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. ____________________________________ 

 

RANT: ENOUGH ALREADY!

 

  

I’M SURE I SPEAK for most of the world’s population when I say I AM SO OVER, SO SICK-AND-TIRED of Donald Trump and the American project he’s steering down the drain, yelling like the captain on the Titanic: “Everything’s okay! Full steam ahead!” Trump 2.0 is like being stuck under a swarm of gnats in the middle of a swamp. Swat at them all you will, they’ll follow you everywhere with no end in sight. In his first term as president, Trump was at least entertaining. His asides and admonitions were crude but shades livelier than the pretty mouth noises most politicians make when they’re trying to convince you to take them seriously. In the States, especially, we see how many of them are bought off by this or that special interest or are led around by this or that unholy appetite or brain-dead belief system. And Trump was going to end all that, to "drain the swamp". Instead he's become a swamp creature.

Donald Trump is soooo last decade!

DURING his presidential campaign, he called himself the “peace president”, promising he would not start any new wars and would end the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. He promised to cut Pentagon spending and focus his attention on the plight of the American working class, on job-creation, border security, reestablishing America’s industrial capacity, and so  on. Promises made; promises not kept and falling short of the mark by a country mile! In his foreign policy initiatives, every day, he and his team of incompetents seem to put their collective foot in it. Whether it’s his  erratic agenda with respect to Russia/Ukraine, or Gaza/Israel, or Iran, “Ch-eye-na”, etc. they are truly the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

 

TAKE RUSSIA, for instance. A nuclear-armed superpower, the Russians have repeatedly said that NATO in Ukraine poses an existential threat for them and is their reddest of red lines. President Putin has expressed, for years, Russia’s alarm over NATO’s inexorable march to the East, surrounding Russia’s borders with NATO-aligned states. Ukraine was the last straw. In mid-December 2021, President Putin spoke by phone with President Biden and came away convinced the U.S. president understood Russia’s legitimate* security concerns. In late December 2021, President Putin made a final entreaty to the United States to cease plans to admit Ukraine into the Western military alliance. Biden seems to have agreed, and Moscow was convinced they had a deal. But, much to President Putin’s and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s chagrin, in early January 2022 they learned the Biden administration had reversed its position and that missile emplacements, sanctions, and Ukraine’s NATO candidacy were still on the table. Left with no choice, in February Russia invaded.

We know that Britain’s PM, Boris Johnson, made a trip in March to Kiev and convinced Ukraine’s President Zelensky to tear up the treaty deal with Russia that was all but complete during peace talks held in Istanbul. The conflict could have ended in March 2022. Instead, the bloodshed continues with Russian forces poised to advance to the Dnieper River, and there are rumours of an impending evacuation of the Ukrainian government to Lviv in western Ukraine. 

 

    Remember this? We thought the bromance was over. Sigh.

All that is to say Trump could have deescalated the war and forced Zelensky to negotiate by stopping U.S. military aid and intelligence operations on Day One of his presidency. It was Biden’s war. Now it’s his, and Trump is not wearing it well. His policies in Ukraine are virtually identical to his predecessor: shipping arms and threatening sanctions. Instead of making a deal, he lectures the Russians, offering them nothing that would incentivize them to start serious negotiations. Yes, there are talks and diplomatic engagement between Russia and the United States—which is an improvement from Biden's presidency—but they’re mostly for show, with Trump’s carrot and stick negotiating tactics adding to the confusion. Everyone knows by now that it’s amateur night in Washington. This crew doesn’t know how to do diplomacy, and so the Russians see no diplomatic solution for the Ukraine problem; they will settle the matter on the battlefield. 

Daily, Ukraine continues to lose territory and its army is being methodically shredded by Russian forces. Trump’s arming of Kiev, even if he has arm-twisted the Europeans into paying for it, [Suckers! Ed.] will not change the battlefield’s ultimate trajectory, which is very much in Russia’s favour.

👉At 79, I think President Trump has lost his mojo. He may even be in the early stages of senility, and like Biden, that is a dangerous place for an American president to be. Dangerous for us and everyone, I mean.

👉I’ve left out a good many details in this short overview. But one of the irksome things about the whole affair is how Trump suckered everyone into thinking he was different from run-of-the-mill politicians. Voters in the U.S. believed he would end the war in Ukraine, a pledge he made often in his 2024 campaign. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Most of us are in the later category. And that’s just his Ukraine clusterfuck. Three-and-a half more years. Let’s hope we make it!

