Mary Anne Macleod

I live in the island from where Mary Anne Macleod set forth to seek a new existence in the New World. She did return here from time to time, worshipped in the church I attend each Sunday. Mary Anne later became mother to five children, one of whom is now the 47th President of the USA: Donald J. Trump.
We raise our children, and instil in them values we hold dear. When they have grown up, they go forth into the world and make a life for themselves to the best of their abilities. What they do with that upbringing is their responsibility.
People in the island of Lewis do not talk about Donald Trump. His behaviour is not the way things are done in the Western Isles, and are a disgrace to his heritage. His behaviour is not the fault of his late mother, he is responsible, as a man of nearly four score years, for his own actions. I never knew Mary Anne Macleod, she died five years before I came to live in Stornoway. I do know people who met her. When I stand at the gate at the bottom of Cross Street, a quiet back street in Stornoway, I glance over to the row of houses on Ford Terrace in Tong. To the demure dwellings in the village beyond. And wonder what she would have made of her son's career in politics. Isn't it the case that she warned never to let Domhnall Iain anywhere near politics?

Greenland

Looks like the son of 5A Tong has swept aside all the conventions, treaties and understandings that have kept Europe broadly safe and peaceful for the last 80 years or so. I'm not overlooking the war in the Balkans, nor the current invasion of Ukraine. 

After flouting the rule of law by forcibly removing the (admittedly unelected) president of a sovereign country, namely Venezuela's ruler Nicolas Maduro, the power has gone to the head of the US president. 

Taking a leaf out of the book, written by Vladimir Putin, he now seeks to grab what he wants, never mind that Greenland is a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, a close ally. He threatens all who verbally oppose his ambitions, and / or those that support Denmark and the Greenlanders in maintaining the status-quo. All the words of condemnation from various European leaders are just that: words. 

It looks that Donald Trump, like Putin, now only understands the rule of the bully, the rule of force. This could well spell the end of NATO, and expose us to the risk of an active threat from Russia. 

Trump turns 80 in June. His own mother once said: don't let Donald John anywhere near politics. How true Mary Anne Macleod's words now ring. 

 

NaBloPoMo 2025 - #23

 The war in Ukraine is moving towards its 4th anniversary next February. In 2022, the Russian Federation invaded the territory of its western neighbour, having already occupied the Crimea and areas of the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk since 2014 through proxies. Ukraine is resisting valiantly, but is inexorably, slowly losing terrain and men. As Russia invaded without provocation, any ceasefire that includes ceding territory to Russia by Ukraine would be unfair. However, that is exactly what Donald "Chamberlain" Trump is proposing. Let's not forget what preceded this war. 

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, assisted a secessionist movement in Abchazia, a rebellious province of Georgia (on the east coast of the Black Sea) in splitting off from Georgia. Apart from loud protests back in August 2008, no military consequences ensued. Putin occupied the Crimea, part of Ukraine, in March 2014, without any military consequences. Putin's forces allegedly shot down a civilian airliner over the east of Ukraine in July 2014, with the loss of 300 lives - without any retalitatory action. Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This time round, Ukraine's allies rallied round with supplies of military hardware and intelligence. When Donald Trump became US president in January, he started off by giving Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zhelensky a row in the White House. Trump likes strongmen, like North Korea's Kim Jong Un and Russia's Putin. And Putin manipulates Trump. 

We saw in the 1930s what happens when you try to pacify aggressors. "Peace for our time", Neville Chamberlain said in November 1938, upon adorning a piece of paper with some more ink in Munich. Adolf Hitler did not pay the slightest attention, but invaded Czechoslovakia the next year, followed by Poland in September 1939. Only then did we have a declaration of war from Britain and France. Had these allies stood up to Hitler upon his incursions into the Rhineland in 1936, for instance, war might have been averted. But we'll never know. 

We'll see what happens if Trump's peacedeal is adopted. 

 

Ending the war in Ukraine

I have a simple solution for the war in Ukraine. 

The Russians should remove themselves, lock, stock and smoking barrel, from all areas of Ukraine that they have occupied since 2014. Specifically, since their illegal invasion in February 2022. 

I am aghast though not surprised that this has not presented himself to that overboiled porridge Donald Trump (what consistency does overboiled porridge have - right?), and the rest of what calls themselves "world leaders" just crawling up his backside. 

All the Ruskies have to do is get the heck out of Dodge, pay for the reparations and sit in the corner and be very quiet. 

Likelihood? Ice appearing in hell.

Tariffs, reimports and Trump

 So American companies outsourced their manufacturing to low-wage countries, like China, Vietnam (and South Georgia?), who would do the dirty work for next to nothing. 

Then, the goods would be imported into the USA for those companies, who would proceed to make dirty big profits off the backs of what is almost slave labourers. 

And now Trump (and I'll omit the adjectives I have in mind) slams tariffs of close on 50% on those countries. He is shooting himself in the foot to such an extent that he hasn't got a leg left to stand on. 

