RANT: BITS AND BITES

 

Brave Boaters—We’ve all been following the progress of the latest attempt to break the blockade in Gaza by a civilian-led flotilla delivering humanitarian food and medicines via the Global Sumund* maritime initiative. Over fifty ships of varying sizes, embarking from several Mediterranean and Asian ports, will converge by mid-September off the Gazan coast and attempt to off-load food and humanitarian supplies to the starving Palestinian population. Thus far, two of the flotilla’s ships have been attacked by drones, one, the Portuguese Familia Madeira reportedly had the young, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, on board.  Presumably it was an Israeli attack, though with only minor damage and no injuries in either of the attacks. We’ll see how things percolate as the convoy grows in number on its voyage to Gaza.¹

 

PRINCIPLED PATRIOTS—On 3 September in Washington, former Army Intelligence officer Josephine Guilbeau and retired Green Beret Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Aguilar were arrested and led away in handcuffs after disrupting a Senate hearing, where they shouted accusations at  the politicians, saying they were complicit in the Gazan genocide because of their unquestioning support for Israel. Aguliar, you may recall, was the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) private contractor who blew the whistle last July on the activities of GHF and its complicity in the genocide there. Anthony and Josephine demonstrate what’s best in us as human beings: courage, honesty, and doing what's necessary regardless of any consequences to their personal and professional lives. They embody the needed change all of us will be called upon to make in the months and years ahead.

 

AND ACROSS THE POND—On Saturday, 6 September over nine hundred protestors², gathered in support of the now-proscribed activist organization "Palestine Action", were arrested in Parliament Square, London for peacefully demonstrating against the British government’s labeling the group as “terrorists". Amnesty International UK monitored the protest, calling the scenes of the arrests "a shocking demonstration of how the UK’s overly broad terrorism laws are being used to suppress free speech”. (Aljazeera) 

It remains to be seen whether the British court system can handle the increasing case loads brought about by such appalling mass arrests of peaceful protestors. Clogging up the courts might move the government to rethink its position on Palestine Action. Before it’s too late.

👉Also, in London on Saturday there was a separate pro-Palestinian march attracting around 20,000 participants, according to police estimates.

👉And on Monday, 8 SEPTEMBER, the announcement that Israeli President Isaac Herzog would visit Downing Street sparked protests with thousands in the streets demonstrating the people’s strong objections to hosting a visiting dignitary whose country is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. The protests continued during the Israeli politician’s three-day visit. Just when you think Britain’s PM Starmer couldn’t be more disliked by his fellow countrymen, he goes and hosts a genocidaire.³ UCMTSU! 😆 “Starmer defended his decision to meet Herzog, rejecting calls to cut diplomatic ties. ‘I will not give up on diplomacy,’ he said. ‘That is the politics of students.’"

 

APPARENTLY, Starmer has taken on the mantle of 'teacher' in order to school the British electorate on Politics-101. What goes around, comes around, and he and his government may be taught a lesson or two themselves come ballot box time when they learn how the Great Unwashed have long ago given up on them.

👉IN PARIS, there have been demonstrations against the government of Emmanuel Macron. Other European countries are experiencing the growing restlessness of their populations. So, watch out for flying bricks!

👉FINALLY, in London, during the recent protests and arrests of demonstrators, the street artist “Bansky” stenciled his (or her?) take on the increasing heavy-handedness of the judicial system against members of the public. (Remember the lawfare antics of the British courts that kept Julian Assange in a maximum-security prison for over three years?) The artwork appeared on the wall of the Royal Courts of Justice in London. It was erased on 10 September.

 

CHEERS, JAKE. ____________________________________

* “Sumud” (Arabic) “steadfastness” or “steadfast perseverance”. It is a common term used to describe Palestinian nonviolent everyday resistance against Israel's occupation.

 

1. This is Greta’s second try at breaking the blockade on Gaza. In June, her vessel was attacked in Maltese waters, ending her attempt at bringing food supplies to Gaza. This time, she’s part of a convoy of over fifty ships of varying size. Question is: What will the Israelis do? Israeli government officials say they will charge the activists under Israel’s terrorism laws to dissuade such actions in the future. Stay tuned.

