Taiwan looks like being the critical test of the USA's resolve

Since the death of Chairman Mao, beyond a few moments of tension, the governments of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) (ROC) have, until recently, by and large, accepted the status quo with some degree of comfort.  I'll use their official names because it matters, and because the efforts to control the language emanate from Beijing, and I'd rather treat the two governments the way competing governments for territory have been treated elsewhere - as two sovereign states.

You see the Korean Peninsula has two governments on it, both claim de-jure legitimacy over the entire territory of Korea. The Republic of Korea (ROK) in Seoul and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in Pyongyang, both being rivals who have fought to the death to conquer and destroy the other. The DPRK to this day displays its maps including the whole peninsula, as it claims the south is illegally occupied by the United States which governs the south under its "fascist puppet-clique".

China has the same, albeit on a much less balanced scale. The ROK and DPRK both govern roughly similar sizes of territory, if not populations and not remotely economies. The PRC on the other hand is a giant against the minnow of the ROC. Like its ideological comrades in Pyongyang, the PRC has never treated the territory of the ROC (Taiwan) as anything other than renegades that need reunification into the motherland.  The ROC on the other hand is barely the ROC at all. Brave but unrealistic rhetoric of "retaking the mainland" faded away after the semi-fascist President Chiang Kai-Shek died in 1975, given the US stopped seriously thinking about assisting in that endeavour after the early 1950s.  Very few in Taiwan now think that the ROC will once again fly its flag over Nanjing and replace the PRC, what they really want is to be left in peace, which is only reasonable.

ROC (Taiwan) today is a sovereign state that is in so many ways unlike the stultifying military state of Chiang Kai-Shek, being a vibrant liberal democracy, open economy and basic freedoms that are absent under the PRC.  Whether or not people in Taiwan want to declare formal independence and unshackle themselves from the legacy of the ROC wouldn't change how they manage their own affairs, except for one shadow overhanging them - the PRC's demand that they succumb to its control.

Xi Jinping has clearly made a play, far beyond the rhetoric of previous PRC leaders, to take military steps to take (not retake, as the communists never had it) Taiwan and the islets under its control.  Let's be clear, the PRC never revoked its "right" to do so, but that had largely been rhetorical.  Note also that from the late 1990s through the 2000s relations between the PRC and the ROC improved significantly, with direct trade and investment allowed, along with direct mail, flights and travel permitted. The pre-Xi strategy regarding Taiwan was to treat it like "just another Chinese province" in the hope that this would make people of Taiwan feel more relaxed about a future with the PRC, but also interlink their economies so the economic dependency of Taiwan would shift from exporting to the world, to trading with the mainland.

Xi has now blown all of this up in his quest to take a more aggressive stance.  What is Xi's motivation? Is it to distract from problems at home? Is it to claim glory that even Mao could not succeed?  Is it to demonstrate that the PRC of the 21st century can be the leading power in the Western Pacific and show its neighbours that the USA is no longer in charge?  Probably all of this, and given this it is absolutely essential that the USA, with its allies, make it clear to Xi that none of this will be accepted.

It should be crystal clear to Beijing that any military aggression towards ROC forces, or territory, will be met with a military response in support of the government in Taipei. Why? Because the international order depends on it, and because the consequences of the alternative are likely to be much more destructive to international peace and security, than taking on Beijing on a limited scale.

What matters?

1.  International rule of law and the value of peace: The PRC can proclaim endlessly that Taiwan is an "internal affair", and there is no shortage of proclamations from Beijing about the principle of "non-interference in each others' internal affairs" (a principle Beijing has broken more than once in many countries), but fundamentally ROC (Taiwan) is de-facto and de-jure an independent sovereign state. It has all of the characteristics of a sovereign state, and only lack extensive international formal diplomatic recognition SOLELY because the PRC prohibits it. The Cold War saw most countries recognise the PRC when the PRC and ROC were in diplomatic competition, because the PRC was more useful as a bulwark against the USSR.  Since the end of the Cold War, the growth in the PRC economy has meant this has continued to be more important than ROC (Taiwan).  The ROC dropped the insistence of choosing between Beijing and Taipei for diplomatic relations, but the PRC continues to bully the international community into the legal fiction that the ROC (Taiwan) isn't a sovereign state and has no rights that Beijing does not "let" it have.   So from that, the idea that any government can use military force to address its dispute with another government is unacceptable under international law and the UN Charter.  

