NEWS OF THE WORLD

@ May 1 or “May Day” is based on the traditional Celtic celebration marking the end of the dark months of fall and winter and the start of the light months of spring/summer. Called “Beltane”, it was established in lands inhabited by the Celtic peoples (Spain, France, the British Isles) around 1000 AD. One of the most recognizable of its traditions is the “Maypole” dance. The pole is a symbol of male fertility [Natch! Ed.]  with the ‘sheath’ of ribbons wound round the pole by the dancers representing the female role in fertility. Pretty hot stuff!

THIS DAY is also known  as “Workers Day” and is recognized by many countries. [In the U.S. and Canada “Labour Day” is on September 1. Ed.] It originated following the “Haymarket Riots” of 1886 in Chicago’s Haymarket district where, in early May, labour unrest boiled over into bombings and violent conflicts between striking workers and police. SEVERAL strikers and police officers were killed, and many in the labour movement viewed the workers as martyrs to the cause. May 1 became the unofficial day to recognize workers’ rights and their struggles to achieve better wages and working conditions, etc.

 

IN FRANCE, May Day saw huge rallies protesting the Macron government and its pension reform proposals. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets where 300 were arrested and over 100 police officers injured. Dang! They sure know how to protest over there!  We sure could learn a lesson or two from them! 

@ MAY WAS A MONTH for other commemorations. For example, V-E Day (“Victory in Europe”), is honoured by most European countries on May 8. It was on this date in 1945, at 11:01 p.m. that Germany’s official surrender to Allied forces came into effect. Victory Day, on the other hand, is a holiday commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. It was first inaugurated in the 16 republics of the Soviet Union following the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender late in the evening on 8 May 1945 (9 May, Moscow Time). Russia and many former Soviet republics celebrate the defeat of German Nazism on May 9 because of the one-hour time difference between Moscow and Berlin, where the treaty was signed by representatives of the warring parties. In Russia, it became a national holiday in the 1950s.

 

ON MAY 9, 2023, European Union queen president Ursula von de Leyen travelled by train to Kiev to commune with Ukraine’s Zelensky. There the two celebrated “Europe Day”, with Zelensky announcing that Ukraine would henceforth no longer commemorate the Russian May 9 Victory Day. Instead, Ukrainians are to recognize 8 May as the “Day of Remembrance over Nazism in the Second World War of 1939-45”, and 9 May in Ukraine would now be called the “Day of Europe”, and celebrated in conjunction with the EU’s “Europe Day” holiday. No more pesky Putin parties on the 9^th for Ukrainians!  

 

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday he was planning to align with the West on the May 8 anniversary of the end of World War II, in a swipe at Moscow…Until now, Ukraine has celebrated the victory against Nazism on May 9, like Russia. But from now on, May 9 will instead become a “Day of Europe” in Ukraine, celebrating the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, the founding act of European Unity [i.e., the proto-EU in 1951. Ed.], to ‘strengthen the unity of the peoples of Europe,’ Zelenskyy said in a decree released Monday. Both moves symbolically bring Kyiv closer to the EU, and further away from Moscow….” (Politico)

 

IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED that during WWII, the USSR, from 1941-45, suffered twenty-seven million dead, including nearly 11 million soldiers in its bloody conflict with Nazi Germany, and it was instrumental in the fascist state’s defeat. It should be remembered, but ideologues like Van de Leyen and Zelensky would have such history forgotten. INSTEAD of reflecting on the past and through sober judgment make decisions, as  a collective,  on how to prevent such events from ever happening again, we are once more upon the knife’s edge of their recurring. Those who accept uncritically the proposition that Russia’s 2022 invasion Ukraine was "unprovoked” would do well examining the entire history of the conflict, and then judge.⁺ 

 

AT THE END of WWII, it's too bad the walls went up so quickly between Soviet Russia and the West. It's too bad that both sides couldn't have commemorated their victories over Nazism together on a single day, acknowledging the other's contributions to the war effort. After all, in 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the end of war in Europe, the American president (Bush) and first lady, and  a host of European and world dignitaries came to Moscow for the 9 May ceremonies. I don't think such a get-together would be possible today, unfortunately.