 

2. That figure is up from the 532 arrests in early August for the same ‘crime’ of carrying signs or in other ways displaying public support for a “proscribed” group⁴  the government has labelled as “terrorists”. By typing the words "Palestine Action", like I've done here, I could be subject to arrest if I lived in the United Kingdom. What's next “Thought Crimes”? Orwell must be spinning in his grave!

 

3. Of course, PM Starmer wouldn’t be backpedaling over his government’s support for Israel, even as it commits war crimes in Gaza (and increasingly in the West Bank), if it wasn’t for social media’s ability to lay bare to billions the world’s first—though sadly, perhaps not the last—live-streamed genocide. To a certain extent, even the feckless Starmer is ready to drop the hot potato Israel has become or face the increasing ire from his population.

[Jake has said it before: The world needs to shun Israel in the strongest sense of the word: cut off completely all diplomatic, social, military, and economic ties with the “Jewish State”. The United Nations needs to grow a pair and strike Israel's membership from the world body. Let it twist in the wind until sanity or decay takes hold. Ed.]

👉Apparently, PM Starmer and Herzog had  frank and uncomfortable conversations, with the British PM raising objections to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. But, if he really, really objected to the genocide, he’d take Jake’s advice and turn away—and not continue to send support aircraft, sell arms to, buy tech from, or support politically, the Jewish state. Talk is cheap. Just sayin’.

 

4. RECALL how, earlier in the summer, on an RAF airbase in Oxfordshire, Palestine Action activists spray painted the engines of parked transport jets used to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza as well as in other war projects it conducts in the Levant and elsewhere. After this episode, the Starmer government quickly brought forward legislation to ban (“Proscribe”) PA and label it a “terrorist organization”. “Proscription made it a crime to publicly support the organization. Membership of, or support for, the group is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.” (Aljazerra). 

It will be interesting to see if PA members or demonstrators arrested in support of the group, when they are brought to trial, whether there will be any jury in the UK that will find them guilty of not so much as a parking ticket! 😝

 

RANT: WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

  

"Soldier and Death" by Hans Larwin

LAST MONTH, Canadian PM Mark Carney visited Kiev, as well as attending a meeting in Brussels to sign on to an EU arms deal that ensures military equipment gets to Kiev. [See PURL, below] He also went to a NATO summit in The Hague that discussed raising to 5% of GDP* the military spending of member states. So, Carney’s been a busy beaver. But what does signing various agreements around military expenditures mean for Canada and Canadians?

According to gov.ca, Canada has given Ukraine nineteen-billion dollars since Russia’s invasion in 2022. In last month’s Kiev stopover, PM Carney announced an additional two-billion or so down the rat hole for Zelensky’s war efforts, including additional arms and munitions, and humanitarian funding such as emergency food and medical aid. This most recent Canadian donation to Ukraine is through NATO’s new “Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List” (PURL) scam which organizes member states’ donations in handy half-billion-dollar tranches for weapons purchases. PURL greases the wheels to more efficiently restock Ukraine’s depleted equipment and munitions’ stores.

In June, Zelensky said Ukraine would require 40-billion dollars in aid annually and urged everyone to get with the program. Forty-billion bucks a year! Golly gee! Ukraine’s “Churchill” has come back in a big way following his disastrous February visit to Washington and that White House dust-up with President Trump we all saw on our screens. [Ouch! Ed.] After that fiasco he looked like he was on life support, but now he’s got the spring back in his step and, with the Eurocrats behaving like a mob of wet cats hosed into submission by the American president determined to make them pick up the tab for project Ukraine,  Zelensky is all smiley-face and kisses now that he got a transfusion of money and arms, coming primarily from European countries who will purchase the weapons from the US and pass them along to Ukraine. Now, all he’s got to do is defeat the Russian army and lay siege to Moscow. [He’d better have his lucky dice with him because facts on the ground will turn his gamble into a crap-shoot right quick! Ed.]

