Canada going all European is madness

Canada is part of the North American continent. Yet, under new ideas being pushed by the European Union, Canadians are being invited to join the EU as an associate member. It's all because of deteriorating relations betwen Canada and its neighbour, the United States, or more specifically, between Donald Trump and Mark Carney, the very elegant prime minister of Canada. Of course, there is nothing wrong with Canada becoming closer to Europe but this is all about snubbing Trump. And that's stupid. Canada and the US are neighbours, they share an immensely important strategic defence role together, and they trade together, although that is half the problem because of Trump's bitter tariff war. A breakaway from the North American partnership towards a somewhat geographically-stretched alliance with the EU may sound like a good dig at Trump but it rally doesn't make much sense. Trump and Carney need to make up and get on and do proper deals like adults.

Poor King Charles, the barbs keep coming

Every family has its moments of despair, trauma, rifts or just internicene arguments. But the Royal Family headed by King Charles has had more than its share of barbs thrown at it, from both within and without. Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, have caused more angst in the family than anyone in recent years, with Harry's outrageous book called Spare and Meghan's whingeing against the royals and their courtiers on the dreadful Opra Winfrey show way back when the couple first went off to live in California. Now they are back in the UK and still causing problems for Charles and his brother, Prince William. In addition, a new book coming out next week, written by Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, is apparently full of nasty jibes at Charles, the most controversial of which is that he claims that soon after Diana died in the car crash in Paris, Charles (then Prince of Wales), told Charles Spencer that soon everyone would forget about the late Princess of Wales and seemed put out by the outpouring of grief for her death throughout the country. Officials speaking for the king have rejected the accusation and blamed Earl Spencer's recollections on poor memory coloured by grief.The book is being serialised in the Daily Mail and there are bound to be more hurtful passages to come. I would have thought the poor king has had just about enough of being targeted in this way with accusations that may or may not be false. The allegation that he cruelly dismissed Princess Diana as someone who would soon be forgotten (the mother of Charles's two sons for heaven's sake) can be resolved only one way. Either King Charles admits he said it and apologises to the nation or Earl Spencer admits he made it up or at least may have got it wrong and apologises to the nation, and the publisher recalls all the books and removes the alleged quote from the king. Then we can all get on with our lives.

The new Houthi/Saudi war has dangerous possibilities

So far, Saudi Arabia is on its own fighting the Houthis. Despite an appeal to Trump, the Saudi de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, was offered no military help from the White House. Trump is stuck with the war against Iran and doesn't want to get involved in Saudi Arabia's current confrontation with the Houthis in Yemen, even though bin Salman is supposed to be his big buddy. Now there's talk of Britain helping out the Saudis. This would be disastrousw and should be rejected by Andy Burnham. The last thing this country needs right now is engagement in a never-ending war in the Middle East. The UK said no to Trump about getting involved in the war with Iran. It should say no to Riyadh now. The Houthis have taken a very aggressive posture towards the Saudis, firing off missiles and drones at Saudi energy plants and blocking oil tankers from going through the Bab el-Mandab chokepoint at the end of the Red Sea which they now control. Today the Houthis claim to have shot down a Saudi jet fighter, and a drone has landed in the vicinity of Mecca, according to Riyadh. It can only get worse. The Saudis, in the past, carried out fairly indiscriminate air raids on the Houthis some years ago and hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians were killed. An all-out war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis would massively disrupt oil supplies going down the Red Sea from Saudi ports. The economic blows to the world's economies would follow. Inflation is already rising at a rapid rate. Trump says the ecoomic pain will all be worth it when Iran collapses and loses the war with the US. But does anyone, apart from him, believe this?

Is Pete Hegseth out of his depth?

