Migrant Crises: Leave the Wall, Cut a Deal with Mexico.

One way or the other, family separations will end but if the decision to criminalize illegal entries remain in force, it is still difficult to see how one form of separation or the other will not take place as children cannot possibly follow their parents into prison. It is therefore pertinent to delve into the wider picture of illegal migration in order to forestall future outrages. Children being corralled in metal cages do not make pleasant viewing but the pictures a bit away from the southwest borders of the US do not present endearing images too. Whole families in a march through Central America towards Texas and New Mexico as if the country is a no-man's land without laws and borders. As if you could just walk in and start a new life without regard to any form of due process. It looks like a modern form of the gold rush and we all know the consequences of those unregulated movements. Even allowing for the fact that very few countries will allow such unregulated influx, there is the distinct possibility of letting in terrorists and criminals. Central American gangs thrive in almost every American city, consequences of earlier unregulated migrations, causing untold mayhem and further drain on the  already thin resources of law enforcement agencies. It is a picture that can get very ugly.
The equally ugly scenario is that Trump is not doing anything enduring to fight and fix the problem. His determination, or lack of it, to build a concrete wall that practically straddles the long Mexican border is the quixotic adventure of the modern age, utterly preposterous and laughable. Even if he eventually pulls it off, there is little guarantee it will put off determined immigrants and people-smuggling gangs. The infinitely shorter Berlin Wall with its infernal towers, barbed wires and guards ordered to shoot at sight could not prevent dissidents from escaping into the West. And neither is the present demarcation in Korea. The $25 billion needed to fund the wall can be put to more effective use. It is no wonder the plan has gained little traction. Trump's diversionary tactics have attracted similar opprobrium to themselves. What is his concern with immigration problems in Germany? Refugee issues are threatening the governing coalition of Angela Merkel for sure but it is difficult to see what he hopes to achieve by chipping in the falsehood that crime rates are up in Germany due to the influx of refugees. A little attempt at subverting the government of a supposed ally? Or a harebrained justification for tearing children forcibly from their parents and putting them in concentration camps? The US president doesn't appear to be a pleasant man.
Even more so considering his attempts at immigration legislation. If he wasn't using Dreamers at hostages in his desperation to secure funding for his wall, children as young as two are now his bargaining chips. His wall is his real focus in achieving legislation with Democrats and not curbing the flow of illegal immigrants. Which the wall isn't going to do in a million years.
Yet it is not legislation that the immigration problem needs. Horrendously tough sanctions have not stopped the flow of cocaine into the country. More success has been achieved with foreign governments in destroying coca plantations in Colombia and blocking drug smuggling routes. Pro-activeness  is the key, attack the menace from the source. The Mediterranean migrant crisis shows no sign of abating simply because there is nobody to relate with in the lawless cluster of enclaves Libya has become. Mexico has a stable, functional government and migrant caravans could be stopped long before they reach the US border. It would be dead easy to do that, get violators arrested, as well as their people-smuggling gangs facilitators. Even a well-pronounced, tough posture that Mexico will not be the Libya of the Americas can send a very clear message to would-be illegal migrants.
Cut a deal with Mexico, Mr President.

The Heart of Darkness 2: Putting Children in Cages.

Someone has eloquently written of man being the largest beast of the fauna: a brute that not only preys on other creatures, but also preys on his own on a massive scale. The images coming out of the United States bears grim testimony to that and nothing could ever be more shocking than children being kept in metal cages held together by chain links. Everyone has been to a zoo or has seen pictures of one and animals of the wild certainly enjoy more freedom in captivity than we are seeing children of immigrants enjoy in Texas and US borders. It is typical of Trump to blame every failure or disaster of his on enemies or Democrats, with references he can neither back with facts or his limited intelligence. So the notorious forced family separations are backed by a law with provenance in Democrats: a piece of statute he has failed miserably to mention. But apportioning blame here can be too easy. The buck stops on his table but we can beam brighter searchlights by turning the rays on his Attorney-General, Jeff Sessions, a dry-faced henchman who derive little thrills doing dirty jobs for his principal now and then and Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, a woman whose rugged face takes on a bit of menace when she puts on sunshades. The picture she is presenting to terrified children screaming for their mama might chill Medusa now. These two individuals are the principal architects of the horror playing loudly in warehouses, defunct supermarkets and plastic tent cities springing up in the hot deserts of Texas but of equal worry with their taste for terror is the denial and mendacity with which they seek to justify the evil in searing display. Sessions was quick to quote Roman 13 to justify his actions but Himmler and Goebbels could have quoted the same to support the insanity they were herding Jews into concentration camps to maintain order in Nazi Germany. There was no way Apostle Paul, who penned the missive to the Romans, could have been writing about an order in which screaming children are violently torn from their parents and thrown into steel cages. Indeed fanatics will not exist if some folks do not have some pious blood surging violently in their veins. It is instructive to note, however, that Sessions' fellow Methodists have roundly denounced his referrals. If anything, the situation at hand rather dovetails with King Herod's heinous order for the extermination of all male Jewish infants in Israel on learning of the birth of Jesus Christ, a king that would supplant him one day.
When his half-arsed scripture references are not serving him, both Sessions and Nielsen take refuge (no mischievous pun intended) in equally half-arsed, strident denials and semantics. The children detention centers were not Nazi concentration camps but Sessions did not say what they were exactly. Perhaps swanky New York apartments. Perhaps he did not read or heard the Boston Globe reports that children being seized from their parents were being taken away under the pretext they were going to be bathed, a line borrowed perfectly from the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camps. Nielsen was to later called the notorious zero-tolerance immigration policy an 'initiative' and not a 'policy'. After she had initially denied flatly reports that children of illegal immigrants were being forcibly separated from their families. This queen of semantics would later define the metal chain-link enclosures with concrete floors in which children were being held as 'shelters' and not 'cages' or 'dog kernels'.
Whatever they are, they are not alluring images.

Trump

Sessions

Nielsen

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

M.K.O.Abiola:Buhari Rights a Wrong.

Righting a wrong is not, often, the same as righting a situation. In most instances, the wrong outlives the situation so long that rectifying it can only be symbolic. Of recent, President Trump issued a pardon to Jack Johnson, the first American heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson happened to be a black but had a white wife and was jailed under the notorious Mann Act forbidding one to transport a woman across state lines for 'immoral' purposes: charges as racially motivated as they can be in that Jim Crow era. That can only happen now in a distressing comedy but over a hundred years ago, such offenses, even though hideously unfair, were serious violations under laws extant then. Now, such pardon cannot undo the term Johnson served in prison but such gestures help put events in the correct perspective and could help prevent a future recurrence.
It is in light of this that we must appreciate and understand the decision of President Muhannadu Buhari to declare June 12 of every year the appropriate time to celebrate democracy in Nigeria. It was on that day in 1993 that Nigerians rose en masse to elect Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president of the country on the platform of the Social Democratic Party in an election widely adjudged to be the freest and fairest in the country up to date. Thereafter, the polls were strangely annulled by the then head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, under whose tutelage the elections were organized and conducted in the first place: a heinous cancellation that sparked a quickfire series of crises such as the formation of the Interim National Government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, soon declared illegal by the courts and in no time toppled by General Sanni Abacha, the de facto military strongman;  the death of Abiola in Abacha's prison as a result of insisting on reclaiming his stolen presidency; the incarceration of General Olusegun Obasanjo for coup plotting; the death of Abacha himself and the restoration of democracy on May 29, 1999.
Officially recognizing Abiola's role in the evolution of democracy and freedom of choice that we now enjoy will not bring him back to life and neither will it even begin to repair the ruin visited on his businesses and large family. The posthumous medal awarded him, Nigeria's highest, will do him little good and will certainly fit poorly on his neck skeleton. Symbolic things do no such things.
But this recognition will help etch vividly on our mind that his struggles helped call time on military misadventures in Africa and went a long way in cementing democracies now entrenching solidly all over the continent. It will also give some joy to those splendid supporters who stood by him till the end. Once again, Buhari makes the right choice.