If Trump wants manufacturing to go back to the USA, fine. But it'll be a darn sight more expensive than having it done in the sweatshops of Hanoi and Beijing.

Violence on Capitol Hill

I am profoundly perturbed by the scenes in DC last night. I am distressed at the death of demonstrators at Capitol Hill, irrespective of what they were doing there. Donald Trump is responsible for all of that and has disgraced the office of US President. It doesn't matter that he is Republican and that Biden's a Democrat. Incitement to civic unrest and violence, to violating the democratic institutions of his own country would lead to arrest of anybody else. He has done the USA a terrible service, and has defiled his own positive achievements over the past 4 years.

Ingesting bleach

As part of my university course in the 1980s, I was taught modules on toxicology. You know, learn about poisons. We all have dangerous substances in our homes, and bleach is probably one of the nastier ones. To suggest that a corrosive substance like a solution of sodium hypochlorite be injected into the human body, or even better, inhaled into the lungs for the purposes of eradicating coronavirus is irresponsible. However, this level of stupidity is about par for the course for Donald John Trump, who exhorted this lunacy after dining with the manufacturers of a certain brand of disinfectant. It is bad enough to publicly endorse one of the less friendly medicines in the pharmacopoeia (hydroxychloroquine) as a miracle cure for coronavirus - people have died following that suggestion. To ingest bleach is almost suicidal. Do you want to know how many children are maimed and killed after ingesting household bleach after drinking from those brightly coloured bottles in mummy's kitchen cupboard?

Trump's roots

A man passed away in the village of Tong this week. You may have seen him on tv some 11 years ago. It was to his humble abode that Donald John Trump came to visit. It was his humble abode that, some 100 years previous, was the birthplace of Mary Ann Macleod. After emigrating to the US and marrying Fred Trump, she had several children, including Donald John. 70 years later, he became president of the USA. The man who was laid to rest in the cemetery at Gress today was the first cousin of president Trump - and asked people to not speak of his cousin.

I wonder if president Trump is aware of the death of this close relative, and if he has ever been the few miles up the road from Tong, into the Gress Cemetery. To pay homage to his maternal grandparents, humble, honest crofters, eking out a meagre living on the shores of the Cockle Ebb, where they would end their days. They now also rest at Gress.

NaBloPoMo - day 09

Kristallnacht. Have the lessons from history been learned? No.

I glance across to Trump's America and can see the spectre of discrimination, victimisation, scape-goating and blame laying rearing its ugly head again. Once more, like in post (WW1) war Germany, problems have been left unaddressed, and a populist leader has stood up to NOT address them. Previous presidents, all the way to Obama, have not properly tackled the issue of immigration - although the USA is built on immigration. Unfettered migration from Latin America has bred resentment, hatred and contempt.

Donald Trump provides the easy solution of the loud mouth. Build a wall. Thought we in Europe had torn down our walls. I don't see one appearing all the way from San Diego to Brownsville, do you? And it won't solve the problem. Targeting a stream of a few thousand migrants, walking all the way from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to the United States, branding them as terrorists, an invasion, is redolent of pre-war Germany. The US army is going to be deployed near the border to stem the tide. A very popular measure.

But there is more wrong with Donald Trump that bears echoes of the Germany of the 1930s. Fake news. It does exist, and I don't need Donald J. Trump to tell me that. The Russians, amongst others, are artmasters at it. But what Mr Trump brands as fake news is actually fact that displeases him and his agenda. He targets the messengers for their message, for exposing the failings in his policies. He seeks to silence the checks and balances that are in place precisely to keep someone like Trump in order. The investigation into Russian collusion, interference with the 2016 presidential election is in jeopardy, following the forced resignation of the Attorney General earlier this week. He was replaced by a Trumpite, critical of the Mueller inquiry.

What I find remarkable is the support that Donald Trump manages to rally around him, wherever he goes. His message resonates with a good section of American society - meaning that a problem exists in American society that is not, or has not, been properly addressed.

Make America great again, was Donald Trump's slogan in 2016.
Putin promises to make Russia great again, after the humiliation of the fall of communism.
Hitler promised to make Germany great again, after being humiliated during the Great War.

I am ending this post with the flame that I have posted on my Kristallnacht commemorations for the last twelve years.

NaBloPoMo - day 08

I have nothing more to say about Donald Trump. The man manages to plumb ever greater depths, but continues to carry a huge appeal to sections of American society. Why? Because there are problems in the US that previous presidents have failed to address.

That is a signal for danger ahead. Winding the clock back to the 1920s and 1930s, when there were huge problems in post-war Germany. Finding the messiah (undercase intentional) that would solve and dispel all problems involved Adolf Hitler becoming the leader. The German word is Führer, by the way. The best way to avoid solving problems is to find somebody to blame.

Hitler's scapegoat: the Jews.

I'll have more to write about this in tomorrow's posting, for November 9th, the 80th anniversary of the Reichskristallnacht.