The depressing summary

Alan Kohler's summary of the Trumpian project seems very accurate:  

To make America great, Donald Trump is undoing its greatness as global stock markets fall

This part:

There are two immediate questions: first, will the Trump revolution collapse from its own incompetence?

 And second, will an effective opposition/resistance emerge and blunt it?

The incompetence comes from "common sense".

In his speech to Congress last week, Trump described what he is doing as a "common-sense revolution that is now — because of us — sweeping the entire world".

Who can argue against common sense? Sounds fine, right?

Well, yes, except that in practice it means decisions and executive orders are not based on data, inquiries or science, but simply what Trump thinks.

For example, there was no Treasury inquiry and report into the impact of 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, with the result — among other things — that General Motors told him they'd be bankrupt in three months, so its parts had to be exempted.

In fact, the whole tariff venture has become a complete mess of U-turns and exemptions, because it was based on common sense and not thought through. It's also the main reason the US economy is in danger of a big slowdown.

And of course the abandonment of efforts to reduce fossil fuels and combat climate change — in favour of "drill, baby, drill" — are not based on science, but simply his "common sense", along with that of other people on the right, that the energy transition is expensive and pointless.

I have been looking at the example of Australian Trump supporters who hang out online at New Catallaxy.  Look, the average age seems to be about 65 to 70, so it's not as if they are any representative cross section of the population, but reading them, as well as online Right wing America sites, makes it absolutely clear that they are so much still in the thrill of having their culture war priorities put into place by Trump that they simply don't care at all about his entirely haphazard way of governing, and his  neverending stream of lies and grifting that, with 100% certainty, would have appalled them if it were being said or done by a Democrat.  

In the media landscape:  not that I subscribe, but from what I can gather, the Wall Street Journal is a traditionally Right wing outlet that is giving substantial pushback due to the economic damage Trump policies will cause.   But it's galling that this also represents the Murdochs in his traditional fashion:  making money by letting one outlet appeal to the "not on board with Trump" element of the Right, while letting its MAGA devoted night time lineup on Fox News continue to compete with North Korean media in how far they can suck up to the cult leader.   Daddy Murdoch, and his Right wing son, are entirely unprincipled and happy to see the world burn as long as it makes money for them in the process.

A couple of recipes

Because my posting rate has been so slow this year, I've overlooked this blog's function of recording useful recipes I've tried.

 First one - lamb shoulder cooked at low temperature for hours is something I had never got around to before, but I recently followed this recipe which featured a side of white bean puree.   (I see the recipe calls it a roast - but there was lots of liquid involved, so surely it was a braise?)   The most pleasant surprise was how nice the white bean puree was - another thing I never got around to making before.

Second one, as a counter to all the meat in the first:  chick pea curry, using dried chickpeas.   Of course I've used canned chickpeas many times, but the online cooks (especially vegan ones) all suggest that cooking your own dried pulses gives a much nicer result, so I bought a kilo of chickpeas and gave it a try.

I soaked them for 8 hours, changing the water a couple of times as someone somewhere recommended.  Then boiled them for about an hour.  The texture was still slightly firmer than canned, but that was fine by me.   And as for using them in a curry - there are dozens of examples on line and it seems you can use virtually any curry base (dried spices, or jar paste - I used leftover Thai red curry paste), fry an onion first, add the paste or dry spices, a can of tomatoes (and maybe some fresh ones like I did), the chickpeas and a can of coconut milk.   It comes out fine.  (I added some spinach at the end, for colour as well as a fresh contribution.)

And I can tell you, two cups of dried chickpeas, which should cost at most about $2, together with these other ingredients (total cost maybe $4- $5 extra?) made enough for 6 very large servings.

Honestly, this experience has led me to believe that government support for the poor must include a push to getting them to learn how to cook dried beans and chickpeas.   Even allowing for the cost of the electricity or gas (which may be the same for cooking a meat curry too) protein derived from this source is incredibly cheap compared to meat.   And it was pretty tasty and filling.

Tide turning

As I now primarily use BlueSky and live happily amongst the Democrat/Lefty/centrist types who moved there from Twitter, it was there that I saw Californian Govenor (and likely runner for presidential candidate) Gavin Newsom being castigated for saying to Right wing young nut Charlie Kirk that he agreed there was a fairness issue with transwomen competing in women's sports.  