 

DOES THE TERM “money pit” come to mind? Though, Ukraine is more like the “Grand Canyon” of slush funds and money laundering operations, methinks. Has everyone forgotten that as late as October 2021, Zelensky was implicated in a financial scam involving offshore bank accounts and tax avoidance that he’s been running since before he became president in 2019. Folks, Mahatma Gandhi he ain’t! (Nor Churchill, for that matter.) With billions of dollars flooding Ukraine over the past three years, with little accountability and a president with sticky fingers…well, you connect the dots….

 

PM CARNEY also announced that like a good lick-spittle Canada would, “…be lowering the price cap for seaborne Russian-origin crude oil in alignment with measures announced by the EU and the UK…” in the hope this eighteenth package of sanctions (there’s been so many I’ve lost count!) will do the trick and sink the Ruskie economy once and for all. Good luck with that.😝

 

👉I guess the point I’m making here is that the collective West, for the most part, is run by Lilliputian leaders out of touch with their electorates, their priorities serving personal agendas or else promoting last year’s solutions for tomorrow’s problems. They're out-of-step and out of time in other words. And Canadian taxpayers will be picking up our share of the tab, along with our EU buddies, and we will continue to do so apparently until the end of time.

👉If things go pear-shaped in a big way, and the West is foolish enough to engage Russia in a land war in Ukraine, instead of pouring Canadian treasure onto Ukrainian soil, those two-thousand troops stationed in Latvia will be pouring their blood instead.

 

QUICK TAKEAWAYS:

👉Ukraine has a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning this conflict. It’s a numbers game: Russia has more manpower, more weapons, more industrial capacity to produce weapons than Ukraine. Far more. More, even, than the collective West combined (including the USA). That’s not going to change for some years to come.

👉Ukraine becoming a member of NATO is an existential threat to Russia and it will not tolerate such a state of affairs on its borders. Period.

👉Russia is willing to negotiate, but only if facts on the ground are recognized and its legitimate security concerns are addressed—like Ukraine adopting a policy of neutrality based on the Austrian model, for example.

Despite months of gab fests, discussions, proposals, tweets, and ham-fisted politicking on the part of the United States and its posse, the EU (and…sigh, Canada), Russia has concluded the West is “agreement-incapable” for addressing its concerns through diplomacy and will therefore solve the Ukraine problem on the battlefield.

The hashed lines represent possible Russian advances by war's end

👉The Russians are poised to advance to the Dnieper River by the end of 2025 and may then march on Kiev or Odessa (or both).

Providing Kiev with more weapons and money only prolongs the outcome—a Russian victory is inevitable. In the meantime, there may be as many as one-and-a-half-million dead Ukrainian soldiers.

👉How many more must die? How much territory will Ukraine lose to the Russians because Zelensky and the United States et al, refuse to acknowledge the fact that Ukraine is losing and  that they need to settle the conflict through diplomacy?

The political class and ‘talking heads’ of the West refuse to acknowledge reality: As valiantly as Ukraine’s soldiers have fought over these past three years,  they have lost. Their front lines are fraying and their infrastructure is crumbling under increasing Russian missile and drone attacks. Ukraine has nowhere to go but down. 

👉So, they need to make a deal now to save what’s left. But, Zelensky continues to sing the same song while the flower of Ukrainian youth dies along the front lines.

  

CHEERS, JAKE.  ____________________________________

* Canada currently spends 1.37% of its GDP on defence, but it’s looking to up that to 2% in fiscal 2025-26. And like a kid playing hopscotch, Carney hopes to land on the 5% mark by 2035, at least on paper. However, it's unlikely that any NATO member will reach this target except, perhaps, Germany and Poland. Most will wait for Trump’s term in office to end and a more congenial president is elected in 2028.👌

 

    "I am the king..."

 

 

 

ANOTHER KODAK MOMENT

  

POLISH PM Tusk and Canada’s Mark Carney in Warsaw last month.

Photo—DP

 

"WAS IT ANOTHER ‘pull my finger’ moment from the Polish Prime Minister or a 'Hey! Look at this guy! He’s base!' gesture? Dunno. I just click the pics and let the world decide."-- Jordo Jones

[Note: PM Carney’s head (“ego sack”) is inflated here, straining his pencil-neck’s ability to support it upright. Ed.]😆

 

 

CRINGE PIC: GIANTS AMONG MEN?

