Great meeting with Indian Minister of Defence Singh. We celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Framework for our Major Defense Partnership and explored ways to strengthen cooperation.

本日、訪日中のタレク・ラーマン・バングラデシュ首相@trahmanbnpと首脳会談を行いました。 「民主主義」や「法の支配」といった価値を共有する友人として、ラーマン首相の就任を直接お祝いでき、とても嬉しく存じました。 日本は、「民主的な総選挙」を経て発足したラーマン政権による国づくりを、力強く後押ししてまいります。 本日は、こうした観点から、バングラデシュと日本の協力について議論しました。 バングラデシュは、「自由で開かれたインド太平洋（FOIP）」の実現に向けた重要なパートナーです。 今回、両国の協力の基軸である「ベンガル湾産業成長地帯」構想、いわゆる「BIG-B」を進化させ、ラーマン首相との新たな戦略的協力イニシアティブ「繁栄を分かち合う BIG-B」として、推進していくことを確認しました。 ラーマン首相からは、日本が「平和国家」として歩み、バングラデシュの独立をいち早く承認したこと、日本はバングラデシュの人々にとって特別な存在であることを伺い、また、日本政府及び国民による幅広い分野への支援や協力に関する感謝を表明いただきました。 東南アジアと南アジアを結ぶバングラデシュは、人口1.7億人の若い巨大市場の大きな潜在性も含め、日本の経済にとっても極めて重要です。 両国の「戦略的パートナーシップ」の下、本日発表した『首脳共同声明』も踏まえ、官民による両国間の取組により、「共に、強く、豊かに。」 インド太平洋地域の平和と繁栄に向けて、ラーマン首相と緊密に連携してまいります。

The ugly truth about France and some of the other European countries currently in turmoil - and which none of the politicians want to admit because it'd be political suicide - is that you can't solve the problem by going after immigrants (as the right asserts) or the rich (as the left asserts), but you could solve it by going after the old. One extraordinary statistic for you: people over 60 in France, a quarter of the population, own 60% of France's wealth, non-financial and financial (ofce.fr/pdf/revue/2025/3-192…). And here is another crazy statistic: that same quarter of the population, those above 60, receive nearly two-thirds of all social spending by the French government (previssima.fr/actualite/prot…) - which is famously among the highest in the world (France's government spending is an insane 57.3% of GDP). Last statistic: they make up about 40% of voters because they're a third of registered voters (insee.fr/fr/statistiques/266…), and they turn out far more than anyone else (franceinfo.fr/elections/sond…). Put our 3 statistics together and there's almost a bit of an apartheid situation here: the old own most of the country's wealth, collect most of the social spending and have the political power to keep it that way. Which makes them a de-facto rentier class, living off assets and transfers paid for by younger generations. And, of course, at the risk of stating a truism, the future is built by the young. Yet France keeps effectively taking money away from them to give it to those whose working lives are already behind them - and need the money far less since they already own the country's wealth. What about inheritance, I hear you ask? That's the funniest/saddest aspect: given that life expectancy has kept rising, the French now inherit a home at 54 on average. The most common case is someone in their 80s leaving it to heirs in their 50s, in effect the very old transferring wealth to the about-to-be old (insee.fr/fr/statistiques/fic…). You can add this to our earlier apartheid statement: on top of all the rest, even when the old finally let go of their wealth, it stays within their own "camp". That's my personal situation, incidentally: I'm 42, my father is 71 and he is starting to look at ways to pass things on to me and my siblings, when our professional lives are already well settled, so it'll arrive when it changes things the least, which is pretty much the French system in a nutshell. Now, I get that there'd be some unfairness in going after them: they paid into the system their entire working lives, playing by the rules of a social contract that told them if they paid up they'd collect at the end. Changing the rules now means breaking that promise, which is admittedly unfair. But there's no magic wealth tree in any society: you can only take it where it is. That's the way most major societal transformations end up happening. They're often triggered by a catastrophic event (the so-called "four horsemen": mass-mobilisation war, revolution, state collapse, plague) BUT what really drives change is a transfer: wealth gets pried from the privileged class who've been sitting on it and handed to those who'll build what comes next. So, in theory and in an ideal world, you can do without the catastrophic event and directly proceed with the transfer... The fact that in France, and elsewhere in Europe, it's the youth protesting is probably no coincidence - even though they don't frame it as a generational fight. And even though, cruel irony, the left politicians many of them march behind promise to bring the retirement age back to 60 (lcp.fr/actualites/legislativ…), which would make the situation even worse. Let's say they understand intuitively that the system is stacked against them, even if they haven't yet figured out how. And politicians are obviously doing what politicians do, meaning pandering to the people who actually vote, while pointing the young towards easier - and politically convenient - scapegoats. To be clear I'm not saying it's the only problem in France, VERY far from it. I'm also not saying that all old people in France live a lavish lifestyle at the expense of younger generations: there are also plenty of very poor retirees who, if anything, would deserve more. What I am saying is that it's probably the biggest elephant in the room: everyone can see it, nobody dares mention it - no politician, from any side, wants to run on cutting grandma's pension - and it makes every other problem harder to fix.

تنويه للمسافرين الكرام

I really can’t believe that we’re being led to believe that Melania did indeed broker a ceasefire. Melania doesn’t even know how to pronounce “negotiated a ceasefire.”

BREAKING: Following First Lady Melania Trump’s announcement, Russia announces a ceasefire in the Kherson region starting October 27 to facilitate the humanitarian operation in Oleshky and ensure safe passage for humanitarian aid, says Russian Army Chief of General Staff Gerasimov