The Heart of Darkness 1: Concentration Camps Make a Big Comeback.

If you were horrified by President Trump's idea to build concrete walls along vulnerable sections of the Mexican border, then you, as Americans themselves say it, ain't seen nothing yet. In fact, you are in for a real shock, in the far more eerie specter of concentration camps springing up in the hot sands of Texas, close to the proposed walls.
Recent days have seen children of illegal immigrants being separated from their families and taken to detention facilities converted from warehouses and defunct supermarkets while their parents and other accompanying adults are sent to jail awaiting trial under laws extant, or non-extant, that criminalize illegal entry or immigration into the US. This family splitting now seems a cardinal focus of what has been dubbed Trump's 'zero-tolerance' immigration policy. Reports have it that all available spaces have been filled up and plastic tents erected for the same purposes are springing up in the deserts of Texas where temperatures more ruthless than humans can reach 105F. In a recent six-week period there had been more than 2000 family separations and officials are planning to build more tent cities to house these innocent children. We are describing these shelters as detention and processing facilities only out of literary politeness and deference to the taste of our readers. Actualities are grimmer. Representative Peter Welch has made a visit to one of such centers in Brownsville, Texas, and in a tweet, described harrowing images of boys being held in chain  link cages. It held more than1500 boys sitting and staring vacantly in space in what used to be a Walmart. If this is not the description of a concentration camp, we don't know what it is. The good Peter was very prompt in slamming the zero-tolerance policy as zero humanity with zero logic in it.
His is just a bellow in a stridently growing outrage. An indignation so loud and obstreperous that the normally reticent First Lady, Melania Trump, has chipped in with her serious concerns. No woman is ever going to stay undisturbed seeing children being violently torn from their parents. And Laura Bush, wife of ex Republican President G. W. Bush has wasted no time in comparing the unfolding situation to Japanese American internment in the 2nd World War. One of the most dire episodes of the war. Even such frightening reminiscence will hardly do justice to a concentration camp filled with innocent children languishing under conditions that easily stop the heart. Trump has often been compared to Adolf Hitler and there seems to be more than just mere mischief in the dovetailing images now. It is difficult seeing how Trump can get away with this. Maybe in politics where fortunes are so inconstant but morally, the guy has overplayed his hand.
We have it on good authority that conditions in these camps are not all that cozier than what subsisted in Nazi extermination camps or British-built Boer concentration camps in South Africa. Perhaps not many people have noticed that it is in the most advanced countries at a point in time that we find the cruelest methods to run the most deranged of policies. In no time, barbed wire fences and watchtowers are going to spring up in those detention facilities as the situation grows desperate and you wouldn't think the US will be the place to see such horror in this post-internet age, would you? The mightiest, the richest, the supposedly most civilized nation on earth. Man seems to be climbing out of a deep, deep, dark abyss and no matter how much he has achieved, he really cannot tear himself free of his eerie, primordial beginnings

G-7 Minus One Gentleman.

