RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/11/27/donald-trump-right-can-choose-either-europe-us-not/

Ever since Theresa May’s ill-fated decision to call an election and the consequent loss of her majority, very little has gone right for Britain’s beleaguered prime minister. Having finally got Brussels to agree some sort of a withdrawal deal, it now seems overwhelmingly likely that her own parliament will brutally vote it down.

As is often the way with middle course strategies, her deal has ended up offending almost everyone. The country, and parliament, are too divided, too entrenched and immovable in their views, to allow for compromise. Remorselessly, apparently irredeemably, we are drifting towards the mother of all political crises, perhaps the biggest of many of our lifetimes. May’s only hope is that Brussels comes to her rescue, and offers sufficient in the way of concessions – say allowing the UK unilaterally to withdraw from the customs backstop – to get her over the line. But it is an increasingly forlorn prospect.

As if things were not bad enough, along comes Donald Trump to deliver, as is his way, the final coup de grâce, insisting in effect that Mrs May’s deal would be incompatible with a meaningful US free trade agreement. Since free trade deals with other parts of the world were meant to be the big economic dividend from Brexit, this is something of a blow.

But it was also only a statement of the bleedin’ obvious; the closer you are to one trading bloc, the less easy it is to strike a deal with another, and that’s precisely the dilemma that Mrs May’s deal has highlighted. By trying to stay close to Europe, she makes it very hard to be close to America at the same time.

Trade was always as much about geopolitical power and heft as the Ricardo-esque textbook ideal of mutually beneficial commercial interaction and progress. We’d like it to be the latter; but the way of the world is the former. Mr Trump has laid this harsh reality bare, demolishing some of the wilder fantasies about “Global Britain”, free to trade as it likes with the rest of the world once released from its European shackles. What Trump is saying is that you can have a deep and meaningful trading relationship with either the US or Europe, but not both; it’s us or them.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/11/pushing-shoving-south-china-sea/

Warships pushing and shoving in the South China Sea might be nothing to worry about in the short term, but what implications do such incidents have for the area, including countries further abroad such as Australia?

Aggressive naval manoeuvring between the warships of nations who don’t like each other is nothing new. A standard tactic is to deliberately plot a collision course, and then, if you’re the aggressor, change speed or course by a few knots or degrees and just miss your opponent. Crossing his bow then dumping garbage over the stern of your ship so he has to steam through it is another one.

These doings might seem silly but they have a method in their madness. Forcing your opponent to back down is pushing him onto the back foot, as boxers say. Warfare is won by aggression, something warriors learn in the Principles of War. And being a successful aggressor heightens morale on your side, another imperative if you want to win.

The recent shoving between the US destroyer Decatur and the Chinese Luyang-class destroyer Lanzhou was not nearly as fraught as it might have been. These manoeuvres can quickly escalate—if both nations want them to—to fire-control radars “lighting up” their target; missiles and guns being trained towards the potential enemy, and in the more physical sense, one vessel refusing to back down from contact. Having your ship “T-boned” might involve costly damage, injuries, even loss of life, but it shows your ship, and by implication your nation, is not in a mood to back down.

It needs to be understood, though, that such aggressive manoeuvring is almost always done with the full knowledge of the senior command of the navies involved, and from there the political structure above them.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272041/dodging-very-long-vacation-dubai-bruce-bawer

Quick quiz. What do these universities have in common: New York University, London Business School, Michigan State University, Middlesex University, Murdoch University (Australia), Heriot-Watt University (Scotland), the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Birmingham, the University of Bradford, the University of Exeter, the University of South Wales, City University London, and the University of West London?

Answer: they all have branches in the United Arab Emirates. This is a perfect set-up for the petroleum millionaires of the Persian Gulf, who want their sons to have American or British degrees but who may not want them to be exposed to the haram aspects of life in the U.S. or U.K. It’s thus also a perfect set-up for the universities themselves, because these oil sheikhs can afford whatever price these universities charge them to educate their little darlings.

A few decades ago, the idea of establishing branches of Western universities in a country like the UAE would be considered ethically problematic. No free speech, no free press, no due process, and all that. Premarital sex and the drinking of alcohol are punishable by flogging. The penalty for adultery and apostasy is death by stoning.

Fortunately for the American and British universities in question, these drawbacks are more than balanced out by the huge piles of cash that are in it for them. In any event, as you know, it’s politically incorrect – Islamophobic, in fact – to get too worked up about sharia law. And nowhere are people more determined not to be politically incorrect or Islamophobic than at your typical American or British university.