@ IN MARCH, America’s chief pit bull ally, Britain announced it would send armour-piercing depleted uranium shells as munitions for its Challenger-2 tanks to Ukraine. Such munitions have been proven to cause cancer and birth defects in the lands they have been used (e.g. Iraq, the Balkans). Moscow angrily responded to the British announcement:

 

“If all this happens,” warned Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Russia will have to respond accordingly, given that the West collectively is already beginning to use weapons with a nuclear component.” Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu also foresaw a “nuclear collision.” (Reuters)

 

OF COURSE, it did happen, with the first shipment of shells arriving in May. Moscow responded by deploying (Russian-controlled) “tactical” nuclear weapons in the territory of its neighbour and ally, Belarus. It is the first time since 1991 that Moscow has deployed land-based missiles outside of Russia.¹ Britain’s disregard of Russia’s “red lines” and of the effects such munitions will have on the environment, and on civilian populations is despicable. Moscow’s response is sobering.

IN ADDITION, on 13 May, there was a massive explosion in the western Ukraine city of Khmelnitski following a Russian drone attack. Recently arrived depleted uranium tank shells were thought to be stored in a nearby facility. This tit for tat gamesmanship between two nuclear powers, with escalation seeming to be the only way forward, is horrific in its implications.

@ I READ AN ARTICLE recently that said Japan has 54 commercial nuclear power stations. I thought that was a lot, given the size of the place, but who am I to judge? After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, the Japanese government closed all fifty-four. Recently, some facilities have been reopened (10) and eighteen more are scheduled to go on-line by 2030. The world’s largest nuclear plant, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility on Japan’s west coast was scheduled to reopen, but this had to be delayed because an employee had taken home documents relating to plant safety protocols with respect to natural disasters like earthquakes (and tsunamis.) Apparently, he’d left some files on the top of his car as he drove off to work. A local resident found a few and reported it to authorities. I can understand how you might forget a mug of coffee on the rooftop of your car, but the only copy of safety procedures for a nuclear power plant?! That is truly a clown show!

 

FOR THOSE INTERESTED, the United States holds the record for having the most nuclear power stations at 92, followed by France and China with 56 and 55 each. Canada is a distant 8^th, having only nineteen “CANDU” reactors. And for those wanting a radiation-free summer holiday this year, Italy and Ireland have no nuclear power plants. Same goes for Azerbaijan and Oman, and other less glow-in-the-dark countries.

[THIS MAP is intended for future survivors of meltdowns and clouds of radioactivity in their respective wastelands. Hopefully they can find refuge in ‘cooler’ zones around the world. Hopefully, background radiation levels won't have made them colourblind. Ed.]

 

    [Sigh.... Ed.]

@ AND SPEAKING OF JAPAN: there was a recent mid-May meeting of the G-7 leaders in Hiroshima. Ho hum. There was the de rigueur sanctions package against Russia. (The EU has adopted eleven so far and will surely implement the G-7’s further restrictions on Russian trade and finance, travel bans, etc.) But, if the effects past sanctions have had on the Russian economy are anything to go by, then we’ll probably be served up a ‘nothing burger’ on our collective plate. As Nicholas Mulder concludes in his recent book The Economic Weapon (that I’ve earlier reviewed), sanctions’ effects are often problematic and have less impact on the sanctioned nation than we imagine:

 

“The policy debate about sanctions has been repeated almost every decade since the League [League of Nations—Ed.] was created in the wake of World War I. At its core has been the perennial question: do economic sanctions work? The historical record is relatively clear: most economic sanctions have not worked. [Italics mine] In the twentieth century, only one in three uses of sanctions was at least partially successful.” (295)    

 

NOT exactly a resounding endorsement. ALSO, at the meeting, the ever-tone deaf Joe Biden announced that the U.S. would allow its NATO ‘allies’ to send American-made F-16 fighters to Ukraine, further escalating the proxy war with Russia, a country with the world’s largest inventory of nuclear weapons. UH OH! Nukes! Yikes! How awkward. Couldn't he have made the announcement when he was back in the U.S. instead of at the place, forever etched in the collective memory, where a nuclear weapon was first used as an act of war? Just sayin'.

