CRINGE PIC (OF THE YEAR!)

 

A COOL RECEPTION AT THE OVAL OFFICE

AP—2025-02-28

Washington, D.C.

‘Hot Mike’ Intercept

Key:

Volodymyr Zelensky: VZ

Donald Trump: DT 

 

 

VZ: “…an’ all I ass waz you turn heats up. Why you so mad with dat, Opa. I…”

DT: “No more Opa, bubba! I’m not your grandpa, and the temperature is just fine. I get hot flashes, and I can feel one coming on.”

VZ: "I sorry you sicks, Mister Presidentz. But less me throw log in fireplaze. My fingers so cole I can hardlyz sign paperz."

DT: "It’s gas! Quit stalling. For the last time, give me the keys!"

VZ: "Okay. Okay. Here they arez." [President Zelensky tosses a set of car keys on the table.]

DT: "You took my car, my precious, beautiful, made in America Lincoln and wrecked it! How could you…”

VZ: "Wait, Opa…Mister Presidentz. Car is no ‘wreck’ as you sez is. Scrach, almost. Little touch up painz is all it needz. We fix. Make good as new. Give back speek and spanz."

DT: "You’ve made many, many promises and not kept a single one. Why should I believe you? Why should anyone? Tell me why I don't kick you out right now?!"

VZ: "Mister Presidentz, Donald…"

DT: "Mister President will do. Go ahead. Make your pitch. This otta be good."

VZ: "All rize, all rize. I come heres to Washingtones to ass for your helpz. You no give me what I needz to saves my countryz and to fightz Putin. I angryz. Shoutz. We both do, eh? I grab keyz and go for ridez. I notz tells you. I sorry dat. I go for ridez. To clear heads. I drives rounds capital. I sadz. Feel loneless. I see womanz…"

DT: "A hooker."

VZ: "Yaz. Very prettyz. Hair like silk. Nice knocker. So, I fine out she hooks afer I picks up her. But I givez ride any wasz. We talk. She know many Ukrainee here. From embassy. She sayz she need moneys for Oma in hospitalz. Very sick. I want help. But I no have wallatz. I leaves White House my jacketz. I look round car for moneyz to help Slyph. Thas her name. Very nize girls. Sister she say is nun. I fine walletz…"

DT: "My wallet. In the glove box. I always leave it there."

VZ: "I no see cash but gives her debitz card wit pins number on it. You should nevers put pinz number on card, Opa..."

DT: "My security team told me to memorize my pin. But, what am I, a computer? I need the number. So, I write it down. So what? I’m the president!"

VZ: "Yah, yah. You shoar are, Mister Presidentz. So, I give Slyph. She say she be back. She go cash machine in lobby her apartmentz. I wait in carz."

DT: "My beautiful car!"

VZ: "Hey. I pay back. ever cent. You can truss me for its."

DT: "I've heard that one before. Here we go."

VZ: "I waitz and I waitz. She no show upz. I waitz some mores. I still sad. Then I go Ukrainee embassy. I play card wit guys. I comes bactk to White Housez. I doan know who is scratch car. They scratch  bad drawingz of dick in assez, in moutz. Big wad comes. Yuk!  No me, Mister Presidentz. I…"

DT: "I’ve heard enough from you! You’re whore-buddy tried to empty my account! The son-of-a-bitch will be in jail a long, long time. Maybe forever. That's too bad, but that's what you get. My Secret Service team caught the guy while you were out joyriding. Beat the crap out of him…"

VZ: "Himz? What himz, Mister President? Sylph no himz. She no himz. No. Notz"

DT: "Oh, yeah, didn’t you know? ‘Her’ real name is Ollie Mertz. He’s a cross-dresser. Everyone in Washington knows Ollie."

VZ: "You meanz I.... Opa, she werez a he, you say? How dat happens? O, Saintz Olga! I feelz sicks to stomach."

DT: "Don’t you puke on my carpet! Party time is over, amigo! It's time you head back. I’ll send you the bill for the new paint job and detailing. And listen, I know what you were up to. The Secret Service installed a hidden camera in the ceiling light ages ago. You pervert! My car! My beautiful limo!"

VZ: "I sorry, Opa, I…"

DT: "Get out of here, bozo! It's time for your curtain call. You're Fired!"

[end intercept]   

 

 Cheers, Jake.😆

 

 

QUOTES: MARCUS AURELIUS

 

“The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong doer.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome 161-180 AD. From his "Meditations".