   

UNEXPLAINED GIGANTISM AFFECTS VISITING PRIME MINISTER

DP—Kiev

24 August 2025

 

IN A MACABRE TURN OF EVENTS, Canadian PM Mark Carney grew to nearly three times his natural size, dwarfing the honor guard at his address to the Ukrainian people while touring the Presidential Palace in Kiev. Scientists are baffled by his abrupt change in stature, providing a variety of conflicting and at times bizarre explanations to account for the politician’s radical growth spurt—everything from Nigerian “voodoo” to radioactive nodules in the headwaters of the Dneiper River leftover from 1986’s Chernobyl disaster. Even extra-solar aliens with advanced technologies are put forward as a possible explanation. MIT Professor of Physical Sciences, Arno Piffle, dismisses these theories as “trite and quite missing the mark.” Professor Piffle says that to understand the present phenomena we must look to the past so that we may gauge the future: “Really, very many incredibly bright investigators fail to recall one basic fact: this has happened before and will no doubt happen again.” The Nobel laureate went on to say that “Gulliverism”, the term he coined in a 2010 Nature paper entitled: “Reflections on Hyper-Pituitary Functioning in a Sub-set of Mammalian Actors”, is seen most frequently in those belonging to the social strata of high office, in particular, politicians. He reminds us that swelled heads are a precursor for the hyper torso and appendage growth to follow, including the muscles of the neck, which support the heavier, inflated “ego sack” or cranium. What's remarkable is that Gulliverism is so prevalent in this group, with the majority of the population assuming these giants use their enlarged brains for the benefit of society. Not so, says Professor Piffle: “In fact, brain growth in this category does not correlate to cranial growth in most of the ‘big heads’ I’ve examined. In fact, their brains are, on average, smaller than those of normal-sized craniums.” He goes on to say “hot air” fills the additional interior space of enlarged heads of most over-sized politicians. Ukraine's President Zelensky is a case in point. His excessive growth was much more gradual than Carney's, with his upper body developing in lock-step with his air-filled head. Professor Piffle is sure President Zelensky's brain, when removed during his upcoming autopsy, will reveal an air filled "ego sack" with a brain smaller than its cranial volume would suggest. 

This explains how Gulliverians can hold up their heads in the early stages of the disease while their bodies grow sufficient muscle mass to support their heads. Professor Piffle says the growth of politicians’ heads is caused by a virus that “spreads like wildfire” among their class. “At the end of the day, it’s just air inside, and a smaller amount of gray matter than normal.”

What Professor Piffle finds puzzling is how society in general treats politicians with over-large “ego sacks”, giving them the benefit of the doubt in virtually everything they do. He says society goes “out of its way” to support their growth, even though politicians' brains are often smaller even than journalists,  another social class with inflated heads and [to read the rest of the article click here to subscribe and support DP]

 ___________________________________ 

 

"Gosh! It can't be to scale, can it?"

 

 

QUOTES: LAO TZU

  

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

 —Lao Tzu

 

 

 

  

RANT: FOR THE NOBELIST OF MEN?

  

IT WOULD BE NICE if there was a Nobel Prize for participation—for just showing up, an “Also Ran” or “Everybody’s A Winner!” trophy that Donald Trump could receive. I don’t think he'd be satisfied with a medallion like the Nobel Peace Prize (NPP). Make it more like an “Emmy” or an “Oscar”, or a “Noble” business trophy that President Trump can put on his desk in the Oval Office. Have it stand out, be a bit of an eye catcher. Maybe something like a Briars Cup. Something classy, anyway. Because the American president is hell-bent on getting an award. Does he deserve an NPP, though? Nuh-uh. If he’d jettisoned the Ukraine clusterfuk on Day One of his presidency by stopping the flow of weapons and taxpayer dollars into Zelensky’s money pit, then there might be a case made for his getting 2025’s Nobel Peace Prize.* ['Cept, see "Gaza" 634 words👇. Ed.] And while Trump seems to genuinely want to get out of the Ukraine mess, he has strong headwinds to push through. First of all, his advisors, staff, his cabinet and most politicians on the Hill, are hawkish on Russia due to residual hatred of the USSR from Cold War days, or else they’re die-hard “Russia-gaters” who’ve been psy-opted into believing Russia’s President Putin is the horned and goat-footed Satan of our nightmares.

