NoW UDATES: UKRAINE, WHERE ARE YE NOW?

 

SO FAR, about where it was before yesterday’s Alaskan summit meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin. I haven’t seen any read-outs of what was said and/or agreed to at the meeting but I think it’s fair to say that America’s involvement in Ukraine—sending billions of dollars worth of weapons and financial support—is drawing to a close. Neither Zelensky nor the Europeans were invited, suggesting that Trump is re-prioritizing American military spending away from Eastern Europe. It’s interesting that Trump stated that the conflict in Ukraine will only end with a peace “treaty”. 

👉After his three-hour meeting with Putin, the American president seems to have changed his stance on how the conflict will be resolved—not with an immediate “ceasefire” and ‘freezing’ of the 1,000 km. line of contact, but rather through substantive negotiations addressing the Kremlin’s core demands: Ukrainian neutrality (No NATO and perhaps no EU), the four eastern oblasts and Crimea are to be acknowledged as Russian territory; elections to establish a legitimate government in Kiev; denazification and demilitarizing of a future rump Ukraine. And all to be formalized in a peace "treaty". 

 

👉PERHAPS Trump’s discussion with President Putin helped him understand Russia’s legitimate security concerns and why a ceasefire is unacceptable to the Russians. We can only hope Trump doesn’t change his mind by Monday when he reads Zelensky and his EU buddies the riot act talks with President Zelensky and his EU counterparts. Trump may be tacitly signaling that without Zelensky’s approval of the “peace plan” based on Russia’s legitimate security concerns as part of a larger European security architecture, the war and its outcome will be decided exclusively on the battlefield and facts on the ground as they develop. Just what America’s involvement in the conflict will be re: supplying weapons, etc., to Ukraine is unclear. We’ll have to see which way the wind is blowing next week.

 

CHEERS, JAKE. ____________________________________ 

 

NoW UPDATE: AWAY UP NORTH!

   

AS WE ENTER the doldrum days of summer, an event happening TODAY (Friday) merits some discussion, namely the summit in Alaska between the U.S. president Donald Trump and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. MSM is abuzz with predictions and possibilities, chiefly around ending the Ukraine-Russia war on terms Ukraine and the Europeans, and the Americans, can live with. We shall see, but I’m not expecting any breakthrough or ceasefire in the conflict coming out of today’s talks, what with Russia’s and Ukraine’s positions so far apart.

SINCE THE MAIDAN COUP in 2014, Ukraine has gradually become a NATO member in all but name, having been trained and equipped by Western militaries to operate seamlessly with NATO armies when the time came for it to become the thirty-third member of the U.S. led military alliance. As a NATO member, Ukraine could host intermediate-range missile arrays along its border with Russia, something Moscow regards as unacceptable and an existential threat.* For Russia, any post-conflict, rump Ukraine would have to be neutral¹, with limits on the size of its military, its weaponry, etc. Its government would have to be purged of Banderites and neo-Nazi elements, and have legal safeguards established to protect the rights of minorities, including Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. Ukraine would have to withdraw its forces from the remaining sectors it holds in the Donbass and acknowledge Russian sovereignty over the the eastern oblasts, including Crimea. And any treaty must be signed by a legitimate government in Kiev, not Zelensky's, because his term in office expired in 2024, yet he remains in power, citing marshal law as the reason new elections cannot be held.

Thus, neutrality, “denazification”, new elections, and territorial annexations are must haves for Moscow and I don't see Putin compromising much around any of them. He doesn't have to, he's winning.

So, it’s doubtful Zelensky and his yapping band of EU cheerleaders will find Russia’s list of demands acceptable, and the war will continue. In the coming weeks, Russia may advance to the Dnieper River as Ukraine's armies collapse. They may move on Odessa or Kiev. Or both. At that point all bets are off.

 

👉I DON’T SEE an end to the bloody, three-plus-years of war other than on the battlefield (the Alaska summit notwithstanding). Russia will take the Ukrainian territory it needs to ensure its security. Besides, Zelensky won’t agree to any of Russia’s demands and the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, as far as ending the war, will probably be a wet squib. Nevertheless, the fact that Russia has sent a large delegation to the summit suggests there may be parallel discussions in other areas, for example improving U.S. and Russian relations (e.g., a permanent ambassador to Moscow; upgrades to Russia’s diplomatic mission in Washington, etc.); sanctions relief; trade talks, and hopefully strategic arms treaty initiatives, like a commitment to renew the New Start treaty that’s set to expire in February 2026.

👉WE WILL HAVE TO wait and see what comes out of the Alaskan summit. At least they’re talking and not throwing spitballs at each other!

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE. ____________________________________ 

 

* What do you think the Americans would do if China were to install medium-range ballistic missiles at Windsor, Ontario? It’s only 610 km to Washington as the missile crow flies. Answer: They would turn Windsor into an ashtray!

 

1. Ukraine declared itself to be a neutral, non-aligned nation in its founding constitution, after it gained its independence following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. 

