Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

This secret two hour meeting between Trump and Putin is clearly one of the most important events of recent times (although it might be entirely insignificant, one can never tell with these two gents). However what interests me, and should interest you, is the 'careful ignoral' being displayed by the world's media to one aspect of the meeting. What is it?

[Ishmael]

No idea.

[Mick Harper]

Well, ask yourself how it is different to an ordinary two-hour meeting between the leaders of America and Russia.

[Ishmael]

I wasn't aware it was different.

I'm sorry but I no longer watch the news. It's all CIA propaganda.

[Mick Harper]

Off you go then.

[Hatty]

There were four people in this meeting. No-one seems to take much interest in the two 'interpreters' though.

[Mick Harper]

Why should they?

[Grant]

Surely the amazing thing about it is that he chose to have the meeting despite the massive propaganda about him being a Russian agent.
This means that
- he must be confident there is no evidence against him
- he really is getting ready to strike against the Swamp

[Mick Harper]

This has been reported by gazillions of people (why even you noticed it!). We are looking for what hasn't been.

[Mick Harper]

So, why the mano a mano? Usually a two-up summit discussion consists of
the two principals
two (often more) senior advisers
two note takers
two interpreters
one or more protocol expert/major domo/dogsbody etc
It’s quite a crowded room. Numbers might be curtailed to give an air of informal cosiness but the central point of these things is that both sides must have a check on what was said.

Leaders ignore these things at their peril. One famous example was (President) Harry Truman meeting (Generalissimo) Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island in 1950. Truman thought it was an informal clear-the-air chat to discuss how the Korean War was going. MacArthur decided otherwise and that various substantive things had been agreed -- things that he wanted to do. Since they were alone, who could say different?

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[Mick Harper]

Two reasons have been advanced as to why Trump insisted on a private one-on-one:
1. As a businessman he is comfortable with direct across the desk negotiations
2. As Putin has got something on him he was anxious to ensure privacy while he discussed what concessions America would have to make to keep the FSB off his back.

It is this second that gives rise to the careful ignoral. There was no privacy! There were two translators present. The Russian one wouldn’t be a problem but the American one is, at the very least, subject to a summons from the House Let’s Get Trump Committee that will be set up after the mid-terms. So it is reasonably vital to find out whether this obscure functionary was plucked from the State Department’s interpreters’ pool or whether he is a bought-and-paid-for hack from the Trump Organisation.

But nobody has thought to ask.

[Mick Harper]

This brouhaha about anti-semitism in the Labour Party has many lessons for AE-ists. The most obvious is that (British) Jews are their own worse enemy. Nobody had even thought about anti-semitism for years, now there are sixty million of us thinking. “I wonder what that lot are getting up to.” I’d better tell you.

Jews are an interest group like any other. Not a chosen interest group (because of the Holocaust) that is just a typical interest group argument. If they want to engage in public discourse they’ll have to take their licks like everyone else. And they are a ‘they’ – the shrill objection that you must not generalise is just a typical interest group argument.

So what’s it all about? Israel. The Labour Party has a large wedge of old-time Palestinian groupies hostile to Israel. This had never been significant before because they are all out on the lefty loonie fringe. The Labour Party also has a large wedge of Jews, mostly (very) non-practising, mostly hostile to Israeli foreign policy though not hostile to the State of Israel itself. Well, you can see what happened....

[Grant]

[Mick Harper]

But it was. It was said in the presence of a State Department civil servant.

[Ishmael]