NoW UPDATE: A RANDOM ASSORTMENT OF FUN FACTS

 

FUN FACT: Article Five of the NATO alliance, which says an attack on one member is an attack on all, has only been invoked once in the alliance’s history and that was following the 2001, September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. And it will probably be the last time it's invoked, given the increasingly fractious nature of relations among member states within the alliance. Going forward, it will be increasingly like herding cats to get unanimity of purpose and action among NATO members, especially with respect to policies around Russia. A new "security architecture for Europe (including Russia) is needed. This Cold War era military alliance is long past its sell-by date. And Canada should withdraw from NATO as soon as possible.

 

International Court of Justice at The Hague

FUN FACT: Earlier this year, Nawaf Salam (Lebanon), the Chief Judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) resigned his position to take up the role of Prime Minister of Lebanon. Judge Julia Sebutinde (Uganda), the ICJ’s current vice-president, was expected to be elected, by secret ballot, as the court’s next president following Salam’s departure. Incidentally, Salam had served only one year of a three-year mandate. However, in March, Judge Yuji Iwasawa (Japan) was elected as the ICJ’s president. And here’s where politics may come into play. Lebanon offered Salam the position of PM. The same Lebanon that has been invaded by Israel. The same Lebanon that will soon host the new U.S. embassy, the second largest in the world. The question of chicanery is suggested, at least to my mind, with suspicions around why Salam was chosen for the PM job. Did Israel and the U.S. pressure Lebanese parliamentarians to pluck Salam from his perch at the ICJ?  If so, why? Was it to ensure Uganda’s Sebutinde gain the influential post? It should be recalled that she voted against the court taking up the South African case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. She also voted against the ICJ issuing any 'cease and desist' orders for Israel to stop its "collective punishment" of the Palestinian people. [A war crime, according to international law and the Geneva Convention.] The only other judge to vote with Sevutinde in these rulings was, not surprisingly, the Israeli judge.

👉IN OTHER WORDS, her impartiality--a helpful attribute for any judge--was called into question. Why she voted in such a manner, with weak legal reasoning according to her colleagues, is a good question and one that may never be answered. IN THIS CASE, however, the ICJ may have scotched an attempt by political actors to sway the court unfairly in favour of Israel. Instead, by electing the Japanese jurist Iwasawa over Sevutinde, a more impartial and evidence-based determination of Israeli complicity in committing war crimes in Gaza may be had at the world's highest court. 

BUT it is nevertheless disheartening that political chicanery can potentially pervert the course of justice in such an august organization.

FUN FACT: In May, it was reported that: “The number of [British] billionaires slid to 156 this year from 165 in 2024, representing the sharpest decline in the Sunday Times Rich List's 37-year-history. ‘Our billionaire count is down and the combined wealth of those who feature in our research is falling,’ Robert Watts, compiler of the Rich List, told PA Media.” (BBC) The billionaire count down in merry old England? Oh, my! The horror! The horror! 😂

FUN FACT: Pope Francis shortly before he was admitted to hospital for the last time said: "Death is not the end of everything, but the beginning of something”.

FUN FACT: Did you know since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, that nearly 300,000 Ukrainian nationals have been granted temporary residency in Canada under the “Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program. Canada has received over 1.1 million CUAET applications with 962,612 approved. I assume this includes the three-hundred-thousand Ukrainian nationals already in Canada. That leaves some six-hundred-thousand or so yet to arrive. The CUAET program allowed Ukrainians to stay in Canada for three years, however it has been extended into 2026. Those in the program can apply for additional work and study visas. According to then-Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, Canada was prepared, in 2022, to take in an “unlimited” number of Ukrainian refugees. Sigh.😒

👉Note: Canada has the second largest Ukrainian diaspora after Russia, with over 1.3 million. But adding hundreds of thousands more might not be such a good idea. The feckless Trudeau government opened the flood gates in 2022 to keep the Ukrainian vote in Liberal hands. The question is, can Canada handle such a large influx of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian advance? Of course, many fear violence and the upending of their lives if Russia were to incorporate their lands into the Russian Federation. But, I will pose a question that may be unpalatable to some: Do we really want so many ethnic Ukrainians, predominately from western Ukraine, who might hold nativist beliefs most Canadians would find objectionable, i.e. fascistic sensibilities as espoused by their WWII hero Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with Nazi Germany against Russia, and whose militia, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), murdered thousands of Jews, Poles,  ethnic minorities, and dissidents along the Eastern Front? Yet, because he fought against Russia for an independent Ukraine, even though he was joined at the hip with Nazis, he is considered today a hero and the father of Ukrainian nationalism. 

Statues of Bandera are erected, and annual commemorations are held in his name, predominately in western Ukraine. I’ll stop here, but you take my point: are these the type of immigrants we want coming to Canada? Do we want new Canadians who have adopted such an ideology? With 300,000 Ukrainian refugees since 2022 here on temporary 3-year visas, will the Feds have the political will to return them to Ukraine when the fighting stops? I’m not holding my breath.*

FUN FACT: As I was gathering info on Ukraine for the above "Fact", I happened on a reference to a traditional Ukrainian musical instrument called the bandura. It sounded similar to Bandera, of course, and I wondered if there was some weird connection. The bandura is a multi-stringed lyre-like instrument that's been around for hundreds of years. It is used to play traditional Ukrainian folk music, and I found a YouTube performance of a song entitled "Bandera" played on the bandura. It was first recorded in 2019 and sung by a choir of students from the theology department of Chernivtsi University in western Ukraine. The song comes with the refrain: "Our father is Bandera, our mother is Ukraine". (Catchy tune.) Here, it's  sung by a Ukrainian-American Alex Lagoda and his bandura in November 2022. He comments about the song:

 

“It's about a hero who fought against the Soviet Union. [Bandera] The song…talks about our 20th century Ukrainian revolutionary. [It’s] about, you know, the fighters that fought against the Soviet..um..Russian invaders and they really…fought till the bitter end, into the 1950s. And you know this guy Bandera, you know he's real controversial [Ya think! Ed.] for some people, but for us, I mean, he is an obvious..uh..inspiration and revolutionary.

