President Xi Jinping gave a sinister warning to President Trump that would have gone way over his head and baffled his dwindling band of MAGA fanatics.
Xi mused whether the USA and China would avoid the Thucydides Trap, referring to the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, where a rising power challenged the existing hegemon and war ensued.
The last time this happened was the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. War was avoided when the Soviet Union collapsed suddenly, liberating countries imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was an attempt to reclaim lost pieces of the old Soviet Union. It still grinds on.
Was Xi warning Trump that he had better not interfere if China decides to take over Taiwan?
Trump fawned over Xi, breaking with protocol to meet him upon his arrival. He humiliated himself and the US and elevated China to an equal partner.
China still supplies vital support to Iran despite the disapproval of Trump and there is nothing he can do about it. The American Empire is dying before our eyes, as China waits in the wings.
The upcoming American midterms, if they occur, should prove a bloodbath for Republicans, according to polls, and they may lose control of the Senate too.
Trump will remain a flailing but highly dangerous leader. For example, Trump told the UN General Assembly (UNGA) ‘…do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell?’
The world knows the only way he could do that is to unleash the nuclear arsenal, starting World War III.
Some shrug their shoulders and declare ‘TACO is at it again’, with his fake threats, but cornered demented narcissists are capable of anything.
Hitler, desperate at losing the war, threw almost the entire German army into what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, a few months before committing suicide in his bunker.
Hitler’s generals meekly obeyed his disastrous orders. Would Trump’s generals obey his?
They have already consented to committing shocking war crimes- invading Iran, killing schoolchildren, assassinating ‘drug smugglers’ in their boats, invading Venezuela, blockading Cuba.
ICE agents commit crimes daily on the streets of America, killing and jailing innocent people and deporting them to countries they have never been to.
The American administration has supplied endless weapons and support to the extremist Netanyahu regime facilitating genocide and destruction of Gaza and done nothing to prevent further illegal occupation of Palestinian land on the West Bank.
Netanyahu was welcomed to the UNGA while the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and top Palestinian officials were denied visas for the second consecutive year. Abbas had to address the assembly remotely.
77 countries walked out or were absent from Netanyahu’s address, including Spain and Ireland, but not Australia.
A coalition of 12 countries has implemented sanctions and other measures targeting goods from illegal West Bank settlements and freezing assets. These include the UK, Canada and France, but not Australia. Why?
Whilst Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was welcomed on the world stage and his initiative on saving young people from social media harm is being taken up by other countries, his image at home was further damaged by that awful selfie he took with Donald Trump.
For many it reinforced the view that he is far too close to the rogue Trump administration. His kid glove treatment of war criminal Netanyahu also shows he is not reading the room back home. He needs to have a closer look at the polls to find out what average Australians are thinking and what they are concerned about.
His lack of adequate attention to bread-and-butter issues is also driving longtime Labor voters into the arms of the appalling Hanson.
The irony is she would make life so much worse for average Australians. Her naïve supporters seem oblivious to this. She would ape Trump’s cruel destructive policies, take us back to the coal age and introduce the Australian equivalent of ICE, seizing people off the street.
Out in the real world, away from the global stage of New York, people are fretting about rising fuel prices, another interest rate rise, sky-high rents and simply making ends meet.
Locally, in our Shire, deeply caring people are despairing about the failure of the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act to protect threatened species at Wallum. It’s likely that several coastal planigales, tiny marsupials vulnerable to extinction, were killed when the heathland was slashed the other day, as well as Wallum sedge frogs and Wallum froglets and many other creatures.
Wealthy developers win, nature loses, as usual. No wonder people are disillusioned with governments that don’t truly represent them and what they believe in.
♦ Richard Jones is a former NSW MLC, and is now a ceramist.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