 

RANT: YOU’RE UNDER ARREST FOR…WORDS?

 

SOMETIMES, YOU DON’T KNOW WHETHER to laugh or cry. Last weekend over 532 people were arrested for conducting a peaceful protest outside the Parliament buildings in London, England. The reason for the mass arrest was simple: The protestors  carried placards stating their support for the pro-Palestinian, direct-action group “Palestine Action”. Until last month, Palestine Action (PA),  had been a UK based protest group that staged non-violent acts in support of the Palestinian people of Gaza (and  the West Bank and East Jerusalem). On the night of June 20, PA broke into the RAF base at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire and spray-painted the engines of two Voyager cargo jets, aircraft used in mid-air refueling of spy planes over Gaza and U.S./Israeli fighter jets in the various conflicts Israel has instigated in the region. PM Keir Starmer claimed there was “millions” of pounds damage done to the two aircraft.

IN HINDSIGHT, PA should have known that staging a direct-action protest that would entail such repair costs (True or false? Who knows) was something that would put the group in the crosshairs of authorities.  But, for the Keir Starmer government to label the organization a “terrorist” group and to arrest Saturday’s protestors “under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act for displaying supportive placards or signs”, (Guardian) was overkill. As intended, this law, and others like it, will have a chilling effect on protests, demonstrations, rallies, marches, pamphleteering etc., going forward. Nevertheless, on Saturday, June 20, hundreds of peaceful protestors challenge Britain’s new anti-terrorism law that bans any support for the now-proscribed Palestine Action* organization. Even carrying placards or T-shirts displaying the group’s name is outlawed by the government and its increasingly Draconian laws inhibiting freedom of expression and the right to peacefully protest. It was an ABSURD SCENE of mass arrests, with protestors handcuffed and led away to waiting police vans. Many were over sixty years of age and unlikely candidates for radicalization by Al Queda. 😝 One was in a wheelchair. All this from the land that gave us the Magna Carta and British jurisprudence! 

 

Recall that ALL THE PROTESTORS were released the next day. There’s a simple reason for this: Breeching Britain’s Terrorism law comes with a stiff sentencing regime, including a maximum penalty of fourteen years in prison. By law, this mandates the accused be tried before a jury of their peers. Thus, the authorities realized, belatedly and with much chagrin, that no jury in the country would convict them. And so, they were released.

SO, was it against the law for Palestine Action to spray-paint those planes? Yes. Does the death and destruction those Voyager aircraft facilitate by being links in the logistics chain that allows Israel to bombard Gaza and other parts of the Levant, does their sordid legacy far outweigh in criminality any physical damage done to the aircraft by PA? Yes. Was it morally justifiable? Yes. Was it the right thing to do?  Again, yes. 

 

 Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________

* If I were living in Britain and I were to publish this post like I’m now doing, a post that mentions "Palestine Action" (as I do here), I could be subject to arrest and face a possible prison sentence of fourteen years. Just for writing the words "Palestine Action." (Oops, I did it again.) 

 

 

 

RANT: TOMORROW

 

TOMORROW (August 6) is the eightieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing by the United States, the first time a nuclear weapon was used in war. (The bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, was the last time such a weapon was used. So far.) Much has been written about these two Japanese cities, destroyed by America’s atom bombs, because they represent the ultimate of cautionary tales. If we treat nuclear weapons, of whatever size, as somehow ‘useable’ in a conflict, as tactical weapons that can draw a line in the sand to make your opponent stop and reconsider their actions, and if we assume such weapons can be contained on a battlefield and not spread to a broader, even a global, conflagration, then we are kidding ourselves. Escalation is almost guaranteed following a nuclear detonation, particularly if the other side is also a nuclear power. 

 

The BBC recently published an interesting article on a subset of victims of the Hiroshima bombing, namely Koreans living in the city at the time. Of Hiroshima's 420,000 people, 120,000 were Korean (IIUC the population statistics from the article). In addition, of the immediate dead following the detonation, which was some seventy-thousand people, 20% were Korean. 

Korean nationals were in Hiroshima as part of a conscripted work force or else they had come there to escape poverty in their homeland. Note: Korea had been a colony of Imperial Japan for some thirty years prior to WWII and tens of thousands of its citizens were dragooned into supporting Japan's war effort, in its factories and other sectors needing manpower. Following the bombing, the conscripts were given tasks like retrieving and burning the dead. This exposed them, disproportionately, to dangerous levels of radiation.

