Trump loses - kind of

Donald Trump will no doubt deny it but he hasn't got what he wanted in the midterm elections. He will still declare it a great victory for him because the Republicans appear to have won control of the House of Representatives but, so far anyway, have failed to grab the majority in the Senate. Trump will probably claim it was all fixed and a false result but the fact is he has been dealt a blow to his ego. Some of his personally selected candidates haven't made it and the great red rush of Republican wins across the country just hasn't materialised. There are a number of positives that have come out of the midterms: Trump may have scared off a lot of voters and the Democrats have done much better than they predicted. It may also give Trump reason to feel les confident about making his "very big" announcement next week. For Biden it's more complicated. Obviously if the Democrats had swept all before them and won control of both houses of Congress for the next two years that would have been a helluva filip for his administration and probably would have encouraged him to be defnite about standing for reelection as president in 2024. But losing the House of Representatives and hanging on to the Senate for dear life, albeit wth an extra seat (so far), can't really be classed as a major victory. Biden's poll ratings are also slipping. So in other words, the Big Declaration for the 2024 battle is not as clear-cut for either Biden or Trump.

Donald Trump does love to tease

In the latest from the Trump bandwagon, the man says he is going to make a very big announcement on November 15. Donald Trump really does like to tease. I think it's safe to say that if he doesn't declare that he will be standing for reelection as president in 2024 the whole of the United States, nay the whole of the globe, will be so amazed everyone will fall off their respective chairs. So unless he is teasing for teasing's sake and just wants to keep people on tenterhooks for another few months, Trump will be standing again. Now that we pretty well know for sure one has to ask what will this mean for the planet if he stands and wins the presidency and moves back into the White House. The predictions are not too difficult. He will be the most interfering president since the last time he was in the White House. He will make decisions based on whatever he wakes up thinking about. It could be "let's stop the war in Ukraine, I'm off to Moscow" (yes it will still be going on in 2024), or it could be "It's time we bombed North Korea/Iran", or maybe *I'm going to finish building that wall and the Pentagon can pay for it". It's truly hard to believe that the 45th president might be back. Those who will support him all the way to the White House haven't learn any lessons or harboured any doubts. They just want their man back and to hell with the rest of you. I guess this is the way the world is going right now. Apart from Brazil where they have gone socialist the majority of elections are going to the right, the extreme right. Italy is already off the wall right, France is probably going to swing to the nationalists in the next election and now America is heading into Republican hands (probably) and the Trumpites are getting excited. I'm all for democracy but heaven help us.

Trump waits in the wings with the midterms up for grabs

Anything could happen tomorrow at the US midterm elections. I doubt either the Republican party or the Democrats are absolutely confident of winning. That is, winning enough seats in the House of Representatives and Senate to grab the majority. At present the Democrats have control over both with the skin of their teeth. But they have one big disadvantage. It's common if not traditional for the governing party to lose popularity halfway through the first four years of its administration, so expectations will not be high anyway. But with the added factor of having nice old Joe Biden in the White Huouse, the Republicans have been having a ball knocking him down at every available opportunity, and voters may start to get the message - that old Joe is too old to carry on beyond the next two years and it's time to prepare for a Republican president. The midterms are nothing to do with the 2024 presidential election and everything to do with the 2024 election. You cannot separate one from the other, and if the Democrats lose the majority in both houses, as is being predicted, then the path to 2024 will seem pretty straight and narrow for the Republican nominated candidate which of course could be one Donald Trump. If by a miracle the Democats retain control of the House and the Senate - not an impossibility - then Trump will feel somewhat chagrined and might delay his announcement about the presidency. But it won't necessarily be all good news for Biden and his 2024 hopes because there isn't a single voter in the country who doesn't know that it's Biden's 80th birthday coming up this month and another six years on top of that would be, well...quite a gamble. If the Republicans win big time tomorrow and Trump gets his chosen candidates through then the 45th president (Trump) will definitely go for the White House in 2024. Not probably as he said the other day but absolutely definitely. As for Biden, a serious defeat for the Democrats in Congress would be writing on the wall for his future I suspect. With any luck, Trump's candidates will fail to win seats and Biden's lot will scrape through. It still doesn't mean Trump won't stand for the presidency but it might make him hesitate.