The summit in Alaska the last week, while it was short on “deals” as Trump so often wants to make, nevertheless had several important upsides:

👉First, Russia and the United States, as represented by each country’s president, met face-to-face; at least they’re talking.

👉Trump seems to have come around to Putin’s view that a temporary ceasefire—what Zelensky and most European heads of state want—is a non-starter. Why should Russia, that is winning decisively, stop their advance and give Ukraine time to re-group and re-arm?  Such a deal only delays the inevitable Russian victory with more death and destruction, going forward. A “peace treaty”, on the other hand, is a comprehensive settlement to the conflict that hammers out a deal whereby Russia and Ukraine, as well as Europe, can have their security guaranteed. Something along the Austrian or Swiss model of non-aligned neutrality. It would require a good deal of diplomatic wrangling, but it is far better than establishing a “frozen conflict”, like the one in place between North and South Korea since 1953, which is an armistice, a truce, not a real peace. Unresolved issues there have caused conflict, fear, and mistrust between the two nations ever since. Without a peace treaty, Ukraine would remain an existential threat to Russia, especially if what remains of Ukraine rearms and bids for NATO membership where it could become a base for conventional and even nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at Moscow and points eastward. Which would be unacceptable for Russia.(Think of China placing a ballistic missile site in Windsor, Ontario and how the Americans would react. They'd level the place ASAP, right? Is Russia not allowed to feel the same way about Ukraine becoming a NATO member and thus a more dangerous neighbour? 

BTW, NATO has been nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Uggh! Gag me with a spoon! 😝 The alliance is a paper tiger well past its sell by date. It does more harm than good and promotes conflict where diplomacy is urgently needed. Please, NATO, go sit in the corner and dissolve!

 

 👉Trump may have come away with a better appreciation of why Russia sees Ukraine as a threat to its peace and security. Which would be helpful if he is going to wind down American support for the Zelensky regime. SINCE the summit, the American president has cut off direct sales and donations of weapons to Ukraine, saying he will sell armaments to the Europeans and if they want to donate or sell them to Ukraine, that’s up to them. He’s opening up a bit of daylight between the United States and Ukraine, and at the same time placating hardliners in his administration by allowing US armaments to still flow there, if by a more circuitous route.¹

 

👉Trump said his three-hour meeting with Putin in Anchorage involved a wide-ranging discussion and he made it clear that America and Russia have concerns between them other than Ukraine. More talks and negotiations are in order. Putin invited Trump to visit Moscow in the near future. I would like to see negotiations around limiting nuclear proliferation and revising nuclear treaties, such as New Start, and the INF treaty. We will have to see how this all shakes out over the coming weeks and months.

 

So, should President Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize if his efforts in making a “deal" between Russia and Ukraine bear fruit? No he should not. His unwavering support of Israel and its depredations in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian lands is unconscionable, clearly marking him as complicit in the Jewish state's genocidal crimes there. But, I’d be happy to see him receive the Nobel Peace Prize as long as he’s in prison in the Hague for war crimes. He can keep his gold-plated Nobel medallion in his cell or use it to buy extra snacks in the prison commissary. 😁

  

ALFRED NOBEL'S WILL stipulates that the Peace Prize award should go "to the person (or group) who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Trump has a long row to hoe, I’m sure you'll agree.³  

 

 CHEERS JAKE. _______________________________

 

* One suggestion would be for Trump and Obama to time-share the NPP Obama won in 2009 for ending the “combat” mission in Iraq (mostly), though there are American troops there to this day. And the American military got out of Afghanistan only during Joe Biden’s presidency in that FUBAR of a withdrawal in 2021. So, while there was troop downsizing during Obama’s presidency, he didn’t end the “forever wars”, and he got America involved in Syria, to boot, in 2013. And let's not forget Libya! Finally, recall how Obama was given the moniker of “Drone Warrior-in-Chief” for his extensive use of the then-new remote-killing tech used to blow up Taliban chieftains and wedding parties. I personally feel Obama should give his medal back. He didn’t deserve one then and Donald Trump doesn’t deserve one now.

