Category Archives: Politics – international

The second Battle of the Marne a hundred years on

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In August 2014, exactly a hundred years from the day World War I began, I happened to be in France driving along the battle front that crossed from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border and visited many of the WWI battlefields and came across not a single ceremony of any kind to memorialise the start of the most devastating and consequential war in the history of the West. There have been battles that have probably been more consequential – Tours and Vienna [1683] come to mind – but no war has so uprooted every aspect of the European continent, and indeed the entire planet, than the First World War. Whether it was the disappearance of entire dynasties, “the sealed train” which led to the Russian Revolution, or the deadly meddling of Wilson in European affairs, the fact is that even now we are still trying to wind back its effects. There could have been no North Korea without Communist China and there could have been no Communist China without the Soviet Union. There would have been no Nazis and no World War II if there had been no Kaiser and World War I. And on it goes. Yet the same has occurred throughout the period since August 2014 with no memorials and remembrances of any significance that have brought to mind this fantastic war that had done so much to create the havoc of our world today. Those who died on the battlefields of France are barely remembered.

So in The Oz a few days back there was this tiny article on the editorial page foreshadowing the centenary of The Armistice on November 11: 100 years, 100 reasons why Armistice matters. I imagine the Armistice, too, will go by without much notice. So I will just remind us that we are now living through the hundredth anniversary of the second last battle of World War I, The Second Battle of the Marne, whose dates are officially July 15 to August 6 of 1918. August 6, of course, was the date that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Two days from now will be the 100th anniversary of the start of the last battle of WWI, Amiens, which brought the war to its end.

We are the products of history whether we think about it or not, and the fact is no one any longer cares about our own past which in itself means we are rudderless and without bearings. We no longer barely know who we are since we no longer know who we have been and from whence we have come. We may well be heading for changes that will make even the eruptions of World War I seem mild and inconsequential in comparison.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts

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Via Instapundit. INTERESTING FT PIECE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: The Chinese are wary of Donald Trump’s creative destruction: The president is the first US leader in decades to challenge China on multiple fronts

Donald Trump is leading a double life. In the west, most foreign policy experts see him as reckless, unpredictable and self-defeating. But though many in Asia dislike him as much as the Europeans do, they see him as a more substantial figure. I have just spent a week in Beijing talking to officials and intellectuals, many of whom are awed by his skill as a strategist and tactician. . . .

Few Chinese think that Mr Trump’s primary concern is to rebalance the bilateral trade deficit. If it were, they say, he would have aligned with the EU, Japan and Canada against China rather than scooping up America’s allies in his tariff dragnet. They think the US president’s goal is nothing less than remaking the global order.

They think Mr Trump feels he is presiding over the relative decline of his great nation. It is not that the current order does not benefit the US. The problem is that it benefits others more in relative terms. To make things worse the US is investing billions of dollars and a fair amount of blood in supporting the very alliances and international institutions that are constraining America and facilitating China’s rise.

In Chinese eyes, Mr Trump’s response is a form of “creative destruction”. He is systematically destroying the existing institutions — from the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement to Nato and the Iran nuclear deal — as a first step towards renegotiating the world order on terms more favourable to Washington.

Once the order is destroyed, the Chinese elite believes, Mr Trump will move to stage two: renegotiating America’s relationship with other powers. Because the US is still the most powerful country in the world, it will be able to negotiate with other countries from a position of strength if it deals with them one at a time rather than through multilateral institutions that empower the weak at the expense of the strong.

My interlocutors say that Mr Trump is the US first president for more than 40 years to bash China on three fronts simultaneously: trade, military and ideology. They describe him as a master tactician, focusing on one issue at a time, and extracting as many concessions as he can. They speak of the skilful way Mr Trump has treated President Xi Jinping. “Look at how he handled North Korea,” one says. “He got Xi Jinping to agree to UN sanctions [half a dozen] times, creating an economic stranglehold on the country. China almost turned North Korea into a sworn enemy of the country.” But they also see him as a strategist, willing to declare a truce in each area when there are no more concessions to be had, and then start again with a new front.

For the Chinese, even Mr Trump’s sycophantic press conference with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in Helsinki had a strategic purpose. They see it as Henry Kissinger in reverse. In 1972, the US nudged China off the Soviet axis in order to put pressure on its real rival, the Soviet Union. Today Mr Trump is reaching out to Russia in order to isolate China.