China is the biggest carbon emissions polluter

No matter what the world decides at the climate-change summit in Egypt, nothing will be seriously achieved unless China, the biggest polluter in the world, agrees to make huge policy decisions: either cut back on carbon emissions on a scale and timetable that would be immensely impressive or donate vast sums to developing countries which have played little part in destroying the planet but have suffered the worst from flooding, tsunamies and other devastating global-warming challenges. The chances are that China will do something but not nearly enough. The US used to be the biggest pulluter and was number one in the rankings for carbon emissions. China now is so far ahead of the US that it is guilty of producing double the amount compared with America. Beijing claims it is still a developing nation, so it's unfair to make them the scapegoat. But that argument holds no water any longer. China's economy is striding ahead and the country is a vast production line for what the rest of the world needs. So in Egypt Beijing has to make the biggest gesture of its life and lead the way towards saving this planet. It won't I'm sure because the President-for-life Xi Zinping doesn't want to stop polluting the atmosphere until China rivals or overtakes the US as an economic and military superpower. Rishi Sunak who is attending the summit after all - surprise surprise - is going to call on world leaders to do more to switch to alternative energy sources. Well, duh, we've got well beyond that. People have been pressurising for that for DECADES and no one really listened, well not enough to invest big sums on alternative energy. What we need now from the summit in Egypt is a firm, binding commitment to drastically reduce carbon emissions in a much shorter timeframe, with China and the US providing joint leadership to save the planet from a catastrophe. Will this happen? I suspect not which means the next generations of humans are doomed to a fearful future. That's not being alarmist, it's a fact!

North Korea's real nuclear threat

North Korea has progressed from having a few old Soviet Scud missiles bought from Egypt in the 1970s to becoming a fully-fledged member of the exclusive nuclear club with intercontinental ballistic missiles to match. It has been a dedicated pursuit by successive dynastic regimes in Pyongyang, accelerated by Kim Jong-un, the present leader, at the expense of the North Korean people. “From a humanitarian perspective it’s heartbreaking to see that what wealth North Korea has it is literally dumping into the ocean,” said Ian Williams, deputy director of the missile defence project at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He was referring to the latest multiple launch of short-range missiles and one intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) which splashed into the Sea of Japan. There was nothing new in terms of technology from the test launches, he said. “But what was new was the volume of launches – 23 short-range and one ICBM which failed in its second stage,” he said. “It shows they have a manufacturing production line that’s humming along, so we have to assume they can amass them very quickly. This is by a country whose GDP is on a par with Uganda,” he said. North Korea has now launched more than 60 missiles this year, 23 of them on Wednesday, the most in a single day, a hypersonic missile in January and a claimed test of its largest-ever ICBM called Hwasong-17 with a potential range of 9,300 miles. The size of the missile indicates it could carry multiple, manoeuvrable warheads. The US said it was actually an older Hwasong-15 but this missile still has an estimated range of more than 8,000 miles, capable of reaching anywhere in the US if fired on a flatter trajectory. Pyongyang has also developed submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the Pukkuksong-4 and Pukkuksong-5, with ranges of more than 1,800 miles. “We have to assume they have minituarised nuclear warheads to fit on the end of their missiles. The technology has been around since the 1950s and 1960s, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they mastered it themselves although they may have had help; there are a lot of people around the world who know how to build nuclear weapons,” Williams said. “The greatest dangers we face from North Korea fall into two areas: one is its artillery which is embedded in many of the mountains on their side of the demilitarised zone, and, more formidable, is its nuclear-armed missiles,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a US defence analyst and former Pentagon official. “Given open source information on the number of nuclear warheads in their possession – 20 or so – we could face the challenge of dealing with a ‘haystack’ attack in which North Korea launches a salvo of, say, 40 missiles but only a small number of which are actually armed with nuclear weapons,” he said. “Yet we would be compelled to intercept all 40 which would deplete our inventory of missile interceptors. Assuming they have 20 nuclear warheads and they can fit them on missiles, North Korea has enough missiles to fire several such salvoes until it finally overwhelms its adversaries’ defences,” he said.

