While it blocks the Suez Canal and stops the massed array of cargo vessels on either side, we are all, as it were, holding our breath to see when and if it will ever be moved. I see the US Navy has now offered to help. When it does eventually get shifted away from the sandbank, perhaps that will also be the symoblic moment when the Covid-19 pandemic is moved further back into the shadows to enable us to emerge from our hibernation and start to live again. Is it not time, after a whole year?

US Navy still hasn't explained this drone mystery

THIS DIDNT MAKE IT IN THE TIMES: Five US destroyers were pursued and spied on by a swarm of unidentified drones over several days off the coast of California in July, 2019, according to ship logs now revealed under freedom of information releases. Up to six drones targeted the warships and performed “brazen manoeuvres” in low-visibility conditions near a sensitive military training range about 100 miles off Los Angeles, The Drive news outlet revealed. The released logs of USS Kidd, USS Rafael Peralta, USS Russell, USS John Finn and USS Paul Hamilton, all Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, gave no indication from where the drones had originated and whether they were friendly or hostile. However, it was judged unlikely they could have been operated from land because of the distance involved. One possibility considered was that they came from a foreign submarine sufficiently advanced in technology to be capable of launching multiple drones when submerged. All five US destroyers which are fitted with the Aegis anti-ballistic missile weapon system, are regularly deployed to the Indo-Pacific as part of the Pentagon’s focus on China and North Korea in that region. The 2019 drone incidents led to an investigation by both the US Navy in San Diego and the Los Angeles office of the FBI. Admiral John Richardson, then US chief of naval operations, was kept informed of the investigation, as was the commander of US Pacific Command. The first drone sighting was made on board USS Kidd around 10pm on July 14, 2019, according to the log published by The Drive. The destroyer immediately reduced the ship’s electronic emissions profile “to enhance operational security and survivability”. The other warships in the same area were warned, and photographic intelligence units on board known as Snoopie teams, were alerted. The log on USS Rafael Peralta noted at 2207: “USS Kidd reported UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] overhead warned.” At 2210, the same ship’s log said: “USS John Finn reports two drones overhead.” At 2323, the USS Rafael Peralta log reported: “White light identified hovering over ship’s flight deck [helicopter landing pad].” The destroyer was moving at 16 knots (18.4mph) at the time, and the drone or drones kept pace with the ship for at least 90 minutes which is beyond what a commercial drone could sustain when operating 100 miles from land. Similar drone incidents occurred the following night. The USS Kidd log recorded at 2120: “Multiple UAVs around ship.” USS Russell also reported “multiple drones spotted” . The drones were moving forward and backward, left and right. A passing cruise ship, the Carnival Imagination, radioed to say five or six drones had been seen. “The drones did not originate from their ship,” USS Rafael Peralta recorded. One ship that did have drones on board, an oceanographic research vessel, ORV Alguita, said their UAVs could only fly up to 10ft from the vessel and were not operating efficiently. At no time were there any attempts to shoot down the drones. There were more drone sightings on July 25 and 30. Naval investigators struggled to pinpoint who sent them. The US Navy in San Diego said it only operated drones in limited areas and provided operational details that appeared to rule out any official drone exercise.

Biden wants to be president for eight years. Will the media be asleep by then?

Joe Biden has waited so long to be president he's not going to allow anyone to persuade him to step down after four years. He insisted during his very boring press conference at the White House on Thursday that he fuly intended to stick around for two terms. Unless something goes drastically wrong in the next four years, then it will Biden until 2028 by which time he will be 86. This is old but if he stays fit and mentally up-to-it there's no reason these days why a man of that age sbouldn't be president of the US. But judging by his first press conference most of the media will be asleep by then because there really wasn't much spark throughout the session with the White House press corps. That's partly to do with their tedious, uninspiring, longwinded questions but also because Biden seems to have taken a whole bunch of written answers to the podium and just read them out. If he does that a lot then future press conferences will likewise get no interesting answers. He didn't take umbrage with any of the ten reporters who were allowed to ask questions. But then every question was boring, longwinded and easy to answer. Perhaps we all got so entertained by the Donald Trump press conferences where he finger-pointed any reporter who asked tough questions or literally got them banned from attending future media sessions that anything low key like the Biden inaugural press conference just doesn't compare for fun and excitement. There is no question that the Biden administration will get on with the job of governing without upsetting a helluva lot of people and that's good for everyone. But it won't be so interesting as the four years with Trump on the rostrum.

US hypersonic missile tests have to join a long queue

SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION OF MY TIMES STORY TODAY: The Pentagon’s hopes of fielding the first hypersonic weapon by 2023 is at risk because of huge demand at America’s sole long-range ballistic-missile flight-test centre located on an atoll in the central Pacific Ocean, a government watchdog has warned. The Ronald Reagan missile defence site in the Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands, is involved in all flight tests for intercontinental ballistic missiles and anti-missile interceptors, and launched the first hypersonic weapon a year ago. Equipped with four of the most advanced radars in the world and five high-powered telescope systems, the atoll centre, spread out over eight islands, collects data while tracking the flight of a missile over the ocean. Boats with sensors on board also have to be positioned along the route of the test flight and can “take weeks to reach their remote destinations”. With 40 planned test flights in the joint US army and navy hypersonic missile programme over the next five years, the Kwajalein military site which uses just one “flight test corridor” over the Pacific will not be able to cope with the accelerating pace of testing, the US government accountability office said in a report. If the Pentagon fails to conduct all the proposed flight tests of the hypersonic missile which can travel at more than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5), “they will be forced to either proceed to an operational capability with fewer tests (and thus less knowledge) or to accept the delay, with schedule and cost consequences”, the report said. The Kwajalein Atoll is uniquely placed to allow for long-range missile tests across the Pacific. Located at nine degrees north of the equator it is set in a broad ocean area which is ideal for missile launches to the east, “capitalising on the rotational velocity of the earth”. The Pentagon is spending $15 billion on developing hypersonic missiles in a rapid programme to keep pace with similar projects underway in China and Russia. The US NASA space agency and department of energy are helping to develop the technology which could lead to a hypersonic missile capable of speeds of up to Mach 20. The report reveals that the Pentagon is seeking international partnerships that could provide access to overland flight ranges. Aerial sensors are also being developed “that could relieve some of the burden on ground and sea-based sensors which are logistically difficult to arrange”.

