The appalling, devastating Bondi Beach killings

There is so much hatred and evil in the world.There always has been but today it is definitely getting worse and worse. The slaughter of 15 Jewish people celebrating their annual festival on Bondi Beach in Australia was so appalling and gruesome it was yet another example of how vulnerable innocent people of all ages can be when there are hateful Isis sympathisers armed with guns and other weapons ready to pounce. Terrorism is the blight of our lives but especially for those who face religious or cultural or ethnic discrimination. Jewish people have suffered so much for such a long time and it was so tragic that a survivor of Hitler's holocaust was one of the victims of the two Isis gunmen at Bondi. The Australian prime minister has called for tighter gun controls but that's never going to stop the determined killer who will use whatever means available to pursue their murderous cause. The slaughter on the beach followed the ambush by Isis gunmen of three Americans - two soldiers and a civilian - in Syria. They died in a war which has been almnost forgotten. There are still about 1,000 US soldiers based in Syria fighting Isis, and the triple deaths remind everyone that while Isis may have been "defeated", as a terror organisation they remain a threat to this day.

Zelensky in yet more peace talks but not with Russia

It's becoming a bit like a merry-go-round, with no disrespect intended. Zelensky has continued to have meetings with European leaders, Amerian envoys, European leaders again and US officials again and then back again and again and again. Now he's off to Berlin to meet with US officials and it's reported that Zelensky is getting closer to a new version of the infamous Donald Trump 28-point formula which Putin quite liked but everyone else hated. But at no stage in this merry-go-round is Russia a feature, well not in the sense of having a Russian sitting in the same room with the Ukrainians to see if there is any possibility of a compromise deal. The reason for this is that Putin is not remotely interested in adapting the Trump plan to better suit Kyiv and he is not interested in ending the war. So this whole toing and froing is a total waste of time. It raises expectations when there are no expectations to be raised. It raises hope when there is no hope. Peace today in Ukraine is as far away as it has been over the last three and three-quarter years. And that is very very depressing.

What will Russia do if Trump attacks Venezuela?

Before any US president, or any leader come to that, contemplates a foreign military venture, they have to spend time thinking of the consequences, or potential consequences. Thus, Putin must have calculated that if he invaded Ukraine, the chances of the US and the rest of Nato intervening on the ground to confront Russian troops and drive them back over the border, were remote. He was right about that, but he miscalculated what Joe Biden would do. He certainly can't have imagined that Biden would gather a huge coalition of countries to back Ukraine with weapons, intelligence and cash. As a result of that miscalculation, his war is still continuing and around a million of his fellow countrymen have died or been injured. History will curse Putin. Now Donald Trump must be asking his advisers what Russia and China might do if he decides to launch ground troops into Venezuela to topple the dreadful Nicolas Maduro. Putin supposedly rang Maduor this week to ask if there was anything he needed to confront Trump. We don't know whether President Xi Zinping has made a similar call from Beijing, but I suspect not. The phone call from Putin, I expect, was a gesture but didn't mean very much. I doubt either Russia or China will get heavily involved if there is US action against Venezuela. They will launch a load of rhetoric about the infamy of attacking sovereign countries and the rest of the world will laugh. Xi is probably going to attack Taiwan some time in the next few years, and Putin....well we know about Putin. So, Trump might get away with action against Venezuela without drawing in Russia or China. But will he do it? So far it has been all swagger and threats.

Russia's cyber warfare needs challenging

A German internatioonal airport gets cyber-attacked, presumably by Russia, and air traffic controllers find they can't do their job safely. So flights are cancelled. Is this a unique occurrence? No, it's just one of many, many cyber attacks carried out by state-sponsored cyber aggressors. Russia is in the forefront of such attacks. But what did Germany do about it? The German government summoned the Russian ambassador in Berlin and delivered a ticking-off. Russia. basically, is getting away with a war against Europe which is undeclared and unchallenged. Every country in Europe has faced similar attacks of one sort or another and each time the Russians have been accused of being behind the outrageous incidents but nothing has been done to punish Russia. This is because Europe is afraid of Putin, and scared of escalating what is already a dangerous confrontation with Moscow. It's high time Russia had a taste of its own medicine. Europe should stand up to this bully and cyber-attack back, so that his airports and banks and energy systems and other vital infrastructure are impacted. He can't just be allowed to get away with denying these attacks and then carry on doing the same again. This guy is only 5ft 5ins tall, he's not 7ft. We should stop treating him like he's some sort of Big Guy. BUY MY NEW SPY THRILLER AGENT REDRUTH, GIVEN BRILLIANT REVIEWS. CHECK OUT AMAZON.

Would the US come to Poland's aid if Russia invaded?

