This is an outstanding article from the NYT, reporting on President Trump and President Putin’s first face to face meeting at the Hamburg G20 meeting.
Source: Trump Questions Putin on Election Meddling at Eagerly Awaited Encounter – The New York Times
Given recent tensions between the US and Russia, the two hour meeting went cautiously well – it was originally scheduled for a half an hour.
The NYT was careful to report in a balanced way, citing the alternative views emerging of the meeting. Here are some important threads:
- Mutual respect from Trump and Putin, which will form a basis for cautious future dealings – this has to be set against the rest of the Hamburg G20, where US isolationist and nationalist policies, are placing the US in disagreement with other members, in particular Europe.
- Trump raising Russian interference in the US election, Putin denying it and Trump accepting Putin’s word. Both sides were keen to deal with other matters
- A cautious cease-fire in the South East of Syria was a clear victory for the meeting
- But overall both leaders and their countries agreed to new dialogues on important areas like cyber attacks and Ukraine. The NYT suggested that President Putin was happy to play for longer term improvements.
The liberal NYT has been highly critical of Presidents Trump and Putin in the past but was even-handed in its reporting a of this historic meeting. It was significant that Trump highlighted that the evidence for Russia meddling in the US election was far from clear.
No doubt the world’s media will present more colourful accounts but the bottom line implicit in the NYT article was that given the disagreements this meeting was a good start for future dealings. This has to be a win, albeit a minor one.
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
Dr Alf is right,this does represent a good sign for future dealings provided those like Michael Fallon in this country and people like McMaster in America who seem to want World War 3 can be restrained.
Those representing the “Beltway Bandits”(America’s military Industrial complex) and BAE Defence Systems seem to be keen to start a conflagration by attacking Russia and China starting with North Korea in the East and Syria,Ukraine and Iran in the West.
They think that with space based weapons which they think neither Russia or China has they can prevail.
If Trump can stay alive and at the same time get along with Putin and Xi in some form or other then these potentially tragic events can be averted.
Climate Change is becoming somewhat more difficult to prove or take seriously because if one goes back 4 IPCC reports one discovers that since 1998,some 19 years ago there has been global cooling.
The compilers of that report debated how to present this information but came up with a new and ingenious explanation which was that the “warming effect” had been neutralised by the cooling effect of the world’s oceans and would re-emerge with a vengeance in 25 years time”.
The subsequent IPCC reports say similar things each time conveniently pushing Doomsday into the future.
The reality is that the UK Government has been in possession of its own reports going back 12 years saying that there has been overall cooling but the visions of apocalypse still persist since to admit otherwise would destroy the rationale for personal carbon footprints which many wish to see.
Trump’s call to protect our civilisation is timely in terms of dealing with militant Islam and I question the West’s will or capacity to deal with it alone as it did effectively during the Crusades and the Battle of Tours and subsequent predations by Turkey whose empire was destroyed by the British in 1918.
I calculate that it will take the combined forces of America,Russia,India and China to deal with the threat posed by militant Islam but that this could be dealt with by a combination of conventional forces,military robots and robots to occupy troublesome Muslim countries permanently and to maintain a codon sanitaire around them once the bulk of Muslims in the West are relocated appropriately minus the ones who are fully signed up to our Judeo Christian values and our way of life.
Whether this happens under Trump or someone else is anyone’s guess but we live in very dangerous and unpredictable times.