Merkel's extraordinary about-turn on Easter lockdown

Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, has always given the impression of being a tough politician who knows what she wants and generally succeeds. Her abrupt totally surprising about-turn after announcing total lockdown over Easter hints at panic. Faced with a third surge in Covid infections she had decided that everything should be shut down in a lockdown measure that provoked an outcry from everyone in Germany. Instead of sticking to her guns she U-turned and said she had a made a bad mistake. Well in practical and realistic terms it was a mistake because she failed to give anyone sufficient notice of the instant lockdown. But the change of mind was symptomatic of the way Germany and the rest of the EU have managed the coronavirus pandemic and in paticular the vaccination programme. It has been 27 countries in a maze, getting lost whichever way they turn. Merkel had said she was against the EU stopping the export of vaccines made in Europe to other countries wbhich of course included Britain. Yet now the German government has joined with France and other EU members to approve legislation that will do just that so that they can get what they think are their due supplies. Britain may have left the EU but we haven't moved further away geographically and we're still close allies and partners in pretty well everything that matters, including trade. How are relations between Britain and the EU going to be cemented in friendship and mutual respect if this sort of political foot-stamping continues? It's time for Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to end this disruptive behaviour and go back to being grown-ups, solving problems with their former EU partner in a conciliatory, diplomatic and intelligent way.

Operation vaccine confusion

Politicians have a favourite word. It's clarity. They always want more clarity. Well, so do we all, so do we all, especially with Covid vaccines, lockdown, restriction-lifting dates and whether or not foreign holidays are permitted. In the UK foreign travel - holidays - is supposed to be allowed from May 17. But that has been thrown into doubt because of the third wave of coronavirus throughout Europe and the possibility that every European country will be on the UK's red list - ie banning all travel to and from them. Then up pops legislation which appears to state that all foreign travel is banned until the end of June and that if anyone is caught sneaking out of the country will be fined £5,000. So naturally all the newspapers today are full of doom and gloom. Then Matt Hancock, the health secretary and Master of Confusion, declares, at least I think he did if I got it right, that although the legislation seems to say that, actually it's not true and the timetable previously set for foreign holidays is still applicable. Depending of course on the situation at the time. So half ok and half maybe not. Meanwhile in the US, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is available but has been very sketchily distributed and there are reports of millions of the doses sitting in fridges. And the furore over the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine continues, except in the UK where it's being distributed and jabbed into people's arms at an accelerated rate. No other country seems to like it. Europe remains iffy but wants to keep what it does have for themselves. It's very difficult to keep a grip on what is happening. The one truism worth hanging on to is that the vaccination programme is the only way out of this pandemic and the quicker Europe can get on with its jabs the better it will be for all those Brits who are planning a summer holiday on the beach in Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Portugal or wherever.

Is an army of 72,000 soldiers an army?

The great British Army is to fall in size again. Just 72,000 soldiers. This is the Boris Johnson government's idea of an effective 21st century fighting force. Ok I know restructuring armed forces these days is all about artificial intelligence and unmanned planes and ships and super technology but there is no substitute for having brillantly trained hot combat troops to seize territory and hold ground and keep the enemy at bay. Just like there's no substitute for tanks when you need to advance at a rapid pace and, again, hold ground. Some might say this is all old-fashioned stuff and that all you need today to win wars or at least to fight off the enemy is to have things you can launch from several thousand miles away and people to twiddle knobs sitting in a wargame chair. But I bet you that at some time in the future there will be a crisis that requires British troops and more British troops, not fancy missiles and oddly-shaped drones. The trouble is troops are expensive, they need paying, feeding, housing and equipping and then pensioning off when they've done their duty to Queen and country. So cut back form 82,000 troops to 72,000 troops and look at all the savings. It's a sorry business. I know we can't afford everything anymore. But for heaven's sake the UK is spending billions of pounds on two huge aircraft carriers which will need new frigates and destroyers to escort and protect them. Something is out of balance. It cannot be right for the British Army to have just 72,000 soldiers, many of whom won't be combat troops but enablers, as they call them, and support staff. The Royal Marines have been redrawn into some new fighting force that will take on some of the special forces roles. That might work ok. At least they're not being abolished. But with an army reduced to such a pygmy size, what on earth is its role going to be? Will we ever again be able to send a division of 25,000 soldiers to war? I seriously doubt it.

Deadlines for returning to normality look increasingly doubtful

Apart from two blissful years as a teacher at a Sussex prep school I have been a journalist all my working life and have therefore had a life of deadlines. Deadlines, by the way, that cannot be breached or extended or abandoned. If you have to write a story and file to the newspaper by 4pm at the latest, then 4.15pm is not going to do it. The coronavirus pandemic has been about deadlines too. Boris Johnson has almost based his offensive against Covid-19 by announcing sometimes arbitrary deadlines which have in equal measure lifted the spirits of the nation and then dampened them within short order. Never more so than with the beginning and ending of lockdowns and the likelihood or not of foreign summer holidays. The last time Boris and his health secretary Matt Hancock set a series of new deadlines, international travel and beaches and swimming costumes and moules frites in French seaside cafes etc etc looked to be on the cards from May 17 onwards. Bookings spiralled. Travel companies desperate for cash started smiling again as the phones began to ring. Then the EU struck. Lacking sufficient vaccines and resenting the Brits for being so vaccine-organised, the Brussels hierarchy wants to stop any Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine doses made in a Belgian factory from being exported to the UK and a third wave of the virus is sweeping across many of the EU countries, driving millions of people back into lockdown. Boris is determined that the UK lockdown will come to an end whatever is going on in Europe but we all know that's nonsense because we can't go to to France, Spain or Italy or wherever if their pandemic is still rife because of the risk of catching it and bringing it back home, thus reviving the flagging virus in the UK. A vicious circle. So now officials are warning that perhaps after all there will be no foreign holidays this summer. So holidays cancelled or vouchered. Until when? I know this is not a perfect science especially when virus variants keep popping up. But deadines no longer have real meaning. You plan ahead based on what your political leaders dictate but, unlike my journalistic deadlines, political deadlines change whichever way the wind blows. Looks like a stay-at-home summer ahead.