Signing another non-aggression pact.

History repeats itself and in no department of it is this more pronounced than political history. Over time, we had a succession of political monsters that were almost perfect clones of one another: Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler...or political processes that are, in crucial respects, replicas in actualities or reverse. On 23rd August, 1939, with the 2nd Word War imminent in Europe, the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, was compelled to sign a non-aggression pact with another dictator, the rampaging German Nazi monster, Adolf Hitler.  Both sides pledged to refrain from attacking each other, sought cooperation in neutralizing common enemies and so on. But the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the two countries' foreign ministers was actually no more than mere paper, a document Hitler would tear to shreds barely two years later by invading Soviet positions in eastern Poland.
Fast forward to 2018, almost 79 years later, and one could see another non-aggression pact taking shape again between the two countries. In the reverse. A lot have changed, certainly. The Soviet Union now exists as a rump called Russia and communism that used to be the foundation of the state is now gone. Dictatorship now exists in other forms, propped up by an imperfect democracy but a democracy nevertheless. Germany had lost East Prussia, a third of its territory, is now a pure democracy, if any such thing exists, and now has a woman calling the shots in Berlin. The country is now an economic power but it now relies practically on the United States of America to protect her. Of recent, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been setting her sights on the East, on erstwhile bitter foe, Russia, strangely on a country the US has sworn to protect her from. It is just like extricating oneself from a very gentle handshake and then delving into the suffocating embrace of a bear hug. Strange, yet it is a reassessment that is very inevitable. The so-called handshake across the Atlantic has been gradually turning into a fist lock. Physically, President Trump's hands might be small but the grip they enforce could be really humiliating. And in no way is this demonstrated more than the recent peremptory cancellation of the Iran deal, an agreement Merkel and the European powers of Britain and France helped put on the table at great pains. Talk about making allies look small, ineffectual and pathetic! These three countries have had their diplomatic reputation torn to shreds and the outrage from their own nationals and economic concerns have been loud, reverberating. Merkel, a professor of physics, must have been miffed even further that the chap  making them look so inconsequential is one who could not really tell the difference between HIV and HPV, two classes of organisms so dissimilar. And so appalling was the remission that Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, had to explain it to him twice, according to the billionaire's testimony. There are very audible grumblings in Europe by folks there that they cannot continue to be treated like vassals and Merkel must have been listening to the discontent of her own subjects.
Merkel knows that her Achilles' heels, and that of Europe, is ironically, an economic power that is hugely entwined with that of the United States. Even long before these European leaders had started trying to voice some determination, restating their resolve to shore up the Iran deal, many of their companies and big businesses such as the French energy giant, Total, were already pulling out of Iran. Deweaning Europe of the alliance with the US is going to be tough,  very tough, long and laborious but as a scientist, Merkel very much knows it is never too late taking a first step, no matter how small it is. She knows too that the Transatlantic Alliance is one that needs reappraisal. The world is not what it used to be. There is a new military power in the shape of China which also has a vast economic power. Asia's economy, if we factor in the influence of the Asian Tigers, is rumbling and in the foreseeable future, American economic power might not be decisive again. No doubt, Russia, although a rump of the former Soviet Union, is still an enormous military power and has in fact been behaving badly of late in its annexation of Crimea and elsewhere in Britain and Ukraine but the military picture is not the same as the one that drove it into the arms of the US.. Soviet satellites such as Bulgaria, Poland e.t.c. are now fully independent states with their own credible armies. The same for countries that used to be part and parcel of the Soviet Union itself. Sovereign states such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan and so on. Russia  will have to roll its tanks through these obstacles to get to western Europe.
Hence in this peace, as in that war, Germany can always forge some partnership with Russia, if not an alliance. For now, Merkel has little to fear from Russia, besides Putin will not be there for ever. Increasing partnership with Russia and China means decreasing alliance, read reliance, with the US. If it gives a new world order, it will also secure Germany's vital gas supplies from Russia. A new non-aggression pact makes sense.

What does Kim really want? Trump, Pence and Bolton won't let us know.

What does the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un really want? We don't know, simply don't know. In suddenly agreeing to talks with the US, perhaps the most remarkable volte-face of the new century, a huge factor could have been at play in the mind of this guy that used to sport a very bad haircut. A factor, or several factors. Things we could only guess. It might have even been a dream: after all without a dream we wouldn't have had something, a movement as momentous as Christianity. At least in its present form.
There are a lot of things we do not know. We do not know  whether his hand was forced by crippling US sanctions, severe penalties that have brought the at-best crawling economy to a coma. Made more so by the fact that China that used to supply some oxygen have decided to cut some gas, thinking it more profitable to bow to US pressure that to bow to some nebulous friendship. Chinese-style economic reforms are just across the border and these might have appealed to him quite strongly, a panacea to some future turbulence and insurrection that might sweep his dynasty out of power: reforms that will never happen with sanctions in place. It might be that he got his inspiration by simply gazing across the border, seeing the development and affluence his foes and kinsmen in South Korea are basking in. It might be he was simply indulging himself in some diplomatic tomfoolery and that he was as interested in peace as Harvey Weinstein was interested in women dignity, confirming what the often tactless Vladimir Putin said was the resolve of the pariah state to eat grass rather than give up nuclear weapons. Then his influential, blushing sister, Kim Yo-jong, could have been whispering some filial softness into his ears. He might even know that the much touted nuclear weapons were not as perfect and developed as we have been made to believe, in no shape or condition or advancement to threaten South Korea, let alone the US. He might be genuinely interested in peace, secretly coveting the sure Nobel Prize that will come to him by pulling off the twin magic of unification and denuclearization.
Answers we would have surely obtained at the June 12, US-North Korea summit in Singapore, a coming together that would have laid bare precise intentions on both sides of the divide. A summit that would have been victory for all of us, those confirming suspicions or confirming expectations. The tone here is a bit fatal because the summit looked increasingly to be in jeopardy, judging by recent comments from both sides of recent. Now President Trump has decided to pull out of it outright. None of the two sides wins laurels for tact and subtlety but North Korea is the bull in the China shop and Trump's aides seemed to be nursing the habit of chasing it away with a pepper spray. The trouble with this administration is that there are too many hawks in in. Hawks snatch things and what is being snatched now is defeat from the jaws of victory. Victory that the highly anticipated summit would have given us. Whether those who suspect or anticipate.
There is no doubt Trump really wanted the summit. After such petty scandals at home, he needed the big diversion the summit would give him. It did not matter whether it was successful or not. The fact that it is happening alone would have been a very big step for him.  It seemed the loud-mouthed hawks that fly around him had different things in mind. Kim has a big chip on his shoulder but Bolton, architect on the infamous Iraq weapons of mass destruction, should have known linking denuclearization to Gaddafi of Libya was going to be a mammoth faux-pas. Even less subtle threats were ratcheted up by the Vice-President, Mike Pence, in a recent interview with Fox News. Pepper spray, pepper spray in the whole shop, everywhere.
The popular author, John Grisham, in the run-up to the polls that brought Trump to power campaigned vogorously for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and when asked about a year later if he had reasons to change his mind, he said no. The only thing missing to confirm his misgivings was a crisis. Which he was sure the president would mismanage. Trump is capable of mismanaging peace either.