The heading is a quote from Richard Feynman.

Toronto the bad

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News from my home town although it does seem ever more remote from the place where I grew up. But this is beyond incompetence:

Detectives in Canada are still seeking a motive for a mass shooting which left three dead – including the gunman – and injured more than a dozen others, as residents of Toronto grapple with the latest in a string of violent incidents to hit Canada’s biggest city in recent months.

Federal officials said on Tuesday that there was no terror link to Sunday’s attack in which the lone gunman opened fire along a bustling avenue in the city, seemingly shooting at random at pedestrians and into shops and restaurants.

Nor is this just out of nowhere. Toronto has had a few of these of late:

Toronto has been rattled by a string of violent incidents this year.

In April, 10 people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a driver in a van ploughed into pedestrians on a city sidewalk. The following month, more than a dozen people were injured after a homemade bomb ripped through an Indian restaurant in May in nearby Mississauga.

The year started with the arrest of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, now charged with the deaths of eight men, and the high-profile homicides of billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman.

Gun violence has also tightened its grip on the city. Last month two sisters, ages five and nine, were shot while playing in a park. The two young girls survived, partly thanks to neighbours who used napkins to stem the bleeding. At the start of this month, two men were fatally gunned down in a brazen daytime shooting in the city’s downtown core.

So far this year 26 people have died from gun violence, a 59% increase from the same period last year. The number of shootings has risen 13%, according to police data.

“People now – whether you’re walking on Queen Street, walking on the Danforth, walking on Yonge Street – are going to be looking over their shoulder,” said Louis March, the founder of the Zero Gun Violence Movement in Toronto.

How about a zero robbery movement, or a zero double-parking movement. No one wants to identify the problem, and so neither will I. Here’s the mayor:

On Tuesday, Toronto city council, led by Toronto mayor John Tory, began debating a range of measures aimed at tackling gun violence in the city….

Measures being considered by the city include bolstering mentoring programs, the purchase of 40 new CCTV cameras and a contentious listening technology that claims to be able to detect and report the sound of gunshots to police.

“I’ve said for some time that the city has a gun problem, in that guns are far too readily available to far too many people,” Tory said on Monday.

It’s not too many guns but too many people who want to shoot other people that is the problem.

Talk about creepy

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Perhaps a bit of common sense at last from the Foreign Editor at the Oz: Back trump on Iran, with Netanyahu, Putin’s co-operation. But first he says this:

Now, I think that crew of creepy right-wingers in the US and Australia who think Putin is a great friend of Western civilisation are just about crazy.

My goodness, who are such people? What do they say? Quotes and references, please. The Russians have their interests and we have ours and sometimes they overlap. But Russia is no longer the Soviet Union and there are many things the US and Russia can achieve together since their and our interests often overlap. And guess what we find right after the above?

But in strategic policy, in the real world, the choice is often between the evil and the even more evil. Russia’s presence in Syria may have produced something somewhat less horrible than its absence would have produced. Look at the other main actors in Syria — Islamic State, Iran, ­Hezbollah. They are all worse for humanity in Syria, and worse for Western interests, than Russia has been.

For whatever its many sins, Moscow has played the role in Syria that the West once played in troubled countries — it has restored order.

And on the American president:

The Trump administration is right to repudiate the pathetically weak deal Barack Obama did with Iran. Trump wants to enforce the red lines Obama once had for Iran — no uranium enrichment, no ballistic missiles and so on. Canberra should support this.

With this conclusion:

Trump does good as well as bad. We should explicitly and publicly support US policy on Iran.

Well, yes indeed we should. And on much else as well. Did you see this, for example: North Korea: satellite images show dismantling of missile test facilities. Quite a lot of good is being done by PDT, in fact, with very little bad of any kind so far as I can see.

A very good 500 days with many more to come

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There are no even-handed accounts. There are only individual perspectives. But all that being so, there are still shared beliefs and political aims that transcend the individuals who hold these aims and beliefs. So here is one more perspective from yet another who sees PDT coming up short: MAGAnomics: a 500 Day Appraisal. Here is a reply via Catallaxy from Bruce of Newcastle.

Very naïve article from Mr Firey.

First: fiscal policy is in the hands of Congress, who presented a bipartisan omnibus porkbarrel bill to Trump on the budget. He signed because there wasn’t much choice against a probable veto-busting majority.