The problem is that the progressive Left steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that there does indeed need to be nuance on trans policy.  Their reasoning, if you can call it that, is that because Republicans have way overreacted on this culture war issue, the Left cannot concede an inch, because that would be giving support to an enemy who has to be defeated with zero compromise.

I find this very frustrating. As I have been saying for a while now, the Left is not going to win this on common sense grounds.  The cases where it matters may be relatively rare and infrequent, but no way is the broader public ready to think that a man with a penis declaring himself to be a woman is being fair if he insists he compete against them as a woman.  If you can't admit that, you're just pushing against unrealistic extremism with your own preferred version of unrealistic extremism.

I am pleased to see, however, that there are finally signs of pushback within Democrat supporters against the progressive tactic. 

This is shown in the tweets here, where David Roberts (a pretty sensible man on most issues with a huge blindspot on this one) gets told:

 

This is good.

 

Even poor Noah Smith is suffering for his lack of ideological purity:

 

 

Brain glass

There's been a lot of reporting on this odd story.  Here's part of the New York Time's version:

Five years ago Italian researchers published a study on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. that detailed how one victim of the blast, a male presumed to be in his mid 20s, had been found nearby in the seaside settlement of Herculaneum. He was lying facedown and buried by ash on a wooden bed in the College of the Augustales, a public building dedicated to the worship of Emperor Augustus. Some scholars believe that the man was the center’s caretaker and was asleep at the time of the disaster.

In 2018, one researcher discovered black, glossy shards embedded inside the caretaker’s skull. The paper, published in 2020, speculated that the heat of the explosion was so immense that it had fused the victim’s brain tissue into glass.

This was, according to some reports, a controversial conclusion, but it's in the news because a new study appears to confirm it:

On Thursday, a paper published in Nature verified that the fragments are indeed glassified brain. Using techniques such as electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry, scientists examined the physical properties of samples taken from the glassy fragments and demonstrated how they were formed and preserved. “The unique finding implies unique processes,” said Guido Giordano, a volcanologist at the Roma Tre University and lead author of the new study.

Maybe it's still a bit controversial:

The 2020 study was met with some skepticism by other scientists, largely because the raw data was not available. Tim Thompson, a forensic anthropologist at Maynooth University in Ireland, was perhaps the most vocal doubter. This time around, the results excited him. “I very much enjoy seeing new scientific methods applied to the archaeological context,” he said.

But Dr. Thompson would like to see more evidence and more of the original data: “The heating and cooling within Herculaneum following the eruption is likely to be complicated, and the results of the investigation certainly support their conclusions. It just depends on whether the material is brain.”

And why am I posting about it?   Because it reminded me of one of the more curious things to be found in the Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Singapore -  examples of Sarira, the pearl or jewel like beads claimed to have been recovered from the cremated remains of Buddhist spiritual masters.  I mentioned this in a previous post.

Now, the ones in Singapore are often very pretty, and I'm not saying that the apparent example of one brain apparently turned by the right kind of heat into something resembling black glass is a good explanation. But I am just surprised to learn that any sort of organic stuff can turn into something that looks glassy...

 

Wet and windy

I'm not telling anyone who lives in Brisbane anything new - but this Cyclone Alfred weather event turned out to be very odd.

Late on Friday night, when it was still a small category 1 cyclone crossing Moreton Bay, it got a bit windy and showery for a couple of hours (after the Western sun had been out at about 6 pm when I was walking the dog.)   I thought it might continue being windy all night, but it died down, and it didn't even rain that much.  It was worse on the Gold Coast, but in Brisbane it felt very anti-climatic, as I always suspected it might.

Then Saturday was very grey and showery, not all shops opened and the city was still pretty much shut down.  Unexpectedly for everyone, in the early evening, it became far windier (and I think wetter) than the night before.  It really felt like what a close cyclone should feel like, and the wind was strong for hours.

Followed by today - I'm not sure if it was showering when I woke up, but it was certainly raining by 8am, quite hard, and it has not stopped all day.   Intensity has varied a little bit, but flash flooding is happening everywhere, and with many trees down last night, the city was more or less at a standstill again.  (I mean, shops re-opened, but I am sure no one was travelling further than they really needed to, as it was obvious that certain streets would be flooding, and trees on footpaths might in some cases be in a precarious state.)