Santa Fe: Yet Another Shooting.

Barely three months after the shooting at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, We have yet another mass shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, 40 kilometers south of Houston, Texas. There is little we can say or do right now, except let our thoughts be with the families of the murdered and our prayers with those injured and their relatives. As usual, the president has sent in condolences and tons of promises to rectify an enduring, odious and cancerous phenomenon. We can do better than take him for his words. It is a bit difficult to sift through reports now but one suggested(it may be altered yet) that a boy saw the shooter walk in with a shotgun and managed to trigger the fire alarm. This singular act of bravery and vigilance may yet turn out to be what will limit the casualty figures.
It is a vigilance we've been advocating on this forum. Gun controls and outright abolition are vital but a determined mass murderer will always get the weapons to perpetrate his evil. In the same way that the Prohibition did not deter guys intent on quaffing their whisky or bourbon. Gun legislation need to be tweaked, very fast, so also are privacy laws. That dictum of aloofness "It ain't my business" doesn't sound all that musical again when horrors like these crop up. Safety is everyone's business. Those who commit these evils do so with detailed planning and in most cases a vigilant mother or grandmother or friend or girlfriend, acquaintances or even curious, not nosy, neighbors could have prevented the carnage as a result of filial intervention or simply tipping off law enforcement agents. Nothing is private again when shots ring out.  

The Bible Isn't God's Word, 1

The bible isn't God's word: at least the larger half of it. The Old Testament. That part is definitely the word of the sons of Israel, with a lot of quotations and deeds attributed to God. Jews have always been excellent poets, in addition to many other alluring attributes and have had little trouble turning what is essentially history into a document that tickles human faith and spiritual yearnings. That is why we must take with a pinch of salt statements quoted to a religious leader in the US, relying heavily on quotations from the bible, that God, more than three thousand years ago, ordained Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel. If we resist the temptation to delve into long history, Tel Aviv has been the capital of Israel for some time now and nothing catastrophic has happened to the Jewish state. Now, in case the resistance crumbles, the time Jerusalem has not been capital of Israel far outstretches the period it has and nothing distinctly evil has been attributed to that displacement. There has been pogroms, genocides, even a holocaust suffered by the race in between but Armenians also suffered genocides at the hand of Turkey and that disaster has never been linked to the failure or non-observation of a divine will of a place being capital or not. At any rate, Russian Jews should be more interested in Moscow being capital of Russia that Jerusalem being capital of Israel. French Jews should be more interested in Paris... Millions of Jews are there all over the world who don't all that care much for Jerusalem. This is what Trump knows distinctly well and it is a bit difficult arguing with his critics that in moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, he was only trying to fulfill electoral promises made to his core political base which included orthodox Jews and right-wing American Christians. This is what Palestinians should have seen through. They rather allowed themselves to be blinded by needless emotions and 58 of them have been killed in another ruinous confrontation with their arch-enemy.
Apropos of things catastrophic. May 15 is al-Nakba or Catastrophe for Palestinians, the most mournful date in their calendar. On May 14, 1948, the British Mandate ended in Palestine and Israel declared war the following day. In the battles that ensued, more than 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in territories now occupied by Israel and they have not been able to return home since then. Many of them now live as refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and so on. It is certainly a loss of epic proportions but no more catastrophic than the slaying by David, who later became a great Israeli king, of the giant Goliath, commander of the Philistines, ancestors of the present Palestinians. Going back to the bible, so to say. Jews and Palestinians have both suffered mind-numbing catastrophes in course of their entwined histories, yet they have multiplied. The rhetorics of destruction should now sound a bit tiring on both sides. It is too late for that. That urge is a bit more strident on the Palestinian, at least Hamas, side but they should now realize they have more than 8.5 million Jews to destroy in Israel alone. A huge task, potentially catastrophic considering the fact that their enemy has scores of nuclear weapons. It will do very few people harm changing the tune to new rhetorics now

The US, George Orwell And The New Cold War.

In light of recent events, the rhythms of the Transatlantic cooperation, or Western solidarity, now that the cold war is fully back, have been sounding eerily Orwellian. It must be right if the US says it is right. A faux pas that is a bit worn, a cliche that doesn't even hold water in present day animal kingdoms. The US is not always right, as Tony Blair found out after his tactless haste to deploy British troops to oust Saddam Hussein, an American misadventure based on the fake intelligence that Iraq was brimming with weapons of mass destruction. It is instructive that the architect of that hoax was John Bolton, the then US envoy to the UN under President George Bush and now Secretary of State under President Trump. Not a single phial of chemical weapons was found in Iraq and the whole fiasco should have served as a restraint to Theresa May, an otherwise sensible girl. The presence of John Bolton alone should have sent the alarm bells ringing and with Trump at the helm of affairs, the horror of two reckless Napoleons, crude hardliners, veritable loose canons, should have reinforced caution. Russia is not the same as Iraq and incidents that could trigger skirmishes with a nuclear power need to be handled with utmost restraint. There is simply no guarantee that a missile will not go astray and land in a very wrong place. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is already in place in Syria and acceptable caution dictates that concerned paties should have waited for its findings. A report of culpability would have secured a reasonable mandate from the UN and then the missile strikes would have had a greater impact than the silly show of fireworks many people are now claiming it to be. With his tweets and loose tongue, Trump was always going to err on the side of impulse and Jeremy Corbyne was right in asking huge questions about British involvement in the strikes. Britain is a power on its own and doesn't have to be corralled into doing whatever the US does
 No power is as effective as one that is cautious, reasonable and based on facts. Corbyne has a point and he would have a huge ammunition indeed if it turns out that the OPCW team finds out that that the allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Douma might have been more complex than thought. The UN was established to handle situations like this and its chief was right to remind the allies of their obligations to the UN charter. The Syrian civil war is indeed a very, very complex conflict and truths emanating from such spheres need to be handled carefully, intractabilities Trump was inclined to simplify. Simplicities made worse by preemptive accusations of Russia tampering with the attack site
 The OPCW is a well-resourced technical organization and it should not be difficult for it to ascertain a chemical weapon was used in a place, even a year ago. The next few days should be revealing indeed.