Disputes are not new to the G-7, a group of wealthy, industrialized and advanced nations that is made up of the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Being an association of countries with diverse economic, social and political histories, disagreements were bound to be plenty and loud but the good news was that they always managed to resolve them, or at least paper over the cracks. Simply because it was supposed to be a club of gentlemen well-versed in boardroom antics of compromise and hand-shaking. National leaders who must carry with them the negotiating skills and dignity of their respective countries The not-so-good news now is that the good news seem to be finding it very difficult and awkward to fan out. All because one of them does not now care a hoot about being a gentleman, cracking up huge fissures in the organization.
It is well-known President Trump of the US has a predilection for prowling on the battlefield, not in the boardroom, despite his corporate background, and, not surprisingly, did not think it twice before firing hefty salvos at gentlemen supposed to be his comrades in the G-7, slapping huge tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Europe, Canada and Mexico. The president argued the move would protect domestic producers of such commodities and help to boost national security. He conveniently forgot to add most of those home producers were struggling. And his colleagues in the EU, still smarting from his unilateral and very peremptory abrogation of the Iran deal which they helped to bring to the table with a great deal of effort and to which they were signatories, wasted no time in retaliating, announcing counter-tariffs on a wide range of goods from the US. In fact, the G-7 now looks like a madhouse, with a huge madcap of retaliations reminiscent of cold war battles. The schism has been widening since last year over conflicting positions on climate change, differences that came to a head with Trump's subsequent announcement to unilaterally withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement on climate change. This year G-7 summit in Canada is even expected to generate less agreement. Meetings have been at best fractious with leaders speaking loudly and unreservedly about divisions and Trump's body language suggesting his forthcoming June 12 summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un in Singapore was of far greater interest to him than sitting down in Canada to resolve a host of differences with his G-7 allies. Which is as well, as he has long been suspected of being uncomfortable at negotiating with groups as opposed to one-on-one, man-to-man, mano-o-mano negotiations that the summit with Kim envisages. And he has just dropped a cat in the cage of pigeons by suggesting Russia should be readmitted into the body. He knows it is a suggestion that will raise the decibel of commotion a shade further, giving him ample cover to sneak out of Canada.
As for the G-7 itself, the convulsions extend beyond Trump and may take some time quietening. It is too exclusive a club, practically needing the Crown Jewels for admittance. Requirements will have to be lowered and there is no reason for countries like South Korea and China and India and indeed Russia not to come in. The body might corner 60% of global wealth now but it is a share that is not going to increase in the near future. Many nations are coming up and a rival body might not be out of place. It is instructive to note that as the summit in Canada taking place, China was hosting a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security block, inviting Russia to the event. The G-7 should look over its shoulders in its squabbles.
AND THE GIRL LIFTS IT.
Simona Halep has just won the French Open, beating Sloane Stephens in the process. It would be her first Grand Slam, having lost on all three previous occasions she would reach the final. Still she remained unbowed, just like Chris Evert who faced exactly an ordeal in her career,

Simona Halep

and has just confirmed the suspicion that despair and defeat are not always linked. Congrats, girl.

Trump

G-7

May, Macron, Merkel: The Three Mumsketeers.

Captains with salt and ice in their muskets. Unarguably the three biggest losers in the just annulled Iran deal, allies left high and frying in the high desert, thumbs stuck deep in their asses. There is all the grand talk of keeping the Iran deal alive but even the most optimistic know that it is as dead as the dodo: without the US, it is difficult to see how it could even be kept on life support. In diplomatic rhetoric, American leaders used to refer to Britain, France and Germany as allies, speeches that often sounded patronizing, condescending at times, but even these thin icings of sugar have been brutally peremptorily dispensed with by President Trump in cancelling the deal. No single hint of consultation, no acknowledgement of the tough, enervating and complex negotiations these governments had to carry out in order to bring the deal to the table. No consideration of their interests. It was as if they were not there in the first instance. Macron even had to travel to America to indulge in some charm offensive that was nothing short of being comical. Trust Trump not to indulge in some sweet horseshit, pandering to some shitty allies. The damage has been massive but of more poignant disaster is the harm the whole fiasco has done to their reputation. Nobody will ever trust them to be agents of the United States again. If any country does, then a paradise exists on earth. A fool's paradise.
Grumblings in Europe have been very loud. Bruno Le Marie, France Economy Minister has talked about defending his country's 'economic sovereignty', bristling heatedly about France behaving as a vassal to the United States. But the chaffing reality is that his country is not only a vassal, politically, economically and militarily, it also has little power to compel its own big companies not to shiver whenever the US sneezes. The energy giant Total is pulling out of multi-billion deals it has signed with Iran and many companies in France and elsewhere in Europe are following suit.. For Daimler-Benz, as an example, the stark choice is between selling Mercedes cars in Iran and selling them in America. It is a terrible mismatch. Such is the level to which these countries have sunk from being great European powers to great vassals of the United States.
And to set fire to the shredded regalia, the man putting them through such torrid trials is a guy who cannot tell the difference between HIV and HPV. The job of the president of the United States might be the most powerful and glamorous one on earth but it is in no way the toughest or most cerebral. He needs to work as a team, surrounded by thousands of aides and advisers and he has the money, clout, connections and power to hire the best.. He could bring in the infernally brilliant James Rubins of this world with just a snap of his fingers. Nobody is expecting Aristotle to occupy the seat but then a president of the most powerful, most technically-savvy country on earth should be able to know the difference between the Human Papillomavirus and Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HPV and HIV. Every schoolboy knows it and it is a pity Bill Gates had to tell us at an event that he had to explain the difference to the president. Twice. As early as 1980, long before the advent of HIV and AIDS, Time was doing a lot of articles on herpes and papilloma viruses. If such a common knowledge, such simple understanding, can elude our president, it becomes difficult envisaging how he would comprehend and grasp the nuances, the fine details of the hideously complex Iran deal. It is dead easy to suspect the deal was impetuously cancelled on the shallow fancy of a man that heads a country Europe has accustomed itself to in not-all-that graceful followership.  Too bad, too sad. May, Macron and Merkel will not only have to extricate their countries from this pathetic embrace, they will also have to extricate their economies, big businesses and to some extents their cultures. The missteps of the tango are becoming badly glaring.

