The German leader stepped all over Ramaphosa’s  careful explanation of why South African abstained in a United Nations General Assembly vote condemning Russian aggression.

Ramaphosa carefully added that his German counterpart had understood South Africa’s wish for negotiation, dialogue and engagement to end what hecalled “the conflict”, carefully avoiding taking any sides.

“I don’t see any other way,” said Ramaphosa.

“Sanctions against apartheid were different to the sanctions imposed on Russia.

“What really ended apartheid was negotiation.

“Our position will be to end the conflict through negotiation and Chancellor Scholz understands that.”

Without hesitation Scholz countered: “We agree that the war in Ukraine is a war of aggression by Russia to conquer territory that does not belong to it.

“Ukraine must be give the ability to defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

“There must be no new delimitation of the Ukraine border,” he said, adding for his host’s benefit that the Kenya’s  President Uhuru Keyatta had acknowledged this at the United Nations.

“We are giving financial support and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine along with other European countries

.” said Scholz

“Ukraine must be able to defend itself and this is why we though sanctions against Russia are necessary.

“We discussed South Africa’s action in the UNGA and how this differs from Germany’s position .

“We are doing our utmost  to stop the war and get Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine.

“We want to see the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and integrity.

“We also discussed the global implications of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.  Many countries in Asia, Africa and America are affected.”

Scholz confirmed Germany was supplying weapons, along with other countries, to enable Ukraine to defend itself and said he supported excluding Russia from the G20 summit and inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Scholz said Germany  intended stopping oil imports from Russia by the end of this year and also finding alternative LNG sources to those currently coming from Russia.

Germany intends having  a carbon neutral economy by 2045.

In this regard he and Ramaphosa will be visiting Sasolburg, south of Johannesburg later today for the launch of a green hydrogen project 

ends

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The practical issues of fighting the pandemic is best summed up in the assertion that no-one if safe until everyone is safe.

The moral issues, equally plain, have been more problematic as rich nations grab more of the vaccine than they need to save their faltering economies.

The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan  and the United States had a packed agenda preparing for next month’s G7 summit to be hosted in Britain.

In pre-meeting briefings they listed Russia, Myanmar and Iran ahead of COVID a.

Then members of the Indian delegation – invited as observers along with Australia, the Association of South East Asian Nations, the European Union, South Africa and South Korea- reported cases of COVID and were forced into self-isolation.

India and Brazil are responsible for the overwhelming majority of COVID cases as the pandemic goes into its third wave.

The media covering the deliberations at Lancaster House in London’s West End have eyes for nothing else.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown set the moral tone calling on the G7 to fund the global push for COVID vaccine.

Speaking as the UN Envoy for Global Education he called on the richest nations raise $60 billion over two years, saying inaction now would lead to greater global division.

“By our failure to extend vaccination more rapidly to every country, we are choosing who lives and who dies”, he warned. 

“And I say the world is already too deeply divided between rich and poor to allow a new unbridgeable divide to become entrenched between the world’s vaccinated who live, and the under-vaccinated who are at risk of dying.” 

Brown asserted that mass global vaccination is not an act of charity, but “the best insurance policy for the world”.  Though costing billions now, the result will be “trillions of additional economic output, made possible when trade resumes in a COVID-free world.” 

Brown will be remembered as the British premier who hosted the G20 summit in 2009, where the world’s major economies committed an additional $1.1 trillion to address the fallout from the global financial crisis,  

World Health Organization  chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thanked Brown for his call to the world’s economic and political leaders. 

“The G7 are also home to many of the world’s vaccine producers. We will only solve the vaccine crisis with the leaders of these countries”, he said.

For those of a more cynical or dubious bent, a poll by the People’s Vaccine Alliance shows that70 percent of G7 citizens believe their governments should ensured pharmaceutical companies share the formulas and technology of their vaccines.

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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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Happily Tik Tok is providing mine.

Yes, yes, I know it is designed for younger consumers.

But it is not the content that provides my chortle.

It is the belief by the orange-tinted US Presidential candidate DonaldTrump that he can force ByteDance, the owner to sell Tik Tok to an American buyer.

Not only that, but that he can slice a percentage off the top of the transaction and claim it is for the public purse.

What is funny about that, you ask?

Well the premise is ridiculous.

Trump’s submission thatTtik Tok poses a danger to US security is reportedly based on intelligence from the US military and security establishment.

Get it?

Those are the very people warning that Russia is interfering in the US election to secure Trump’s re-election.

They are also the people whose information that Russia has paid bonuses to Afghan militia to kill US soldiers has been pooh poohed by the President.

If this potentially disastrous double standard doesn’t exactly have you rolling in the aisles, how about the President’s misreading of the international game.

He tells reporters last week that they are talking too much about Russia and that he’s like to hear more about China from them.

If the media can help him understand that China is much more than a target for cheap shots at his unhealthy election rallies , it would be doing the U.S. a great service.

Trump plainly does not understand the strength of China nor does he grasp its penchant for playing the long game.

When President Richard Nixon made his ice-breaking visit to Beijing he asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai of his assessment of the French Revolution.

“Too early to say,” was Zhou famous reply, illustrating the depth of Chinese patience.