 

ARCTIC COUNCIL

 

SINCE WE ARE CURRENTLY up to our eyeballs in snow right now in my neck of the woods, in Ontario, Canada, I thought it might be a good time to revisit an issue I’ve touched on earlier, namely Arctic sovereignty and the work of the Arctic Council. With the high north changing at a rapid pace because of climate change, and the Arctic Ocean predicted to be ice-free in summer by 2050, it’s plain to see that the northern region of our planet will become a busy place in terms of transportation, trade and resource extraction. Like it or not (I personally don’t, but that’s neither here nor there), that's the trajectory we seem to be on. The Arctic Council’s role is to act as a facilitator for scientific and environmental research, as well as a forum for working groups to craft and present proposals to regulate commercial and nation-state activities in the north. For example, one of the earliest agreements, one that predates the establishment of the Arctic Council (1996), was the “Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programmes (AMAP). This 1991 initiative began gathering a wide range of environmental data on the effects of pollution, and the spread of industrial chemicals within the Arctic ecosystem. This data bank led to the disturbing discovery of the degree to which persistent organic pollutants (POPs) were being introduced into the Arctic on wind, water and through food chains from distant sources. It was discovered that POPs such as DDt, PCBs, and dioxins were being “bioaccumulated” in the fatty tissues, blood and milk of living organisms including, of course, native peoples and residents of the region, to the point where female Innuit* foetuses were deemed at risk. The cumulative work done by the Council led to the “Stockholm Convention” of 2001 being ratified in the United Nations.¹ Other initiatives of the council included establishing working groups whose work led to the ratification of international agreements like: the “Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna” (CAFF), the “Protection of Arctic Marine Environment” (PAME) and the “Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response” (EPPR) protocols. 

 

NEEDLESS TO SAY, the Council’s focus is on protecting the fragile Arctic biosphere from local and southern sources of pollution and environmental distress due to carbon-intensive commercial processes and, of course, climate change, where, in recent decades, it has been observed the Arctic is warming 4x as fast as the rest of the planet.)

  

“The Arctic Council is the leading intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, Arctic Indigenous Peoples and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular on issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic. It was formally established in 1996.

All Arctic Council decisions and statements require consensus of the eight Arctic States.” (Arctic Council)

 

INTERESTINGLY, the idea that an Arctic council or forum be established among the eight Arctic nations² to discuss issues and work on common interests and goals in the far north came about during the years of “Perestroika” and “Glasnost” (“restructuring” and “openness”) in the USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republics), and through the auspices of that country’s president, Michail Gorbachev. Recall the momentous time in the late 1980s when, under Gorbachev’s leadership, Russia reached out to the West, and to the United States in particular, opening its economy to Western investment and reforming its political structures to better align with emergent democratic values. And one of the ways he reached out was to propose that nations whose land mass fell within the Arctic Circle work together on a variety of environmental projects. Note: the changes in the Arctic—especially the advent of an ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer by the mid-21^st Century—were  well off the radar in the 1990s when the Council was formed. 

 

IN 1987, President Gorbachev gave a speech³ in the far-north port city of Murmansk on the need for the USSR to focus on environmental challenges in the Arctic and to work with other arctic nations in a collaborative and task-orientated manner. He even suggested making the Arctic region a Nuclear-Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ).⁴  [Not a bad idea if I do say so, myself! Ed.]

 

👉ALSO IN 1987, Gorbachev and the American president, Ronald Regan, signed the historic “Intermediate Nuclear Forces” treaty (INF) which banned an entire series of nuclear weapons, making Europe a much safer place with fewer nukes targeting European cities. Of course, Trump’s foolish walking away from the treaty in 2017, during his first term as president, is directly responsible for Russia’s recent deployment of hyper-sonic missile systems along its border to counter a possible siting of U.S. nuclear-capable intermediate-range missiles in Europe, something the Russians would consider provocative and threatening. [Nukes are a particular bug-a-boo for Jake. Ed.]

 

👉POINT IS, in the 1990s, there were initiatives among the northern nations promoting real dialogue, scientific inquiry and a wide range of research projects. In so doing, the working groups provided their respective countries with data and background information so that legislation and binding agreements could be made between the member countries, like the “Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic” (2013) and the “Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation” (2017). 

👉MY REAL POINT here is: the more dialogue you have between countries, the better will be your understanding of those countries' needs and comfort zones. This, in turn, makes it more likely you will find compromise and accommodation and vectors of agreement when crafting together treaties and international agreements. And agreements in one area of engagement, often will lead to agreements in others. "Jaw, jaw. Not war, war," as Churchill said.

 

IN 1991, Canada proposed establishing a permanent advisory body for far north affairs with the eight Arctic countries as Permanent Members. As well, it lobbied for indigenous people’s organizations like the Innuit Circumpolar Council and the Saami Council to stand as “Permanent Participants” in any future Arctic Council, and going forward, indigenous voices were heard at every discussion forum of the Council, which was incorporated and signed into law in Ottawa, in 1996, as the "Ottawa Declaration". Up until then, there had been only ministerial links between the eight Arctic nations, coordinated through the “Rovaniemi Process” which is named after the Finnish city where the first meeting was held. Again, these were years when the Cold War was thawing and tensions between east and west were easing. And, going forward, of the eight "Permanent Members", Russia's participation in the Council’s working groups and governance forum was critical for accurate and complete scientific monitoring in the far north, and for designing protocols and agreements to better manage human impacts on the environment. It goes without saying, that the work of the Council would have been woefully incomplete without Russian input and support. After all, 53% of the Arctic coastline lies within the Russian Federation.