 

  

Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________

 

* Having been invaded via the plains of Ukraine several times in the last couple of centuries, it should be obvious how Moscow views, in particular, NATO emplacements of so-called ‘defensive’ long-range missiles abutting its soil. Not to mention troops.

 

    Tin Man: "Oh no, Dorothy! Look! It's Donald Trump! I hope he doesn't bite Toto!"

 

 

HOTEL GAZAFORNIA: YOU CAN CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE, BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE

 

ADOLF HITLER AND HEINRICH HIMMLER must be jumping for joy and high-fiving amid the fires of Hell where their black souls are sequestered for an eternity or two. Why do I say this? Check out what an Israeli parliamentarian, a member in good standing in the Knesset, said last week. It’s a short clip at the 10:05 mark on Judge Napolitano’s go-to "Judging Freedom" YouTube channel. Judge Nap interviewed retired American diplomat Chas Freeman and asked him to comment on MP Zvika Fogel’s poisonous rant. Ambassador Freeman says:

 

“Well, it's both the best impersonation of a Nazi that I've ever seen and it does represent the government policy of Israel. That's why they're talking about building concentration camps as a way to expel  the Palestinians from that part of Palestine. Meanwhile, of course, while no one's watching, they're busily expelling everybody from the West Bank. There's quite an effort going on there to achieve what is called ‘transfer’, which is ethnic cleansing and expulsion. So, you know, one of the crazy things that's been going on is that normally when you deal with genocide, you have great trouble demonstrating intent, but [here] there's no question about the intent. You just heard it. That is, as I said, the best demonstration of Nazilike thinking that you could possibly imagine. And it is now the majority opinion in Israel.” (ret. U.S. Ambassador, Chas Freeman on the "Judging Freedom" podcast, 8 July 2025)

 

THE "CONCENTRATION CAMP" plan the ambassador mentions comes from the very real, recent proposal by Israel’s  Defence Minister, Israel Katz, to establish a “humanitarian city”, as he calls it, in the southern Gaza district of Rafah near the border with Egypt. The first stage of the plan is to entrap house several hundred thousand Palestinians from the local area inside a fenced off zone and keep them there until they ‘voluntarily’ choose to leave Gaza or until other arrangements can be made to “transfer” them abroad to a country willing to host them. [That's a war crime, the forced displacement of an indigenous population from their homeland. Ed.] To this end, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will build feeding stations and work with “partners” to construct housing (tents, actually), water and sanitation facilities, medical clinics and even a school. It will be policed internally by mercenaries private contractors while outside the fence, IDF soldiers keep watch. The idea, according to Israel Katz*, is to screen all entrants, digitally identify and “tag” them, and arrest any Hamas militants that may be uncovered during the screening process. Food and humanitarian aid would, of course, be distributed inside the camps. And, one more thing: once you enter the camps, you can never leave (except for 'voluntary' migration outside of Gaza and the state of Israel).

 

    "Barbed Wire" by David Ludwig Bloch

THIS FIRST prison camp will be a demonstration model where all the kinks in the system can be worked out. Minister Katz envisions that the place, and others like it, will eventually come to house two million Palestinian Gazans. These are “transition” camps, temporary stops for inmates as they make their way out the door and out of Gaza forever. Where they will go is a good question. Recall that in 2024 Egypt constructed a sixteen-square-kilometer fenced-off area abutting the Rafah Crossing into Gaza. I’d like to think they cleared the land for vegetable and flower gardens but it’s probably more likely the Egyptian President El-Sisi cucked to pressure from the Biden administration and threats and cajolement (aka “bribes”) from the Israelis and new Trump administration to prepare for an eventual exodus into the Sinai of some or all of the Gazan population. And Egypt may not be the only potential 'landing pad' for all those Palestinians soon to be bottled up in concentration camps in southern Gaza. I read recently that Cyprus may be petitioned to set up reciprocal “transition” camps to help Israel offshore its unwanted millions. We’ll have to wait and see which governments cuck first to the U.S. and its Levantine pit bull. It should be noted: There’s a fair bit of walking around money to be had in offshore oil and gas fields. Will Israel work a deal with Cyprus to share in the petroleum profits with a quid pro quo that Cyprus take in Gazans? Stay tuned.