Mr Comey and Trump's Unending Wars.

In the United States, of late, a new, nasty turn has entered the writing of memoirs. We used to write those books because they give us something to do in the boredom of retirement, could bring in hefty cash and at the same time satisfy some personal joy on the sidelines. James Comey, the ex-FBI Director fired by President Trump doesn't seem to be looking for money, looks very busy and if he's in retirement or semi-retirement, he's certainly deriving no joy from the inactivity. It would have been his wish he was still FBI Director, revelling in the glamour and power of office and he wasn't going to like it at all he was kicked from office by a man who has certainly not filched hair from sheep and whose hands are not really out of proportions as we think, virtually the only positive things he said about President Trump in his trending memoirs. If Mr Comey was out to unleash some vendetta, have some pound of flesh, a direction some memoirs are now turning, he has given himself some relief. Let's be sincere, Comey's sacking surprised even himself, he has been chafing all the while and he was certainly going to fight back and he has done plenty of hitting back in his latest book.
And the book isn't really going to do much more than that. He could write tomes and tomes of horrendous things about his ex-boss and still not say more than what we already know about him. Many of these thing's are in the open: Trump has a mafia-like impulse for elimination and it is hardly all about execution, even the most trenchant exhibitions of loyalty do not guarantee aides they would be spared the axe. What saved you today might be your death sentence tomorrow and in this way, you might liken him to the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. In fact, Trump sounds and looks eerie because so many personae swirl around him, images from many outlandish, troubling figures of history. Comey's memoirs will contain so many truths, and a rich sprinkling of outright fables, but it wouldn't matter a jot: Trump is such a grotesque character that anything trivial or prodigious redounds on him. He is a sort of Pandora Box and many of us are resigned to whatever he might throw up.
And out of view, Mr Comey might be silently bitting his ow fingers. If he had been convinced he did right by reopening the Clinton e-mails brouhaha when he did then he wouldn't have been making so much noise about Obama's vote of confidence. He reopened that particular nasty box and out flew a president that would busy himself not with substance but with so many unending wars.

Putin isn't Strongman of the World.

Russia is a superpower, a country that has enormous human and technical resources to prove simply it wasn't behind the notorious poisoning of ex-Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. It has chosen not to, relying rather on verbal denials that nobody was going to believe. If Putin was going to wash his hands off the whole mess, he was going to need more than water, and he hasn't even held up a drop. Now even his most ardent supporters will need some convincing the Russian state wasn't behind this insanely stupid attempted murder.
And now, rightly so, Russia is being censured all over the world. Even President Trump has now joined the bandwagon of Russian bashing. Sixty Russian diplomats based in Washington and at the UN in New York have been expelled by the US and Putin should consider this remarkable, knowing he could always count on Trump as a faint ally, very few of which he has on earth. Indeed, Trump had chosen to tread a cautious line over the whole matter, refusing to blame Russia until more evidence had been provided. A lot of people felt the same way all over the earth, rationalizing that Putin and Russian intelligence were too smart to have embarked on such a stupid adventure. The Novichok group of nerve agents used in the attack could be so easily traced to Russia. This medium has even suggested a rogue scientist could have sold the formula to a rogue state or organization with an axe to grind against Russia. Putin and Russia itself has not done anything to encourage such skeptics and for Trump to have moved the way he did, it seems some materials very damaging to the image of the great nation of Russia is circulating somewhere in the labyrinths of international diplomacy.
The response is the same in Russia's backyard, Europe. Germany, France and Ukraine have also expelled Russian diplomats and countries like Latvia and Poland have summoned Russian ambassadors to their foreign ministries. According to them, in solidarity with British friends. A very natural thing to do. If such a brazen murder attempt could be carried out far away in Britain, only God knows what infernal plots could be incubated and hatched in these East European countries so close to Russia. But then there is something faintly grand about that line about solidarity. Ukraine has suffered enormously at the hands of Russia, what with the annexation of Crimea and the switching on and off of gas pipelines from Russia at will by GAZPROM. This is certainly an opportunity to kick some ass in return by Petro Poroshenko. It is a kick at a bully that the Ukrainian president should deservedly relish and which Putin and his Russia deserve for now. He might be liked by his subjects in Russia but Putin is not strongman of the whole world.

