We were concentrating on who would be getting in the next round and discussing the many ailments that runners tend to prattle on about.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg would not be entirely wrong saying our preoccupation with our below average athleticism at the expense of the United States reasserting its role as climate change leader after ex President Donald Trump reneged on the 2015 Paris Climate Change Accord is a sad reflection of a generation that does not care.

Actually as long as one is talking about reducing carbon emissions it is hard to be wrong.

President Biden told the dozens of world leaders remotely gathered for the two-day summit that the US will reduce these emissions by 52% by 2030. This will be measured against the peak level of 2005.

Canada and Japan also promised to reduce carbon emission levels by more than they pledged in Paris.

All this is leading up the summit in Scotland later this year where 200 countries will have report whether or not they have me their Paris commitments.

I have spent much of my more than half century in journalism covering such lofty multilateral gatherings ranging from nuclear disarmament, to destroying apartheid to saving the environment.

They get an enormous amount of ink, airwave and television time.

The delegates comfortably ensconced in the host nation’s best hotels battle through a maze of rhetoric until they  infallibly work through the final night of the conference to reach a triumphal agreement.

It is all words though.

Back to my running club.

We speak every week about ratcheting up the training miles and pushing the chairs away from the table earlier to achieve leaner and faster physiques.

These promises and resolutions are remarkably similar to what the Washington  climate summit delivered.

They sound brave and promising.

But until they are accompanied by legislation and implementation on climate change  and diet and exercise by my fellow runners, they don’t even get off the start line.

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There had to be consequences for inciting the deadly attack on the Capitol that left five people, including a police officer, dead.

Sweeping up the mob is far more serious that the abuse of power that got Trump impeached last year.

He learned nothing from that.

He is using the same vocabulary to defend his actions both times. “Totally appropriate.”

A strong indication that he was away with the fairies then and he is even more dangerously so now.

At least a dozen, possibly two, Republicans agree with this although not all had the courage to support impeachment. 

They recognize that Trump is unhinged and dangerous and realize that his political base they once held in ane actually poses an existential danger to the constitution and democracy they are sworn to defend.

The FBI has assured us they will track down the thugs who trashed the legislature. 

We hope they can use their self-declared long memory and long reach to good effect and that the the courts will make examples of these people who trashed the home of American democracy because they did not like the ruling of the Supreme Court, loaded with Trump appointees, that the election of Joe Biden as President was not rigged.

And, most significantly, because Trump egged them on.

He is, as the third highest ranking Republican in Congress Liz Cheney, at the very centre of the outrage.

Who else is to blame?

Clearly those Republican congressmen and women who perpetuated Trump’s lie about the rigged election, knowing full well that doing so is worse than disingenuous, it is dangerous.

We would like to see them and officials like Rudi Giuliani who urged the angry mod to conduct “ trial by combat” pursued to the full extent of the law.

Leaving their fates to the tender mercies of the electorate seems risky to me given the electorate’s proven ability to make terrible choices.

After five decades in this business, I am accustomed  to blame being heaped on the media.

That is now an entirely new arena. Where once there were tens of thousands of journalists to hold accountable, social media, which gave the Trump scorpion wings,  has turned millions of people into reporters.

Reporters able freely to give vent to their ill-formed opinions and  to megaphone known calumnies So not journalists.

This does not exonerate the media.

We find ourselves with feet firmly planted in  mid air between two stools.

The removal of the principle of fairness in the United States more than three decades ago allowed the establishment of avowedly partisan news outlets that are not required to provide either balance or fairness.

They are unashamedly propaganda outlets.

Those newspapers that clung to their old values – like the New York Times – ended up providing the whole picture which required reporting Trump’s lies.

For their pains they were insulted and discredited by the narcissist they provided with a constant supply of the oxygen of publicity.

The best way of dealing with a shameless and pathological bullying liar like Trump is either to laugh at him or ignore him.

