Ukraine: Wimbledon bans Russian players.
Taking sanctions to another level, and unfair to individual Russian players, it highlights how sanctions all have a degree of injustice and impact many innocent people. I have an upcoming exploration of this topic.
Elections.
Fortunately, the Macron is mightier than the Pen in France. A friend who is French assured me before the result that even citizens who vote for Le Pen in round 1 do so only as a signal of protest, and will not allow her to actually win, so will not support her in round 2. However, 41.45% percent of French citizens did vote for her in round 2. As a long time supporter of Putin, the potential consequences of a Le Pen victory for the world could have been dramatic.
In Australia, a country with two issues on the world stage:
- how to deal with being a pawn in China’s game for world domination
- the battle to govern on climate issues when the fossil fuel industry lobby is so effective
The main narrative to address these issues is to “prepare for war” (see below) with regard to China, and to largely ignore climate change.
Strangely, the closest any party has come to a breakthrough policy is the United Australia party. One one hand, if you have such random ideas, chances are you will eventually find one that is handled by competent hands would have potential, but it is also a sad indictment of the major political parties.
In the lead up to the election, the incumbent Coalition of “Liberal” and National parties, in recognition that people were feeling ‘pain’ from erosion of living standards, announced one-off payments and short term reduction of fuel taxes. This is like the doctor recognising you have a problem causing pain, and the only prescribing aspirin.
Yet the main opposition party, when questioned on why they support the measures through parliament despite their criticism, had no answer. The problem is they do not want to target a cure for the actual disease either. You would think they could have countered with “we are not saying don’t provide short term pain relief, just that a long term solution is also required”. They don’t say that, probably because they are not confident of a long term solution. All either is focused on is whatever it takes to win right now, with very little in long term plans.
Oh…with one exception on the long term plans. The defence minister announced Australia need to prepare for war, when the main plans are for defence capability seem based on new submarines:
Some experts suggest submarines constructed before the current 2040 deadline is possible, but only with bipartisan consensus and also an openness to constructing at least some of the fleet overseas
Doubts raised about Peter Dutton’s proposed submarine design plan
Either any war is quite some time in the future, or the plan is to ask combatants to wait until Australia is ready some time around 2040.
Tesla vs BYD and the Atto 3.
For lighter news. I spent some time looking at the rise of the giants of the electric car push, Tesla and BYD, and the impact of the giant of electric cars from China reaching the world stage. Bad news for the car industry in many countries, and worse news for fossil fuel industry. At least good news for the economies and the balance of payments of countries that are not major car makers or oil producers, as their reliance on foreign fuel sources will decrease. The worry is the exaggeration of the imbalance on where manufacturing takes place.
