WORLD ROUNDUP
An Overview of Some Significant World Events Over the Last Week
USA
It has been an interesting week in the US with various Republican primary elections to select candidates for the November mid-term elections. President Trump still exerts great influence in the Republican Party and 95% of Trump-endorsed candidates were selected for US Senate and House of Representatives races. Trump was correct about the last Presidential election being stolen, there being confirmation in the remarkable movie 2000 Mules made by Dinesh D’Souza. Dinesh also made the movies – Hillary’s America (https://hillarysamericathemovie.com/), America: Imagine A World Without Her
2016:Obama’s America and Trump Card . I’ve seen all Dinesh’s movies, which are well-made and provide information not available elsewhere.
2000 Mules tells the story of how using postal votes, the Democratic Party was able to steal the 2000 Presidential election. The word “mules” comes from the name given to drug couriers smuggling illegal drugs. The same name has been given to illegal “ballot stuffing” where Democrat operatives organized massive postal ballot drop offs by “mules”, mostly in the dead of night. At least 380,000 votes involving 2,000 vote “mules” were estimated to have influenced the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. The movie provides information about how mobile/cell phone data was used to identify the more than 2,000 “mules” who collected and illegally dropped off postal votes. The data was accessed by the organization True the Vote which bought cell phone data from phone companies and then followed individual cell phone movement using each phone’s geolocation information. The film makers conservatively assess that at least 3 states would have been won by Trump if these illegal votes had been invalidated, which would have handed Trump the presidency. The film is worthwhile viewing and is available on a number of platforms, except YouTube. The mainstream media have ignored the film and even some Republicans have proposed that the 2020 Presidential election was “the most secure in American history”. It is clear now that there was massive fraud by the Democrats in the last Presidential election and of course the challenge now is whether any US elections will ever again be free and fair?
United Kingdom & Europe
Apart from the war in Ukraine, the UK has been grappling with the Brexit agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol. After Britain left the European Union in 2016, there has been an ongoing challenge related to the Irish Republic border with Northern Ireland, which is the only part of the UK that has a land border with an EU country. The EU has telephone book sized volumes of food rules and requires non-EU countries to have border checks. This is impractical with the Northern Irish border in the Irish sea. Northern Ireland is being penalized as this part of the UK has additional mandated EU requirements not applicable in the mainland UK. Liz Truss, the UK Brexit negotiation minister and Foreign Secretary, is threatening unilateral action by the UK, which could lead to a breakdown in relations with the EU. Meanwhile the recent Northern Ireland elections have resulted in Sinn Fein, the party that favours Northern Ireland uniting with the Republic of Ireland, becoming the dominant party in Northern Ireland. However their main opposition, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) support Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been in Northern Ireland this week to try to convince the local parliament to meet and he has written a long article which is mainly verbiage but he does say that the UK will protect the single UK market and the open border with the Republic of Ireland. This will be tricky and it is likely that there will be further conflict coming between Britain and the EU.
Meanwhile there is a more serious problem with civil servants (government bureaucrats) refusing to return to work and continuing to stay at home. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has the extraordinary title of “Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency” has been visiting civil servants offices and leaving notes saying “sorry to miss you”. Rees-Mogg has noted that most civil servants work from home on Mondays and Fridays and there are less than half the staff working as required from their Whitehall offices. Even more remarkable is the story in the last few days that in an audit of the UK Cabinet Office, there are 700 people working in Human Resources in just one department and 80 people remain working on the Cop26 climate conference which ended 6 months ago. Of course this raises the question: who is really in charge in the UK? Boris has announced that he wants to remove 90,000 civil servants as the civil service had become “bloated”. These civil servants won’t go without a fight and I think that we can anticipate many document leaks against the government in the coming months.
It does look as though Boris has escaped from “partygate” which threatened to end his leadership of the UK Government. The London Metropolitan Police announced that their investigation is finished and Boris has not received further fines. However the Sue Gray report which investigated the party culture of No. 10 Downing Street during the lockdowns, will be released this week and could cause further problems for Boris’ leadership. Durham police meanwhile continue their investigation into the Labour Opposition Leader Sir Keir Starmer over “beergate”. All these issues are being dwarfed by the dramatic cost of living increases in the UK, including energy costs. The UK Treasury solution seems to be more handouts and increased taxes!