The China-US freeze-up in Alaska

The read-out of the high-ranking diplomatic meeting between the US and China in Alaska's capital city, Anchorage, opens up the possibility of a new style of cold war. It should be called the deep-freeze war. There was no let up in the insults thrown by both sides. Basically, for the world to get on and stay safe, Washington and Beijing, and to a lesser extent, Moscow, need to have a constructive, adult, pragmatic relationship so that where agreements can be reached they can be achieved without hostility or brinkmanship or ultimatums. Like on climate change. If Beijing and Washington are not talking sensibly together, the chances of finding solutions to the climate nightmare we face in the future will diminish. Likewise North Korea. If Washington can't talk to Beijing about restraining North Korea's nuclear programme, let alone eliminating it, Kim Jong-un will just do what he wants and build more and more nuclear bombs. The Alaska diplomatic farce was an embarrassment. It achieved nothing but angry words. Both teams returned to their capitals in a hostile mood. We need another Henry Kissinger to sort this one out. Perhaps Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, will pick up the phone and have a chat with Kissinger who in his 90s definitely still has all his marbles. Talking to the Chinese government has never been easy but there must be better ways than sounding off at each other across a table in Anchorage. Not impressive.

Biden trips then trips then trips again

If ever a video is going to go viral it's the one I've just seen. Joe Biden walking smartly up the steps of Air Force One. Fine for the first few steps then sudddenly he trips, rearranges himself and then immediately trips again, slightly harder, stands up and takes one more step and falls heavily bashing his shin. I feel really sorry for the guy. He has had the odd trip in the past but this triple trip is pretty spectacular and I think he may have hurt himself because when he gets to the top he slightly limps through the curtain. The newspapers and TV are going to go mad with this. Being president and looking like a president are not necessarily two of the same thing although I have to say that since January 20 Biden has donned the presidential garb very well. His hair tends to need a cut at the back but after Trump's yellow candyfloss hairstyle, Biden's top knotch is fine, albeit somewhat thin but then he is 78. Not to make too much of the obvious puns availabe, Biden hasn't really put a foot wrong in his first two months, and one wrong foot on Air Force One steps would be seen as unlucky, but two wrong foots in a row might seem quite careless and three wrong foots, the last one being almost a tumble, that's somewhat alarming. To continue with the analogy, in the meantime Biden is standing up to Vladimir Putin and calling him a killer, and he is putting the boot into Xi Zinping to remind him that he dislikes China's human rights record. Poor Biden. In future it might be wise for someone to accompany him up those steps. In the video it looked as if the US Air Force chappie was going to do that but then didn't. He must be thanking his lucky stars and stripes that the president didn't tumble all the way down and crash into him. Joking apart I hope the president is ok and didn't damage his leg, and I hope the headlines aren't too cruel.

Should Biden have called Putin a killer?

Technically Joe Biden didn't say Putin is a killer in his first TV interview. He was asked by George Stephanopoulous of ABC whether he thought Putin was a killer and he replied "I do." But of course all the headlines say Biden called Putin a killer. Which he did, technically. The question is should he have done so or should he have replied something like: "Well George, there have been many accusations against the Russian leader but I'm not going to answer your question." If he had used this diplomatic approach he would probably have seen very different headlines. "Biden shies away from accusing Putin" or "Biden declines to call Putin a killer". Instead he just decided to agree with Stephanopoulos. So I assume that means relations with Moscow during the Biden era are going to be frosty to say the least. Of course Biden is not the first US president to cast doubt on Putin's humanity. George W Bush famuously said he had looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul, presumably meaning he didn't like what he saw. Someone else who was very explicit about Putin was Bob Gates, the former CIA director and twice defence secretary, under George W Bush and then Barack Obama. Gates said he had looked into Putin's eyes and saw "a cold stone killer". So Biden's comment is not a first. But the point is, Biden is president and Gates was defence secretary. There's a big difference. Trump certainly never called Putin a killer but that's another story. I think Putin will see the Biden remark as a badge of machoism. I see he has replied today that he wishes Biden good health which has quite a ring to it! In the end, for the US president to call the leader of one of the two countries perceived to be America's major security threats a killer is not necessarily the most sensible way of doing business. It will make it very difficult for Biden ever to be in the same room as Putin, let alone shake his hand. You can see the headline now: "Biden shakes the hand of a killer".

More nukes for UK? On what nuclear deterrent theological grounds?

Whoever in the UK Ministry of Defence came up with the advice to increase Britain's nuclear warhead numbers from 180 to 260 as part of the comprehensive review of security and defence strategy published yesterday needs to explain the rationale for this rise. Personally, having written about nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, among other things, for the last 30 years or so I simply do not understand how the meaning of "minimum credible deterrence" which has always been the UK government's posture ever since we had nuclear weapons, has in any way changed. Boris Johnson and co said it was necessary to increase the number of nuclear warheads available because of changing circumstances in the world and the pursuit of larger nuclear arsenals by certain countries, ie China. I'm sorry but that doesn't wash, not if you have a proper understanding of what minimum credible deterrence means. In the simplest terms, the theology of nuclear deterrence is that a prospective enemy will think twice before risking a weapons of mass destruction attack on the UK because they realise that if they do so the UK prime minister will order a nuclear retaliation, sufficient in size and devastation to cause totally unacceptable and long-lasting destruction. The Cold War concept of mutual assured destruction still holds today and, hopefully, always will. But does that concept become stronger and more lethal and add deterrent value if the UK increases its stockpile from 180 to 260. In other words, is more better than less? If China, and let's say North Korea and Iran (please God not) build large arsenals of nuclear weapons, outstripping the UK's stockpile, does that place us as a country in more or less danger of annihilation if we have 260 nuclear warheads or if we have 180 warheads? In pure deterrent theology terms it should make no difference at all. The only rationale I can think of is that if a Royal Navy ballistic-missile submarine is on patrol and nuclear war breaks out, the prime minister of the day can order the sub commander to fire, say, four extra Trident missiles, knowing that with the additional 80 warheads in the total arsenal the Royal Navy will be able to carry on firing nuclear ballistic missiles at the enemy for longer and over a wider range of territory. But to adopt that argument is to encourage madness. One Trident missile with its multiple warheads would do such huge damage to a city that, unless the UK wants to destroy a whole country, east, west, north and south, there would never be a situation in which the UK prime minister would be eternally grateful and thankful that he or she has 260 nuclear warheads, rather than 180, to launch at the enemy. By then the world would have come to an end anyway. So no time or point for any future prime minister to give himself/herself a pat on the back. This is the reality of nuclear war. Once the button is pushed, deterrence has failed. So in my opinion there is no reasonable theological argument to justify increasing the UK's nuclear warhead stockpile from 180, which previously the government had planned to reduce to, to 260. And that's before even venturing down the morality path. The UK is signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which means it must do everything in its power to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in other countries and as a quid pro quo, for nuclear powers to reduce their stocks to demonstrate a willingness, one day, to rid the world of all nuclear weapons. Ronald Reagan had that dream years ago! There is no question that China plans to expand its nuclear capability over the next decade. But is that really why the UK government has decided it is imperative to increase the number of nukes by 40 per cent? It's a false argument and it worries me if there isn't anyone of sufficient experience and knowledge to have made this point during the strategic review. If there was, he or she, must have been shouted down. I wonder what Sir Michael Quinlan, probably Britain's greatest nuclear strategist and deterrent theologian, would have said if he was still alive today. The former permanent under secretary at the MoD sadly died in 2009. His words of wisdom might have weighed against the decision announced yesterday which, summed up crudely, seemed to be about "more nukes and fewer soldiers".