Second: The GOP elites have been underhandedly opposing Trump to try and keep the party out of his control. Thus McConnell has been vacillating in the Senate about the Dems slow walk approval of Trump nominees to key administration positions. That prevents Trump from pushing his agenda through the bureaucracy. In this light it’s amazing how much he’s achieved despite opposition from both parties and the deep staters.

Third: Mr Firey does not comprehend the Art of the Deal strategy which Trump is applying to foreign relations and trade. The tariffs are doubly designed, first to appeal to the blue collar Democrats dumped on the scrapheap by Obama’s embrace of left coast and NYC progressives, and secondly to bring other countries to a deal.

The problem at the moment is both the EU and China are prepared to die in a ditch for ideological reasons rather than deal on trade. The soy tariffs China brought in are a terrible own goal* for Chinese people who rely on cheap soy beans. But Xi is in a Great Game conflict with the US for his own reasons, in which trade is a tool of dominance. EU likewise is in the grip of the Left, and they hate Trump with an irrational fervor.

We’ll see how this goes. Trump is pushing tariffs as a tactic. The tactic may fail, but the aim is a good one: to break down to non-tariff barriers that the EU and China are now getting away with.

(* “There simply aren’t enough soybeans in the world outside of the U.S. to meet China’s needs,” said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics.)

And it really ought to be emphasised that economics is far from the only reason for supporting PDT, not to mention that the US economy is in the midst of an astonishing revival.

Reflexive ignorance across the media

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ADDED ON: Old Ozzie mentioned in the comments that the Russian President had spoken about a Western assault on Christianity and traditional values in 2013 – just before anti-Russian troubles began, so I went looking to see what he meant, and there below in the vid is what I found. Not at all what you might have expected.

ORIGINAL POST

Thank you for noting the typical far left media bias at the ABC, Rafe, but what can you expect? The ABC is just reflex ignorant as this article today on Venezuela provides one more example: IMF: Venezuela’s inflation on track to top 1 million percent which comes via the ever-unreliable Associated Press. Heaven forbid they should mention that socialism has had anything to do with it. Instead, their authority on the nature of the problem is no less than the President of Venezuela himself:

Socialist President Nicolas Maduro often blames Venezuela’s poor economy on an economic war that he says is being waged by the United States and Europe.
Maduro won a second six-year term as president despite the deep economic and political problems in a May election that his leading challenger and many nations in the international community don’t recognize as legitimate.

Two of the most uninformed sentences you are ever likely to find, specially designed for those who want to hide themselves from reality. It is even possible that the ABC knows better, but the last people to actually try to explain it are the ones who want the same kinds of economic management in Australia.

But this media ignorance continues everywhere. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a sickness that will do us all in and if we are not very careful put an end to Western Civilisation within a generation. The latest bit of TDS is from Troy Bramston in a column as empty and unhistorical as it is possible to be: Putin could never have suckered Reagan like Trump the chump. I will merely make the obvious point that when Reagan was president, Russia was the Soviet Union and when Reagan met with the Soviet President he was dealing with the core ideological issue of the time. As it happens, I supported Reagan then just as strongly as I support Trump now, and for much the same reasons. Russia is no longer communist, so perhaps it is time to bury the hatchet. Bramston doesn’t like Trump, but so what? He is like virtually every other media type, with nothing to add to the conversation other than empty rhetoric. Here are a few of the comments on the column at The Australian, starting from the top and working my way down. There are plenty more like these, and in fact I never came to a single comment that supported him.

So the writer was in the meeting between Trump and Putin!! I’m sick to death with this type of article. No wonder many of us no longer trust the media.

Oh my Lord … talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome writ large. This column should be compulsory study for journalism students in what NOT to write. There are so many falsehoods and opinions masquerading as fact that no-one could even begin to deconstruct it! Truly shameful, Oz.

What was Trump to do about funding 70% NATO, May’s feckless indecisive dithering over Brexit, the Steele dossier fraud, the FBI, CIA stacked with anti Trump activists, the Muller witch hunt, an irrational left wing media and the list goes on and on. But the best thing he’s done for the US is to get out of that crippling Paris Agreement. If only we had a Trump here.

Sorry Troy…..that days of journalists cherry picking factoids and creating an ideologically charged narratives are over. In this digital world, we are on to you, and what you have tried to run here I know not to be true.