The conventional media believes it would be doing a disservice to its readers/viewers/listeners by taking such a cavalier approach.

The result is every piece of Trump craziness or dishonesty was accurately covered by the conventional media while being treated as gospel by the fawning Trump media.

He could not have dreamed for more.

Trump is much diminished by his disappearance from so-called big tech.

Being denied access to Twitter, Facebook and You Tube has meant he cannot fulminate to millions without the push back that occurs at press conferences.

Trumpublicans and the Orange Man himself complain of censorship.

It is nothing of the sort.

The social media outlets that block him have made a commercial decision rather than an editorial call.

They have decided that dealing with Trump is bad for business – rather like having a noisy drunk man come into a restaurant and spoil dinner for other patrons.

The best thing is to get rid of him.

Happily more and more legislators are seeing this too.

Ironically it is in the Republicans interest to take punitive action that would prevent Trump from standing for office.

If he were to run again, it would certainly not be as candidate of the GOP.

So it would have to be in a new guise that would split the right of centre vote and guarantee another win for the Democrats.

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Donald Trump’s claim to have brokered the deal is made all the more ridiculous by the well-know reality that Tel Aviv and Rabat have secretive military relations dating back decades – to the time they were both in league with the apartheid regime.

In those Cold War days Morocco was being armed by Pretoria and Israel cooperated with apartheid South Africa in developing a nuclear weapon.

Both countries justifiably feel deep shame about this now and speak of it either with reluctance or try to deny it.

The surprise in yesterday’s announcement by President Trump is his recognizing what he calls Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.

This amounts to him flying in the face on international condemnation of Morocco’s 1995 invasion of the former Spanish territory and its illegal occupation of it since then.

Britain, America’s permanent Western partner on the United Nations Security Council, who joined in scolding Morocco 45 year ago, hastened today to stress that its position on Western Sahara has not changed.

It is holding Morocco to its promise to hold a referendum on self-governance for the territory.

That was a condition of the 1991 ceasefire ending Morocco’s 16 year war with Polisario, the Western Sahara liberation movement.

The African Union also hastened to emphasize that Western Sahara is a founder member of the continental grouping having been admitted to its predecessor the Organization of African Unity.

Morocco stormed out of the OAU when this happened and shunned Africa until it recently joined the AU as a fellow member with the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic.

King Mohammed VI, Morocco’s absolute ruler, has clearly opted once again to turn his country’s back on Africa to take up with Israel and the lame duck Trump administration in the United States.

It remains to be seen whether President Joe Biden will persist with the maverick position on Morocco which is at odds with international opinion.

The ruling African national Congress in South Africa which currently occupies the  chair of the African Union says: “It is regrettable that outgoing President Trump in his last days in office tries to cement his legacy of reactionary foreign policies, that does not contribute to peaceful resolutions of conflict in  the world, but in fact fuels hatred and conflict.”

It “calls on all international and progressive forces on the continent and in the world to condemn this deal and continue to work for the implementation of UN and AU resolutions.”

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Not surprisingly France’s President Emmanuel Macron was among the first world leaders to congratulate Joe Biden on winning the US Presidency.

Paris and Washington have a crowded schedule of business, starting with Biden bringing the United State back into the climate change agreement signed  in the French capital four years ago.

Biden will be an extremely welcome participant at the climate summit in Scotland.

France continues to control the file on this make-or-break issue for the world.

Running close behind welcoming America’s more prominent green agenda , France is looking for increased US support for the initiative to fight Islamist jihadis in the that strip of land between North Africa and the Sahara Desert known as the Sahel.

President Donald Trump has effectively told Macron that this French-led initiative is to Paris’ account.

Washington’s has given $8,5 million to Chad to help it counter ISIS terrorism.

This pales next to the boots on the ground and cash contributed to the G5 comprising Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania.

The group was set up in 2014 when Mauritania held the AU presidency.