EU leaders really have screwed up their vaccine programme

When the Covid history is written, European leaders will be blamed for causing hundreds if not thousands of unnecessary deaths by failing to get their act together with the vaccine programme. The latest farce is over their sudden alarm about the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine because a handful of people who have had this jab have gone on to develop blood clots and some have died. All the real experts, including the UK vaccine regulators, the World Health Organisation and anyone with a PhD in anything linked to vaccination programmes have said that the blood clots are unrelated and happen unfortunately to some people. Well I agree that sounds a little weak. If a blood clot occurred soon after someone had received the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine you might well ask if there could possibly be a link. But the fact is millions of people have had this particular vaccine and 99.whatever per cent have been fine, apart from a flu-type reaction for 24 hours which experts say is normal. I had the Pfizer jab and had no after-affects whatsoever. The point is, all the EU countries seem to be focusing their doubts and warnings and worries on the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine. No mention of any of the other brands. So does that mean they have a thing about the Oxford one because it's from Brexit Britain or have they examined all the vaccines and concluded, rghtly or wrongly, that blood clots have only happened with the Oxford one? And is this true? I may be wrong but I think there is buried at the back of their minds a little prejudice against the Oxford jab because it's Brexit British. Oh dear, I don't want to sound anti-EU because I'm not remotely. But before this latest kerfuffle there was all that fuss about whether the Oxford jab could be given to over-65s and Angela Murkel saying she wouldn't have the jab because she is over 65 anzd went for the Pfizer one instead. But that all turned out to be rubbish and eventually the EU backtracked and said ok the Oxford vaccine was fine for the older ones too. These two setbacks plus the blatant failure of the EU machine to get its engine working quickly enough to start ordering vaccines in the first place has meant that the 27 EU countries are two or three months behind a lot of other countries including and especially the UK. I feel sorry for the people of all these countries who are wonderng when the hell they are going to get vaccinated. And in the meantime a third surge of infections has begun and only a small percentage of the populations have been protected with a jab. With the suspension of the Oxford vaccine it will inevitably mean even fewer doses for the waiting populations. Not a good advert for European efficiency. And you can bet that in a week or so the likes of Merkel and Macron will come out and say that after all the Oxford vaccine is safe.

Misleading headlines that backed racist claims by Meghan and Harry

There is nothing like a montage of screaming headlines in newspapers to support an argument that the British press is racist. The montage that appeared on the screen during the Ophrah Winfrey interview with Meghan and Harry was unbelievably disturbing and totally racist. But I thought at the time when the montage filled the screen that I had never seen such headlines before. I didn't recognise the vast majority of them and others looked more familiar but still didn't look right. Sure enough, the montage was not what it seemed. A third of the headlines had appeared in the worst gossip papers and magazines in the US and Australia - not UK at all - and the British ones, notably the Daily Mail and Guardian, related to outrageous racist comments made by other people and were not reflecting what the newspapers themselves felt. So, all in all, very distorted and very dishonest to brand the British press as racist when the so-called evidence in the selected headlines was wholly tainted. It really has been a lesson in twisted television-making. There is racism in British society, just as there is racism in the US, all of it to be condemned out of hand. But the British press is actually governed by very strict publishing and legal rules and whenever there is a hint of racism in a headline or story, there are always repercussions. And quite right too. But on this occasion headlines were wilfully shoved together to put the British press in the worst possible light so as to satisfy the allegations by Meghan and Harry that they are victims of racism. ITV which broadcast the interview the day after CBS in the US has quickly removed the offending headlines from the digital version but CBS has yet to react. A sorry tale all round and another example of how the Meghan and Harry interview will, in the end, do them no good at all.

Biden's North Korea problem

How do you go from calling someone a "thug" to shaking hands with him and chatting amiably about the weather? This is Joe Biden's problem with Kim Jong-un. North Korea is going to have to be dealt with during Biden's first four years but all Kim Jong-un will remember is that the new US president once called him a thug. Difficult to forget and forgive. Which is probably why Pyongyang has given absolutely no sign so far of wanting to react to Biden's back-channel attempt to make contact. Of course Trump called him Little Rocket Man but Kim Jong-un probably quite liked that. "Thug" he won't like. Nor will he like Biden's apparent talks offer which came with a proviso that a meeting could only take place if the North Korean leader pledged to start reducing his nuclear stockpile down to zero. As I have written a thousand times, Kim Jong-un, like his father and grandfather before him, is not interested in giving up any of his nuclear bombs whoever is president in the White House. Having got away with it with Barack Obama and then Donald Trump he is not going to hand a diplomatic gift like that to the new White House incumbent. I don't think Chairman Kim is any longer interested, if he ever was, in the game of quid pro quo: he gives up his treasured nuclear bombs in return for total lifting of sanctions and massive financial help for his deprived and poverty-stricken nation. Having spent billions and billions on building a pretty impressive array of medium and long-range ballistic missiles and a significant stock of nuclear bombs (at least 50), why on earth would he agree to denuclearise, as the Americans like to call it? What would be the reasoning? You could argue that for the sake of his country and his people a leader might consider doing a deal to transform his state into a hotspot for tourism and US franchise fast-food chains. But this is Kim Jong-un. He has a dynasty legacy to worry about. He likes his people to be obedient not happy. So even if he were to consider talking to Biden, he is not going to be in the business of trading nukes for hamburgers. He gets all the hamburgers he wants anyway. He agreed to talk to Trump because I think he was genuinely scared to hell that the crazy man would launch an attack and destroy everything he and his daddy and granddaddy had done to make North Korea a nuclear-armed pariah state. Is he scared of Biden? No, I don't think so. Is that good or bad news for the rest of us? Bad, I fear.