Typical Trump basher. Ignorant of American history and even more ignorant of the American voter. Donald Trump’s supporters don’t care who he’s nice to or how many mistakes he makes as long as he drains the swamp. That’s what they hired him for. He has done exactly what he said he would do when on the campaign trail. That is why people like the writer of this article don’t like him. Donald Trump is not one of them. He is his own man. God Bless Donald Trump.

Mr Bramston, you and many others in the media and political elites will no doubt continue to pile on President Trump but be aware his supporters are as strongly behind him as ever and while his press conference in Helsinki was clumsy, it had no negative effect on his support in America. In fact the more they pile it on, the stronger Trump’s support may get. No doubt you also predicted with absolute certainty that Trump would never beat Hillary, and that Hillary calling Trump’s supporters “deplorables” would have no meaningful impact as well? Hmmm

Engaging in a bit of hyperbole, Troy. The EU is still in place, so too NATO, ANZUS and the rest. Unfortunately for the UK, Australia and the US, so is Theresa May. The fact that some passengers are told to pay up is not a bad thing. The fact some countries taking advantage of trade rules to the detriment of the US are told that must change is not a bad thing. That Trump talks to Putin is not a bad thing. Now, if Kim Jong Un does not deliver on his side of the bargain in Singapore, let’s see how Mr Trump responds. At that point you will be in a better position to see whether Mr Trump was wrong to give talks a chance. But if Rocket Man is sliding from his agreement, I’d be looking to see what role China has been playing in sabotaging any agreement.

“We are witnessing a fracturing of the Western liberal order and a ­decline in US global leadership”. Wrong Mr Bramston, what we are witnessing, thanks to Donald Trump, is a worldwide draining of the swamp and the hopefully the decline of the United Nations and the European Union from taking over our countries.

I’ve not read this article, looks like more Trump bashing. I’m sick of these stories/analysis by people that can’t wait to criticise, when the end of the event in nowhere in sight. Hoping and praying for failure. Can’t you wait to see how it unfolds?

Awesome news filtering in today that the great US President is considering revoking the security clearances of former top Obama era officials. They all conspired against him and need to go now and quickly. Whilst Bramston pummels the keyboard listing all the petty things Trump has done, little does he know that after Iran is fixed, the Federal Reserve will be next on the agenda. There’ll be plenty of time for Troy and his globalists friends to write angry articles about Trump – waaaay into the future as they observe, from the sidelines, the glorious wonders of the swamp getting drained!

Tweet not so softly and carry a big stick

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President Trump late Sunday tweeted out to Iranian President Rouhani to never threaten the U.S. again or face historic consequences.

The tweet came on the heels of Rouhani’s warning to Trump that hostile policies could lead to the “mother of all wars” with Iran.

Trump called for Rouhani to stop the rhetoric or “suffer the consequences the like of which few throughout history have ever suffered before. We are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence and death. Be cautious!”

Rouhani earlier warned Trump to stop “playing with the lion’s tail” and threatening Iran, “or else you will regret it.”

Trump earlier this year pulled the U.S. out of the international deal meant to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon and ordered increased American sanctions.

TO WHICH MAY BE ADDED THIS: The address by the American Secretary of State was delivered at the Reagan Library just to underscore the message:

From the speech:

You know, despite the regime’s clear record of aggression, America and other countries have spent years straining to identify a political moderate. It’s like an Iranian unicorn. (Laughter.) The regime’s revolutionary goals and willingness to commit violent acts haven’t produced anyone to lead Iran that can be remotely called a moderate or a statesman.

Some believe that President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif fit that bill. The truth is they are merely polished front men for the ayatollahs’ international con artistry. Their nuclear deal didn’t make them moderates; it made them wolves in sheep’s clothing. Governments around the world worry that confronting the Islamic Republic harms the cause of moderates, but these so-called moderates within the regime are still violent Islamic revolutionaries with an anti-America, anti-West agenda. You only have to take their own words for it.

Via Scott Johnson at Powerline.