 

👉ONE HOLD-UP to Minister Gatz’s wet dream of Gaza ethnically cleansed of Palestinians is that he needs a sixty-day ceasefire with Hamas to give him time to build his “humanitarian city" that will be sited atop the ruins of Rafah. It should come as no surprise that the idea of screening and “concentrating” Gaza’s population into IDF-controlled camps doesn’t sit well with Hamas and, so far, there is no ceasefire agreed upon, though negotiations continue in Doha. If the camps are filled with non-combatants, it stands to reason that anyone outside the camps will be considered a militant, whether they are one or not. And it’s quite probable that many Palestinians will refuse to enter the camps because they see what fate has in store for them behind the wire, meaning they will be considered “militants” by the IDF and treated as legitimate targets. 

Ethnic cleansing is still very much on the agenda in Tel Aviv and in Washington. Recall that the American president mused earlier this year about "deporting" Palestinians from Gaza, taking over the Gaza Strip and turning it into a "Riviera of the Middle East", with "big and beautiful" condos and casinos.

 

Pipe dream though that is, there are serious players in West Asia and elsewhere who are interested in turning Israel and Gaza into an "energy and commercial hub" with rail lines, oil and gas pipelines, and shipping lanes linking India, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia Israeli ports⁺ and eastern Europe. The proposal by the Balsillie Paper think tank [see above link] envisions a rebuilt Gaza with Palestinians participating in an energy and commercial network (the "India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor"), and by having Gazans share in the growing regional prosperity, the besieged Palestinian enclave would stand a better chance at becoming a stable and peaceful entity. Growing indigenous Palestinian wealth is a legitimate goal which should be discussed and analyzed. But, I don't see the Israelis wanting to share their toys with the Palestinians. Do you? Their racist project of ethnic cleansing and genocide has gone too far. Too much blood has been spilled. And the IMEC corridor, should it ever come to pass, would bring onto the scene global financial interests and energy corporations whose bottom lines might not be in the best interests of Palestinians. So, there's that. If I were to hazard a guess, by the time either Trump or an IMEC consortium ever break ground to redevelop Gaza, there will be no Palestinians left; they will be gone, one way or another. 

👉BUT, FIRST THINGS FIRST. Minister Katz’s plan for a “humanitarian city” in Rafah, something Ambassador Freeman sardonically calls: “Auschwitz on the Mediterranean”, is still on the drawing board. How long it will stay there, we’ll have to wait and see. Don't forget, the defence minister needs a ceasefire so he can build his concentration camp that's slated to hold several-hundred-thousand Gazans. So far, no ceasefire is in the offing. 

👉Who would have imagined in this bright, new century of ours that descendants of survivors of the Holocaust would be complicit in creating the same type of system under which so many of their relatives and co-religionists were murdered by the Nazis during WWII? It's not exactly the Circle of Life, is it? (Circle of Death is more like it.)

 

    GHF aid station June 15, 2025. Chaos, Inc.

EACH DAY IN GAZA, dozens of people are killed by Israeli bombs and gunfire--often the figure is over 100 dead, mostly women and children. And since the end of May, around 780 Palestinians have been killed near the four Gazan Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) feeding stations and five-thousand-five-hundred have been wounded attempting to receive food aid.  What kind of humanitarian aid system is this, where people risk their lives for a box of food?! ANSWER: It's not humanitarian aid. It's cheese in a mousetrap, and there are so, so many hungry mice everywhere. As I mentioned in a previous post,  the GHF stations are purposely designed to induce stress and strife among Palestinians entering them, thus creating an inherently unstable environment where IDF troops are given license to fire on the crowds. But, I'm sure the "humanitarian city" Israel Gatz hopes to set up will be better organized and all the nutritional, medical, social, and psychological  needs of Palestinians living inside the wire will be met in a robust and forthright manner. 😝 Yeah, right. Fuck Israel.

 

Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________ 

 

* One Haaretz newspaper wag suggests calling it “Camp Israel” after the innovative and forward-thinking Israeli defence minister.

+ The main Israeli port of Haifa and a proposed Gazan port.  $$$$$$$$$$$$

 

    "Maus" by Art Spiegleman

 

 

 

 

 

RANT: MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL....