Furthermore, it doesn't even matter if the PRC treats the ROC (Taiwan) as its own, it does not justify military force to win an internal dispute. The reality that Beijing knows is that the ROC (Taiwan) is independent, because it acts independently.  Countries cannot be allowed to just declare that they have the right to inflict force on another sovereign entity to take its territory.  It's a norm of international law, and if the PRC wants to be a respected member of the international community, the latter must make it clear than attacking ROC  (Taiwan) territory is an unacceptable risk to international peace and security (even though Beijing would veto any action in the UN Security Council.  The message must be loud and clear that no power can just exercise force to take territory and try to overthrow government that it doesn't like. Russia did the former with barely a blink internationally, under the Obama era, Biden cannot let this happen to Taiwan.

2. Dissuading further aggression:  If the PRC can "get away" with taking parts of the territory under the control of ROC (Taiwan) or go further, then it will embolden it to go further. It has territorial claims of India and Pakistan, and of course its ongoing active claims in the South China Sea.  There is little sense that Beijing is expansionist in the way the USSR was, but the willingness to use military force (and the likely casualties from that) if not resisted by forces outside Taiwan will generate new interest in settling scores or supporting those that may want to settle scores.  As crazy as it is, this might include the DPRK seeing Beijing as willing to back it, once more, in an attack on the ROK.  Intervention is about deterring more military force. If Beijing takes Taiwan, there are the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands just to its north-east, controlled by Japan, that are claimed by Beijing (and in fact Taipei too). Expect them to be under pressure, and if the US wouldn't defend Taiwan, would it really defend the Senkaku Islands? If not, how vulnerable would Japan feel and how abandoned by the US?

3. Pax Americana remains intact:  Since 1945 the Pacific has been dominated by the peace established by US victory in WW2. The USSR had limited impact on that, but the PRC wants to remould the international order to suit its needs, one of those is to expand its sphere of influence and to demonstrate that it is the leading naval and air power in East Asia.  If the US demonstrates that its commitment to Taiwan's defence is toothless, then it will be a transformative end to Pax Americana.  The implications of that aren't just in the US feeling shame and impotent, but the reaction of other governments in Asia.  The ROK, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Vietnam will all wonder if they are safe in a Pax Sinica (Marxist-Leninist). Given the PRC has WMDs, there would be some fear in Seoul, Tokyo and Delhi that the US's nuclear umbrella has just folded up somewhat, and more disconcertingly they should all develop or expand their own.  ANY of this will aggravate the international order in Asia, as a nuclear armed ROK and expanded nuclear India will raise temperatures and risk.  Japan will be unlikely to embrace nuclear weapons, but it will want to expand militarily to deter the risk the PRC will take islands near Taiwan that are under dispute, next.  

So if you worry less about Taiwan, worry more about what is next, Asian powers seeking to contain the PRC with WMDs.  Beyond that must be the effects this has on US power elsewhere, such as in Europe. 

4. Liberal democracies must be protected from tyrannies: It is almost least important, but morally it is easily the point that pulls the hardest at emotions. ROC (Taiwan) is a vibrant, liberal democratic capitalist country of free people. It demonstrates that China can be a liberal democracy, and that Beijing's long held excuse that China "cannot become a democracy" because it would be "ungovernable".  ROC (Taiwan) has, like the ROK, transformed itself from essentially a dictatorship into a free and thriving liberal democracy. It should not be able to have that destroyed by the world's deadliest dictatorship (60 million Chinese killed through famine and executions in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution).  ROC (Taiwan) has been a model international citizen, it has been peaceful, productive and constructive internationally, it represents values that the US should hold dear, and which promote peace and development globally.  If Beijing has snuff that out with only some stern words from Washington, then Washington will have abandoned any pretence about leading by some moral imperative.

So there should be clear solidarity with ROC (Taiwan).  It should be no doubt at all that if the PRC attacks military forces in Taiwan or any territory, that there will be intervention to counter this, and that unilateral sanctions will be imposed on the PRC by liberal democracies. The UN is toothless on this, not least because the PRC has a veto in the UN Security Council.

There are lots of reasons to be critical, historically, of Pax Americana after 1945, with a good list of mistakes made, and behaviour that is not becoming of a country that proclaims itself to be in favour of freedom.  However, there is little doubt that a world led by a flawed semi-free liberal democracy is better than one led by a Marxist-Leninist one-party state.  