What's going on behind the Buckingham Palace doors?

The Queen has made her statement about the Meghan and Harry Oprah interview and apart from her deliciously questioning remark about how some recollections vary, from now on all discussions within the Palace and on the phone to the mansion in LA where M and H reside will remain private. As some newspaper put it the other day, Her Majesty has ordered a three-line whip on the subject. In other words, total shtum from now on. No royal sources speaking out on pain of.....well whatever the Queen does to errant, disobedient aides. So one can only speculate what the Queen and the rest of the royal family are talking about in private. But if they have read their Daily Mail today it might have underlined the questions that surely came into their heads as soon as they had finished watching the Oprah show. Ok it has been claimed the Queen wasn't going to watch it but you can bet your life some members of the family did. Princess Anne for a start, and probably Charles and Camilla, and definitely Prince Andrew who would have been very curious to see how his nephew and wife handled the Big Interview, and of course William and Kate. They will have asked the following questions: (Anne):"How come she said she was the one who cried over that wretched wedding garment when I distinctly remember you, Kate, bursting into tears that day?" (William):"Daddy, didn't you give Harry a huge lump sum from your Duchy of Cornwall estate to tide him and Meghan over when they were setting up home in Canada and then LA?" (Charles): "I didn't cut him off, Wills, you know I gave him more than a million smackers." (Kate): "And what's all this nonsense about them getting married the day before the wedding at Windsor Castle in their backyard? We don't say backyard anyway, that's a frightful American expression?" (Charles): "That wasn't a marriage ceremony, right? That was just a rehearsal requested by her. The poor Archbishop went along with it." (Anne): "It's all poppycock. Everyone knows a marriage, wherever it's held, backyard or beach, requires by law to have two independent witnesses. Unless there were a couple of garden gnomes present. Hahaha." (Andrew): "I think it's unfair that I got Emily Maitlis and they got Oprah Winfrey. Maitlis asked horrible questions. Oprah was all lovey-dovey and astonished looks of sympathy. I never got that from that Emily Maitlis." (For those who don't remember, the BBC Newsnight Maitlis interview with Prince Andrew when he gave cringe-making answers to her questions about his friendship with Jeffery Epstein)." (Charles): "And who raised the skin colour of the baby? It wasn't me." (Anonymous): "I did but I didn't mean anything bad, I was just interested and anyway she said it was raised when she was pregnant but that's totally rubbish. I spoke to Harry before they were even married and just mused about what a baby would look like if he and Meghan got wedded and had offspring. No harm in that was there?"

Will Meghan and Harry be happy with what they have achieved?

Now the weekend is approaching in London and in LA I wonder how Meghan and Harry (it has to be Meghan and Harry now, not Harry and Meghan) are looking back at The Interview and wondering whether it all went to plan and whether it has helped to give them a brighter and more affluent future. On the face of it if they just read the American papers they did pretty well. There have been numerous stories questioning whether the British royal family is racist and sympathy for the way Meghan claims she was treated. Back in London of course the sympathy levels haven't been quite so high. In fact mostly the opposite. There has been, if you like, a general rallying behind the Queen in her 95th year. Meghan and Harry I'm sure have absorbed all the millions of words that have appeared in the British press since they were interviewed by Oprah Winfrey and will have got a lot of satisfaction from the departure of Piers Morgan from ITV's Good Morning Britain show. Once a friend of Meghan's and now top enemy, Morgan went one insult too far while trashing Meghan and paid the penalty, although I have no doubt he will emerge soon in some other television presenting capacity. You can't keep a man like Piers Morgan down for long. But Meghan who joined 41,000 other viewers who complained to the television watchdog about his behaviour will have felt she scored well there. So while Meghan and Harry sit in their LA mansion with a reported 16 bathrooms - is that even possible? - they can reflect on the fact that probably every single newspaper on the planet had an item, big or small, on their front page about The Oprah interview. So, mammoth publicity for the Duke and Duchess, sorry Duchess and Duke, of Sussex brand, at least for the next year or so. But then what? Will they ever be able to move back to London? Meghan certainly won't want to. Her life is now LA LA LAND. But I just don't see Harry dancing in the aisles after upsetting his grandmother, his grandfather, his father, his brother, most of the British press and probably a large percentage of the British people. LA LA LAND will not be his cup of tea for ever.

Did the US admiral speak out of turn on China?

MY FULL VERSION OF TIMES STORY TODAY: China could be preparing to bring forward plans to invade Taiwan by 2027, America’s top commander in the region has warned. Beijing has a stated policy that it intends to reunite Taiwan with mainland China and reserves the right to use military force if necessary. Admiral Philip Davidson, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate armed services committee that he feared Beijing’s increasing aggressiveness in the region suggested an invasion could take place in the next six years. “I worry that they’re accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership in the rules-based international order which they’ve long said they want to do by 2050,” he said. “I’m worried about them moving that target closer. Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then and I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six years,” the admiral said. Admiral Davidson is due soon to retire and his warning appeared to be a signal to his nominated successor, Admiral John Aquilino, that the increasing vulnerability of Taiwan is likely to be his priority concern. He pointed to several worrying indicators of Beijing’s strategy on Taiwan’s “reunification”: the numbers of ships, aircraft and missiles China had “put in the field”, the “line of actual control” the Chinese military had imposed in the South China Sea and East China Sea, and the attacks on democracy in Hong Kong. Taiwan broke away from mainland communist China in 1949 and set up as a self-governing island . Under the so-called “strategic ambiguity” policy, the US does not formally recognise Taiwan as an independent state. Washington has supported a long-established “one China policy”. However, the US retains strong informal ties and sells arms to the Taipei government to help defend against Chinese aggression. Admiral Davidson said that more than 40 years of strategic ambiguity “had helped keep Taiwan in its current status”. It was vital, he said, that the US continued with “consistent and persistent arms sales” to help Taiwan bolster its defensive capabilities. The US assists Taiwan during its annual military exercises by providing observers to advise on defensive strategies. The admiral’s comments came after China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, warned President Biden against giving any support for Taiwan’s independence. “The one China principle is the foundation of the US-China relationship,” he said three days ago. He described it as an “insurmountable red line”, warning that there was “no room for concession or compromise on Taiwan”.