It has been underpinned by two resolution of the United Nations Security Council.

The world organization has committed 10 000 troops to its anti terror group in the region known as MINUSMA.

France has put its muscle where its mouth is with 3 000 troops from Operation Barkhane .

France stepped into drive out the Islamists who took advantage of a 2012  coup in Mali.

Things have become vary complicated since then and France could do with help form a fellow permanent Western member of the UN powerhouse.

Ibrahim Boubakar Keita, installed in 2012, was unseated in another coup last August which led to Bah Ndaw becoming become the interim president.

Further confusing things, Amadou Toumani Tourè, who led Mali for a decade during which he introduced democratic reforms before he deposed in the 2012 putsch, died in Turkey this week.

It will be impressed on Biden that Germany has provided 900 troops to the Sahel operation and the European Union  has chipped in 50million euros.

Even the cash-strapped African Union has contributed $3 million.

The world is waiting on the new administration in Washington.

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Certainly the way some frightened senior GOP members are running scared makes it appear that he has.

The question is are they quaking in their boots for fear of what Trump might do to them or are they terrified of the dangerously militant base that unquestioningly swallows everything he says

By becoming US President in 2016, Trump silenced those within its ranks protesting that that the pathological liar and tax dodger posed an existential threat to Abraham Lincoln’s party.

The election map shows much has been proven true.

Donald Trump has lost the presidency, plain and simple.

There is no escaping this reality but his sociopathic condition will not allow him to acknowledge defeat.

So he is looking for a path out of the White House that does not look like losing.

He does not care a jot what damage this is doing to American democracy.

Some analysts say Trump has attained king-making powers that enable him to boost or destroy the careers and aspirations of Republican politicians.

There is an increasing likelihood that his path to defeat in 2020 is being  made more palatable by his contesting the 2024 election.

What use is a king-maker who is determined to retain is crown?

My bet is the Republicans prepared to sacrifice their credibility are actually fearful of upsetting not Trump himself but the dangerous Trump base.

That might account for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo telling a news briefing about a re-elected Donald Trump.

It does not explain why the press corp did not simply burst out laughing and leave the room when he said it.

Being obliged to paint a balanced  picture or to actually sympathize with  a frightened Pompeo does not require one to be played for a fool.

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Pfizer the American drug maker and its German partner BioNTech report that their COVID 19 vaccine is 90% effective.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla calls this a game changer.

Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases – who is probably the most trusted doctor in America – says this extraordinarily good news.

We know that people who had shots of the vaccine three weeks apart showed a 90% rate of immunity over those taking the placebo.

Doctors were saying the best they could hope for was 60%-70% effectiveness.

According to Food and Drug Administration guidelines, Pfizer has not filed for emergency use for two months after the test to be sure of the vaccine’s safety.

This means the vaccine should be available in the third week of this month.

Bourla says there will be 50 million doses available globally by the end of this year.

At least 1,3 billion doses will be available in 2021.

It is not yet clear if the vaccine will obviate severe cases of COVID that require hospitalisation and could result in death.

Neither is it certain whether persons vaccinated will not show symptoms of COVID.

Most importantly, Pfizer cannot say how long the vaccine will be effective for.

Nevertheless stock exchanges around the world are preparing for record breaking openings today as sectors like airlines tourism and others for which COVID was an existential threat begin to recover.

The old maxim is that good news comes in threes.

The vaccine is the second heartening item following Joe Biden’s decisive US Presidential election win last weekend.

Dare we hope that the third will be Donald Trump being persuaded by the growing band of family members urging him to face reality and make a dignified departure?

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Yes, his becoming the 46th President is probably the salvation of US democracy.

More importantly the departure of the most divisive president in American history allows us to return to what we prefer to be.  Donald Trump’s hate-filled, nasty four years left us with a quotidian search for spiteful things to say about him.

I did not like what being in such a toxic relationship did to me.