US taxpayers money pouring into Afghanistan without accountability

The US has donated more than $1 billion to Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power in August last year but has failed to account for how the money was spent, a government watchdog has reported. Successive US administrations spent more than $2 trillion during the 20-year war in Afghanistan and used to provide expenditure details to the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (Sigar) which reports to Congress. However, since the Taliban takeover following the decision by President Biden to withdraw all US troops in an accelerated and controversial evacuation programme, the watchdog has struggled to fulfil its oversight obligations. John Sopko, the inspector general, said it was the first time cooperation by government departments and agencies had been withdrawn. The state department, treasury and USAID, the principal international development aid agency, had refused to give updated information on programmes being supported by the US in Afghanistan, totalling $1.1 billion. Under US legislation the state department and USAID are forbidden to provide any funds to the Taliban. Before the Taliban’s return to power, the US had given more than $17 billion directly to the Afghan government. According to Sigar, up to $1 million in cash “was taken from the grounds of the presidential palace and loaded onto helicopters” as the Taliban approached Kabul. While no evidence is provided in the latest Sigar report that the Taliban has benefited from continuing US donations, the refusal by the relevant agencies to supply precise details of funded projects is likely to lead to questions in Congress. In previous years when US troops were present in Afghanistan, Sigar staff were able to travel to the country to monitor reconstruction projects. But since August last year, no Sigar investigators have been to Afghanistan. Sigar estimates the US spent $146.55 billion on reconstruction and related activities in Afghanistan from shortly after the US-led invasion on October 7, 2001 through to September 20, 2022. The Pentagon reported last year it had spent $849.7 billion on the war. However, the Watson Institute at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island estimated the total cost of the war for US taxpayers in Afghanistan was $2.313 trillion, including $1 trillion for warfighting, £233 billion on care for Afghan war veterans to date and $532 billion interest on borrowing to fund the military operation. The majority of Americans (69 per cent) agreed the US had mostly failed in achieving its goals in Afghanistan, according to a Pew Research Centre poll conducted in late August last year.

America fighting for its own democracy

Joe Biden and Barack Obama have given the same warning, that democracy in the United States is looking more fragile than ever. While the timing of their warning is clearly aimed at influencing voters in the midterm elections on November 8, the substance of their message is scary but essentially true. There are extremist elements in America who do not want anything to do with democracy. All they want is to damage, undermine, even kill those who hold what they perceive to be liberal views. The break-in and assault at the house of Nancy Pelosi summed up the terrifying anger that is circulating in different parts of the US. Hopefully this sort of attack on democracy is not going to become commonplace; and all the signs are that the suspected perpetrator was unhinged. But his intentions were clear, according to the police. He wanted to enter Pelosi's house and kidnap her and then bust her kneecaps. Her poor husband was the one who got attacked because Nancy, Speaker of the House, was away in Washington but the plot was aimed at her. It seems that anyone who has been a longstanding public figure and represents middle-of-the-road, centrist views could become a target for exremist right wing hatred. This is what Biden and Obama meant when they said America's democracy was at stake. Donald Trump's rhetoric and inciteful language have played a significant part in this alarming rise in anger across the US. In the lead-up to the midterms this anger is palpable. With Russia tramping on democracy in all forms and China turning sharply back towards Marxism and Leninism, the US needs more than ever to be a beacon for democracy and human values. If Trump stands for reelection and wins the presidency in 2024, the true meaning of democracy will be threatened. I fear it is as simple as that.