 

“[T]he Council still operates in the spirit of the Rovaniemi Process: the focus is in the environment, indigenous peoples sit in the main table, and the work concentrates on the working groups established during the process.  

(UArctic)

 

THERE are a number of countries from Europe and elsewhere (Japan, China, India) that are Permanent Observers at the Council. Periodically, they are invited to participate in projects and task forces of the Council's six "Working Groups". It should be noted there are NGOs and inter-governmental organizations that also have observer status at the Council: for example, the United Nations Development Programme, the International Red Cross Federation and the United Nations Environment Programme, among others.

 

Currently, there are approximately 130 “projects” the Council supports, “tackling issues from science, to shipping, to Indigenous youth suicide.” But since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the seven Council members have foolishly refused to cooperate with their Russian counterpart, impacting the ability of various working groups to complete their projects or to accurately compile their data. This unacceptable situation persists today, with a bare minimum of participation by Russia, which, BTW, has recently warned it may resign from the Council.  Of this possibility, Svein Vigeland Rottem, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen Institute, says: “Technically speaking, there’s no ‘Arctic Council’ without Russia.”

   

SO, WHY HAVE I DONE a blog post on an organization that most people have never heard of? Well, because it’s a forum for communication and cooperation between nations around shared interests and areas of concern. You have working groups of marine biologists, geographers, geologists and so on, providing the Council's eight Permanent Members, who are ministers of state from their respective governments, with information and statistics from which they will craft their national protocols and international conventions and treaties like the International Maritime Organization’s regulatory “Polar Code”, and the important 2013 “Minamata Convention”  on mercury contamination which seeks to regulate the heavy-metal's spread into the environment.

 

EXCLUDING RUSSIA⁵ from the Arctic Council’s deliberations since the it launched its 2022 invasion of Ukraine is another example of shortsightedness on the part of our politicians. Yes, the Arctic, like just about everywhere else these days, is becoming politicized to the nth degree and is a venue for both hard and soft power politics. But, is refusing to talk with Russia at a diplomatic level (or an Arctic Council level) a good idea? Even at the height of the Cold War, there were open channels of communication and diplomacy. A word to the wise: In an age of hypersonic missiles we can not afford any miscommunications. 

👉AND If we can’t remain engaged, talking with one another, sharing information and doing work on important issues of common concern—despite our differences—then we may be in for a whole lot of woe down the road.  

 

Cheers, Jake.____________________________________

 

* It should be noted that from the beginning indigenous inhabitants of the far north have been engaged as "Permanent Participants" in the Council’s deliberations, and continue to do so.  

 

1. “The Convention aims to reduce levels of POPs entering the environment over time by eliminating or restricting releases of POP industrial chemicals and pesticides, unintentionally produced POP by-products and stockpiles and POP wastes [that tend] to migrate long distances and accumulate in northern climates….” (Government of Canada) 

 

2. Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark (Greenland), Russia, the United States. 

 

3. Note: The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant environmental disaster occurred in 1986 and may have prompted Gorbachev to broach the possibility of a mutual cooperation pact among the northern nations to work on shared environmental concerns. 

 

4. There are only a handful of NWFZs today: Antarctica, the seabed, outer space, Latin America and the Caribbean, and several others. I was interested to learn that Canada is NOT a NWFZ. In the past, Canada has hosted U.S. nuclear weapons, allowed testing of nuclear weapons delivery systems on its soil and allows nuclear armed naval ships to dock in its harbours. FUN FACT: While Canada is a signatory to the “Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty” (NPT), it has consistently voted against UN resolutions on expanding the “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” (TPNW). And while there are several cities in Canada that have declared themselves NWFZs, on an international level, toady Canada adheres to its NATO commitments, which entail the potential deployment of nuclear forces. As a middle-power that no longer punches above its weight, Canada should instead support efforts to ban nuclear weapons entirely, but our feckless leaders all fall in line and march to tunes from the American playbook. We might as well take that offer from President Trump and become the 51^st state. (Just sayin’.)

 

5. This may be too 'in the weeds', but I noted that since 2011, the Arctic Council requires new applicants for Observer status to:

 

"recognize Arctic States' sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the Arctic" and "recognize that an extensive legal framework applies to the Arctic Ocean including, notably, the Law of the Sea, and that this framework provides a solid foundation for responsible management of this ocean". (Wikipedia)

Yada-yada-yada, right? But consider the fact that northern Arctic States do have a shared "commons" whether we recognize it as such or use it poorly, or well, or at all. But the requirement that new Observer members to the Arctic Council recognize, in writing, the jurisdiction of "Arctic States" over this region does have some merit and sway in international law. Not much, but some. And for Canada, a middle-power with a long Arctic coastline, we might need all the help international jurisprudence can afford us in the coming decades, when the last of the polar bears finally drown and they open a KFC at the north pole. 

👉Being part of a smaller group of eight nations with shared interests in the far north, that can 'push back', to some extent, against other, non-Arctic nations and sub-national groups vis-a-vis the Arctic, might be to our advantage, going forward, if only for the sake of a bucket or two of the Colonel's best. Head's up! It's a big, bad world out there, kemosabe.