I cannot say I am a fan of the Donald Trump plan of turning Gaza into a Mediterranean resort strip, that may well be one of the dumber ideas he has had, and boy has he had some dumb ideas. Of course, he thinks it is brilliant, he will not let this idea go. Donald really thinks the Palestinian people will give up their homeland so he can create a resort town complete with golf courses. Trump dispatched his real estate developer mate Steve Witkoff to negotiate a deal, this was always going to be a disaster.

The sooner Hamas was eradicated and the remaining hostages returned, the sooner the rebuilding will begin. I would doubt even the most ardent Hamas supporter would have envisaged the level of destruction in Gaza. Hamas were unwilling to hand over the remaining hostages, at the time rumoured to have only 20 alive with the remaining 26 deceased. Hamas were tricky, they were not returning the deceased bodies, Israeli authorities performed DNA analysis and refused to accept Palestinian bodies they claimed were Israeli.

Egypt has been training Palestinian forces to take over the security of Gaza, this training is occurring at Egyptian military academies. The recruitment for the Gazan security force is to come from the West Bank, there will likely be some Gazans in that cohort. Israel will be unlikely to support he Palestinian Authority as they claim they are supporters of terrorism. Previously, Hamas has returned immediately after Israeli forces have withdrawn from Gaza.

It is likely Israel would object to a Palestinian peacekeeping force, Israeli spokespeople have openly stated they do not want the Palestinian Authority to control Gaza in post-war Gaza. The majority of the force will come from Egypt, with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates supplying personnel. I would think all nations are in agreement, Hamas will not be represented in the new Gaza security force.

In what that can be only described as another Trump disaster, calling into disrepute the NATO commitment in Afghanistan. The NATO countries that sent troops to support the United States after they were attacked in the 9/11 terrorist attack. Pretty much the whole of the developed world came to support the United States, this was a multilateral coalition to root out terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

I am waiting for George W. Bush to come out and refute Trump’s statement. We saw Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden at Dick Cheney’ funeral. Donald Trump was told to stay away, that tells us all we need to know. We all know Donald Trump is unfit to be President, even former Republican Presidents and Vice Presidents refuse to deal with Donald, they are happy to meet with Democrats, but refuse to interact with the current Republican President. That says to me the respect former Democrat Presidents are held in and the lack of respect for Trump.

When the United States was attacked by terrorists dubbed 9/11, NATO invoked Article 5 and stood with the United States. This is the only time Article 5 has been invoked, NATO quickly organised and had a significant presence in Afghanistan. NATO collectively had 130,000 troops deployed with the United States, Italy and the United Kingdom providing the bulk of the troops. Germany, Poland, Denmark, Romania, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Finland were active in Afghanistan, this is not an exhaustive list.

According to Trump in a Fox interview, he stated they were there but “they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines” in what could be considered the ultimate insult by a President who himself avoided military service. Denmark [7.82], the country Trump was threatening to invade to secure Greenland had the same deaths per million as the United States [7.96], the United Kingdom [7.25] with only Georgia [8.42] having a higher death count ratio. I hope the former Democratic Presidents come out along with George W. Bush and make statements to restore the reputation of the United States.

I don’t have a whole lot of Penfolds in my cellar with the exception of the St Henri shiraz being the only multiple bottles. I have just a few Penfolds bottles stashed away now, they are pretty expensive these days. They are easy to identify though, the red bottle seals make them easy to identify laying in the racks, they are not grouped together so I have to search a bit.

Checking now, I have a 1996 and 2005 St Henri left, along with a 2012 vintage 407 cabernet sauvignon and a 2009 Bin 28 shiraz. With the fruit matured in old seasoned oak vats, there is really no imparting of oak flavours, the St Henri shiraz is fruit driven. Typically the St Henri is matured for 14 months in 2000 litre old oak casks. They reckon the St Henri is opulent and fruit driven when young, developing into soft earthy style mocha flavours as the wine ages. I am struggling to remember when I have ever opened a young St Henri, most of my experiences are vintage wines.

The St Henri was created in the early 1950s with the first commercial vintage released in 1957, this shiraz offers a counter to the famous Grange shiraz. Unlike the now famous Grange that is snapped up by collectors, the St Henri remains reasonably priced. Whilst a famous shiraz, the 2006 St Henri is a blend of 89% Shiraz and 11% Cabernet Sauvignon and the 1996 is a shiraz. The St Henri is a varietal wine with fruit sourced from the Adelaide Hills, Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale regions.