 

Granted, the dangers of radiation poisoning were not well known at the time, still the Koreans were treated as essentially slave labour before, during, and for a time, after the war. Many of the survivors returned home and many suffered the aftereffects of radiation exposure with higher rates of cancer, heart and kidney disease, etc. According to one survivor, a Mr. Shim:

 

“Koreans were second-class citizens – often given the hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs… In the aftermath of the bomb, this distribution of labour translated into dangerous and often fatal work for Koreans in Hiroshima. Korean workers had to clean up the dead… At first, they used stretchers, but there were too many bodies. Eventually, they used dustpans to gather corpses and burned them in schoolyards. It was mostly Koreans who did this. Most of the post-war clean-up and munitions work was done by us." (BBC)

 

SCORES of returnees, including Mr. Shim, settled in Hapcheon, a small county in South Korea, dubbed “Korea’s Hiroshima” because so many survivors chose to live there. Long term studies of the survivors suggest higher than normal mortality rates when compared to Japanese survivors, and higher rates of disease and genetic disorders affecting their second and third generation descendants. Eighty years on and the peoples of two countries live with life altering effects stemming from the detonation of a single atomic bomb. Imagine the effects today’s nuclear arsenals would have on our cities should they ever be used.

👉Let’s hope that never happens.🙏

 

Cheers, Jake.

   

[The Day After and Threads are a couple of movies that should scare the pants off any viewer. Both depict life in a city following a nuclear attack. Hang on to yer knickers!]

 

 

 

RANT: RUB-A-SUB-SUB: THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS!

  

 

WE ALL KNOW how hurtful name calling can be. It makes the recipient cry, or it can fire them up to punch back with words or fists. And mean tweets? We’ve all had them (well, I haven’t, but no matter). They’re like digital gauntlets thrown down or, better yet, smacked across the kisser of the addressee for all to read. Like a red flag to a bull, they've launched flame wars across the internet ever since ARPANET was born in the early 1970s.

Today, of course, name calling and mean tweets are the daily slings and arrows we all face online if we engage in anything other than posting cute kitten pics on our personal blogs. If we get a mean tweet or a half-star rating on whatever it is we post for review, then it’s BAMB! We come back with a zinger of our own. Folks, it’s one thing for losers those who have lots of time on their hands to wield sharp words like Ninja warriors brandishing ninjatō swords in battle. But, after a while, if you're like most people it's ho-hum. Time to scroll on. Except, if you’re the notoriously thin-skinned President of the United States that mean tweet is another matter altogether. 

 

SO, LAST WEEK, there was a flame war on social media between President Trump and Dimitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current Deputy Chair of the Russian Security Council. Medvedev, who loves to troll Western elites, got a rise out of Donald Trump when he mocked Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Indian goods into the US as a penalty for India continuing to import Russian oil. Trump responded (on Truth Social), calling the economies of Russia and India “dead” and that his tarriff warnings should be taken seriously. Medvedev responded by saying that Russia and India were far from dead and reminded the American president that Russia has a "dead hand" and that Trump should not forget about it. The Russian was referring to the “dead hand” strategic defence system first activated in the 1980s. It ensures a launch of Russia’s ICBM missile force should there be a decapitation strike on Moscow. [BOAKYAG time. Ed.] It’s definitely provocative trolling but just that--trolling. Just words in the ether. Nothing more.

 

👉EXCEPT TRUMP,* called Medvedev’s X-post a “threat” and announced last Friday that he was repositioning two “nuclear submarines” closer to Russian shores (presumably one in the North Atlantic, the other in the Pacific). Whether they are nuclear “armed” or merely nuclear “powered” is unknown. Instead of an angry reply to Medvedev’s comment, Trump decides to threaten Russia with nukes.¹

👉WHAT THE FUCK?!! Moving subs closer to Russian shores and shortening the time SLBMs (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles) take to reach their targets, how is this a good thing? If you think Russia is treating this as a joke, you’re either kidding yourself or you’re an ostrich with your head in a hole and your feathery ass in the air! Think about it: WWIII because of a mean tweet! Perhaps we don’t deserve to exist as a species if this is the best and brightest we have leading us. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an idiocracy. Or at least next door to one. Just sayin'.

 

 

 Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________ 

 

* I think we should consider the possibility that Trump is losing his marbles. Such a dangerous, pig-headed decision suggests to me that the American president is increasingly non compos mentis. Is America so  lacking in leadership that they must pick candidates from nursing homes? This is crazy! Thank our lucky stars there’s someone with a normal brain in the Kremlin! 

 

1. Recall that Trump recently okayed the transfer of nuclear bombs from America to an American base in Great Britain, the first time in nearly twenty years that B61-12 gravity bombs have been deployed there. Provocative? Yes. A threatening gesture? You bet. And you can rest assured that's how the Russians view such a move. And an American four-star general commented last week how NATO could overrun the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad lickety-split. These are not signals of diplomacy, tolerance and good will. Earlier, in June, there was Ukraine's "Operation Spiderweb" and those drone attacks on Russia's strategic bomber fleet. Also that month, NATO member states (including Canada) agreed to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. 😆  What message is Russia to take from all this? Our 'betters' are playing with fire. And all of us are liable to get burned.☮

 

[For a discussion on this serious matter, watch the short interview George Galloway has with Scott Ritter, former  United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector, author and commentator, here at the 1:07:57 mark of Galloway’s YouTube show. If Scott is worried, all of us should be worried.]