President Trump's Scandal Credit is Huge.

Perhaps if Stephaine Clifford, alias Stormy Daniels,  had come out a bit earlier about her illicit relationship with President Donald Trump, the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections would have been less certain. Some have pointed out the sex was consensual. It does not make it any more tolerable, considering the fact that his wife, Melania Trump, was weaning a baby at the time and flesh grabbing on the sidelines in such a tender period smacks of hasty, egregious infidelity. At any rate, consensual or not, sex outside wedlock is strictly forbidden for the president of the most powerful country on earth, whether aspiring or in office. Senator Gary Hart was toast the very moment his affair with Donna Rice went public and gave free ride to Michael Dukakis in the 1988 Democratic nomination. President Bill Clinton escaped by the whiskers in his affair with Monica Lewinsky. It has also been reasoned that Trump's comments about groping women's sexual organs in the run-up to the presidential polls did not compel the electorate to reject him. True, very true, the horrific outbursts were even worse than sexual harassment, but an actual deed often carries greater weight in the mind of people. Stormy Daniels did not do her country a lot of favor by not coming out earlier with her expose, a duty that would have put the future president of the United States in clearer perspective.
Which brings us to the issue of women victims coming out in droves to speak about their experiences. The alleged Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby affairs have a common thread running through them: the abuses were serial. Carried out over a huge length of time on several victims. It is certainly gladdening that the victims are now coming out in droves with their humiliating experiences and similar testimonies have led to the downfall of seemingly important and responsible men in the society, such as the popular actor, Steven Seagal. The #MeToo hashtag campaign  has attracted millions of devotees but so many folks could have been spared excruciating agony and humiliation if the first victim had come out boldly about her experience the very moment it happened. Silence and inaction only serves to embolden such predators and, as it is, we have simply lost count of the plethora of women coming out to allege Weinstein.
Hence the thunder Stormy Daniels was expecting from her revelations has simply not happened. In fact, a lot of people now see her revelations as more of a business venture. If Trump did not sign the non-disclosure agreement in the first place, what ever prevented her from coming out with her revelations in 1916 when they would have constituted real political scandal. The hush $130,000 Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, paid her would have been simply sensational. As it is, her expose now sounds real limp, not really more than commercialized petty scandal And it is coming out at a time Trump's scandal credit has grown so huge. The disclosure that a goon approached her in a Las Vegas park in 2011 and threatened her to leave Trump alone will have to need back-up. We hope she has evidence, even a slim one of the encounter. Then the law will require her to satisfactorily link the thug to the president. Otherwise that aspect of her interview rather sound like a cheap thriller brought up to sex up the whole show, wow her audience and keep them queuing for more. Stormy Daniels is certainly going to gain more scheduled appearances and more folks will be visiting her $14 naked cam, all to great profit, but this is a scandal that is not going to pull Trump down. He has enough scandal credit to cover it. Because he is such an outlandish figure that any scandal, real or imagined, fits him like a second skin. Americans recognize the figure that they voted for and scandal isn't a strange fit on the persona.
Trump may come to grief yet from at least two other women accusers: the ex-playboy model, Karen McDougal who claims she had a consensual sex with Trump between 2006 and 2007 and a former contestant on Trump's reality show 'The Apprentice', Summer Zervos, who claimed the president sexually assaulted her at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007. The various lawsuits instituted by these individuals may prove very, very damaging but for now, he could go on enjoying his bizarre presidency. And Stormy Daniels could storm on with her television shows. Basking in the limelight a bit will not do her glow any harm.

Maybe Kim Jong-un's Sister is the Miracle Worker.

On the night of October 27, 1962, the then Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev  was close, perilously close to a nuclear holocaust. Or he could have been well several hours into it were it not for the restraint of a Soviet naval officer aboard a submarine. Earlier, US forces had dropped depth charges on the submarine and the standard operational response from the warship was to fire nuclear-tipped torpedoes, a move that would have likely triggered a nuclear confrontation. However, all the three officers aboard would have to agree to the retaliation. It was the restraint of Vasili Arkhipov on submarine B59 that saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Still, on the night of the 27th, the Cuban Missile Crisis was far from being resolved and Khrushchev must have sat in a very quiet corner of the Kremlin, mind wrapped in trenchant introspection, a lot of 'what is the point?' going on in his mind.
What is the point of putting the vast, almighty Soviet Union on the firing line for the sake of tiny Cuba thousands of miles away? What is the point of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba when a single Intercontinental Ballistic Missile(ICBM) launched from Russia can equally make the same statement? A lot has been said about the strategic ICBM superiority of the US over that of Russia in that period but placing medium and intermediate-range missiles in Cuba was not really going to bridge the gap overnight. What's the point of the whole crisis? And that train of reflection, perhaps aided by the sight of his young son nearby, must have engendered the biggest of them all. What is the point of building nuclear weapons?
Perhaps North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un had experienced the same epiphany of recent. He has just agreed to hold presidential-level talks with the US, a move a lot of folks now regard as a miracle, and which a greater number now attribute to the huge sanctions imposed on the pariah state by the international community in wake of well-publicized nuclear tests by Kim. In international politics, emphasis is mostly placed on cold, biting calculations. Hardly is there a place for emotions. It might be as well but there is really no hard evidence to suggest that Kim's sudden change of heart, if it is real, was triggered by sanctions. The sanctions have been biting, no doubt, especially with the active cooperation of China, North Korea biggest trading partner, in making them effective but stiffer sanctions had been imposed on Iraq, Iran, Liberia, on many brutal regimes, and there is no single instance in which a positive correlation has been safely recorded between pressure and capitulation. In fact, the US had to move in troops on Iraq and the West African peace-keeping force, ECOMOG, had to go into Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Gambia when it became clear tough sanctions imposed were not working. It is very simple to see. No matter how devastating the sanctions are, some resources will still have to flow in and the brutal dictator only has to appropriate most of these for his cronies and repressive forces for him to continue in power, the sufferings of his people not mattering a jot. Many commentators point to Iran but the sanctions were a diversion for leaders who were increasingly grappling with a young population with whom Great Satan rhetorics were not going to resonate much and who were equally going to be disenchanted with their country's involvement in costly foreign wars. At any rate, Iranian clerics must have come too to the inevitable question: 'What's exactly the point in acquiring nuclear weapons?" Weapons nobody, even a madman, is not likely to fire. The destruction a single one can wreak is so mind-boggling that it even weighs down the hand. Khrushchev's son himself said that his father cut a very forlorn subject on the night of October 27, 1962, clearly unwilling to go down in history as the first person to start a nuclear war. By the following morning, his mind was made up. In fact, he had to accept the terms put forward by President Kennedy for ending the stalemate without consulting the Politburo, the highest decision-making body in the Soviet Union at that time. The capitulation was a severe humiliation for the USSR and was later to pave way for Khrushchev fall from power two years after. He was never a fan of nuclear weapons again and if he had stayed in power longer, there was credible likelihood he would have actively sought their complete elimination. Weapons he had spent billions producing.
Hence there are feelings, emotions, attached to nuclear weapons many of us are not conversant with but which those who produce or control them are too well aware of. The tough, thuggish, Khrushchev was not immune to them and there is no reason to believe the bad Kim Jong-un will be too. Perhaps the guy realized that he was to fear the unreliable, unpredictable Donald Trump more than the American president was to fear him. His own sister, Kim Yo-Jong has been prominent of late and the lady might have had a calming influence on him. And for those enamored of cold, hard calculations, what stops him from coming to the futility of putting all his aces in a couple of nuclear weapons most of which American anti-ballistic missiles are likely to intercept anywhere. The US has thousands of more sophisticated, more reliable ones, five of which can obliterate the whole of North Korea in a couple of minutes.
Still on cold, hard facts, which nobody has exempted Kim from deducing, he and his sister could have stood side by side gazing south of the border, envying the incredible luxury (luxury she was well-acquainted with in her recent visit to South Korea during the Winter Olympics) their kith and kin are living in. Without manufacturing nuclear weapons. Goods that nobody is going to use or use without a single benefit. Goods that invariably constitute a drainpipe.
Goods worse than grasses the often tactless Putin claimed the North Koreans would rather eat than give up nukes. Castro and the Cubans came to the inevitable conclusion they could not go on feeding for ever on sugar cane, another form of grass, so to say. Kim and his sister might have realized that they and their suffering citizens might do better by investing lean resources on pizza or chicken or bread or pills. And not on nuclear weapons America and Russia keep on manufacturing in thousands. And keep on dismantling in thousands.   

