HISTORY LESSON: Recalling Australian desire to form a free trade-association with China. A decade before the decision by Tony Abbott, New Zealand agreed to a very good trade deal with China, with the New Zealand players noting...well, China is the biggest economic market place on earth, and we are a really small country, and we got a very good deal! Very true indeed. For that decade Australia was told by the USA not to have a free-trade agreement with China, or suffer the consequences of the USA not being our friend...thus the USA had the opportunity, and took it, to sell all the same kind of stuff we wanted to sell to China without having us as a competitor. It was only when, after that ten years, that President Xi noted in a public forum that China WOULD sign a free-trade agreement with Australia that same year, and then stuck a $30/ton tariff on Australian coal until we agreed it was a good idea...as soon as the tariff was imposed, the then PM Tony Abbott flew immediately to China, signed the deal, and said it was a great achievement, and we were the best of friends, whilst the US Secretary of State, at the time, Hilary, said we shouldn't have done it. It interfered with USA export profits to China. How was Australia a friend of the USA if also a competitor? The "Smart" Australian view was to basically 'ride two horses, with one foot on each'...unfortunately, they didn't notice that the horses were going in opposite directions. Not Smart, Australia. Best to have gone one way or the other, way back then. Too late now. 2020: Australia: Broke both legs....and no real friends.

As for the USA relaxing covid-19 restrictions, well, why not? See how they go. It's kind of like watching what happens in a petri-dish from a long way away. \Same with their gun laws...or lack of laws. If guns and disease make them happy, well, good. They don't need to ask anyone else's opinion, and they never do anyway. If it all means less Americans, the real world can cope with quite a few million less of them in a minute.

Trump is a poor leader. Yet he hasn't waged major war anywhere so is very unlike Obama, Bush, Clinton etc, going way back to that remarkable man Jimmy Carter. I'm not an American and I do see them as bizarre foreigners in an adolescent ridiculously powerful and greedy culture usually bent on attacking anyone they like...but always only countries that can't fight back. As for Trump, well, if he continues to pull troops out of Europe and Asia, well, that's great! As for being an effective leader within the USA, well, no, he is not good, he is quite bad, but, they elected him and thus deserve him. I expect he will win the election. I feel the same with the remarkable propensity for Americans to have and need guns. If they only kill their own people within their own borders, then, well, that's their own choice and that's their own business.

North Korea and South Korea remain the broken tectonic plate for the world. This remains the only place that one could have a war involving pretty well everyone. The geo-position of the 2 Koreas, between China, Russia, Japan, and the floating USA armada means it is the most sought-after real estate on Earth. This is North East Asia. This is the big time. Israel and Saudi and Palestine fall into profound insignificance in comparison. The religions of both South and North Korea are indeed fascinating. I will write more about both. North Korea is very difficult for the USA to invade, which is why they haven't done it. Any invasion would meet with a huge number of feisty Chinese PLA soldiers arriving first in Pyongyang, followed by Russian soldiers. Then the US would be third to arrive...and then a big face-off between the 3. Not pleasant. This geo-position means North Korea will remain independent for a long time to come. The current Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, educated in Switzerland, is in his thirties and surprisingly has survived in a very cut-throat system by being the 'most cut throating'. He is not positively healthy with a family disposition to diabetes and the cancers. Here is a picture of his sister, Kim Yo Jong, a serious and high ranking politician in the propaganda and agitation department, and his wife, in pink, Ri So Jul. It is believed that Kim Jong Un and his wife have 3 children.

As for coronavirus intelligent restrictions to value and save human life: I see the Americans are revolting. I said that the psyche of that nation can only deal with a two week crisis, then they just just go fucking crazy. Anything longer than 2 weeks and they are terrified...paranoid...vicious and aggressive, and start lashing out. An adolescent addicted-cult of a culture being lead, by their choice, by an infantile freak. No good will come of it.

Krakatoa Volcano Eruption - April, 11, 2020 Wow!

These are remarkable and unheard of Times. It will take awhile, months, before the impact sinks in, and the world of people won't be the same as it was in say December 2019. I wish us all the best and to find value and meaning in relationships with others, or peace in solitude, as either best suits us...perhaps time with others, and time alone. I guess the natural world will be slightly improved with less toxins around for awhile. What we might notice, and I have noticed just recently, is the general quietness of the world when a lot of people are removed from it. The incidental things, quiet journeys with hardly any traffic, quiet walks, quiet parks etc. More birdsong. The damn infernal noise of Melbourne City is greatly reduced in many cases and places. I've noticed that most colleagues are worried about their work wise fate, of course, as am I and my wife, and we expect the times will grow harder as we move into a cold winter here with both corona virus and flu virus needing us for them to live their virus lives. I don't have a lot of faith, well, I don't have any faith or trust at all in our Government, Federally, as I don't think the ideology of Conservatism is useful to humanity at this time, and I think those leaders are ill-equipped in thinking competence about what is best for the people. One just hopes that the arising need may force the Federal Government, belatedly, almost criminally belatedly, to do what is best for the whole, not just their protected friends and their ideologies. I expect they will need to be forced and beaten into Reason. This is the first time I've considered that this really is a new century with problems very much of its own making and solutions, if any, are quite some distance away in time.