The US trillion dollar spending economy keeps rolling on

How the little countries with tight economies or no economies at all, like in Syria and Yemen, must be staring at the spending figures being produced in the US and Britain and throughout Europe to counterweight the coronavirus pandemic and realising that they are in a different universe. It really is the Us and Them planet right now. Not that it wasn't always thus. But at this moment in time, the contrasts are so huge that it's embarrassing to see how lucky and privileged we are when compared with countries where it is desperately hard to survive, with or without Covid. Especially the children suffering from or dying of malnutrition in Yemen. I think of them when I see how US Congress has finally approved the $1.9 trillion stimulus package which includes a gift of $1,400 for every taxpayer. Joe Biden will sign the package into law on Friday. Biden has also announced he is ordering another 100 million of doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Biden has got the Boris bug. Boris Johnson ordered every vaccine going before anyone else and the UK has ended up with a huge surplus of vaccine doses to make sure everyone can get two jabs with tons left over. Yet in many countries, governments are struggling to get enough vaccines. And while the US and UK, and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe, are beginning to lift restrictions and are heading for greater normality from the summer, other nations, such as Brazil, are facing a huge new surge in infections. So we have globalisation but no global policy on the pandemic to ensure that every nation has the same rights to the same vaccines. It's the way the world is and it's very very sad. Especially for those kids in Yemen with their huge eyes and distended stomachs. It makes you weep.

Harry feeling trapped within the royal family was the saddest statement of all

I've always felt that Prince Harry is a good guy. He lost his Mum in the most tragic and terrible of circumstances and he, and William, have had to live with that trauma ever since and always will. In public, apart from the odd high-jinks as a very young man when he inadvisedly wore a Nazi get-up at a party, Harry has been a pretty inspiring sort of bloke and I will always have huge admiration for the time he spent serving Her Majesty's army in Afghanistan. I was one of those who knew he was serving in Afghanistan but was sworn to secrecy by the Ministry of Defence until he had completed his tour because of the huge risk that the Taliban would target him if they knew a son of the Queen was on their territory. But in the Oprah Winfrey interview he revealed he had felt trapped in the royal family, trapped in the whole institution of the monarchy and that it was the arrival of Meghan Markle in his life which made him realise there was freedom out there and a different life which he could actually enjoy. It is a very sad indictment that a young prince with so much to give felt under siege by the system. He claimed his father Prince Charles and his brother Prince Wiliam were also trapped. Indeed Prince Charltes himself said the same thing a long time ago in an interview with TV presenter Selena Scott. The point that has to be made, however, is that in this world there are millions of people who feel trapped in their lives for all kinds of reasons, such as poverty, domestic abuse, political dictatorship, life-threatening illness, whole-body paralysis, long-term unemployment, war and hopelessness. Being trapped within a royal family endowed with immense wealth and privilege cannot ever be compared with the miseries suffered by so many people on this planet. But I still feel sorry for Harry. But, selfishly, I also feel sorry that he wasn't able to come to terms with his birthright and find happiness and play an inspiring part as a respected member of the royal family. He and William together looked set to be the royals we all wanted for the future. All that has now been blown by the Oprah interview. The good guy has now become the sad, bitter royal who felt trapped by the institution and let down by his own family, especially his father. It's a tragedy.

Meghan dishes the dirt - very sad and unbecoming

The overall impression from the two-hour session with Oprah Winfrey was of a woman (Meghan) determined and well-rehearsed to do as much damage as possible to the reputation of the royal family. Her reference to a member of the royal family questioning how dark-skinned her first baby might be was, on the surface, a devastating insight into how her arrival in the royal fold was being seen by at least one individual. But we don't know who it was and, much more importantly, we don't know the context. If this question WAS asked, was it coming out of the lips of a racist taunting Meghan over her mixed-rate origins and showing concern about having a black baby in the royal family. Or was it said with genuine curiosity - no unkindness or racism intended - and possibly even believing that the baby might be all the more beautiful by having Harry as the father and Meghan as the mother? Or was it a slightly riskee joke? Clearly the first possibility is the worst and should be condemned by everyone. But just throwing that line in without explaining anything about the occasion and context, let alone the person who allegedly said it, has produced horrific headlines around the world, including one I spotted saying the royal family was guilty of being sympathetic to white supremacy. Meghan brought it up, and presumably had always intended to bring it up, because she convinced herself that Britain, the British people, the media, and, yes, Buckingham Palace are all racist-bent. And Harry backed her up. He believes this nonsense as well. And it is nonsense. There IS racism in our society, just as there is in the United States and Europe. But to brand everyone with this label, and I'm definitely including the media here, tabloid or otherwise, is both inaccurate and harmful and, basically, insulting. Her remark has made people think that the Queen and family shunned her because she had a black mother and that her son Archie was not being given the title of prince for racist reasons. This last accusation is wrong. Harry and Meghan's children were never automatically going to be princes or princesses. William and Kate's children, yes, because he is second in line to the throne. So it was never a slur on Harry and Meghan, let alone a racist slur. I believe the racism allegation is the most damaging of all the claims and accusations made by Meghan, and seemingly backed up by Harry. Now the whole world wants to know which member of the family asked The Question. Speculation will go wild and at some point some royal source will reveal the name and all hell will let loose. Oprah has said in a separate interview with CBS that Harry told her that "the person" was neither the Queen nor the Duke of Edinburgh. So that cuts down the numbers, although I have to say that Harry's apparent appeal to Oprah after the interview to try and get the message across that the Queen and Prince Philip were not guilty of asking about the skin colour of the baby, begs more questions than answers. Harry didn't ask Oprah to say his father Prince Charles was innocent. And what about his brother Prince William? This is so damaging and totally unnecessary. Meghan and Harry should never have agreed to do the Oprah Winfrey interview.