So on social media the "it was a fizzer" cynicism has been replaced by other people going "ha ha".

And poor Harvey Bay, on the northern edge of the influence of the system, had a storm that brought a record amount of intense rain in a short number of hours, leading to 400 emergency calls for flash flooding (I just heard that number on the radio.)  My brother, on the Sunshine Coast between Hervey Bay and Brisbane, seems to have been relatively unaffected. 

It's supposed to stop raining sometime overnight, but at the moment, it slows down for a while, then picks up again.    I think we can all agree we've had enough, please move on...

   

Waiting for weather

So, the cyclone that could have arrived a day or more ago is now not arriving until tonight - maybe.

Sure, it's been windy on the coast (especially the Gold Coast, where, as it happens, I was due to spend a night in a high rise apartment tomorrow - it's been cancelled), but in Brisbane it's been a couple of days of "oh, the rain is picking up" and "it's finally getting breezy", only to have it stop a few hours later and feel as calm as anything.

If the cyclone weakens to a couple of hours of rain and a bit of gusty wind, I bet people will start complaining a lot about over-reaction in terms of preparedness....

 

And now, a South East cyclone

It's been many a year since a cyclone wandered as far south as Brisbane.   From dim memory, one very small cyclone might have approached the Sunshine Coast when I was a youngster, but it didn't do much. Well, that's not counting one that came pretty close one Christmas when I was a toddler and the family was in a tent at Maroochydore and had to pack it up and go to - I think - the surf lifesaving club.  I have no memory of that at all.  

They all tend to fizzle out once this far down (except for the rain, which I think comes more from the post-cyclonic depression if it gets stuck in place)

This hasn't stopped a ridiculous amount of panic shopping, even in supermarkets probably 10 km from the coast, like my local ones.   It seems Covid lockdowns have damaged the psyche of Australians forever such that any prospect of disruption to shopping for even a day causes a rush on toilet paper, bread, eggs (already in short supply) and some fresh fruit and vegetables.  (No sign of a tomato - apart from cherry tomatoes - or bananas in the shop yesterday evening.  Plenty of potatoes though.) 

Of course, I could be wrong, I suppose, and there might be damage of an unexpected scale, especially to places right on the coast.  I just can't see much risk of Category 1 or 2 causing much problem with 90% of Brisbane, though.

Let's see.  Here's the current forecast path:

 

 

Did COVID or politics kill movie going?

Again, I find myself in the mood to kind of ignore the rapidly evolving disaster that is the Trump administration, and note (as I usually do each year) that it's Oscar time today.  I will go over my poor mood regarding the state of cinema again, instead.*

It seems to me that the world is having trouble getting over the apparent fatal blow that Covid and/or the polarisation of American politics has caused to interest in attending the cinema.  Or is it that I'm just getting older and getting lazier to going out?  (I don't think it's the latter.)

As I said to my daughter a few months ago, the problem with cinema feels a bit like we're waiting for a new trend that simply isn't turning up.   In the depressing 70's, you had dark social realism as a thing;  by the end of it, though, you had the science fiction/adventure blockbuster era kicking off, which took us through the 80's.  I'm not sure, without checking, what the 90's brought us - off the top of my head, we had the best 'serious Spielberg' era (with Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan, and then in the 2000's his excellent adult oriented science fiction);  but overall, I think it was a decent decade with a decent mix of themes.

In the 2000's, I was mostly becoming a father and not going out much, but towards the end was enjoying a lot of kids animation.   And then in the 2010's was the peak of the Marvel superhero movies, which I only half followed, but the best were pretty decent.

Now, Marvel and superheros feels well and truly dead, with efforts to revive it spluttering badly.  DC superhero movies never appealed that much.  And there is a well defined backlash to Disney's culture warring efforts (heavy emphasis on female protagonists and diverse sexuality), which I reluctantly agree is kinda deserved. 

One thing I continually feel puzzled about is how Hollywood used to be capable to making mature movies on current US political and cultural issues - yet at the time US politics is most intensely deserving of fictional drama and scrutiny, it seems the political polarisation has killed off interest in doing it.  I suspect it may be because there feels like there is no "middle" to appeal to anymore, and if you make a movie slanted to the Left or Right, the polarisation means social media campaigns can kill off a movie's box office so easily.

It's all a pity.

