I did not sleep particularly well the evening before yesterday and so decided, in the middle pf the night, to have a look at some of the liberal media websites that are constantly examining the shenanigans in which Trump is engaged in the White House. One of the latest is being reported in the UK media but is not receiving the attention which it deserves. Many, if not most, of the 800 generals serving in military establishments in the USA and across the globe were summoned to a military academy. There we were informed that in the newly renamed Department of War (renamed from the Ministry of Defence) the military should focus their attention on ‘the enemy within’ who just happen to be the large cities in the USA which are under the controls of the Democrats. Trump told the assembled generals that they should now focus on large Democrat-controlled cities and these should now be used as ‘training grounds’ for the American military and is clearly aimed at intimidating and suppressing any Democrat votes on those cities. Ostensibly, the reason for the deployment of the military is to ‘fight crime’ but in the Trumpian view of the world, these cities have been invaded by people who wish to destroy America from within. At the same time, the American Secretary of State for War, as I suppose he is now called, vowed to eradicate what is perceived to be a ‘woke’ culture in the US military. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said he is ending woke culture and political correctness and that diversity and inclusion policies would be rowed back, with changes including ‘gender-neutral’ or ‘male-level’ fitness standards for everyone. He also hit out at ‘fat troops’ and said height and weight requirements would be brought in – as well as twice-yearly fitness tests. These harangues were received in a stony silence as, after all, the intelligent military chiefs well know the difference between serving their country and being used as a partisan political weapon which is as unconstitutional as it is possible to be. Trump himself was a well-known draft dodger and the American Defence secretary has the most limited of military experience and neither are at all respected for any of their military credentials. The meeting concluded with a stunned and stony silence which is not something to which Trump is at all used. He then informed his incredulous audience that it was up to them whether they applauded or whether they left the room. But if they were to leave the room, they would be automatically stripped of their rank and then dismissed! I imagine that the assembled military would try their utmost to avoid implementing these new policies but in the discussions that I followed on the TV, there are already reports that throughout the American military, individuals are being promoted (or even dismissed) on the basis of their political loyalty to Trump rather than their actual competence. Now you would have thought all of this would have been opposed in Congress but this is being actually closed down as I write as there is no agreement between Republicans or Democrats over the passage of two crucial bills. A Congress shut down is not a trivial thing as thousands of government employees are temporarily laid off and Government business and funds temporarily cease. Now to be too dramatic about this, individuals will die as they no longer receive the funds supplied through Medicare for life-saving drugs. All of this may receive an airing in the UK press in the fulness of time but like the troubles in France on which I commented yesterday, we in the UK are being very insular about events elsewhere that may well impact upon us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the morning, I had promised to take my Droitwich friend to Birmingham airport which I did. My friend had two enormous suitcases but assured me that each was below the regulation 23 kg but I am not so sure. We got to the airport in plenty of time with no holdups on the motorways. A really long journey was in prospect because my friend was flying first to Dohar in Qatar for a three-hour stopover and then on to Johannesburg and then on to Durban for which she is going to spend a couple of weeks with her family. I warned against ‘burning the candle at both ends’ because it is quite possible that she goes from relative to relative and has a succession of really late nights. I may get a text later on in the morning tomorrow telling me she has arrived but I think a good long sleep was in prospect, particularly as she had got up at 3.00am this morning with last minute packing to do. This afternoon after lunch, I checked over the legal documents that my son and I had worked on in the morning and then parcelled them up to get them into the post. I took the car down into town and then after dispatching my documents, I took the opportunity to buy a couple of reams of paper for the laser printer in my office. Although I try to keep my printing requirements down to the bare minimum, there are still occasions when I need a hard copy. Knowing that tomorrow is the day when our green bins (paper waste) get emptied, I spent some time in the afternoon going through a pile of ‘The Times’ to see if there are any things that I really feel the need to keep. Most typically, these articles are health related ones such as the double page spread of information giving tips and hints of how to maximise the response of your immune system to cope with the winter months ahead. It is fairly common knowledge by now that when children return to school in the autumn, they inadvertently help to activate respiratory and other viruses that had been dormant throughout the summer. These are then transmitted to older siblings, the rest of the family and so on into the wider population as a whole. Again, knowing it was bin day tomorrow, I made a quick excursion to remove some of the tallest and most unsightly weeds from the kerbs along our common roadway, so that these, too, could be removed in our brown (garden waste) bins. I think I will have an early night tonight and try and catch up on some of the sleep that I lost in a restless night last night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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