It is subsequently emerged that Zhou may have thought Nixon was talking about the 1968 worker/student uprising in Paris rather than the 1787 storming of the Bastille.

But it’s all part of the fun.

 If you don’t believe me, ask Microsoft, Oracle and Walmart whose shares took an upward trajectory when they became part of the Tik Tok acquisition game.

The cold reality for those chasing the Chinese social network for user generated videos the world over is that the forced sale simply is not going to happen.

Chinese is not going to allow this asset to get lost because of a temper tantrum thrown by a man who realizing he is not going to be around much longer. 

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There should 47 Presidents involved in the virtual fest. But Mali’s Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta who was deposed in a military coup last week, remains in detention.

The WHO’s Africa region doesn’t include North Africa. However, there has not been a case of wild polio there  since  2004 so WHO Africa director Matshidiso Moeti correctly declares the entire continent free of the disease that used to paralyze 75 000 children a year.

That leaves only Afghanistan and Pakistan as the only countries on the the planet still reporting polio cases.

Vaccines are very much front and centre of public consciousness with the race to find one against COVID 19.

The politicians are taking the lead in this battle with Donald Trump maintaining a COVID 19 vaccine could still arrive in time for the November 3 U.S. Presidential election he is desperate to win.

Both China and Russia maintain they have actually produced a vaccine but there is no rush by the public to avail themselves of such poorly tested measures.

The scientists  maintain that COVID 19 will be with us for some time, even after a reliable vaccine is produced.

So far in medical history, smallpox is the only infectious disease to have been eradicated by vaccine. That was 40 years ago.

Rinderpest, spread among animals, is the other.

The World Health Organization lists 17 vaccines against dangerous and deadly diseases.

The polio eradication efforts led by Gates and Dangote began almost three decades ago and failed to meet its millennium target.

A 2003 boycott of the vaccination programme in Nigeria led to the disease spreading to 20 other countries in the next five years.

The eradication programme looked like it had succeeded in 2015 but four new cases were reported in 2016.

The Nigerian problem was focused on Borno State where the Islamist terror group Boko Haram prevented medical access to the population.

The authorities used the army to back up vaccination teams that used guerrilla tactics to get their job done.

They moved into areas made safe, even for a few days, and vaccinated children accompanying their parents to markets.

The children immunized in this way passed this on to their peers through drinking water.

Unfortunately some of the vaccine viruses muted and spread to villages where immunization was not total.

That strain is much less virulent – one in 200 cases results in paralysis.

In 2018, 68 children were infected. This number increased to 320 last year.

The WHO fears that this number may increase because of the COVID 19 lockdown preventing access by polio vaccination teams.

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Hopes of become an international energy player have been delayed at least five years as Exxon Mobil put the hold on investing in the vast resource beneath Cabo Delgado.

Exxon Mobil made an intermediate decision last year to invest in the exploitation of liquid petroleum gas in Mozambique.

According to Mozambique analyst Jo Hanlon that was for the benefit of President Felipe Nysui’s election campaign.

Now the real ink on the dotted line has been delayed five years, meaning production cannot start until 2030.

The depression caused by the COVID 19 pandemic has stalled investment everywhere.

Gas prices, which follow oil prices, halved between 2018 and 2019 and then halved again this year as Saudi Arabia and Russia boosted production to push U.S. shale out of the market.

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The world organization condemns what it calls the senseless damage of a most needed medical facility.

Libyan rebel leader Khalifa Haftar has broken the ceasefire he entered into to allow medical staff to fight the COVID 19 pandemic.

His forces shelled the Al Khadra General Hospital in Tripoli controlled by the UN-supported Government of National Accord.

UN Human Rights coordinator for Libya Yacoub El Hillo says the attack is a violation of international law.

Haftar, who has close ties with the United States intelligence community, is bent on seizing control of the capital. He has the support of Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. 

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He describes the pandemic as the common enemy and a threat to all mankind.

Antonio Guterres has instructed the UN Secretary General’s special envoys in every conflict zone to work for a global ceasefire.

This is ahead of a $2-billion appeal he’s making to stop the pandemic spreading into refugee camps caused by fighting around the world.

Libya is leading by example.

The UN-backed Government of National Accord and the Russian-backed rebels led by Khalifa Haftar have agreed to a ceasefire to allow the medics to fight CORONA 19

Guterres says he hopes the ceasefire will become immediate and permanent.

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This is the first such announcement since Ankara sent troops to back the Government of National Accord in Tripoli.

ends intro

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself announced the death of his soldiers in Libya, adding that there were Syrian National Army troops alongside them reinforcing a military co-operation  treaty signed between Turkey and Libya.

Last months Berlin summit that agreed hostilities should stop on Libya so that the political peace process  could take place has evidently broken down.

Rebel leader Khalifa Haftar, backed by Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, claims to have killed at least 16 Turkish troops as he defends advances his forces have made in capturing Tripoli.

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He tells them it’s happening at a challenging time for the country, the continent and world.

President Cyril Ramaphosa takes a swipe at Russia and Turkey, without naming them, for having ulterior motives in getting involved in Libya.

South Africa will look carefully at this as chair of the African Union and a revolving member of the UN Security Council.

Ramaphosa says advancing peace and security is priority for the South African chairmanship of the AU as the continental body seeks to silence the guns in 2020.

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