Between Parkland and France: Vigilance, not Rallies, is the Key(And a bit of heroism)

Across America, and elsewhere in the world, people are naturally rallying against violence in the society, especially mass murders perpetrated by gunmen. The events were precipitated by by the Parkland school mass shooting in which 17 young, innocent and fantastic lives were lost and since then several measures have been put in place to prevent a future recurrence. The state of Florida has raise the age at which people are legally allowed to possess weapons and President Trump is seriously, for once, mulling the banning of bump stocks, devices that enable semi-automatic guns to be converted to far deadlier assault weapons.
Heinous gunmen like Nikolas Cruz are pretty on our minds now but to underscore the overall danger our societies increasingly face, terrorists struck again in France yesterday, a lone gunman wreaking havoc in the south of France. By the time the Islamist gunman, Redouane Lakdim, was shot dead in a supermarket, another three innocent souls had been lost. A police officer was to later die of injuries sustained in the whole sordid ordeal.
The focus is now on guns but, as the events in France have shown, eventually our attention will have to eventually settle on people, on ourselves. Controlling gun possession is not the ultimate solution, and in this, the National Rifle Association is right. France do not have a gun culture as we have in America but it did not prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons and killing people in scores. A determined mass murderer will always obtain his weapons. Imagine a boy who had just dropped his sister at school coming back home, delving into his cache of arms and then embarking on a shooting spree. It was an act a more vigilant mother could have stopped. Or a more observant sister or sibling. This may sound a bit awkward but the duty of protecting our own societies will ultimately have to fall on us. Perhaps those two fantastic individuals who tried to alert the police and the FBI about Nikolas Cruz realized this. But, in truth, if the security agencies are not being negligent as in the case of the Florida school shooting, several other factors exist that will make it difficult to stop a felon intent on terror. Redouane was well known to the authorities in France but the country, as in most advanced western societies, are hampered by the liberal values they hold. In essence, such countries are eventually victims of their own sophistication. The contest soon ensues between giving up these values and making the most of the security difficulties entailed in retaining them. It is the uncertainties that naturally crop up in the contest that terrorists ruthlessly exploit. Laws in France, Belgium and other western societies go to elaborate lengths to protect the basic rights of their citizens. It is easy for those not acquainted with such societies to think such standards, tenets that really form the foundations of  those countries, to be laced with too much saccharine. Why guarantee the rights of a potential terrorist when he in fact has sold the same rights to the Islamic State? But it is really a vital ingredient of their culture and security agents have to live with the hindrances they portend.
But even if the police are always alive to their duties and the laws could be tweaked to stymie the rights of a budding terrorist, the facts remain that western societies are always very large, very sophisticated. Security agents are always going to be stretched and real duties of protecting our societies from mass murderers and societies will have to fall on mothers, grandmothers, sisters, siblings, friends, acquaintances and so on.
And if we are lucky, on brave and intrepid folks who are the antithesis of Deputy Sheriff Scot Petersen, Resource Officer at the M.S. Douglas High School, who had all the reason on earth to intervene while the shooting was going on but did nothing and went home. Folks like the French police officer, Arnaud Beltrame, who was sorely responsible for limiting the damage the Islamist terrorist could have wreaked yesterday. He was more than just a hero. He was obviously that, by taking all the risks he took. But foremost, he was a thorough gentleman. By agreeing to swap himself for the woman held by the gunman, a lady in distress, he has observed all the rules of gentlemanly chivalry. President Emmanuel Macron could have added more when hailing him a hero.