One must feel sorry for the Queen

As mother and grandmother, the Queen really has had more than her fair share of family squabbles and crises over the years. And that's a huge understatement. Which makes it all the more sad and disrespectful that at the age of 94 she is still having to put up with dramatic and hurtful divisions within the wider royal family. The Meghan and Harry debacle must be causing her untold grief, especially when she is worrying about the state of health of her 99-year-old husband, the Duke of Edinburgh. There have been calls for the Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan and Harry to be postponed while Prince Philip is in hospital but of course that's impossible. The interview is tied up with so much money - millions and millions of dollars - that it's too late to delay it. So it will go ahead tonight in the US and in the UK tomorrow. Poor Queen. The Sunday Times tells us she won't be watching but you can bet your life she will be given a summary of the main accusations and allegations, if there are accusations and allegations. She's already "cheesed off" according to the same newspaper, so no doubt she will be even more cheesed off by the time she gets her summary. Throughout this breakaway by Meghan and Harry, the Queen has always stated that they remain loved as part of the family. But loving and being cheesed off don't mix very well. Secretly, although we will never know, she must be more cheesed off with Meghan than Harry. Harry after all is her beloved grandson and Meghan has not only removed him from the royal family bubble but has taken him and the great granchild to live in Hollywood. Does the Queen do Facetime or Skype or WhatsApp video and if so does she chat to Meghan as well as Harry, or is friendly family conversation now out of the window? This is the trouble with the Super Strict Protocol that covers every aspect of the Queen's life. Unless she actually says something herself, like when she admitted 1992 was an annus horribilis after the breakdown of three of her children's marriages and the devastating fire at Windsor Castle, we can only rely on so-called royal aides or sources who whisper what's going on to royal correspondents on national newspapers or TV broadcasters. One never knows whether these whispers are all authorised by the Queen herself or whether she is kept away from this sort of under-the-table insights and it's left to cunning officials to do the whispering. However, I can't believe that the latest revelation about alleged bullying of staff by Meghan was not sanctioned by the monarch. Would a royal official have dared come up with this juicy morsel without telling the Queen first? Whoever was behind it all, it's another symptom of what the Queen is no doubt already defining as her second annus horribilis, and at her age that's terribly unfair. I doubt Meghan and Harry will ever be forgiven.

It's the Meghan never mind Harry show

With all due respect to the Duchess of Sussex who has been the focus of an unbelievable amount of column inches in the last week or so, it's clear that she wears the trousers in the Meghan/Harry family. So whatever is said in the Oprah Winfrey interview tomorrow night, the main interest will be in what Meghan has to say. We already know from cleverly publicised clips of the two-hour interview that she is going to take on The Firm, the rather trite name given to the Royal Family. Harry is very much second fiddle. He is, after all, brother to the second in line to the throne, grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and son of the first in line to the throne. So whatever he says to back up his wife he is not going to say anything so explosive that the world will be shocked. He is a member of the Royal Family still, she isn't anymore. So he has more to lose if he attacks the Queen or any other member of the family he grew up with. Meghan, on the other hand, has already lost what she gained when she married into The Firm. She has rejected everything that was there for her to enjoy, including of course a fancy house with all the trimmings, servants, staff, Rolls Royces and chats with the Qyueen over scrambled eggs. All that has gone and she is now an independent person shot of all the royal trappings. And, judging by one of the clips released, absolutely over the moon that she can say what she wants when she wants and doesn't have a royal aide listening in as she telephones her friends. She feels liberated, she says. Well all fine and good. For her. But not for Harry. Harry is still half royal and half independent and doesn't know which way to turn. He will always be a hybrid because it's impossibe for him to cast off his royal origins and become an "ordinary" person, whatever he may claim in the Oprah interview. He knows his new role which is to support everything Meghan says and does but what's going on inside his head and heart we'll never truly know. He must be suffering from anguish that he has screwed everything up so badly and inwardly he knows that it was his choice of wife which brought everything crumbling down around him. And yet it was not like this from the beginning. It could have all been fairytale stuff. The press and public adored her. She is gorgeous to look at, beautifully spoken, wonderfully self-assured. Perfection. But it was not to be. She got it into her head that everyone was against her and even though she declared she knew exactly what it would be like to be a member of the British royal family, she found very quickly that she couldn't stand it. She hated the protocol and restrictions on her liberty and came to believe that criticisms in the media were all about racism. From then on it was nothing but disaster. And Harry had to go along with it whether he wanted to or not. So it was off to LA to live a different Hollywood-style life with multi-million dollar showbizzy contracts. And now tell-all time with Oprah Winfrey. For Harry it will be the door finally slamming in his face. For Meghan it will be the door finally opening wide to new fame and wealth and freedom.

Biden gets filibustered

I thought politics in the UK was pretty bad, with members of parliament behaving like peacocks on heat (apologies to the female MPs) to get their view across or to screw up another member's bill or the government's legislation or just for the sake of strutting his stuff before the cameras so that they get a mention in their local newspaper. In the US Congress it's worse. Here we have a near-$2 trillion bill to help the needy and the economy in general during the pandemic and all the Republicans want to do is cause chaos in order to ruin Joe Biden's chance of winning a victory in Congress. The arch screwer-upper is Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who decided to go down the filibuster - should be billibuster - route by insisting on having all 628 pages of the coronavirus relief bill, presumably including footnotes. read out by clerks of the Senate. Which took hours and ruined everyone's Thursday evening. What a pathetic gesture of stupidity. Remember the name, Senator Ron Johnson. If anyone deserves to be kicked out of the Senate, he does. I hope his constituents do just that if he decides to go for reelection. All this bodes ill for Biden. The Democrats have the majority in the Senate - just - so the bill should go through anyway. But the Republicans are putting in so many amendments, all of which have to be voted on, that it could take a long time for the final vote to be reached. In the meantime those who desperately need financial help have to wait for the politicians to stop playing infantile games for the sake of demonstrating that that's what they can do. It's called democracy. If the Republicans win back the majority in the Senate in the mid-term elections, they won't even need to filibuster. They'll just vote no to everything. Again,that's democracy.

White supremacy threat in US military

FULLER VERSION OF MY TIMES STORY TODAY: The US military is facing an insider threat from extremists dedicated to white supremacy ideology, the Pentagon has admitted in a report to Congress. Extremist and terror groups are also actively attempting to recruit military personnel to exploit their combat and tactical skills, the report said. “Military members are highly prized by these groups as they bring legitimacy to their causes and enhance their ability to carry out attacks,” the Pentagon said. “In addition to potential violence, white supremacy and white nationalism pose a threat to the good order and discipline within the military,” the report added. The admission that white-supremacy extremists are still being recruited despite background screening and criminal records checks follows the revelation that many of those leading the attack on the Capitol on January 6 were current or former members of the military. More than 20 veterans or active-duty serving military personnel including members of the right-wing extremist group, Oath Keepers, have been charged with federal crimes for participating in the January 6 rioting. The Pentagon report said “one of the deadliest neo-Nazi groups in the US” was the so-called Atomwaffen (atomic weapon) division which rebranded itself as the national socialist order. The co-founder served in Florida’s army national guard. He was sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison for possessing a destructive device. Two weeks after the Capitol attack, Lloyd Austin, US defence secretary, said that although he believed only a tiny percentage of service personnel were extremists, “small numbers in this case can have an outsized impact”. The Pentagon said that checks on social media should now become a crucial part of background screening of recruits to identify any sympathies for extremist views. The most active white supremacy and white nationalist groups used the internet as their primary method of communication and recruitment, focusing on platforms such as Discord, Telegram and 8chan, the report said. However, the report warned that analysts could not be expected to search the internet for the hundreds of thousands of people that undergo department of defence background vetting each year. Applicants for the military would also have to give their permission for such checks because of privacy and civil liberty rights. The Pentagon recruits about 400,000 applicants for military service every year of whom 250,000 are contracted into the forces. At present the Pentagon does not know how serious the extremism issue is. There is no data available. Even when a serviceman or woman is identified as a white supremacist , there is no specific offence related to extremist activity. If discharged from the services, they are accused under the general heading of misconduct. This is expected to change.