With a couple of searches, I found a 1996 St Henri priced at $319 and the 2006 priced $160 at Dan Murphy’s. The St Henri really took on a renaissance in the 1990s, this is when both Penfolds and the shiraz became popular again. The 2020 is the current release and priced at $134 once again at Dan Murphy’s as I try to keep wine pricing consistent with retailers to provide an even pricing comparison.

For me, booking.com as an accommodation booking website is finished. I could not believe it, we had two mobile phones running side-by-side under the same search conditions finding totally different pricing structures.

The only difference was, I was already logged in via my account as I was a pretty good customer over the years. She did not have an account, so maybe she was receiving discounted prices to secure an account. The prices I was offered compared to her was startling, percentage wise, the pricing differential exceeded 25% adding a couple of hundred dollars to a five-day stay.

I contemplated using her account to make the booking, then I decided to search the same Singaporean hotels using agoda.com to find they were cheaper again. So what I have learnt from this episode is to use booking.com as a search tool and then make the actual booking with pagoda.com, such is the distrust of this website.

The first time I tried Beck’s I was a little surprised, the flavours were not what I was expecting. Not that I minded, it was a pretty good surprise, we were around my sister’s house where we were all watching the football, it was a pre-season game where we snatched victory in the final couple of minutes of the game. So this was a memorable day for a number of reasons. 

Beck’s is a pilsner so a little lighter in colour and flavour than a traditional lager beer. That is fine as long as you know what you are letting yourself in for. The palette is light, has plenty of dryness and for me, hints of coffee flavour. I was surprised and thought it was pretty good, not that I would be drinking this all the time, just something different.

Doing a little reading, the brewery has lowered the alcohol volume from 5% to 4% after it was purchased by Anheur Busch, the brewer of Budweiser – oh no. I now have to work out if I first had the older beer, the one that everyone raved about or the new recipe, the one that everyone complained about.

There are now plenty of complaints about the new Beck’s now it has been purchased by the owners of Budweiser. Sure, they sell plenty of beer in the US, it is not universally liked by anyone who isn’t American, it has a lousy reputation and have them purchase a great German brewery and start playing around with the recipe – this isn’t good.

Bernie Sanders does not pull punches for an old guy, he discusses freedom of speech and the move to authoritarianism in the United States. Bernie is very blunt, he calls for Republicans to stop using the word freedom. The smarter Republicans see what is going on, the Trump era will be over soon enough and whilst nobody knows if the Democrats will win back the White House at the next election, they will eventually regain power at some stage. Trump will be well and truly gone, but the aftermath he leaves behind will haunt them for some time.

The long-term Republicans know that the new media landscape brought about by Trump’s short-term thinking will affect their chances to communicate with the people in the future as restrictions may be placed on them. Freedom of speech is under attack in the United States, what Trump supporters are not seeing is how it will affect them in the future, they just see what is happening right now. When they finally work it out, they will be concerned as it will probably backfire on them spectacularly.

So good on Bernie, he sees the attacks on the United States constitution and he is calling it out in real time. He sees the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, the misuse and abuse of Presidential powers. The attempts to dismantle the judicial arm of the government to push through an agenda that should be debated and ratified in the Congress, Bernie is old, he has seen many eras in US politics and this rise in authoritarianism is worrying him the most.

My favourite liqueur is Cointreau, I do not drink it often, so when I do I want to make sure I enjoy it. However, Cointreau  is not the only orange liqueur on the market, whilst Cointreau is known around the world as a mixer, this liqueur is best served straight up. 

Cointreau is best known in B-52 shooters, the Margarita, the Sidecar and the Mai Tai. Grand Marnier is also an orange liqueur, the colour is a mid-range brown, and I find this liqueur less crisp than Cointreau despite both being known as a triple sec liqueur. I find Grand Marnier a lot heavier than Cointreau and sweeter as well, there are oak tones with orange peel flavours. 

So I ask myself, how do the orange liqueurs stand up against each other? Well, Cointreau is a reasonably clear liqueur that I prefer to drink chilled. I keep a bottle in the refrigerator to keep the liqueur cold so it does not get diluted through the ice melting. Like Cointreau, I prefer to drink Grand Marnier liqueur neat, this time it is served at room temperature in a shot glass so it is easily sipped. I have never chilled Grand Marnier like I have with Cointreau, this is a room temperature liqueur for me.  