 

*   I think I wrote a very similar post late last year, but I am feeling sufficient depressed by the state of the world to not bother checking!   

The state of US politics

Some light hearted content (while we wait for the shooting to start)

I've been busy, and sorry about the madness

By way of explanation as to slow posting:

*  Work had been very busy and distracting for quite a few months now, and it's not going to get much better for another month.

*  American politics has gone over an edge which makes it feel there's no point in talking about how bad it is - it's just too obvious and leaving (I think) a lot of people like me feeling kind of speechless at the spectacle.

* I have an idea or two for longer posts I want to write about some "big picture" stuff about the state of the world, but am having trouble finding the time to get some older books I want to reference off my bookcase, where they hide, somewhere...

Anyway, I also apologise for being a bit slow to delete the mad anti-Semitic comments made by Graeme Bird in recent posts.   (Tim, I'm surprised you had to ask who it was!)

Is there some sort of competition underway as to how badly people can act regarding Gaza?

 I mean, seriously:

*   Hamas thinks looking like militaristic terrorists while they hand over emaciated hostages, just after they have just suffered a massive and inevitable defeat, is a good look??     

*   Trump thinks that talking about America "owning" Gaza is not like running up and throwing petrol on the fire??    

*  Netanyahu thinks - what?   That further grinding the strip into concrete dust will force the countries adamant that they aren't going to upend their own regimes by taking in a million or two Gazans to change their minds??   And that expanding into the West Bank helps encourage Jordan into co-operating with the closure of Gaza?   

I mean, seriously, listen to Trump being an idiot:

King Abdullah II of Jordan on Tuesday rebuffed President Trump’s proposal for his country to absorb Palestinians living in Gaza, saying that he remained opposed to a plan Mr. Trump has laid out to clear the territory so the United States can seize control of it.

During a “constructive” meeting with the U.S. president at the White House, King Abdullah said, he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“This is the unified Arab position,” he stated in a post on social media after the meeting. “Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all.”

His statement came hours after Mr. Trump insisted the United States had the authority to “take” Gaza, part of an effort to pressure the leader of Jordan and other Arab nations to embrace a forced removal, which has drawn widespread condemnation.

“We will have Gaza,” said Mr. Trump, as he sat next to Mr. Abdullah and the Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan. “It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it.”

Who knew a constitutional crisis would be so easy?

All it takes is for the executive to think it doesn't have to obey the courts, and for a craven Congress to shrug its shoulders. 

I wonder at what point someone in the military feels they have to intervene, because it's kinda starting to look like that is what it would take.

Or does it only need something to get to the Supreme Court and for it to say "executive, no, you can't ignore the courts, if you want constitutional government"?

The trouble with that is, if it is a majority statement, with a few of the corrupt MAGA supporters not joining in, Trump and Vance would likely say its an illegitimate, political, decision.

As for the matter of the ease of constitutional crisis, I guess some Australian readers would say "well, the sacking of Whitlam was easy too."   Which is true.   But compared to the possible problems of how to deal with a rogue President in the US, our system at least democratically resolved it quickly and neatly.

Update:  When even the Wall Street Journal is putting out videos asking if the country is in a constitutional crisis, you know it is getting pretty serious...

 

Only the best (outright racist) people

So, as this Reuters story tells us, of Elon Musk's kiddie team of "DOGE" pretend department of cost cutters and ideology enforcers:

*    one had a X account re-post Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate content;

*   one was sacked for leaking a company's proprietary information;

*   one resigned after outright racist content was posted on his X account.

The last example has had more detail supplied in other media, such as this BBC story:

The account connected to Mr Elez - first reported by the Wall Street Journal - posted a variety of inflammatory comments that were verified by the BBC as authentic.

"Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," read one post from the pseudonymous account in July.

Another post, in September, said: "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity."

"Normalize Indian hate," another post that month said.

All of the posts have since been deleted.

JD Vance, with Indian wife, has said people shouldn't be mean to him.  And Elon deals with it by having a X poll of his MAGA app:

On Friday, President Donald Trump, when asked about Mr Elez's resignation from Doge and Vance's support for the employee, said he didn't know about "that particular thing", but agreed with the vice-president on the matter.

Writing on X, Vance said that while he disagreed "with some of Elez's posts... I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life".