(Oh and don't doubt that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is much more on the side of the USA than the PRC)

So what's an alternative to the Three Waters Reform?

I’ve already written critically of the Three Waters reforms in a polemical way.  It's rather curious that Nanaia Mahuta is so committed to these reforms given she has no record in her political career of ever having passionate views about structural reforms of any sectors of the economy.  You wouldn't know what she thinks about energy, transport or communications sectors, so why water? Surely it can't be because of the transfer of some power to Iwi under the new mega-water "entities"? 

Regardless of her motivations, I think the problem definition is largely correct.  The status quo has failed appallingly, and that status quo is combination of leftwing ideology about the "power of general competence" of local government (and it being committed to "economic, social, environmental and cultural wellbeing") and rightwing ideology about supporting localisation of power (although that power still lies with politicians, apparently local politicians that fewer people vote for are more accountable than MPs).  

Yet it is abundantly clear that the options assessed (at least from the public documents) were remarkably narrow minded, apparently only considering:

• Sector-led reform: This would be returning to the philosophy of the “power of general competence” that local government is capable of reforming itself to address the problems listed. This seems unlikely and is in effect a “status quo” option.

• National Three Waters Fund:  This option is frankly bizarre. It is touted as being similar to the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF), yet there are so few useful parallels. The NLTF is funded mostly from user fees on motorised road users, through fuel tax and road user charges.  There are NO centrally collected user fees on water users, and many local authorities don’t even impose user fees at all. Furthermore, the NLTF fully funds the State Highway Network, which is central-government owned and operated, there is no equivalent in water.  This looks like a brain fart from some politician.

• Regulatory reform only: This has its merits, if only because there is poor oversight of what territorial authorities do with water already, but existing governance structures range widely from being promising (Watercare Services) to being very poor. This is unlikely to be enough.  

It might be too much for me to expect a Labour Government to have assessed privatisation, even if it dismissed it on grounds of being contrary to the policies and principles of the Labour Party, but it should have been included to see what the benefits and risks would be.

So assuming privatisation per se would fall on deaf ears, here’s my quick and dirty alternative. Quite simply it is to commercialise and transfer control of water assets to ratepayer or consumer owned companies, those entities would carry the local authority debt associated with those assets. My proposal is:

1. A water sector regulator would be set up, which in association with the Commerce Commission, would oversee the water entities, particularly the transition of the reform, but also ensure that these monopolies don’t abuse their position, and are accountable for the effects of failure on consumers and property owners.  Yes yes, I would MUCH prefer some consumer association that would test water quality and seek transparency in these entities, but that's too much to hope for.  A regulator is likely to be necessary at least for the first five years, particularly to enforce some basic standards of drinking water.

2. All territorial authorities would be required to transfer fresh, waste and stormwater assets into water companies.  This would also include debt associated with those assets (which would have to be agreed with the Commerce Commission, to stop local authorities transferring unreasonable levels of debt to the new entities). These companies would be at arms-length control from territorial authorities, with independent boards prohibited from taking direction from councillors as to specific capital spending decisions. The companies would be required to make a return on capital and pay taxes. This would help avoid both over and underspending on infrastructure and remove politics from decisions around water infrastructure. The companies would be required to provide services to end users and to make a profit. They would be allowed to merge and consolidate as they see fit, and if the efficiencies claimed are real (and some no doubt are), this will become abundantly clear as being the right choice. Those that lag and perform 

3. The water companies would have all shares initially owned by the territorial authorities, but within twelve months shares would be transferred either to ratepayers with property serviced by their networks (with some proportionality by those served to different degrees by the three networks) or to consumers (which in some cases is ratepayers at least for stormwater). These shares would be tradeable, although there could be limits on foreign ownership if desired. However, the companies would essentially by owned directly by the public, rather than by local authorities. It would leave accountability at the lowest possible level, those who have paid for it and who own it. It’s actual people power.  I am ambivalent about whether ratepayers or consumers gain shares, and tend to prefer consumers (i.e. those who will be responsible for water bills) take fresh/waste water shares and ratepayers stormwater shares.