Trump, Turks and Kurds: Leaving Allies to Fry 2

So President Erdogan  sends troops, tanks and warplanes into Syria at will to attack the Kurds while President Trump and Secretary Tillerson look on numbly like rabbits caught plumb in powerful headlights. It does not really matter that Syria is supposed to be a sovereign state, the country had long been partitioned among Russians, Iranians, The Gulf States, Saudis, Turks, Kurds and just anybody that could arm a miscreant with a rifle. This inaction, even silent acquiescence, on the part of the US is even more baffling in the sense that the Kurds remain the only sensible option for securing the porous borders and crossing points  from Syria to Iraq and even to Turkey itself. Hence the decision of the US to convert the YPG to a border force is a well thought out policy, the only effective way to stop the IS from regrouping. After all, Turkey with all its huge army and security paranoia was unable to prevent would-be militants from Europe and elsewhere from using the country as transit points to join  the shitty caliphate in Syria and Iraq at the height of IS ascendancy. Hordes of them were crossing the borders in broad daylight and Turkish officials were looking the other way as a result of compromise or sheer incompetence. The Kurds represent the only credible and capable buffer force in those climes, a fact Trump well recognizes. Hence shrugging helplessly while Erdogan attacks and decimates the forces required to carry out the all-important policing can only be as a result of a foreign policy that is at best, formulated in tweets. Trump is horribly incoherent in his foreign policy and in no instance is this more demonstrated than his inertia in coming to the defense of his most dependable allies in the Middle East. It seems as if he had gathered the Kurds in a police compound for training and then he sends in a bomb-laden suicide truck to blow up the whole place. When policies are set out in tweets, or on a glib tongue, the obvious victims are organization, logic and unity. Senselessness supplanting sense and vice versa.
Maybe Trump thinks that it is a choice between NATO and the Kurds. Then it is equally a choice between where he could put his two feet in and a place that could, in all honesty, admit in other feet. It is leaving immediate, pressing certainty for a long-term certainty, if we can even qualify it as such. It is the Kurds that are in the demand books of the US now, not the Turks. A country that the EU would not even allow in.
Someone said he was confused as to what the US could have done when Turkey sent in its forces into Afrin. Very simple, a couple of US soldiers stationed in very visible places in the enclave. There was no need to do anything combative. No need to unleash warplanes to protect her allies. Something very symbolic would have stopped the tanks. Erdogan's attack on Afrin was no more than a diplomatic test of will, just like Hitler's re-militarization of Rhineland. He was really expecting a firmness from Trump that an attack on YPG and Kurds would be an attack on US troops itself. A couple of  unarmed Green Berets placed on Afrin roads would have driven that home quite trenchantly.
Just like Hitler, all he got in response was sordid appeasement.
After Rhineland, Austria was next and then Czechoslovakia. After Afrin, Manbij, Raqqa and other Kurdish enclaves.
Appeasement is defined as letting a bully have his way always. 

Trump, Turks and Kurds: Leaving Allies to Fry 1

President Trump's most coherent foreign policies are on his lips, so it is a huge wonder that he is presently tongue-tied as Turkey sends tanks and troops to attack the only slice of influence the US has left in Syria: the sliver of territories controlled by Kurds in the eastern margins of the country. Putin and his Iranian allies call all the shots now in wider Syria, committing men and materiel to underline an influence growing by leaps and bounds every hour while the US has been hiding in the deserts of eastern Syria. Right from Obama, the country didn't even have a plan A in Syria, not to talk of a plan B or C. In other words, Russia had a focus it was going to enforce with a trenchant ruthlessness now yielding immense results while the US simply did not know what to do, looking back fearfully at an American public that had grown so weary of war.
But the US was lucky, so to say. It did not have to move in thousands of troops or an aircraft carrier brimming with warplanes. Like in Afghanistan during the invasion, all it needed on ground was a proxy army. And no proxy army could ever be more reliable than the Kurds, sturdy individuals with fighting skills and resilience that easily put to flight the famed capabilities of the Northern Alliance. Their heroics in Kobane is well known, a battle that showed everyone that the Islamic State was not an invincible evil horde before which every resistance must melt. The Islamic State impaled itself on the chimneys of Kobane and once they were defeated there, their days were numbered, just as Nazi Germany days were numbered after Stalingrad. The Kurds, under their YPG militia, were to later play the crucial role in driving the IS out of their fiefdoms in Raqqa, Manbij and several other towns and territories in eastern parts of the country, aided by Arab allies and US airstrikes. Without the Kurds, maybe IS would have been defeated but there was little doubt it would have been a very protracted conflict: infinitely sapping on morale and public opinion.
Faithful and largely peaceable individuals the pugnacious, rabble-rousing Erdogan now label as terrorists despite the fact that not a single instance of terrorism on Turkish soil, whether tenuous or even contrived, has ever been linked to the YPG. The border crossings now controlled by the YPG used to be manned by the evil IS fighters and not a single shot was fired by Turkey into Syrian territory then. Naturally, Erdogan would be more comfy with Daesh. Convoys of trucks laden with fuel stolen from Syrian oilfields were crossing the Turkish border in broad daylight on a daily basis, driven by IS terrorists while they held sway in areas now controlled by Kurds. Perhaps Erdogan feared a bullet would ignite one of the trucks and set off a fearsome conflagration.
So it is easy to understand Erdogan's contrived animosity towards the Syrian Kurds. What is far more nebulous is the US silence and inaction. Save for a couple of rhetorics that do not even qualify for a whimper, Trump and his Secretary, Tillerson, have watched with soporific eyes as Turkey rolls its tanks deeper and deeper into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syria.  