It has not been a good week for Europe. In a new national strategy document, the Trump administration switched US interests to the Western Hemisphere and downgraded Europe. To emphasise his disaffection with Europe, President Trump said in an interview that European leaders were weak and suggested the European continent was heading for trouble. The head of Nato, Mark Rutte, the secretary-general, seemed to back the warning that Europe might be facing a dangerous security challenge when he warned that it might be at war with Russia within the next five years. While this is an alarming prospect, the purpose behind Rutte’s prediction was to urge European members of the Nato alliance to spend much more on defence to be prepared for such an event. Trump has in the past given the same message, that Europe must share a bigger burden when it comes to defence expenditure. What is new is that Trump has now demonstrated, beyond doubt, that he is no longer as interested as previous presidents were in propping up Europe to protect the alliance from potential adversaries such as Russia, but rather to focus the national strategy towards US neighbours, in particular, Latin America and Mexico, focusing on the threats posed by illegal immigration and drug trafficking. This is a totally different view of the world and fits closely with the president’s America First policy which helped him to get elected for the second time. However, the message is clear for Europe. It must now face a future in which the automatic dependence on the US can no longer be taken for granted. The unavoidable question is: what would the US do under a Trump administration if Russia decided to invade, say, Poland or Lithuania? Under Article 5 of Nato’s founding treaty, an attack on any member of the alliance has to be considered an attack on every member, obligating the whole organisation to come to the rescue. Does the Trump administration’s new focus on the Western Hemisphere indicate that the US would not necessarily come to the aid of, say, Poland, if Russian tanks swept across the border or Russian bombers started to target key installations in the country? In other words, would Trump leave any response from Nato to the Europeans? This would be a huge moment for Europe which has always known in the past that the US, as the leading nation of the alliance, would without question adhere to Article 5 and back Poland against Russian aggression. The problem for Europe is that if the US starts to back away from this cast-iron guarantee of military support, it might persuade President Putin to consider an attack on an eastern European country, gambling that the US might stand back. Then it would be Russia versus Europe. This is surely why Nato chief Mark Rutte gave his dire warning to Europe last week about the urgent need to build up defences to deter Russia. Europe will have to make up its mind whether to hope Trump is bluffing or to go ahead and prepare for war with Russia.

So the US military HAS rescued survivors of drug boat strikes

Since the September 2 second drone strike by Seal Team 6 which killed two survivors in the Caribbean Sea, the US Navy has begun rescuing survivors by helicopter and then deporting them back to their countries. So someone womewhere, presumably the State Department's lawyers, must have rung the Pentagon to warn them against killing any more survivors. Has the Pentagon explained this change of policy? The only thing said so far is that the circumstances were different.The one surprising thing is that the drone strikes are not obliterating the boats and killing everyone on board. A drone aimed for the middle of the boat would surely blast everything to kingdom come. Perhaps the survivors leapt overboard when they saw the drone coming. Anyway, the deportation of the survivors is now causing a stir because there are some in Congress who want them put through the US legal system, but as I wrote recently, that's the last thing the Pentagon and Trump administration want to do. According to The New York Times, there was even a suggestion to send them to Guantanamo. But that was rejected. So, off they went back to their countries of origin. This is going to cause a lot more hassle for the Trump administration which is already under fire for what some in Congress fear is an illegal military operation, bumping off suspected drug smugglers off the coast of Venezuela.

Trump disinterested in Europe

It seems Donald Trump isn't interested in Europe and thinks the various countries are run by losers, or at least weak people. The historically close Trans-Atlantic alliance upon which the peace of the world, or the peace of Europe, has depended, is now cast into the bin. Trump is only really interested in America's backyard which is why he has sent a large proportion of the US armed forces into the Caribbean region. It's drugs drugs drugs and illegal immigration which are worryimng him. Not the war in Ukraine and the rising robustness of Russia, nor even China's continuing determination to absorb Taiwan under its communist wing. No, it's Western Hemisphere stuff. That's what's keeping Trump awake at night. So the whole of history is being swivelled around. The only issues that matter are what is going in and out of America, drugs, migrants and trade. It wasn't long ago that Trump was expressing his anger at Putin and vowing to give Ukraine what it wants. Even considering giving them Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. But all that is out of the window now. He is caring less and less about Ukraine and is happy to let the losers in Europe prop up poor old Zelensky who spends more time in European capitals than he does in Kyiv. Keir Starmer who has spent the morning chatting with Zelensky in Number 10 Downing Street, came out and spoke to reporters and the first thing he did was praise Trump for all his efforts to end the war in Ukraine, but then delivered nothing new himself other than the usual mantra about Ukraine choosing its own future. Zelensky can't cboose his own future, let alone his country's because Putin will just plough on with his war, knowing that his main obstacle, the United States, is now not really a factor. And Putin, like Trump, thinks Europe is full of losers. So, Zelensky will go back to Kyiv with nothing to show for his diplomatic back and forth, apart from a promise from Starmer to hand him all the frozen Russian money sitting in European banks. But we have heard that one before. As Trump would say, let's see what happens on that score. BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER, GREAT GIFT FOR CHRISTMAS. CHECK IT OUT ON AMAZON.