4. Water companies would be required to move towards full user pays and rates would be regulated downward. This will include but may not require water metering. Metering is appropriate for fresh and wastewater, but not stormwater, so the water companies would levy consumers for fresh and wastewater (not necessarily property owners), but property owners for stormwater. The charges would be subject to oversight from the Commerce Commission initially to ensure water companies weren’t seeking to gouge consumers. However, EQUALLY important is that territorial authority rates that have been used to pay for any of the three waters are regulated down. That regulation should not be for a one-off reduction, but the Commerce Commission should be required to authorise any territorial authority rates increases above inflation to ensure that territorial authorities are not using the reduction in rates as an opportunity to increase rates to grow other functions.  The net burden on property owners and consumers in each district (adding rates and water charges) will be taken into account.  

5.    Water companies should borrow to fund upgraded infrastructure and recover this from user fees.  Ultimately consumers should pay and as with electricity lines companies, and airports, the Commerce Commission should have oversight over the financial performance 

Opposition to the Three Waters is well justified, but taking power away from local authorities is a good thing. Yet proposed opaque governance structure, which inexplicably adds the Iwi element, is not a recipe for significant efficiencies going beyond some economies of scale and bargaining power in procurement. The forced amalgamation is unlikely to be the best outcome, because neither the Minister nor DIA officials are likely to know what's best.

So Three Waters reforms should stop, but the need for reform remains.  However, even ACT has taken a very pathetic, limp approach to this issue. 

Covid testing and quarantine : Is it causing people to NOT get tested?

I have had three Covid19 tests all up, I had two when coming through managed isolation in 2020 and a third in Australia when departing earlier this year, and they were qualitatively different in terms of experience.  The standard New Zealand PCR test is akin to "nasal violation" with a swab taken through the nostril to the back of the throat. It is invasive, painful and highly unpleasant. However, the PCR test in Australia was a throat swab followed by a nostril swab which was only around a centimetre or so inside.  Heaven help those who get the nasal violation swabbing regularly because of their jobs, but is there a good reason why the former and not the latter is used in NZ? Certainly saliva testing is less reliable, but can be done more frequently.  

So are people who have had one nasal violation test LESS likely to have more? Is NZ's unwillingness to adopt more patient friendly tests reducing the rate of testing? I'd be very reluctant to get tested (in NZ) unless I was clearly symptomatic, are others like this?

Then there is what happens if you are found to HAVE Covid. There is a fair chance you get shipped off to a quarantine facility rather than being able to isolate at home.  What does the fear of THAT do to people to cause them to hesitate being tested?  If you had rent to pay, and a job, would you want the state taking you away from your home and family for several weeks?  Wouldn't you be MORE likely to get tested if you knew you could self-isolate at home (bearing in mind you may have already passed it onto those you live with, if you haven't then it is another story)?

Does the unwillingness to take a more patient centred approach risk more people having Covid, not being tested and not isolating?

AUKUS - best news in some time

So much to cheer in the new AUKUS alliance. 

Why?

1. It enhances Australia's and the region's defence. It enables Australia, New Zealand's most important ally, to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, which will much better serve the defence of Australia and its allies, than the diesel-powered retrofitted French ones, that the Malcolm Turnbull government ordered.  

2. It cancels the previous disgracefully wasteful defence contract, which was a A$90 billion pork-barrel deal to win votes in South Australia, driven by former Minister Christopher Pyne. It was a disgrace, and economically destructive whilst delivering little strategic benefit.

3. It annoys the Communist Party of China, which, given it is the political party responsible for the greatest famines and slaughters in human history, is entirely moral.

4. The mouthpieces of the Communist Party of China took nearly 12 hours to respond to the announcement, indicating that Beijing doesn't have quite the effective spook or snooping network that it might want, otherwise it would have promptly issued a line of comment in response.  AUKUS took Beijing by surprise.

5. So-called "peace" activists are unhappy, as is the Australian Green Party, whilst all fail to protest Beijing's military exercises against Taiwan, imperialist occupation of rocks in the South China Sea and skirmishes with India. It just shows them up for what they are, supporters for any tyrannies that confront liberal democracies.  