Some comments on Trump v Putin

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At Powerline, as soon as I see a column by Paul Mirengoff I head straight to the comments since nothing he says makes any sense. These are comments from a post today on TRUMP’S INCREDIBLE TAKE ON PUTIN’S “INCREDIBLE OFFER”. These make sense to me:

President Trump merely told the obvious truth. Putin is more credible then our ‘intelligence’ agencies who have a long history of lying about the few things they aren’t wrong about. ‘Wrong about’ would include the fall of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall, Iran, the Philipines, Hati, Cuba, Cambodia, Rwanda, 911, the rise of Islamic jihad, etc. ‘Lied about’ would include, the Bay of Pigs, assassination attempts on Castro (and others), Tonkin Gulf hoax and what they did before and after in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, spying on Americans, collecting metadata on Americans and most recently borrowing one of their ‘assets’ to the FBI to spy on Trump. If there is one agency that has proved over time to be incompetent, corrupt and dishonest, it is the CIA. I’d take Putins word over a CIA director any day of the week.

Ive always been a bit befuddled by US foreign policy. Usually, we punch the little guys hard (not that I necessarily have a problem with that) and impose only sanctions, of varying degrees, on the big boys. China is an example – we do plenty of business with a country that is not our ally. We enrich them immensely. They have stolen intellectual property, among other things, and life goes on. Has this conduct changed China’s fundamentals? So now we have Trump engaging in ‘unorthodox’ diplomacy and one might think he’s giving away the store. Only problem with that analysis is that his actions towards Russia are much different from Obama’s actions – who apparently practiced orthodox diplomacy, which emboldened Putin. What am I missing?

Disclosure- I am a Russophile. I like Tolstoy and Rimsky-Korsakoff. I am friends with many former Soviet Jews. And unlike a certain dufus, I thank the people who ate the Nazis for lunch. That being said, I agree with Trump. The US had a chance to develop the former USSR into an ally and friend. It didnt help when Clinto meddled in the 1996 election( although he did the same to Israel). When the Soviet Union broke up the US promised not to expand NATO but W did. I didnt see the MSM freaking out when Obama and Soros were meddling in the Russian 2012 election. In 2014 the US spearheaded the Ukraine rebellion -operation Ajax redux- thank you Victoria Nudelman. The Ukraine has been felt as part of Russian sphere of influence and Obama sent agents to overthrow the legal government there. I have yet to see you mention these facts. Or do you feel that when the US does it , its is kosher? I doubt the Diem family would agree.

I’m pro-American, but the US intelligence community has long been pro Democrat rather than pro American. It is a gigantic, scantily accountable bureaucracy that aligns with big government Progressives. As you’d expect from process-driven government agencies, the IC has failed to protect America from multiple avoidable terrorist atrocities, from multiple avoidable cyber breaches (they didn’t even interdict Hillary Klutz, let alone the Chinese) and has shown itself willing to corrupt the 2016 election and attempt a soft coup against the winner. Putin on the other hand is not opposed to America, he is in favor of Russia and grabs what he can get away with on the edge of his own territory not thousands of miles away across the ocean. Trump is essentially right about US/Russia relations.

In my opinion, the most important factor in all of this “rolling over” by American presidents is our media’s constant emphasis on the virtues of “diplomacy”, over everything else, by the American news media. Confrontation is always portrayed as negative. So American presidents have become essentially skittish, constantly looking over their shoulders at the American press and wanting to be in their good graces, portrayed positively. This takes all of their focus off of “what’s betst for America” in the short, medium and long term and all on what will make them get positive reviews. Sometimes what’s good for America in the long term may look bad for America in the short term (or as portrayed by our media). Perfect example is Rekjavik Iceland with Reagan and Gorbachev. Reagan left without a deal and that was portrayed as disastrous by our media – as it turned out he was refusing to accept Gorby’s gambit, and in the long run he got a deal. Unfortunately, what this means is that, today, our media basically drive our policy. Sad, and scary.

As Rush constantly and correctly points out, conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. It seems to me Putin is the one getting rolled. He’s being stymied everywhere and was the one pushing for the summit. So he scores points with the anti-Trump media and NeverTrumpers. Let’s see how the ME (Syria/Iran) shakes out, where Russia is taking a beating, and how they react to DPRK sanctions.

I’m of the opinion our Intelligence agencies are hip-deep in domestic politics. That some at the top of several agencies were and have collaborated with the Democrats during and after the Presidential elections. To suggest their efforts are devoted to protecting us from the Russians ignores the facts. We need protection from them. If Trump’s actions suggests he doesn’t trust or believe them, he is not wrong. I neither trust nor believe them either.