  

 FRANCESCA ALBANESE has been holding up a mirror for such a long time now. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories of Palestine, the feisty, Italian legal scholar and expert on human rights law just began her second three-year appointment with the UN. Wearing her trademark dark-rimmed glasses, she has, for the last three years, written reports, and given speeches and interviews in support of Palestinians and their right to self-determination and for a homeland. Her most recent report, “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide” examines how the Israeli economy functions within its apartheid system of unequal laws and tiered citizenship rights. She shines a light on the private sector, and “[w]hile political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide.” (“Summary”)

 

SHE WRITES of Israel’s domestic industries, tech “start-ups”, and security firms, and how they enable and profit from Israel’s wars of aggression and genocide, using Gaza and other conflict zones to test new weaponry, spy tech, drones, surveillance software, and so on. Outside Israel there are similar benefits for those investing in Israel's lucrative economy. And, industries and tech firms throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and advanced economies, with familiar names like Microsoft, Google, Boeing, the Banks, financial institutions, universities, NGOs, and governments, as long as they continue to bankroll and sell their wares to Israel, or buy Israeli treasury bills, or maintain institutional and cultural ties with the Zionist state, then they are complicit in its war crimes. [For starters, Israel should have its UN membership revoked and the BDS (Boycott, divestment, Sanctions) movement should become a global effort. Ed.]

GETTING DOWN to brass tacks: All of them, by not turning their backs and walking away from Israel, and by not treating it like the pariah state it has become, then they enable Israel in its ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (and the West Bank and East Jerusalem). As long as the world continues to trade with, invest in, arm and equip, and give political “cover” to Israel in international forums like the United Nations Security Council; as long as the global community's public and private sectors continue to take their profits from Israel, and move chess pieces around geopolitical game boards using Israel as their pit bull--as long as they ignore their responsibilities under the UN charter and deny ethnic cleansing and mass murder by Israel is even occurring, then Israel will continue to do what it has been doing since October 7/23 (and really since its founding in 1948.) Albanese’s report excoriates the global community’s complacency, its crass profit-taking and self-serving politics, all while the world’s first live-streamed genocide takes place before our eyes. She holds up a mirror to us, and it is a wonder it doesn’t crack with shame and shatter into a thousand shards of broken glass. If we fail to stop Israel now, we can expect more such live-streamed horrors in the decades ahead. 

Free! Free! Palestine!

  

I'M WRITING ABOUT Francesca Albanese today because the Trump administration in the United States has just “sanctioned” her. I guess it’s because she has a big mouth and just won’t shut up and behave. They must have read her report (not Trump, of course, he doesn’t do “reading”) while popping fistfuls of extra-strength Tums, but to no avail. Her words will have left their stomachs tied up in knots!😆

 

YOU KNOW, IT MUST BE NICE to be a world hegemon and to throw your weight around, sanctioning every Tom, Dick and Harry you don’t like or disagree with.

By sanctioning Albanese, the United States shows its contempt for the UN, its charter and related systems of international law and justice. The complaint against her stems from her advocacy with the ICC (International Criminal Court) urging the Court to bring forward arrest warrants charging U.S. and Israeli officials, business executives, and others with complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In response, the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says he is imposing sanctions⁺ on the UN Rapporteur for her, “…illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt the International Criminal Court action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”

 

As a result, she will probably will not be allowed into the United States and won’t be able to fulfill her UN obligations in New York. Her bank accounts and property in the United States may be frozen or seized. Rubio has also sent a letter to the United Nation's Secretary General, Antonio Gutterres, calling on him to remove her from her post on the Human Rights Council.  We'll see if Rubio is successful in further degrading the relevance of the UN and its "daughter" organizations like the HRC in a few days.

 

👉WE LIVE IN A TIME when international law and human rights are being eroded. The United States and its partner-in-crime, Israel, ride roughshod over institutions like the ICC, the ICJ and UN itself, de-legitimizing and in some cases de-funding those same institutions the U.S. once played such a seminal role birthing after WWII. Today, Albanese’s brave stance against Israel’s abominable acts in Gaza will stand the test of time and she will be seen on the right side of history, while cowardly governments and indifferent or culpable citizenry will face global scorn when the history of this sad era is written.¹   

  

Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________ 

*  Or as some commentators say, the “Zionist entity”.   

+ Recall that ICC judges were sanctioned earlier this year by the U.S. for issuing international arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defence minister for crimes against humanity. 

  

1. Journalist and author Chris Hedges says it better than I ever can:

 “The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint. It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. No one, from now on, will take seriously our [the U.S.] stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? We speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide…Those that defend the oppressed, such as Albanese, will be treated like the oppressed." (Hedges, Sheerpost)