Both Cointreau and Grand Marnier are from France, Cointreau bears the family name of Adolphe and Édouard-Jean Cointreau was founded in 1849 in Angers. Grand Marnier has a similar founding history, founded in 1880 in Neauphle-le-Château by Louis-Alexandre Marnier Lapostolle, although the distillery was established in 1827 by Jean-Baptiste Lapostolle. Both liqueurs are excellent, I keep both at home and they get pulled out from time to time and I try a sip of both equally.

On last Saturday afternoon I received a message from my brother and I quickly jumped on my computer to check news outlets and social media to determine what happened. I was pretty surprised, we knew the US fleet was stationed in the Caribbean, they were not about to head home, so something was eventually going to happen. So it was really no surprise when missiles started hitting the capital Caracas, I view this as a flagrant violation of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Venezuela.

Initial reports were that CH-47 Chinook helicopters and V-22 Osprey were flying over the capital. It was later confirmed that modified MH-60 Blackhawk helicopters carrying Delta Force commandos were involved, conducted by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Approximately 150 aircraft were used in the raid to take out air defences to allow the commando forces to fly in for a low level insertion.

President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were stopped just short of their safe room, the raid happened so fast, they were caught in bed and did not make it to this enclosure. I have nothing but respect for forces such as Delta, they are the elite counter-terrorist force of the US Army. The question I ask, is it legal for US forces to enter a country and kidnap the President? This sets a nasty international precedent, can countries openly flout international law without repercussion?

In August, the US deployed three destroyers in Caribbean waters, then immediately grew to three amphibious assault ships with approximately 6000 marines and sailors attached. In September, F-35 fighter jets were dispatched to Puerto Rico, there was also a submarine diverted to the region. The CIA was operating in the region, this goes without saying, they were operating drones over Venezuela and apparently had a human source close to Maduro. The CIA was aware of Maduro’s movements and routine after months of surveillance, they knew where he would be at any given time.

From September 2025 onwards, operations against small vessels in the area were targeted, this included killing people in the water after their boats were sunk, breaching international law. The strikes have been questioned as an overreach of executive authority, the United States does not have the authority to hunt down and execute Venezuelan nationals in international waters. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the most advanced carrier in the US Navy, was ordered to the region by the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, so we knew this was going to escalate rapidly at some point.

There is certainly a fair degree of irony in the Trump Administration, who themselves attempted to overturn an election in the United States on January 6, 2021. Trump has announced that the United States will now run the country in the interim, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia should be immediately handed power in Venezuela. Donald Trump has viewed Nicolás Maduro as an illegitimate President since the July 2024 elections. Urrutia stepped up at the last minute when opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was ruled ineligible. Machado was forced to flee the country, but popped up in Norway to collect her Nobel Peace Prize – the irony is not lost on me here. We will see if the Trump Administration immediately hands over control of the country to Urrutia as the legitimate leader of that country.

When I first heard about the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, my thoughts drifted to what country supports the move and what countries oppose the military action and what possible ramifications will manifest. We are yet to find out, I am suggesting international law has been breached, there will be an emergency meeting of the United Nations, but what can they do?

The United States is pretty good at invasion planning and execution, they have less than a stellar record in running countries though. With Russia and China both seeking imperialistic expansion themselves, there is some concern that the Trump Administration is seeking to divide up world spheres with the United States taking the western hemisphere, Russia taking Europe and China left to the Asia Pacific and Africa.

So I expected neighbouring South American countries would condemn the military action, that goes without saying. Cuba has been importing Venezuelan oil, with the US blockade has pretty much shut down Cuba, that has already hit them hard. As Cuba is a long-standing enemy of the United States, they should have plenty of concerns. With this new adventurism in the United States, Cuba could well be the next target. We are learning the kidnapping was pretty surgical, Delta are a highly professional force, 150 aircraft took place in the raid to take out air defences, bomb military installations and provide the distraction so Delta Force could slip in and out reasonably undetected.

With the Chinese envoy meeting with Maduro only hours before, this poses a significant problem. Beijing has a financial interest in Venezuela, with $105 billion between 2007 and 2016 as part of theBelt and Road Initiative in Latin America. With a reported $19 billion in outstanding loans, an oil-for-loans programme running through the China Development Bank is now in jeopardy. With Donald Trump announcing the United States will now run Venezuela, it is unclear if China will purchase oil from the United States or Venezuela. What about the people who lost their lives? The death count is still unknown, what about the people who lost their homes, what will become of them?