 

 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva   

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: During the confab, there was some friction behind the scenes with India  dressing down the ever-obnoxious American Sec of State, Anthony Blinken, who has a habit of lecturing other countries on how they should act. [India is not a member of G7 but was invited as a guest, along with Brazil and others to the three day event. Ed.] In addition, Brazil's new president, Lula, was miffed at Ukraine's Zelensky, the the guest that never leaves, who had ditched a meeting with him. Apparently, Mr. Z didn't want to hear the word "No" from Lula's lips over whether Brazil would join the sanctions bandwagon against Russia. Lula made it clear he does not support the initiative. Nor would Brazil supply Ukraine with armaments. Earlier the same day Modi, India's PM, gave the thumbs down to the erstwhile Ukrainian leader when asked the same question. Poor Zelensky! He's wearing out his welcome. People are becoming tired of him and his demands. Tensions are brewing among the powers of the Collective West, it seems. IT'S ANOTHER SIGN that the political and economic importance of the G7 as an institution is on the wane. Too bad, so sad.

 

@ IN TERMS of the on-going proxy war in Ukraine, both the United States and Russia seem locked and loaded in a dangerous game of chance. With the threat of nuclear war closer than ever, why can’t they play Spin-the-Bottle? It’s a damn sight safer than Russian Roulette! Going forward, we need serious politicians and diplomats who don't play games, who, instead, can face reality and come to an arrangement we all can live with. In Europe  and the Collective West, the only politician who has consistently called for peace negotiations, and who refuses to send armaments to Ukraine is Hungary's PM Victor Orban. Often criticized for his right-leaning government, he is one of the few political leaders who speaks honestly about the Ukraine conflict, as seen in this short Bloomberg News interview, here. I look at the clown show of  Collective West leadership and ask: SURELY we can do better than this?! [I'm not holding my breath. Ed.]

 

@ IF YOU GO TO Switzerland, stick to yodelling. Don’t try to be a whistle-blower or you might end up like Trevor Kitchen with a mountain dropped on your head. In a recent interview on the podcast The Whistle-blowers, host John Kiriakou² interviewed Kitchen, a retired currency broker, as he discussed his struggle with the Swiss justice system. Several years ago, Trevor became aware that fluctuations in the currency trades he was seeing had to have been the result of banks illegally manipulating the currency market. HE exposed the practice and was subsequently jailed like a common criminal in Portugal (where he retired with his wife) at the behest of an aggressive Swiss prosecutor.

 

“The Swiss prosecutor who issued an arrest warrant against Kitchen for ‘Offence Against Honour,’ privacy and secrecy violations, and embarrassing the Swiss banking system has refused to lift the warrant which is applicable across the European Union. Kitchen’s only crime was blowing the whistle on massive [currency] manipulation by Swiss authorities.”

[…] In the meantime, Kitchen and his wife have been deprived of the right to visit their daughter and granddaughter in Switzerland due to the arrest warrant issued against him for his whistle-blower actions. Kitchen noted that his pension in Switzerland has been threatened by the Swiss prosecutor, and he eventually hopes to move to a country like the United States or Great Britain, where telling the truth and exposing criminal behaviour in the banking system is not a crime.” (Whistleblowers.org)³

 

WHAT I FOUND COMPELLING—and disturbing—about Trevor’s account is how doggedly the Swiss authorities pursued him; how he was arrested and detained in Portugal for two days at the behest of a Swiss prosecutor where he had no access to a lawyer, was not allowed contact with his wife. Trevor was threatened with years in prison by the Swiss prosecutor and was put under house arrest for several months. He had his bank account in Switzerland emptied and his passport was confiscated.

IN EUROPE, there are no habeas corpus laws which guarantee anyone accused of a crime is to have access to a lawyer, not be subjected to arbitrary detention, be given a speedy trial, etc. Prosecutors there have considerable leeway in how an accused is arrested, detained, interviewed, charged, and brought to trial. Swiss prosecutors, in particular, have a reputation for harsh prosecutions and stiff sentencing recommendations, when compared to their British or North American counterparts. Kitchen was no criminal; his only ‘crime’ was in exposing the criminal activity of major Swiss banks (and embarrassing the Swiss Government). Of his experience as a whistle-blower who has been ground down by a vindictive legal system, he says:

 

“The Swiss have weaponized the justice system. They jump jurisdictions to get even with whistle-blowers. Whistleblowers⁴ are not criminals.” (The Whistle-blowers podcast)

 

I DON’T think I’ll ever look at my Swiss army knife quite the same way from now on. I include Trevor’s cautionary tale here because all of us, too often, take our rights and freedoms for granted. And going forward, I think the political and economic pressures that our societies are apt to experience will put enormous pressure on those rights, and it will be interesting to see whether they can be preserved in the long run.