Growing up under apartheid, we were driven to attaching expletives to every characterisation of institutionalised racism.

It seemed to be the most effective way of expressing our outrage.

The late Nelson Mandela explained it for me.

In one of our conversations during filming his retirement film, he recalled how former US President George W Bush asked what he would like to drink.

“I told him, Cuban rum,” said Madiba.

“Sometimes you have to say things people don’t want to hear.”

No danger of this happening with Donald Trump. He doesn’t listen to anybody else.

Nevertheless it would have been a delight to see the former South African President put him in his place.

So now we have Joe Biden leading a crusade to return decency and normality to the nation leading the free world.

No more tolerance of official hate-speech, racism, sexism, religious bigotry or homophobia.

I don’t mean to add to the President-elect’s burden, but shouldn’t ageism become equally taboo.

I venture to say, this won’t happen until the grey panthers become as militant as the group’s fighting the aforementioned evils.

I was speaking to a recently-retired friend last week who told me how being pensioned off left her deeply depressed.

“But we have to make room for the next group,” said this woman who is still physically and professionally in the pink.

It brought to mind a Saudi Arabian professional woman some years ago trying to justify the ban on female drivers and other chauvinistic behaviours as an attempt by authorities to ensure the security of woman.

I am sure she would be mortified if I reminded her of this.

I have been around long enough to remember the apartheid regime sending articulate black collaborators abroad to explain why South Africa was not ready for majority rule.

Offensive? Intolerable? Certainly.

Why then accept references to Joe Biden as the oldest American President in history as though it were something bad?

Do I need to use an expletive to make my point?

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I was also deeply irritated to have a U.S. official point out that the result has been  accepted without any last-minute deals to keep the peace.

He was referring to seats given to the Inkatha Freedom Party to prevent bloodshed in KwaZulu/Natal 14 years earlier and to other post-election deals in Africa.

How the didactic have fallen!

A dozen years since the official’s irksome lecture we have the incumbent of the White House behaving exactly like a brazen African dictator.

Donald Trump has prematurely claimed victory and urged electoral officials to stop counting votes in states he  believes he is winning and to keep counting ballots where he fears he is losing.

Trump has gathered lawyers to keep the election results tied up in the courts.

He is hoping to be heard in the pinnacle tribunal to which he has appointed conservative justices hoping to get a sympathetic hearing.

He has taken a leaf from the African dictators’ handbook and deliberately left his compatriots wondering whether he will accept the election result.

Legal experts point out that in the unlikely event of  his case coming before the Supreme Court, the justices are painfully  aware that their credibility is at stake and  will make a decision on its merits.

They will not be swayed by loyalty to the man who put them there.

Trump’s single-minded pursuit of his self interest blinds him to long term damage he might be doing to American democracy.

A happier African example will come into play here if the Supreme Court behaves like the judiciary did in apartheid South Africa and saves the country from its cynical, selfish and misguided politicians.

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Surely in this age of social media that gossamer thin excuse has disappeared.

Some Germans might have claimed they did not know about the Nazi genocide until the Nuremberg trials painfully mapped them out.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission obliterated any ability South Africans might have had to profess ignorance of apartheid’s crimes against humanity.

No Moroccan with a smart phone or personal computer can pretend not to know about that country’s invasion, occupation and lethal repression of the neighbouring Saharawi people..

In all three cases the perpetrators of these outrages or their supporters not only knew exactly what was happening but they have the blood on their hands from backing it to the hilt.

Let us accept that over the years millions have been swept along by the wicked wind of history.

They are not exactly innocent. Just ignorant.

So we should give the benefit of the doubt to the Americans who accepted Donald Trump as President without knowing what he really was.

His conservative support base put him in the White House for the purpose of turning the tide of liberalism that has been washing over the the United States for more than half a century.

They were prepared to put him there despite his bullying, narcism.

They are planning to keep him there to continue that trend even though he represents everything they are taught not to be.