Earlier in the day, Musk posted a poll on X inviting users to say whether the staff member should be brought back.

At least 78% voted in favour of his return out of hundreds of thousands who participated, according to results displayed underneath.

What an appalling bunch of people.  

Some useful commentary on Gaza and Trump

From the New York Times:

For decades, the question of whether and how Palestinians might build a state in their homeland has been at the center of Middle East politics — not only for the Palestinians, but for Arabs around the region, many of whom regard the Palestinian cause almost as their own.

Forcing Palestinians out of their remaining territory, Arabs say, would doom Palestinian statehood and destabilize the entire region in the process.

So it was a nightmare for the Palestinians’ closest Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan — and a dream for Israel’s far-right-dominated government — when President Trump proposed moving everyone out of the Gaza Strip and onto their soil, an idea he repeated in a White House news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Tuesday.

Egypt and Jordan have responded with categorical “nos” — even if their reasons aren’t all borne out of pure concern for the Palestinian plight: Cairo dreads what Palestinian refugees in Sinai would mean for Egypt’s security. Militants could launch attacks at Israel from Egyptian soil, inviting Israeli retaliation, or be recruited into the local insurgency in Sinai that Egypt has battled for years. Jordan’s king has to reckon with a population that is more than half Palestinian, so to accept more such refugees could further raise tensions.

That refusal has been backed up by political independents and opposition figures in Egypt, along with mouthpieces for the country’s authoritarian government, underscoring how the Palestinian issue can unify even the bitterest political opponents there.

Khaled el-Balshy, the editor of one of the few remaining Egyptian media outlets that are not pro-government and the head of the national journalists’ union, issued a statement on Wednesday calling Mr. Trump’s proposal “a clear violation of human rights and international laws.”

Moustafa Bakry, a loudly pro-government member of Parliament, suggested, without giving specifics, that Egypt could repel the displacement with force. “Egypt can move forward with other measures, because the Egyptian military can never allow this,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.

But Mr. Trump has shown little regard for the two countries’ concerns, their sovereignty or the idea of Palestinian statehood.

“They say they’re not going to accept,” Mr. Trump said of Egypt and Jordan during an earlier meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office. “I say they will.”....

Egypt has cooperated closely with Israel on security in its restive Sinai Peninsula, which borders both Gaza and Israel. But while Egypt and Jordan are on speaking terms, and sometimes more, with Israel, their populations have never stopped seeing Israel as an enemy, especially after its most recent assault on Gaza.

Analysts say the incentives of keeping U.S. aid, which makes up a limited portion of each country’s budget, are minor compared to their fears of alienating their populations by appearing complicit in what many see as ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Though the rulers of both countries frequently brook little dissent, often using repression to silence internal criticism, analysts say they cannot afford to ignore public opinion.

“It’s no joke going up against Trump, particularly for Egypt and Jordan,” said Paul Salem, the vice president for international engagement at the Middle East Institute in Washington. But since “this would really be a bridge way too far for much of public opinion,” he added, “there is no other option for an Arab leader. I don’t see what else they could do.”

 There is more at the link - although I am not sure if it is open or paywalled....

 Update:   Hey, even the extremely pro-Trump site Hot Air agrees with the New York Times - 

Sorry, But Trump Is Wrong on Resettling Palestinians in Jordan and Egypt

 Update 2:  The laughable spin of the Wall Street Journal:

The reaction to Mr. Trump’s flyer was predictably hyperbolic. Some called it “ethnic cleansing,” as if the U.S. military would round up two million Gazans against their will. Others criticized Mr. Trump for U.S. imperialism, contrary to his campaign theme of deriding foreign interventions. For those reasons and more, his Gaza daydream is fanciful.

But note that Mr. Trump expressed admirable sympathy for the Palestinians and their plight. The Gaza strip “has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it,” he said Tuesday at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Who could disagree with that?

Some sympathy:  "You lost, now you have to move to another country."

In which I find something useful via Helen Dale

As I have long said, I am no fan at all of Helen Dale and her writings, but occasionally, very occasionally, I will drop into Twitter X and see what she is commenting on.

This time, she linked to an article she wrote about another writer's book about the indigenous academia world of "settler-colonialism", a phrase of no obvious meaning (much like a mantra simply made to repeat in front of other academics)  which I have seen used endlessly on the Twitter accounts of the likes of Professor Sandy O'Sullivan - the indigenous/Irish academic who is, for my money, a hot favourite for any award there may be for the worst waste of money on academic research funding in Australia (see the list at the end of the article linked).      