Russia and Ukraine
I heard a very interesting interview this week – James Delingpole interviewed Jacques Baud, a former Colonel in Swiss Army Intelligence, who has great insights into the Russian-Ukraine conflict. Colonel Baud has a great understanding of Ukrainian and Russian history and provided some historical insights that I had not heard elsewhere. The conflict has many historical antecedents and certainly is much more complex than has been promoted by the West – Putin as a psychotic dictator. Another useful perspective was provided by a Spectator podcast this week titled “Zelensky’s choice”. This podcast discusses the role of Turkey and President Erdogan’s influence because Turkey is a NATO member and also reliant on both Russian oil and Russian tourism. Turkey is being pressured to accept Sweden and Finland joining NATO (there needs to be a unanimous vote among current NATO countries) and a key issue is what inducements can be given to Turkey to accept these new NATO members?
In contrast to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, that remarkable cultural event, the Eurovision Song Contest was held last weekend and unsurprisingly Ukraine was voted the winner in a sympathy vote from the rest of Europe. The win wasn’t based on artistic merit and you can judge for yourself by viewing this link to the winning song “Stefania” by the Kalush Orchestra. Most US readers will be unaware of Eurovision which truly is a bizarre event but wildly popular each year in Europe. The winning country hosts the next year’s Eurovision contest and so it is anticipated that the war with Russia will be finished by then, when the Ukraine hosts Eurovision.
It is interesting that Christopher Steele, the former UK intelligence officer, who was responsible for the fake Trump-Russia dossier used by the Democrats before the 2016 election, is in the headlines again. Steele has said this week that “Putin is seriously ill” but he is not sure if it is “incurable or terminal”. It is likely that the situation with Putin’s health will be clarified in the next weeks and it is certain that the status of his health will have a significant impact on the Russian invasion. Of course, obtaining accurate information about Putin’s health will be extremely difficult.
I was shocked to see a headline in the UK Telegraph yesterday “Putin turns screw on global food supplies”
It is clear that Putin is being lined up to be blamed for global food shortages and these shortages will be significant and will increase in the days ahead.
China vs The West
Joe Biden has departed for Japan and South Korea on a 6 day trip. China and North Korea will be watching closely to see if there are new security announcements. Australia is being drawn into this Presidential visit when Biden is in Tokyo because there is a meeting of the “Quad” (US, India, Japan and Australia) to discuss regional security. Australia’s election is on Saturday 21st May and the socialist Labor opposition leader Anthony Albanese (known as Albo) seems likely to be elected. He has declared that he and the proposed new foreign minister, Senator Penny Wong, would be immediately sworn in to office on Sunday and then they would then leave the country for the Quad meeting. One can only hope that the election results are still unclear and that Albo has to stay home awaiting the removalist to move him into the Prime Minister’s residence in Canberra. Alternatively, we may be able to pay Albo to stay in Japan!
China is fostering its own security alliance and President Xi hosted a virtual meeting of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries this week. President Xi said that BRICS should “oppose hegemonism and power politics, resist Cold War thinking and bloc confrontation, and build a community with shared security for mankind together”, which loosely translated means that China wants to take over the world!
Meanwhile the lockdowns in China are being eased but the economic impact particularly on exports is still significant. It is clear that many supply chain issues will continue and we can anticipate the solution: more global control.
Israel
The Israeli government was thrown further into turmoil this week with the resignation of a member of the Meretz party from the coalition, leaving the government in a minority position of 59 seats in the 120 seat Knesset. Meretz is a left-wing party with just 6 seats in the current Knesset. Likud (the senior partner in the last government) has the largest number of seats in the Knesset but is not part of the current government. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next weeks but it is hard to see the Bennett government surviving a vote of confidence and so we can anticipate a coming election which will be the 5th one in the last 3 years. This will lead to further political instability in Israel and therefore instability in the region.