Back when Pete Hegseth was still just a television presenter, the former Army National Guard officer who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan explained how he returned to civvy street. “I separated from an Army that didn’t want me anymore,” Hegseth wrote in his book, The War on Warriors. “The feeling was mutual. I didn’t want this Army anymore either.” Fast forward two years and Hegseth finds himself at the Pentagon, trusted by President Trump to overhaul America's armed forces, the leadership of which he still does not seem to want. Twenty months after he was named as defence (now war) secretary, he undertaken a purge of top commanders that shows no sign of slowing, causing turmoil, anger and resentment among the US armed forces. Hegseth appears to be a man on a mission: to eliminate wokery and what he views as an obsession recruiting and promoting military personnel to meet cultural trends that have no place in the armed forces. The 46-year-old who is loyal to a fault to President Trump has sacked more top commanders than the combined total of his seven predecessors. More than 80 rising stars have had their promotions blocked, many of them black or women. The disruption to the leadership of the military has been so dramatic that some of the key appointments, including the chief of staff of the army, remain vacant, after the then incumbent, General Randy George, an officer with an impressive pedigree, was summarily fired after clashes with Hegseth. On September 1, Dan Driscoll, the highly regarded army secretary, the top civilian job in the service, resigned and went to see Trump to complain of the damage being done by his war secretary. At a time when the United States is at war with Iran and the two big-power rivals, China and Russia, are making their moves to exploit perceived American military weaknesses, the Hegseth revolution at the Pentagon has turned the second largest office building in the world upside down. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has urged Trump to sack Hegseth. “I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country,” he said in a social media post. Eric Edelman, defence policy chief at the Pentagon in the George W Bush administration, warned in a recent subscription-only podcast called Shield of the Republic of “the potential institutional damage that the poseur who claims he is the secretary of war is doing to both the uniformed military services and the department of defence more broadly”. “Much but not all of this personnel churn has been directed at the US army and so it was not surprising when the secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll, in the wake of all these acts of self-harm to the officer corps, resigned after warning the president about the damage being done to the fabulous military that he likes to tout which has left the army rudderless in the midst of a war,” he said. Despite the turmoil in the Pentagon, no one in the military can claim they weren’t given early warning. Hegseth’s personal mission was laid out in his 6,000-word address to more than 800 generals and admirals, summoned to hear what he wanted from them during an unprecedented gathering of top brass at the Marine Corps’ Quantico Bay base in Virginia on September 30. Overweight generals padding around the Pentagon corridors, fat troops struggling to train to the proper standards, gender-changing military personnel, beards and women in combat roles, all emerged as his pet hates. “We became the woke department, but not anymore. No more identity months, DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship, no more division, distraction, or gender delusions, no more debris.” Hegseth told his stunned audience. Since then, Hegseth, the 29th defence secretary, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantry officer in the US Army National Guard, has sought out commanders who remind him of his wartime heroes, General Norman Schwarkopf who led the US and allies to victory in the 1991 Gulf War – the only US military victory in nearly 50 years – and General George Patton. of Second World War fame. However, General Chris Donahue, a commander who would appear to fit that bill, fell foul of Hegseth for reasons that have not been fully explained, and he was forced into premature retirement. Donahue who had spent much of his army career in the dark world of special forces missions had been put forward as the next supreme allied commander Europe (Saceur). But Hegseth blocked it. By all accounts Donahue was punished for being the last man to leave Kabul when all US troops were evacuated in a shambolic end to the war in Afghanistan. Trump who described the troop evacuation as “the most embarrassing moment in the history of the United States”, wanted heads to roll. Unlike two of his predecessors, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, both regarded as distinguished secretaries of defence, Hegseth has had no experience of managing a large government department, let alone one the size of the Pentagon which is responsible for 2.8 million people, uniformed and civilian, and has a budget of nearly $1 trillion. Gates, 22nd defence secretary, and Panetta, the 23rd, were both formerly directors of the CIA. Panetta also served as the director of management and budget in the Clinton administration. However, Trump thinks Hegseth is “one of my best”. When the president secretly swapped planes in July from Air Force One via a catering truck at Ankara airport after a Nato summit following warnings of a suspected plot to assassinate him, he took only one cabinet minister with him: Pete Hegseth.

Putin's most outrageous plot

While he was gathering with fellow leaders at the bizarre summit with the leaders of China, India, Iran and others in New Delhi, Vladimir Putin must have given the go ahead for one of his more outrageous acts against the West at a railway station close to the Ukraine/Poland border. A jet-powered drone with a 90-kilogram high-explosive payload crashed into a locomotive at the railway station only a short time after a train had left for the Polish border carrying VIPs, including Boris Johnson, all of whom had been attending a summit of officials in Kyiv with President Zelensky. Everyone knows, including Putin of course, that the Ukrainian government runs a train shuttle between Kyiv and Poland, and the "diplomatic train", the one that ferries important visitors very regularly, must have been on Moscow's mind for a hit for a long time. The drone didn't attack the train with the former British prime minister on board because, it seems, it left earlier than the timetable planned. The drone struck a train which had been emptied of its passengers fifteen minutes earlier after word got through that a drone was on the way. Russia has begun attacking railway stations and railway lines in Ukraine but this looked like a deliberate attempt to strike at Zelensky's latest visitors. If the drone had hit the diplomatic train and people had died, what would have happened? It doesn't bear thinking about. But it seems Putin was prepared to take the risk.

The European Union still reliant on Russia for gas supplies

After all the sanctions and bans imposed on Russia since the invasion of Ukraine nearly five years ago, it is staggering that the European Union still relies on Russia for 12 per cent of its gas requirements. The EU promises to bring this to an end in January but the way the world is going right now and the shortages everywhere in oil and natural gas because of the disruption of the energy market since the war with Iran began, it's likely this partial dependence on Russian gas will continue for longer. It's one of the gravest lessons learned by the West, that it became too sucked into cheaper Russian oil and gas when relations with Moscow were relatively stable It is true that Europe has become far less reliant on Russian energy but the fact that nearly five years later, the EU still can't fully shake off the Russian connection when it comes to energy supplies is sobering. Vladimir Putin presumably knew for certain that the West would not be able to shut off all supplies from Russia and has benefited hugely as a result, helping him to fight his war with Ukraine. Things have gone badly for Putin since the invasion but thanks to the world's demands for oil and gas he has managed to keep going and build better and more powerful weapons to hit Ukraine. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs we see in the world today.

Everyone has underestimated the Houthis

When they started becoming a nuisance way back, the Houthi rebels as they were then called were a pain in the neck, like a cloud of mosquitos buzzing away in the wrong places. Now, they are a force to be reckoned with and are always known just by the name, Houthis. The world knows who the Houthis are because they pop up whenever they want and cause trouble. Today, they are playing a leading role in forcing oil prices up beyond $100 a barrel. They have taken control of the whole coastline of Yemen, effectively putting them in charge of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, another one of those wretched maritime choke points through which Saudi Arabia, in particular, transits its crude oil to Asia. The Houthis are saying that after their lightning military advance to grab the Red Sea coastline and key coastal towns,such as Mokha, as well as an island in the middle of the strait called Perim Island, they can dictate which tankers can transit and which can't. So far they have said their focus is to stop all Saudi tankers going through the strait. How the Houthis have managed to build themselves into such a major strike force is hard to comprehend. Of course they have had help from Iran but the Houthis are also a fiercely independent organisation and they clearly have effective leadership. Literally, no one, not the United States, not Saudi Arabia, not the Gulf states, know what to do about the Houthis. They are running rampant and getting away with it.