I'm still not sure who claims credit for the term - Dale claims a lot of Australian academia helped it spread, but she's light on details.  Nonetheless, this part of Dale's article about it seems to me to explain it well:

This replacement of history with myth leads Kirsch to argue the ideology is a “political theology,” that is, a secularised religious concept expressed civically. A form of original sin where the everlasting process of colonisation means never-ending exploitation, racism, misogyny, and genocide, it suggests only the Noble Savage that is the Native can redeem us.

In one of the field’s most influential papers, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Eve Tuck of SUNY New Paltz and K. Wayne Yang of UC San Diego write that “relinquishing settler futurity” is necessary if we are to imagine “the Native futures, the lives to be lived once the settler nation is gone.”

And here’s me thinking futurity referred to a competitive equestrian event for younger horses.

As Kirsch says, “The goal is not to change this or that public policy but to engender a permanent disaffection, a sense that the social order ought not to exist.”...

Much of On Settler-Colonialism turns on Kirsch’s argument that because it requires policies that can never be implemented (“deport 97 per cent of the US population!”), it’s merely depressing and stupid. “America should not exist” is never analysed with a view to doing anything apart from making the place miserable with itself. 

Yes:  this is exactly what it has been like to watch indigenous rights street protest in Australia for the last couple of decades - as silly as watching 1960's communists trying to muster support for abolishing capitalism, and simply designed, so it seems, to perpetuate grievance without any sensible work as to how to actually improve things.

I will add to this later...

A good idea

Yeah, I didn't realise that was a meme from the movie, which I haven't seen for many decades.

I've no doubt mentioned before, though, that I'm pretty sure Paulin Kael called it "an anti-exploitation exploitation movie" and that phrase has stuck in my mind...

Column on tariff threats states the obvious

Of course, the Republican Party is now only comprised of the dumb and conspiracy addled, cynical, and dishonest (and the people in each of those categories are all in for culture wars too), so of course they will claim Trump is the smart tactician in his current tariff threat rounds which have been put on hold.

An article in the New York Times states the obvious about why it is not a good long term strategy:

“I don’t want to use names, but tariffs are very powerful, both economically and in getting everything else you want,” Mr. Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office. “When you’re the pot of gold, the tariffs are very good, they’re very powerful and they’re going to make our country very rich again.”

The president is right that the American economy is a powerful weapon, and that a trade war would hit other countries harder. Canada and Mexico in particular are deeply dependent on trade with the United States. They send more than 80 percent of their exports to the United States, and could be crippled by a prolonged fight.

But many economists say the strategy will cost the United States, too. They estimate that as strong as the American economy is, trade wars will weaken it by raising prices, stalling investment, slowing growth and dragging down exports. Many farmers and businesses who would see their costs go up and export markets evaporate have protested the risk.

Even if the president ultimately does not follow through on tariffs, the uncertainty his policies are creating could discourage businesses from investing in new factories and hiring workers until they have a clearer picture of how trade will unfold.

Emily Blanchard, an economics professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, argued that the tariff threats would eat away at U.S. economic leverage. She said that Mr. Trump was “undermining the trust that provides the foundation of U.S. strength” by throwing around the country’s weight in global markets.

If companies and investors expect the United States to deploy tariffs regularly, they will hedge against future disruptions by reducing their reliance on American markets, she said. “Trade policy is an economic weapon that becomes less powerful every time it is used,” she said....

Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator and vice president at the Asia Society, said Mr. Trump was correct that trade wars would be more painful for Canada and Mexico. “There is no doubt that our partners will be more severely impacted than the United States, with over three-fourths of their exports destined for our market,” she said.....

Beyond the effects on companies, trade experts said there could be longer-term damage to U.S. interests. That is because the tariff threats would eat away at international confidence that the United States will abide by trade rules and norms that govern when governments deploy tariffs and why.

Edward Alden, a trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the United States had nurtured a system of international rules and predictability for decades. With Trump’s decision to move ahead with tariffs over the weekend in a “random, incomprehensible fashion, he said, “that era has come to an end.”