Why shouldn’t Trump take Putin offer? Mueller just got his ass handed to him on his first set of fake indictments of a Russian company. McFaul is a Jackass, the Browder the same. you can’t keep picking a fight with the Russians with no real evidence then hide behind daddy Trump and yell Treason if he won’t protect you. Trying to cause a World War for What? But hurt Dems and Neocons? We already kicked the crap out whole unit of Russians in Syria, Trump already made his point.

Once again the hysterical side gets all the oxygen. Words and posturing are much different than concrete action. I see nothing to show that we have given any ground to Russia. So calm down! No one has given Putin anything. You might consider that Trump is deliberately poking those that have the most to fear from what ever Putin knows . Clearly that’s not Trump. So I wonder who it might be?

Nitpicking. Trump is freewhelling and off script. Overall, Trump is Putin’s worse nightmare. Clinton would have been Putin’s dream come true. Trump would be the last person Putin wants in office. A weak Clinton was the obvious first choice. Trump has:

Deepened economic sanctions on Russian Oligarchs
Kicked many Russia Diplomats out of the US
Pounded Russia assets in Syria
Strengthened Eastern European Missile Defense
Spoken out very strongly against Russian annexation of Crimea
Armed Anti-Russian Ukrainian military to the tune of 1B$
Cajoled NATO to increase spending by 45 Billion dollars- most of which will be used to defend E Europe against Russian aggression
Criticized Germany for reliance on Russian gas
Added major muscle to the US Military
Pulled the plug on the Iranian Nuclear deal, damaging Russian interests
Guaranteed total US energy independence
Started a Space Force as protection against Russian and Chinese possible agression
Then Putin, in an act of deference to Pres Trump, offers some public dirt on Clinton: 400 million of illicit Russian money went to the CF.

Putin is obviously in Trump’s pocket, not the other way around, foolish writers notwithstanding.

The purity wing of the political right

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Here’s how it is. The only president on our side of the fence is Donald Trump, just as the only Prime Minister on the Liberal side is Malcolm Turnbull. All present alternatives from other political parties are worse, much worse.

With Donald Trump, thus far he has not tried to do anything I disagree with. He gets it on open borders, public spending, climate change, the Middle East, China, our Nato allies, Brexit and just about everything else. I am not even in the slightest concerned with his personal style, and I love his twitter feed which is a wonderful addition to public discourse. The only reservation I have had was that he was concerned about rising interest rates, but this is a technical thing, and about which in my own view higher rates will stimulate growth since it will reduce the proportion of our savings going towards unproductive projects. On this I am not going to make a fuss, and about everything else I am with him 100%. On tariffs, I am generally in favour of free trade, but only among nations in which cheating on their obligations is not the rule but the exception. I am also pleased to see trade issues being used to achieve foreign policy outcomes, such as the pressure being put on North Korea and its allies to get rid of its nuclear weapons.

About Malcolm I have had my doubts in the past but he is the PM and he leads a party who are generally speaking on my side of things, far more than the people anywhere else. I wish him success, and in that I wish even more success to those members of the party holding their cattle prods to induce the PM to do the right thing. His instincts are generally terrible, but he seems pretty sound on stopping the boats, and seems to be getting the message about population growth. He even seems to be seeing the light about coal-driven power stations. I want him to win the next election, and my preference is not marginal but overwhelming. Lots of things I don’t like about Lib-Nat policies at the moment, but while selling the pass in some areas they are still well in front so far as my own agendas are concerned. I just wish they would become more of a entrepreneurial party – cut down their own spending and reduce business regs much much more than they have, but you can’t always get everything you want.

At Freedomfest I met up with many many people with whom I could agree on things almost totally across the board, a very rare experience but an immense pleasure. But the minute I walked out of the conference venue, there I was in the middle of Las Vegas among people for whom none of that would be true. Not that they wouldn’t necessarily agree with me if they thought about things. But that they never think about these things so don’t agree with my views mostly because CNN got to them first and with better production values.

I am not and never have been a member of the purity wing of the right side of the political divide. I worked in policy far too long to even begin to hope to see things done as I would wish most of the time. Democrats and socialists are a lost cause, same again with the #NeverTrump wing of the so-called right. They are political fools and a danger to us all. On our side there are many points of view, even people who think climate change is a genuine issue that needs urgent attention.

But I do have to say that if you do not see the virtues in the miraculous election of Donald Trump as president, you are a political fool of the highest order. Your opinions are dead to me since as far as I am concerned, you are as big a political dimwit as I can possibly imagine.