 

[The above link to a book review of a biography of Stepan Bandera gives you a good look into Bandera's fascism, his antisemitism and his complicity in war crimes. He ain't no hero. Ed.] 

 

FUN FACT: The other day, Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon was interviewed by Sky News anchor Yalda Hakim who proceeded to bi#ch-slap him with several hard-hitting, pointed questions around Israel’s current phase of destruction, ethnic cleansing, and using starvation and collective punishment against the Palestinian population of Gaza—all war crimes under international law. The latest pogrom will see the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attempt to corral two-million Gazans into the southern Raffah area of the enclave where a despicable scheme of providing food and medical aid only to those Gazans who relocate there and register with a newly-established private aid organization called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), that will use military contractors to guard and distribute aid supplies to desperate Palestinians and their families.¹ There are currently hundreds of aid trucks on the Egyptian side of the border waiting to enter Gaza but they have been barred by the Netanyahu government which has blockaded all aid into the Palestinian territory for over two months. Gazans—men, women and children—are starving, with the most vulnerable wasting away and dying without adequate nourishment. Starving. In real time. Every day on our screens.

👉THE PLAN is to use food aid and bombing to force Gazans into the Raffah area where they can be monitored with facial recognition scans and the like, and policed with armed, private sector guards (aka “mercenaries”, an old-school name) with the ultimate goal of pushing the population into Egypt’s Sinai, whether the Egyptians like it or not, or else abroad to other countries that will feel obligated to take them in, or that are compelled to do so, or  that are given enough of a financial incentive to make a deal with Israel. And they’ll do the same for the Palestinian populations of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

👉BUT, RETURNING to that refreshing Sky News interview with Israeli UN ambassador Danny Danon, Yalda asked questions of Danon—a poisonous toad in my opinion—questions he couldn’t answer except with the lame response of everything happening in Gaza is “Hamas’ fault”. Her questions were rebuffed by Danon with the standard talking points we’ve heard ad nauseam for months, but at least the questions were asked.

NOTE: In January 2024, another Sky News presenter, Bella Donati, in her interview with Danon, was fired for an impolitic comment she made suggesting that what was happening in Gaza was a “holocaust”, raising comparisons with what happened to European Jews in WWII and by implication suggesting modern-day Israel was acting like Nazi Germany. [Well, if the shoe fits…Ed.]

And now? No firings or apologies from Sky News. It seems more and more mainstream media (MSM) outlets are becoming critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza and its military campaigns in the Levant. Perhaps reporters are beginning to report again. 👍

 

Giant white slug or reclining ex-president?

FUN FACT: Former U.S. president Joe Biden is having trouble attracting speaking dates on his post-presidency-polish-my-image-for-posterity-tour. Maybe it has to do with the fact that his brain is now a shriveled kumquat. Or maybe it’s because there are few takers willing to pony up the $300,000 speaking fee he seems to want to charge. He's the one who should be paying anyone foolish enough  to listen to his drivel! Who wants to listen to his trips down memory lane, or hear tales of “corn pops”, or how he stood eyeball-to-eyeball with Putin. (He'd been looking in the bathroom mirror during a sun-downer moment when he made the comment.😏)

BUT, I guess, three-hundred-thou is a good deal if you compare it with Obama’s $400,000 speaking gig arrangement. Me, I don’t need to pay one thin dime to hear old Joe speak. I can instead go down to the old folks’ home and listen to any of the opas speechify. They’re loud, full of opinions, and cranky as hell if they miss their noontime nap! Just like Joe.

 

 

Cheers, Jake. _____________________________________

 

* One commentator raised an important consideration in any post-conflict Ukraine: The more territory Russia incorporates into the Federation, those predominately eastern regions populated by ethic Russians and Russian speakers, the more concentrated the population of ethnic Ukrainians becomes in what remains of any future Ukrainian state. In the past, eastern Ukraine acted as a 'check' or 'block' against harsher, less democratic policies promoted by the western oblasts in the Rada (Ukraine's parliament). Any future Ukraine would, in all likelihood, have a more extreme and potentially dangerous political and demographic environment. Especially if the ideology of "Banderism" is allowed to flourish.

This would be a problem for Putin and Russia going forward, to have such a 'hornet's nest' on its border. One solution might be to allow revanchist intentions of Poland, Hungary, Romania, and possibly Belarus free rein to break apart Ukraine and absorb those oblasts  where ethnic populations of their respective states are located. It would further fragment  the country, but into more manageable chunks. It's FAFO time for Ukraine!

NOTE: These East European states  have nationals inside Ukraine who are denied the right to speak and learn in their own language or to promote their ethnic cultures--much like the Russian-speaking minorities were oppressed in the Donbas region, one of the original causes for Russia's 2022 invasion.  

 

1. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) plans “to deploy private security firms to guard its aid distribution sites—a move that critics say undermines fundamental humanitarian principles. Under international law, aid operations must remain neutral, independent, and civilian in nature. Treating humanitarian relief as a militarized mission violates those standards. According to Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel—as the occupying power—is obligated to allow independent and impartial humanitarian organizations to operate freely in Gaza. But GHF falls short of both, especially as hundreds of trucks remain stalled at Gaza’s borders, awaiting Israeli permission to enter.” (Quds)