 

1. Trump has said the U.S. will allow the sale of longer-range missiles to Ukraine but they will need U.S.-monitored systems to fire and guide their flights to targets inside Russia, including Crimea. This is worrying and hopefully it means that Trump is doing what he always does, i.e., ‘playing both sides of the street’. The missiles may never arrive in Ukraine—apparently, they're still in production—or perhaps the launch codes will be withheld by the Americans. I hope this is just Trump dicking around like he always does, looking for some leverage with the Russians. It's a tentative WWIII scenario, but we'll have to wait and see. 

 

2. At the time of the Committee's creation, Norway and Sweden were in a loose confederation, which is why the award ceremonies are divided between Oslo and Stockholm. Nobel was a Swede.

 

3. And Trump winning by hook or by crook, would suggest to me a politicization of the Nobel Peace Prize process, and another example of how our institutions of governance, of law, finance, international relations, and humanitarian outreach, have been corrupted, co-opted by vested interests, and, in many cases, are no longer fit for purpose.

 

FUN FACTS: Each year the Nobel Committee selects six winners in the following categories: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine or Physiology, Literature,   Economic Sciences (since 1901), and Peace.

💣Nobel died in 1896 leaving his vast fortune (he invented "dynamite") to fund in perpetuity the Nobel Prize Committee and the nearly one-million dollar award each of the six laureate takes home. 

Five of the awards are presented through Swedish institutions. The sixth, the Nobel Peace Prize, is awarded in Oslo Norway.²  For the first five awards, the  Committee gathers information and consults experts, beginning in September of the previous year, to decide who will be the laureates the following year.

 

THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE process is different from the other Nobels: Between October and January the Committee opens up its nominations and announcement cycle so authorized institutions and individuals can put forward their candidate for consideration. Instead of the Committee compiling a list of nominees itself, the NPP is thrown open to members of legislative bodies, international courts, university professors, etc., for nomination of possible candidates. In February the  Committee compiles a short list of roughly twenty or so candidates and over the course of several months one candidate is chosen for the prestigious award. Note: Institutions and organizations can also be nominated, for example the International Criminal Court and the government of South Africa are two 2025 nominees. Trump is nominated a couple of times for peace deals he more or less arranged, one notably between Israel and Hamas at the start of his second term. (It was a temporary ceasefire.) He was nominated for the award by the arch war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, and in a cringe-worthy exchange at the White House in early July, the Israeli PM gave Trump a copy of the letter he sent to the Nobel Committee nominating the American president. [After watching that, I needed to wash out my eyes. Ed.] 

OTHER nominees include everyone's favourite genocidal grandmother, Daniella Weiss, a rabid and racist Israeli settler who's just salivating on getting to remake Gaza into a Zionist paradise. My choice for this year's Nobel Peace Prize would be Francesca Albanese,  "for her work as the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, and her tremendous and courageous work to highlight the destruction of Gaza by Israel." You go girl!👍

 

INTERESTING INFO: The "short list" of about thirty candidates, supposedly representing those names compiled by the Nobel Committee from 224 individuals and 94 organizations nominated for the 2025 NPP, is speculation. The Committee does not give out information on the nominees or the short list, nor does it divulge its selection process. Those names found in Wikipedia and elsewhere have been publicized by the nominators for one reason or another, and in some cases demanded by nominees. Currently, the Committee is debating on the short list and there is no telling who is on or off the list, and who remains in contention. BTW, the winner of the NPP is often controversial, one reason why no details of the Committee's vetting process may be revealed for fifty years when all the Committee members are dead and buried in their graves! 

The Committee will make an announcement in October and the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony will take place in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. It's interesting that during his lifetime, Nobel was known as "the merchant of death" for his work developing explosive munitions used widely in militaries throughout the world to this day. 

But, who knows? Maybe a leopard can change its spots?

 

 

    "EVERYONE'S A WINNER!"