@ AND HOW can I not mention another get-together of world elites: the 18-21 May Bilderberg meeting in Portugal at Lisbon’s luxurious Pestana Palace hotel, where approximately 130 participants, drawn from the ranks of politics and business, spent three days trysting and schmoozing, and picking up tips on how to run the world. CANADA'S perky, little FM, Christina Freeland⁵, was there again (hopefully on her own dime and not the taxpayers). And no doubt she will self-promote her bid to become the next Sec Gen of NATO as the incumbent tool Jens Stoltenberg is set to depart soon. Of Ukrainian heritage, she is a fawning ardent supporter of Ukraine’s Zelensky and a rabid unwavering critic of Russia’s Putin.

    Our next Dear Leader? Egads!

AT THE BILDERBERG MEETING, Freeland and the other movers and shakers abide by Chatham Rules. There's really only one rule, which sounds a lot like “Fight Club”!) Wikipedia gives a handy list (probably incomplete) of Bilderberg attendees by their country of origin, which reminds us that this annual forum, like the better-known World Economic Forum (WEF), is primarily a Euro-centric/Collective West talk-shop. 

AT THE SECRETIVE Bilderberg meeting, just what these folk talk about, what ideas they proffer, what deals they make, etc., is anyone’s guess. BUT to ignore such elite forums and their pronouncements, their press releases and so on is to ignore what might be coming down the pipe at us, someday. These mucky-mucks don’t do face-time gab sessions for nothing, you know. Some of their proposals and “thought experiments” or their workshops and seminars may sound silly, absurd, even science fiction, but then so did vaccine passports a couple of years ago. 

FINALLY, if you look at the this year's Bilderberg attendee list, most are from that increasingly narrow range of humanity that falls under the ambit of the "Collective West", with most of the rest of the world yet to receive an invite. One commentator suggests  Bilderberg and the WEF are old money, old power, and that organizations like BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or China's Belt and Road Initiative, are new blood and perhaps part of  an emergent new world order. Time will tell. In the meantime, it behooves us all to pay attention to what our betters (as they think themselves) are saying, and especially what they are doing.

 

Cheers, Jake

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* The Soviet army was first to take Berlin on May 2, 1945. The Allied armies had yet to cross the Rhine. Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower, worried that Stalin might not abide by the Yalta Agreement (which divided Germany and Berlin into spheres of influence controlled by the victorious powers), accepted Germany’s surrender and the capitulation of its western armies on May 7 in Reims, France. Because there was still some fighting going on in the Eastern Front, Stalin was concerned the Reims treaty would look like a separate peace and he wanted a general surrender document to be signed by all parties in Berlin. On May 8 this occurred.  

 

+ A growing number of people agree with the idea that the war in Ukraine was provoked by the Collective West, the USA and NATO, but understandably say that Russia was not justified in starting the war, and that there were other choices, other options President Putin had. I would like to understand just what those choices were. What was Putin supposed to do, exactly, to counter the existential threat of further NATO incursions along Russia’s borders? Was he meant to just standby in early 2022 and wait for Zelensky to attack the breakaway states of the Donbass with his massed 100,000-man army? What choice did he have except to initiate his Special Military Operation?

 

1. The United States has had tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe since 1954. Currently, American tactical nuclear weapons are stationed in five European NATO countries– Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye.

2. Kiriakou is a whistleblower who bravely exposed the United States’ use of torture in interrogating prisoners in the early 2000s. He was sentenced to 30 months in jail for revealing “classified” information. [In a sane world he should have been given a medal! Ed.]

3. Though Kitchen would do well to remember how whistle-blowers like Julian Assange, Daniel Elsberg, and John Kiriakou, himself, have been treated by Great Britain and the United States when he chooses his 'refuge'.  

4. “On the simplest level, a whistle-blower is someone who reports waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, or dangers to public health and safety to someone who is in the position to rectify the wrongdoing. A whistle-blower typically works inside of the organization where the wrongdoing is taking place; however, being an agency or company “insider” is not essential to serving as a whistle-blower. What matters is that the individual discloses information about wrongdoing that otherwise would not be known.” (National Whistle-blowers Centre)  

 5. Freeland spouts all the usual tropes around Russia, war, economics, and politics. A good, little elite, she is a neoliberal fiscally and a neocon elitist in good standing with the rest of the mucky-mucks at the conference. And she is about the most boring speaker I have ever listened to. When I hear her voice on the radio, I want to drive my car off a cliff!

 

Mulder, Nicholas. The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War. Yale University Press. New Haven, CT. 2022. Print.

 

 

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