“The United States is now signaling that tariffs are an all-purpose club to be used for whatever policy goal the president wishes,” he said. “That formula will create enormous, in many ways unprecedented, uncertainty not just in North America but in the entire global economy.”

Hence, just as Australia was a victim of Chinese reprisal tariffs due to their not liking Scott Morrison's comments on COVID, Trump now thinks he can use tariffs for simply anything he doesn't like.

This is such a bad example to be setting, just as implicit sabre rattling over the Panama Canal is a bad example to both Russia and China.

 

 

 

Watch out, Darwin

With all the threats being made by Trump over the Panama Canal, let's remember that it's all about Chinese companies operating not the canal itself, but port facilities near it:

Two of the five ports adjacent to the canal, Balboa and Cristóbal, which sit on the Pacific and Atlantic sides respectively, have been operated by a subsidiary of Hutchison Port Holdings since 1997.

The company is a subsidiary of the publicly listed CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate founded by Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-shing.

It has port operations in 24 countries, including the UK.

Although it is not state-owned by China, says Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, there have been concerns in Washington over how much control Beijing would be able to exert over the company.

A wealth of potentially useful strategic information on ships passing through the waterway flows through these ports.

"There is an increasing geopolitical tension of economic nature between the US and China," Mr Berg says. "That kind of information regarding cargo would be very useful in the event of a supply chain war."

CK Hutchison did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.

The bids to operate those ports faced almost no competition, according to Andrew Thomas, a professor at the University of Akron who has written a book on the canal. "The US at the time didn't really care about these ports and Hutchison faced no objection," he says.

Chinese companies, both private and state-owned, have also strengthened their presence in Panama through billions of dollars in investments, including a cruise terminal and a bridge to be built over the canal.

This "package of Chinese activities", as described by Mr Thomas, might have prompted Trump's assertion that the canal is "owned" by China, but operation of those ports does not equate to ownership, he stresses.

Beijing has repeatedly said that China's ties with Latin America are characterised by "equality, mutual benefit, innovation, openness and benefits for the people".

And this all put me in mind of Darwin and its port being leased to a Chinese company.

Wikipedia summaries the latest in its controversy as follows:

In August 2019, a proposal was launched by Federal Labor MP Nick Champion to re-nationalise the port, thereby ending Chinese control.^[17]

A 2021 review of the leasing arrangements found there were no national security grounds to overturn the lease.^[18] In October 2023, the federal government announced it will not cancel Landbridge's lease after another review.^[18] The announcement brought to an end to an eight-year saga regarding Chinese control of the port.^[18]

 So given that Trump is an idiot, who would be surprised if he next tries telling the Australian government it has to end that lease, or else tariffs will be imposed?

 

Maybe a "reply all" issue...

As we can all agree the Trump administration is going about as appallingly as expected (I knew, before he did his press conference, that he would try to bring in DEI as a reason for a plane crash, with no evidence whatsoever), I am instead avoiding posting about him as he is too awful to contemplate.

Instead, this story is half amusing:

A local health district in New South Wales has apologised after an administrator accidentally sent an email to junior doctors calling them a “workforce of clinical marshmellows [sic]”.

The email, seen by Guardian Australia, was sent by a medical administration manager at a hospital who appears to be complaining about a doctor’s response to a rostering issue.

The misfired message starts: “Seriously!

“I wonder if any of them realise that they are a doctor and that this is what happens. Oh that’s right … I forgot. Life style [sic] before career,” the message continued.

“God help us in the future. We are going to have a workforce of clinical marshmellows!”

The union representing doctors, the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation (Asmof), called the message “tone-deaf” and “unacceptable”, particularly “when NSW is facing a healthcare workforce crisis”.

A spokesperson for the relevant local health district said: “Junior medical officers (JMOs) work hard and are a vital part of our health service, and we sincerely apologise for the hurt and frustration caused by a recent email that was circulated.

“We are committed to fostering a workplace where junior medical officers feel valued and respected. The email did not reflect this commitment or our values, and we have written to the relevant JMOs to apologise. The matter is being addressed appropriately,” they said.

When you read stories like this, it makes you wonder whether the issue is still the conservatism within the older members of a profession that leads to the attitude that because they coped with some ridiculous and dangerously long work hours when an intern, the youngsters should be able to cope with the same - or else they are too soft to be a good doctor.  That's a very bad attitude.