President Pierre "Messi" Nkurunziza.

'There is always something new out of Africa'- Pliny the Elder.
But first let's start with an invention in a place far away from this mostly blighted continent. President Trump in far away America forms a football team. American football or gridiron football so to say and names it The White House Patriots. He spends most of his team moving around with this team and engaging all forms of opposition in football matches, a traveling choir providing the entertainment because the president claims to be an evangelical christian. So no Justin Timberlake or Janet Jackson and all that wardrobe malfunction nonsense, just thumping gospel music in heavy metal mode while the president and his team carry out another sort of thumping on the opposition: always scoring at will, always winning silly, with unbelievable margins. Because the president is not expected to be tackled, or roughened or impeded. If there is going to be any engagement, it would have to be the softest of all touches. In essence it is not supposed to be a contact sport anytime the president is holding the ball. So he makes all the throws, all the catches, all the running, all the touchdowns. He is the quarterback, the halfback, the fullback, the wide receiver rolled into one. And naturally he is the superstar and takes all the plaudits. And why not? He is the president of the United States of America.
That is until he travels to Texas and plays a team made up mostly of refugees being held in camps along the Mexican border. Latinos and blacks, guys being held in concentration camps. Fellows who were not in the happy mode at all. Guys who would like to kick some presidential ass. And which they gleefully did, roughening up the president, sending him tumbling into the dirt several times and getting his jersey torn. Respect my foot!
Naturally, the president is not happy about it, not happy at all and he gets the governor of Texas and his deputy arrested and corralled into a little fetid jail. Crime? Conspiracy against the president of course. You can't arrange a little roughening up of the president in the evening and expect to eat breakfast in your own house the following morning.
A very short, dystopian  story? Sure.
But if you change the settings to Africa, precisely to a nasty corner of it called Burundi, and gridiron football becomes soccer and Trump transforms to President Pierre Nkurunziza and the Texas team is replaced by a group of hungry refugees from Congo, you have the latest comedy from Africa. Nkuruziza runs a football outfit called Haleluya FC and as a self-acclaimed evangelical christian, travels with his own choir called' Komeza gusenga which in the local Kirundi language, means 'pray non-stop.'
A real, real comedy. Dystopian to the ends of nightmare. And not funny at all because the governor of Kiremba region of Burundi where the president was made to 'fall several times and kiss the dust' and his deputy are now in even a dirtier jail for conspiring against and humiliating the president. It is not everyday that Messi has his way. Even Messi of Africa.
What is fiction anywhere else in the world can turn into a nasty, grinding reality in Africa.
Yes, there is always something new out of Africa. And most of it is not always pleasant.

From Florida to Nigeria, Officers are not doing their Job.

This is a global platform in a world wondrously interconnected and there is a lot to think and write about but it is very difficult not going back to the tragic events in Parkland, Florida. Back to Deputy Scot Peterson, the Broward County deputy sheriff who arrived ninety seconds after the start of the carnage and failed to intervene when he had close to five minutes to move in and at least divert the shooter. He was the M.S. Douglas High School Resource Officer and it is easy to think he would at least have some responsibility to the kids under his watch. President Trump did not mince words in calling him a coward and he is evidently in the bad books of many.
Which his defense of his actions is not going to erase soon. According to him, he waited in inaction thinking the shooting was coming from outside the school. You would think it a bit odd that a fifty-four year old officer with more than twenty years of experience would find it difficult determining the direction sustained gunfire, any gunfire, was coming from. Then he left while the firing was still going on. In fact it continued for a further minute after he had left. So if the carnage was coming from outside into the school, the shooter would not have encountered anyone to confront him. In attacking Mr Scot, President Trump has been badly drawn and quartered in some quarters but it seems our president is now having the last laugh: even assuring that if he had been in the same situation as the Deputy, he would have certainly gone in to confront the Mr Nikolas Cruz. That doesn't sound much like a boast now. We are not really in any position to doubt our president now but paraphrasing James Hadley Chase, if you believe the excuses being bandied by Officer Scot, you would believe anything. Perhaps the three other Broward County deputies alleged by CNN to be also present in inaction while the shooting was going on were also crouching behind their cars with drawn weapons thinking the shooting was coming from outside. In this tragic situation, the law and its purveyors have been in serious remiss. It would have been far profitable if Mr Scot had not said anything at all, allowing us to tumble and tumble in our in distance-effected doubts and conjectures
Which brings us to another serious remiss, the recent kidnap of 101 schoolgirls from their hostel in the town of Dapchi in northern Yobe State by Boko Haram terrorists. You would think Nigerian security agents would have learned from their shortcomings in the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls a couple of years earlier. Especially in a large girls' school in a town just eighty kilometers south of the border with Niger Republic, a demarcation as porous as an old colander. Of course the police were at their illegal checkpoints collecting illegal duties from motorists and couldn't care a damn if all the women in Yobe were carted away by Boko Haram. The Nigerian police runs the largest extortion and debt collection agency in the world and safety of lives and property was going to be very low in the priority of its officers. And for a reason or reasons anyone in the army or government has not been able to relate even satisfactorily, a couple of weeks before the abduction, troops were withdrawn from Yobe, a hiatus Boko Haram did not hesitate to ruthlessly exploit.
From Florida to Nigeria, officers collect fat salaries and give very, very little in return.  And their excuses are even worse than their lapses.

China, Xi and the New Revisionism.

What is not important is the news that the Communist Party of China, in the next couple of days, will abolish the two-term limit for the president and his vice, a restraint entrenched in its own constitution. For some time now observers have expected President Xi Jinping to browbeat the party and the rubber-stamp Chinese parliament,  the National Party Congress, into bending the succession rules to enable him perpetuate himself in power. Ten years in power is a very long time, too long by western democratic standards, and the alarm now is that Xi will be given a carte blanche to continue in power as long as he likes in China, a vital player in global economic, social and political affairs.
It is not clear if the party is going to ramp up the limit, three-term or even four but it is instructive to take a closer look at the kite being flown by a party scholar and member: 'China needs a stable, strong and consistent leadership from 2020 to 2035'. Xi was born in 1953 and will be 82 by 2035 in case someone is preparing him or he is preparing himself for such longevity in power. If this is not a revision to Mao, China didn't build a Great Wall.
Mao was a great leader, no doubt, but it is difficult to argue that what he did for China was far greater than the contributions of another great communist leader, Deng Xiaoping. So a heavy argument against dictatorship in present China subsists. The country has witnessed strong economic growth under Xi but it even saw faster growth under his predecessors; he has launched well-publicized crusades against corruption, but any other leader was going to do that anyway, for the sake and survival of the party itself, corruption having eaten deep into the fabric of the officialdom and was fast alienating the common man in the street. The fight against corruption has also conveniently eliminated real and perceived rivals in the communist party. His nationalistic postures have endeared him to many of his countrymen but Trump isn't doing badly too in his 'American First' policy. The same with Putin in Russia. As Trump himself has pointed out, your country first does not mean your country alone. Hence what endears Xi to his people now are ultimately less important than the orderly political succession and stability that China needs. The Gang of Four conundrum that ensued after the death of Mao almost took back the country to the mayhem of the pre-revolution years. The country is now a far more advanced place and is very unlikely to survive any schism that a power struggle will bring. Xiaoping himself realized this and had to orchestrate the present succession pattern that Xi is trying to topple. The arrangement might have thrown up grotesque individuals like Premier Li Peng, architect of the infamous Tienanmen Massacre but by and large it has helped spawn acceptable and capable leaders who had helped steer the affairs of state creditably. What the country can do without now are the grumblings of political repression and exclusion that would eventually unravel in Tienanmen Square.
The communist party has done well in bringing economic growth to China, especially the feeding of its huge population. All thanks to the vision of Deng Xiaoping. And any arrangement he has made for the sustenance of this vision should be held sacrosanct by Xi and his cronies in the Central Committee of the party, a body very similar to the notorious Politburo of the old Soviet Union. The USSR will eventually implode, no thanks to the longevity of Leonid Brezhnev in power. It is a fate that will not augur well for China. And the whole world