6. It has annoyed the Government of France the most, and even the supine European Union has shown sympathy to the gallic sooks.  France was not remotely this concerned about China's occupation of the South China Sea, undermining of rule of law and freedom in Hong Kong, authoritarian racism in its Xinjiang Province or indeed just about any other international incident in recent years. The French response is totemically beautiful, by confirming and reinforcing every stereotype about French hyper-arrogance and emotional incontinence about their entirely onanistic-pneumatic honour.  It's particularly delicious that France withdrew ambassadors from Washington DC and Canberra but not London, demonstrating, once again, France's unbounded Anglo-phobic arrogance, of a kind that it is claimed too many British people use as a stereotype. France EXCEEDED stereotypes about itself, proving that you cannot make up how absurd they can be.

7. The European Union has demonstrated its virtual irrelevance in international strategic defence circles. With France its only serious defence member, and almost all of its members pathetically irrelevant in their funding of defence (and some being neutral), it has been sidelined.  

8. For all of the self-serving puffery of the New Zealand Labour Party about the supposed importance of the Fourth Labour Government's nuclear free policy in the 1980s, New Zealand was, once again, proven to be utterly irrelevant in serious strategic international defence circles. New Zealand was sidelined (as was Canada), because it not only has little to add, but its adolescent nuclear-free policy is an inhibitor, not an enabler, of more robust defence of the region. Jacinda Ardern can claim "New Zealand wouldn't want to join", but it demonstrates that the "nuclear free moment" is more a display of performative virtue signalling, than anything of substance or impact on anyone, except those claiming how wonderful they are for the act of keeping nuclear powered submarines just over 12 miles off the coast of New Zealand.  What New Zealand does is of little importance to those who are committed to the international peace and security, and is of equally little importance in climate change, no matter the egos in Parliament who wish you believe otherwise.

So good for Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden (even if Joe isn't necessarily fully aware), this was a great leap forward in dealing to a whole host of issues at once.

oh and don't anyone think for a moment that the EU was going to offer Australia a useful free trade agreement, neither France nor the EU really care about free trade.

Remembering 9/11

I woke up at around 5.40am on 12 September 2001, in Wellington and switched on National Radio (as it was then) to hear a broadcast, with American voices, describing some disaster. At the time I was living alone, having broken up with my wife the previous year.

I didn't think much of it for the first few minutes, thinking it was some recorded show syndicated by RNZ, until it became clear it was a live feed, from CNN.  It took around 10 or so minutes before I started piecing together what had happened, one, two, three planes flying into buildings, it seemed surreal. So I got out of bed, switched on the TV and watched for about 20 minutes, the largest terrorist attack on the United States. It was all too much, I was 31 years old, and the scenes of the World Trade Center towers were dramatic and devastating. I thought for a moment that perhaps had my life been only a little different, I might have been working in an office in one of those towers, and the people trapped above the flames with no way out, and those below, streaming down stairwells for their lives, in horror. For so many it was too late. Barely over four years later I would be working for a large multinational American consultancy, in London, months after the 7/7 tube attacks, all inspired by the same ideology of misanthropic theocratic death worship.

I showered, got dressed for work and left for the office, at just after 6.30am, because it was too much to watch. I was at my local bus stop in 3 minutes standing, when the only other person standing there, a women in her 30s took a phone call, and it was clear she hadn't heard the news beforehand, as she spoke in utter disbelief. The bus came and after the usual 20 minute ride I arrived stunned at work, much earlier than normal, and nobody else was there yet. Of course I got more of the news on the internet, and as others trickled in, there was only one topic to discuss.  How many people had died? Were other attacks on the way? Who was responsible? How would the US respond?  US airspace was shut down, and so much would never be the same again. Whether it was New York, the Pentagon or indeed the hapless brave victims of UA 93 who fought back, it was a series of events far more profound than fiction.  People born in 90 countries died in 9/11, it was an attack on humanity.

We'll never know the true cost of 9/11, the cost of the lost of the thousands of lives, what they might have created, what their children might have created, and how much richer humanity would have been for it.  It was an attack not just on them, but on an idea.  The idea that free people can choose how they live, to work, to trade, to enjoy life, and to not have their lives owned by others, by self-serving authority bowing to an ideology that shackles them to the literal interpretation of some aged religious tracts. The idea that Government should be to subordinate people to the will of theocratic bigots, rather than exist to protect their rights and established by the people to protect them from those who wish to take away those rights.  Yes, the United States in 2001 (let alone 2021) has many many flaws, and has never met that ideal consistently, let alone for all Americans, but the idea of the United States was and is revolutionary - and Al Qaeda hates that.  The Taliban hates that, ISIS hates that, indeed autocrats of many different stripes hate the United States, because it is antithetical to what they want for humanity. 