Iran two fingers to Joe Biden

Almost as soon as Joe Biden authorised the retaliatory airstrike last week on an Iranian-backed militia command and communication bunker in Syria that led to one death and two injured I bet that Brigadier-General Esmail Ghaani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, in charge of all extremist Shia militia groups operating in Iraq and Syria, thought to himself. "Right, Biden, the game is on. Next attack coming." Sure enough in the early hours this morning ten rockets were fired at the US-occupied airbase at Al-Asad in western Iraq. One civilian had a heart seizure and died but no reports of other casualties. Last week's US airstrike by two F-15E Strike Eagles was intended to be a message from Biden and the Pentagon that if Iran or Iranian-backed militia targeted bases where American troops were located they would be punished. This came after an Iranian militia unit had launched rocket attacks near Erbil in northern Iraq on February 15. Now we're in for a tit-for-tat war. Biden has to reply to today's rocket attack or it will look as if Iran is winning. Tit-for-tat can be a dangerous business because of the risk of serious escalation. But there is no question that the Quds Force is in business to try and put Biden on the spot. Much is at stake. Already Tehran has snubbed Biden by declaring no interest at this time in rejoining talks with the US on the 2015 nuclear deal. Now, with these rocket attacks, Tehran is thumbing its nose at the new US administration. The US may be a military superpower but in this sort of back-and-forth acts of violence, there is not much Biden can do except hit back but in a modest way.

Leave Winston Churchill alone

The Wall Street Journal in its wisdom today describes Winston Churchill in the following manner in an article about the sale of one of his paintings. The article says: "Churchill was best known for his cigar-chomping role as a prime minister". In other words, Churchill was some sort of B-movie Hollywood actor whose most famous role was as a prime minister who chewed cigars a lot. Denigrating or what? Actually Americans on the whole, or certainly the ones I have met, revere Churchill. I once spoke to a waitress in a cafe in Washington who when she heard my British accent asked me to guess what her name was. I tried a few, mostly of Scottish derivation, knowing how many Americans are proud of their Scottish roots. After waiting a few tantalising minutes she burst out: "It's Churchill. I am sooo proud." Well good for her. She obviously knew who Churchill was and what he did, saving Great Britain and the allies from being taken over by the Nazis in the Second World War by sheer force of character and leadership and a never-surrender philosophy. Ok, he liked cigars and he was prime minister. But he was not "best known for his cigar-chomping role as a prime minister". I mention this throwaway line in one of America's prestigious newspapers only because recently some British academic whose name escapes me produced some extraordinary drivel about how we shouldn't think of Churchill in a good light because he was a racist and likened him to Hitler. I know it's the thing these days to criticise people in the public eye, especially on social media, but leave Churchill alone. His painting incidentally, owned by Angelina Jolie, sold for $11.6 million, a spectacular price even for a Churchill painting. At least I have yet to read: "Winston Churchill, that well known cigar-chomping painter who was also a prime minister ....."

China, the burning issue for new CIA spy chief

FULLER VERSION OF MY SPY CHIEF STORY IN THE TIMES TODAY: America’s new spy chief will put China as his top target for espionage when he takes over as CIA director this week. William Burns, a longstanding career diplomat, nominated by President Biden to be the 26th director of the CIA, is expected to be confirmed by the full Senate later this week. The CIA’s pivot towards China will match the Pentagon’s increasing focus on the Asia-Pacific region where Beijing is accused of operating a maritime strategy which the US says is both aggressive and unlawful. Burns who served as a diplomat for 33 years, described the Beijing leadership as “adversarial” and “predatory” during his Senate intelligence committee confirmation hearing last week. US intelligence sources told The Times that China was already a high-profile target for the CIA. But the new director planned to expand the number of China specialists to keep pace with the growing challenge posed by Beijing. “We have large intelligence and analysis structures that exist to cover China but the new director has said he plans to strengthen this department,” the sources said. Burns is expected to boost the role of the CIA’s East Asia and Pacific mission centre which is responsible for China and other countries in the region where Beijing is trying to dominate. In 2018, Michael Collins, then deputy assistant director of the East Asia and Pacific mission centre, warned that China was waging “a quiet kind of cold war” against the US, trying to become the leading power in the world by undermining the US on multiple fronts. Addressing the annual Aspen security forum in Colorado, Collins said China’s construction of military bases on islands in the South China Sea whose sovereignty is disputed by half a dozen nations in the region was like “the Crimea of the East”. He was comparing Beijing’s actions with Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014. Burns appears to shares this view of China. In a written statement to the Senate intelligence committee he said China posed America’s “biggest geopolitical test”. He also accused Beijing of “methodically strengthening its capabilities to steal intellectual property” from the US. According to the US justice department, about 80 per cent of all economic espionage prosecutions involve intellectual property theft “ that would benefit the Chinese state”. Burns whose wife is a senior official with the United Nations humanitarian affairs office, also singled out China for repressing its own people and bullying its neighbours. “For the CIA that will mean intensified focus and urgency, continually strengthening its already-impressive cadre of China specialists, expanding its language skills [and] aligning personnel and resource allocation for the long haul,” he said. The US intelligence sources said that while there would be more focus on China it would not mean a downgrading of interest and resources for counter-terrorism. “The CIA has to look at everything,” one source said. Although Burns, 64, has never worked for the CIA and is the first career diplomat to be appointed to the top post, he has served closely with the intelligence agency at home and overseas throughout his different postings. He was present in the White House situation room in May 2011 when Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan was raided by US Navy Seals, following the CIA’s ten-year hunt for the al-Qaeda leader.