Parkland, Florida Shooting: A Tale of Three Scotts.

The sheriff was in no position or place to shoot or be shot at. His deputy was in position and place to shoot or be shot at. Neither happened. It was Sheriff Scot Israel who alerted us of the 'sickening' inaction, read cowardice, of Deputy Scot Peterson. 'He should have gone in to confront the killer, kill him.'
Most of us were not in position or place to ascertain what really happened at M.S. Douglas High School that day and the only weapons were have now are our conjectures, heated conjectures. Deputy Scot could have been thinking about his own wife and kids(human from his own point of view, execrable from ours), based on training and experience, he could have weighed his pistol against the killer's AR-15 and shaken his head at the mismatch(valid from his own point of view, unacceptable from ours considering the fact there were barehanded heroes in the same saga who threw themselves in the path of bullets), or his courage could have simply failed him. President Trump's  preferred version of the theories. Made worse by the knowledge the guy was on 76k p.a. Life and death situations are often complex and those involved often have less than a tiny fraction of a second to decide whether to become heroes or zeros. Be as it may, the decision was his to make, the judgment will be ours. For ever. Life is like that.
But before we start tacking up Deputy Peterson on the high walls as the poster boy for cowardice, we should not be oblivious of the fact that when the police from Coral Springs arrived at the scene, there were three other officers from the same Broward County Sheriff Office crouching behind their cars with drawn pistols. Doing virtually nothing to intervene. If these accounts by the CNN are anything to go by, then we may equally do well by taking some time off slating Scot Peterson and dwell a bit on well-paid public officials who failed miserably in preventing a carnage that should not have been. For a start, Sheriff Israel should take a closer at his own men in Broward County and we should all help extend this examination. Police officers are paid well, the heroine who alerted them to the errant behavior of Nikolas Cruz probably spent her own money to make the call that they negligently ignored. Still the fantastic woman was undeterred and had to spend additional money, time and effort in approaching the FBI when she got no reply from the police.The FBI chaps,who are equally well-paid, unfortunately, as it turned out to be, had ears that were in the same mode as that of the police. In an earlier blog, we said that the key to preventing such mass murders in the future will be in folks like that woman. Mothers, grandmothers, relatives, neighbors, acquaintances who take a healthy interest in what those close to or near them are doing or thinking and will gladly do their duty to the society without asking to be paid a dime for their efforts.
Apropos of those not doing their job or trying to do it or doing it very poorly, Mr LaPierre of the National Rifle Association could have done far better by saying as little as possible. He should have realized that in times of grief like these, it is not the truth that matters but simply the saying of it and trying to play up to the Second Amendment was simply pathetic. Definitely, the purveyors of the 'right of citizens to bear arms and defend themselves' did not have AK-47s, or the new evil kid on the block, AR-15, in mind, assault weapons that are always in the offensive mode. If the NRA emerges from this outrage unscathed, it will be a mini miracle and Mr Lapierre isn't going to be the savior.
Which brings us to the third Scott, Rick Scott, Florida governor. Cruz might have bought his gun at the age of 18 but the Las Vegas shooter was well above 50 when he perpetrated his carnage. The issue now is not limiting the age at which people legitimately buy weapons but governor Scott is very right in proposing the outright ban of assault weapons like the AK-47 and the AR-15 and the so-called 'bumper stocks' that convert less intimidating guns into far deadlier weapons. Then he would have done his job of protecting his own citizens well if he can follow up his determination to seize weapons from those certified of developing mental illness or beginning to exhibit mind processes that drive hitherto safe individuals into the killer mode.
Provided such individuals cannot well hide their evil turns.   

Parkland Shooting: Vigilance Will, Hysteria Won't Do.

A couple of days before the Parkland shooting, 18 Nigerian students on excursion from the northern state of Bauchi died in a horrible road carnage in a neighboring state. The bus in which they were traveling, while trying to negotiate a bad stretch on the road, had a head on collision with an articulated vehicle that was trying to do the same maneuvers. A couple of dollars spent on road repairs could have saved the lives of these kids and three members of staff. In the same way a little attention on the part of the FBI and the police could have gone a long way in saving the lives of the Parkland kids. A nation can afford to toy with so many things, especially great and rich nations like the US, can even afford to toy with its future(there are almost limitless resources for resurgence) but it cannot afford to toy with the future of its young ones.
So Washington is the right place to march on now, Trump is the obvious person to blame and the National Rifle Association is the right body to take the hit. It is all part of the exigencies of the moment but the hysteria will die down, it would not be the first time, the huge puff of public outrage will expend itself very quickly, like all flashes, and the acrimonious debates about guns will go on forever. We pray and hope such a carnage will never repeat itself. We could all lend our hopes and prayers a helping hand.
Not by railing incessantly at the FBI. The way the organization is set up, it will not stop expending too much time and energy and resources on headline quests that end exactly nowhere: like investigations into Russian meddling in US polls, like inquiries into the Clinton e-mails or even the assassination of President Kennedy. It won't escape attention lapses altogether but despite the hot flak it is currently receiving, nobody is seriously suggesting putting it up for sale. The good it does far outweighs its failings
Not by marching to Washington, Seriously. It is nice calling Trump names but even if he has a change of heart and turns on his erstwhile allies in the NRA and wins ten terms, stopping the likes of Mr Cruz will not happen from the White House. Tougher legislation on federal checks will have an initial surge but eventually will not be enough. The Congress and Senate are peopled by lawmakers most of whom came from varied constituencies far removed from Florida. It is a national tragedy, sure, but selling anti-gun legislation to US voters is often a hard sell. The Democrats may be riding with the tide now but few have listened to President Trump query why anti-gun bills gained little traction while the Dems controlled both legislative houses. The FBI, Trump and both houses and the most stringent of all laws, if they manage to pass them, won't ever get guns off the streets. The gun culture is too entrenched. Besides America is vast. In population, in land mass and in the sheer number of possibilities available to folks: money and like resources, friends and relatives, cyberspace, rivers and forests and so on. Someone who is going to get a gun is always going to get a gun, even if all the guns in the US are confiscated.
So the right place to march to is our homes, our households. Our bedrooms and cyberspaces such as computers and mobile phones. We are a bit emboldened to make this suggestion because we have it on good authority that hundreds of mass-shooting plots are aborted in the US every year by acquaintances, grandmothers, grandfathers, parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, girlfriends and so on, even neighbors. Folks who take a healthy interest in what those close to them are thinking or doing. The relationship involved in the discoveries is what often prevents the public from hearing about them. Like terrorists, would-be mass murderers are not vipers that stay still for long periods and then rise and strike all of a sudden; they are more or less rattlesnakes rattling warnings and signs the size and brightness of comets streaming across heavens. It was what could have saved the Parkland kids, with a little more attention from the FBI, a remiss that isn't likely to repeat itself.
So to our bedrooms we must march. Vigilance. Bedrooms and You Tube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, all forms of cyberspace. Let's take a healthy interest in what others, especially our kids and those close to us, are doing. It isn't snooping or snitching. It is keeping our schools and streets safe. Privacy is great but in times of tragedy like this, few, very few remember privacy   