The US response to 9/11 should have been a rallying call for freedom, for civilisation, for modernity and to seek to confront not the religion of Islam in some sort of new crusade, (for as with all religions, people can follow religion in their private lives and not seek to attack a free, pluralistic society), but to confront Islamist fascism - the application of fundamentalist Islamic sects, such as Salafism and Wahhabism, to impose Islam and Islamic theocratic rule.  This was, sort of, what George W. Bush was looking to target in his "war on terror", but he couldn't really confront it, because one of the great protagonists of Islamist fascism is a US ally, and one of Bush's great enemies was not really an Islamist fascist, but just a fascist - Saddam Hussein.

Attacking and seeking to destroy Al Qaeda was right and moral, as was overthrowing the Taliban.  There was no way the USA could let Afghanistan be. However, the US was never willing to take over Afghanistan and mould it into a tolerant liberal democracy, like it did with Japan, and West Germany.  It allied itself with the then Northern Alliance, who were a bunch of warlords united more by tribal and economic interests than a grand belief in Islamist fascism. Perhaps if the US had sought to occupy with the brute force, sheer numbers and cost it once had done in the 1940s and 1950s, it could have not only defeated the Taliban, but understood Afghanistan enough to convert hearts and minds, and the events of the past few weeks may never have occurred.  However, Americans were unwilling to sacrifice the blood and treasure needed to achieve that, so instead they spent 20 years treading water and keeping the Taliban at bay, just.  So Jo Biden could leave them millions of dollars of military equipment.

However, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, as moral as it was, also suffered from a lack of US willingness to follow through, to establish government that could prevent the deadly insurrection, fuelled by Iran, that killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq. That ultimately spawned ISIS.  Saddam Hussein was not remotely behind 9/11, but Bush had a score to settle, and although it was credible to believe that Saddam Hussein still had weapons of mass destruction (since he demonstrably did use them before), it was proven not to be.  The US spilt much blood and treasure mismanaging Iraq, again because it was unwilling to impose a liberal democracy on a population that wasn't liberal.

In all of this remained Saudi Arabia, the great funder and fuel of Wahhabism, and the Gulf states which themselves kept free from Islamist fascism because of their own wealth and ad-hoc ruthlessness.  Saudi is a US ally, because they have needed each other. Saudi needed protection from the USSR and more latterly Iran.  The US wanted the dominant oil producer on its side (although fracking has completely undermined the importance of that). Furthermore, the chance that the House of Saud would be replaced by a worse regime if it were overthrown. So Saudi Arabia, which spawned those who committed the 9/11 attacked, became the great ally in the "war on terror" as the war on the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

Al Qaeda, and indeed no other Islamist terrorist has been able to come remotely close to inflicting a similar scale attack on the US, but 9/11 inspired the multiple Islamist fascist attacks in Europe.  It remains the great watershed of the 21st century, almost the point when the optimism of the end of the Cold War was smashed, as it was followed by a new age. An age not only of sporadic Islamist terrorism, but Putin's Russia turning the clock back to a Cold War era hysterical nationalism, and irredentism. A few years later the Global Financial Crisis knocked economic optimism and more recently Xi Xinping reawoke China's past remoulding it into an increasingly monstrous Mk. 2 Maoism of authoritarian-corporatist Marxism-Leninism, willing and wanting to become the world's number one economic and ultimately military and political power.  

For me this date has another significance. My Mum died five years ago today. She had been ill, and had had a successful colostomy operation the previous day, but was too weak and passed away in the early hours of 12 September NZST.  I was and am profoundly sad I didn't get to see her or be with her that night, as I had already booked flights to come see her days later.  She died weeks out from her 78th birthday.  I miss her greatly, and indeed am reminded of her daily as we spruce up her (and Dad's) house to sell in due course.  She was a great source of resilience, strength, warmth and courage for me, as someone who had many trials in life, from emigrating with next to nothing in the 1950s, to looking after her terminally ill mother in her 20s, to her first marriage ending in divorce due to discovering her husband was, in fact, gay when it was a crime, to not being able to have children with my Dad (and then adopting me).  So on 12 September, we'll be having dinner and raising a glass to my Mum, and to the memory of those who were killed so tragically on 9/11.