For this to happen, there has to be support, however unwitting, from middle America.

This came from people who either don’t vote for him or will later claim they were swept along by his anti-establishment image and didn’t know what he really represented..

Monday’s bombshell from the New York Times has made that impossible.

Donald Trump has not paid tax for 12 of the past 18 years.

He paid a paltry $750 in each of his first two years as US President. 

The average U.S.tax bill is about $12 000. Trump paid less tax than the undocumented workers he employed at his golf estates and resorts

How has he managed to do this?

For starters he is nowhere near as rich as he claims to be.

So the idea of the offensive, potty-mouthed braggart making himself acceptable because of his business skills is pure cant.

He has been bankrupt more times than he has had years in office.

And his business ventures continue to post millions in losses, despite his pouring into them money earned from his “Apprentice” television series.

These losses, together with some imaginative returns have allowed him to avoid paying taxes.

He claimed $70 000 for personal hairdressing.

He paid his daughter Ivanka $750 000 in consultation fees even though she is already on the family payroll.

That is called double dipping, I believe.

When Hillary Clinton pointed out during their 2016 debate that Trump has paid no taxes on some years, he interrupted her to declare: “That takes me smart!”

Does it? 

Are Americans prepared to pay their share and see their President dodge paying his?

The New York Times, brings up this blatant unfairness, and also points to a national security issue.

Trump owes close to $400 million dollars that will fall due during his second term, if indeed he is re-elected.

The potential embarrassment of having creditors foreclose on a sitting president notwithstanding, the most concerning thing is not knowing if they include foreign countries or individuals.

Trump’s son Eric has boasted that they don’t use American banks because they have  access to Russian funds.

What leverage does this give the Russians over the President?

An audience of 80 million people is expected for the  first debate.

Whether or not Joe Biden is able to capitalize on the bombshell revelations by the New York Times, the American people have been given the truth about the current occupant of the White House.

They will not be able to say we didn’t know.

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The message: never go into a fight under weaponized ,is indisputable.

Many of Joe Biden’s supporters fear he will be doing this when he meets Donald Trump in the Presidential campaign debates starting later this month.

In the one poll Biden is trailing, he is given a 41% chance of winning the debates. 

Donald Trump is expected to win by 47% of respondents.

Biden has rejected the suggestion that he give the debates a miss altogether.

This comes from supporters who say it is impossible to argue fairly against a pathological liar.

They point to Hillary Clinton who rose to almost every outrageous statement made by Trump in their 2016 encounters.

It was like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel.

So far, Joe Biden has avoided this. But is it an express tactic or simply his understated COVID 19 campaigning?

We will have to wait for Cleveland on September 29.

Trump has had a week turning the focus of the campaign away from his lethal failure to manage the COVID 19 pandemic onto the issue of law and order.

But he cannot expect this to last, given that 97% of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations he rails against have been peaceful.

Biden might have lanced the law and order boil early on had he used his formidable running mate.

Kamala Harris was attorney general of California, the world’s fifth largest economy.

She has a reputation for toughness that has repelled some Democrats.

Had she stepped in and reminded protestors that America is a nation of laws that will not tolerate violence, she would have countered Trump’s claims that the Democrats are soft on law and order.

This would probably not have convinced Trump’s hardline base.

But it would have impacted the middle ground that both he and Biden need to capture for victory on November 3.

The three debates between the presidential contenders and one involving the vice-presidential candidates Harris and Mike Pence will be among the most watched television  in America.

No fewer than 84 million people watched the 2016 clash between Trump and Clinton.

The authoritative Pew Centre revealed that only ten percent of viewers had not already made up their minds by  the time of the debate.

Things might be different this year because of the COVID 19 lockdown.

More people might need persuading.

For some the debates will be too late.

North Carolina has already started issuing postal ballots and aspirant postal voters in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan andVirginia will soon get theirs.

However one reads it, there is still everything to play for.

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