FBI and its Investigations: Limbo is the Destination.

The FBI investigation into alleged Russian meddling in US elections reminds one of another probe: the much-worried scrutiny of Hillary Clinton e-mails. Both have generated noise and hype for the theatrics-loving American public, and breakfast for newshounds: and very, very little returns on the huge taxpayers' money that has been liberally invested in them. And both seem destined for a fate that seems like a descent into limbo.
What's the point? No matter the outcome, it will be simply ridiculous to accuse Clinton of treason, or even a lesser official misdemeanor that is deliberate. Maybe lapses in her duty but the censure isn't ever going to be commensurate with the time and energy and resources that have been spent on the quest. In the same way, the Russian probes are not ever likely to be traced directly to Vladimir Putin and even though they have been described as a blockbuster, what they'd succeeded in doing is to thrust a little hammer into the hands of Mr Donald Trump. A weapon which he has wasted little time, trust him, in delving into the image of the FBI itself. With the Parkland shooting giving him a veritable handle. A very tiny fraction of the time and commitment spent on the Russian investigations would have certainly helped in preventing a very visible lunatic from wasting the lives of so many young, innocent souls. It is very difficult not agreeing with the president on that score.
Trump knew that although Americans knew his attentions are a bit on the scrappy side, they equally knew he was too self-conscious to collude with Russians to tweak elections in his favor. The US electorate don't like competitors gaining undue advantages. It instantly confers the tag of the underdog on the opponent and folks don't taste victories sweeter than the triumph that reeks of an upset. It may have little to do with why the Eagles won( a stunning that made the day for millions, minus Patriots' fans) but in an electoral contest where voters were the ones to make the throws and catches and touchdowns, it was going to be a huge determinant.
There is no doubt that Russians actively meddled in the US elections but it seems more reasonable to tie its provenance to Crimea instead of Mr Trump or the elections itself, after all the whole scheme started long before the president announced his intention to contest the polls. The Russians clearly knew they were in for real global censure with the annexation, a prospect even apparent at the planning stage, and it became necessary to work out scenarios that might engender sympathetic ears, no matter how tenuous that understanding might be. It would not be a surprise if Russians also meddled in other post-March 2014 elections in other countries and Trump might have fooled a couple of guys in Moscow with his impetuous profession of love for Putin and Russia during primaries and general electioneering. That the meddlers were also rooting for Bernie Sanders shows they thought another Obama in the White House would not be in the best interest of Russia.
So the so-called Internet Research Agency might be an euphemism for a group of cyber bandits not substantially different from Fancy Bears or the plethora of Russian hackers that make it a profession stealing industrial, sports or military secrets, or just plain cash-most of the heist from the US. A James Bond-style megalomaniac could have superintended over a project that excited his criminal mind and appealed to many other folks. Much noise had been made about the indictment of Yevgeny Prigozhin, popularly regarded as 'Putin's Chef'. It is no more than a hint that must be worked into the blockbuster appeal. It is not always that a master knew what his chef was cooking. It will not be an easy task linking the whole scheme to Putin and neither will it be less difficult tying it to President Trump. Mr Mueller's quest seems destined for limbo. It is hardly tiring repeating it again.
There is something faintly Dantean in the coincidence that Mr Mueller should head this investigation and the probe into the Clinton e-mails. Although he has said it expressly there was no evidence the meddling affected the outcome of the polls, he could turn to his protege, James Comey, to espy what might have affected the outcome. Reopening the e-mail controversy a couple of days to the elections was a recipe that was going to be fatal to the chances of Mrs Clinton.

Trump's Rasputin Coefficient 2: America Gets its Cutting Edge President.

Mr Donald Trump, as a presidential candidate, got something going for him, though a lot of folks in America might not admit it: or might not even be aware of it. The stage was waiting for a cutting-edge leader and Trump stepped right onto it. It would have taken something very extraordinary to stop him: certainly not his horrific groping statements about women, certainly not the latest Stormy Daniel revelations. If even they had gained more substance then. American folks were simply bored of the unending procession of family-loving, politically-correct speaking presidents, of which the latest, Barack Obama had a demeanor and manner that was so soporific he easily could send a hungry lion to sleep. Trump was a character whose idea had come and he was going to win, come prostitutes, come scandals.
Which was perfectly understandable. Political contests in the US had become hideously repetitive, on a template of combats that were not exciting, even interesting. Candidates were more or less sparing partners wearing the same gloves everyday. The best they could throw were phantom punches. Personal attacks sounded like gossips initiated by bored housewives, nothing subtle or engaging, that catches on all fours. The two dominant parties were rapidly being stripped of their colors and it was only a matter of time before a third force came to steal all the pinks and roses. Trump might have won on the Republican ticket but if someone was searching for traces of Bush or Reagan or Eisenhower in him then folks had better search for their ancestry in Mary, Queen of Scots. American politics was screaming for an Ali to come in and shake the scene and sex things up and in stepped a reality TV star who knew how to serve a repertoire of acts designed to keep his audience glued to their seats.
And he has been serving it aplenty: big, raw(no pun) and loud, very, very loud. Day in, day out, the controversies just keep pumping in. If an aide is not being accused of stubbing out cigarettes on the hand of his darling today, tomorrow a personal lawyer is admitting having paid a prostitute to... A charge he had denied so vehemently earlier. Every moment, Trump's Rasputin Coefficient is unraveling. Which is why the latest revelations will not elicit more than a puff of public outrage, a sudden huge flare of indignation that expends itself so quickly like the flashes of an explosion. More likely the hammer, if there was going to be any, will fall on the fingers of Mr Cohen. Folks take a very dim view of lawyers paying money that look hush. Another controversy will break out shortly, if it doesn't, it means the president has lost the plot Americans scripted for him. Few, very few are complaining. Folks can't have it both ways. Americans wanted a cutting edge chap in the White House and there was no toolmaker written into the scenes: a guy to pull out a blunting stone when the edge becomes too sharp.