RANT: FOR THE NOBELIST OF MEN?

  

IT WOULD BE NICE if there was a Nobel Prize for participation—for just showing up, an “Also Ran” or “Everybody’s A Winner!” trophy that Donald Trump could receive. I don’t think he'd be satisfied with a medallion like the Nobel Peace Prize (NPP). Make it more like an “Emmy” or an “Oscar”, or a “Noble” business trophy that President Trump can put on his desk in the Oval Office. Have it stand out, be a bit of an eye catcher. Maybe something like a Briars Cup. Something classy, anyway. Because the American president is hell-bent on getting an award. Does he deserve an NPP, though? Nuh-uh. If he’d jettisoned the Ukraine clusterfuk on Day One of his presidency by stopping the flow of weapons and taxpayer dollars into Zelensky’s money pit, then there might be a case made for his getting 2025’s Nobel Peace Prize.* ['Cept, see "Gaza" 634 words👇. Ed.] And while Trump seems to genuinely want to get out of the Ukraine mess, he has strong headwinds to push through. First of all, his advisors, staff, his cabinet and most politicians on the Hill, are hawkish on Russia due to residual hatred of the USSR from Cold War days, or else they’re die-hard “Russia-gaters” who’ve been psy-opted into believing Russia’s President Putin is the horned and goat-footed Satan of our nightmares.

The summit in Alaska the last week, while it was short on “deals” as Trump so often wants to make, nevertheless had several important upsides:

👉First, Russia and the United States, as represented by each country’s president, met face-to-face; at least they’re talking.

👉Trump seems to have come around to Putin’s view that a temporary ceasefire—what Zelensky and most European heads of state want—is a non-starter. Why should Russia, that is winning decisively, stop their advance and give Ukraine time to re-group and re-arm?  Such a deal only delays the inevitable Russian victory with more death and destruction, going forward. A “peace treaty”, on the other hand, is a comprehensive settlement to the conflict that hammers out a deal whereby Russia and Ukraine, as well as Europe, can have their security guaranteed. Something along the Austrian or Swiss model of non-aligned neutrality. It would require a good deal of diplomatic wrangling, but it is far better than establishing a “frozen conflict”, like the one in place between North and South Korea since 1953, which is an armistice, a truce, not a real peace. Unresolved issues there have caused conflict, fear, and mistrust between the two nations ever since. Without a peace treaty, Ukraine would remain an existential threat to Russia, especially if what remains of Ukraine rearms and bids for NATO membership where it could become a base for conventional and even nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at Moscow and points eastward. Which would be unacceptable for Russia.(Think of China placing a ballistic missile site in Windsor, Ontario and how the Americans would react. They'd level the place ASAP, right? Is Russia not allowed to feel the same way about Ukraine becoming a NATO member and thus a more dangerous neighbour? 

BTW, NATO has been nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Uggh! Gag me with a spoon! 😝 The alliance is a paper tiger well past its sell by date. It does more harm than good and promotes conflict where diplomacy is urgently needed. Please, NATO, go sit in the corner and dissolve!

 

 👉Trump may have come away with a better appreciation of why Russia sees Ukraine as a threat to its peace and security. Which would be helpful if he is going to wind down American support for the Zelensky regime. SINCE the summit, the American president has cut off direct sales and donations of weapons to Ukraine, saying he will sell armaments to the Europeans and if they want to donate or sell them to Ukraine, that’s up to them. He’s opening up a bit of daylight between the United States and Ukraine, and at the same time placating hardliners in his administration by allowing US armaments to still flow there, if by a more circuitous route.¹

 

👉Trump said his three-hour meeting with Putin in Anchorage involved a wide-ranging discussion and he made it clear that America and Russia have concerns between them other than Ukraine. More talks and negotiations are in order. Putin invited Trump to visit Moscow in the near future. I would like to see negotiations around limiting nuclear proliferation and revising nuclear treaties, such as New Start, and the INF treaty. We will have to see how this all shakes out over the coming weeks and months.

 

So, should President Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize if his efforts in making a “deal" between Russia and Ukraine bear fruit? No he should not. His unwavering support of Israel and its depredations in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian lands is unconscionable, clearly marking him as complicit in the Jewish state's genocidal crimes there. But, I’d be happy to see him receive the Nobel Peace Prize as long as he’s in prison in the Hague for war crimes. He can keep his gold-plated Nobel medallion in his cell or use it to buy extra snacks in the prison commissary. 😁

  

ALFRED NOBEL'S WILL stipulates that the Peace Prize award should go "to the person (or group) who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Trump has a long row to hoe, I’m sure you'll agree.³  

 

 CHEERS JAKE. _______________________________

 

* One suggestion would be for Trump and Obama to time-share the NPP Obama won in 2009 for ending the “combat” mission in Iraq (mostly), though there are American troops there to this day. And the American military got out of Afghanistan only during Joe Biden’s presidency in that FUBAR of a withdrawal in 2021. So, while there was troop downsizing during Obama’s presidency, he didn’t end the “forever wars”, and he got America involved in Syria, to boot, in 2013. And let's not forget Libya! Finally, recall how Obama was given the moniker of “Drone Warrior-in-Chief” for his extensive use of the then-new remote-killing tech used to blow up Taliban chieftains and wedding parties. I personally feel Obama should give his medal back. He didn’t deserve one then and Donald Trump doesn’t deserve one now.

 

1. Trump has said the U.S. will allow the sale of longer-range missiles to Ukraine but they will need U.S.-monitored systems to fire and guide their flights to targets inside Russia, including Crimea. This is worrying and hopefully it means that Trump is doing what he always does, i.e., ‘playing both sides of the street’. The missiles may never arrive in Ukraine—apparently, they're still in production—or perhaps the launch codes will be withheld by the Americans. I hope this is just Trump dicking around like he always does, looking for some leverage with the Russians. It's a tentative WWIII scenario, but we'll have to wait and see. 

 

2. At the time of the Committee's creation, Norway and Sweden were in a loose confederation, which is why the award ceremonies are divided between Oslo and Stockholm. Nobel was a Swede.

 

3. And Trump winning by hook or by crook, would suggest to me a politicization of the Nobel Peace Prize process, and another example of how our institutions of governance, of law, finance, international relations, and humanitarian outreach, have been corrupted, co-opted by vested interests, and, in many cases, are no longer fit for purpose.

 

FUN FACTS: Each year the Nobel Committee selects six winners in the following categories: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine or Physiology, Literature,   Economic Sciences (since 1901), and Peace.

💣Nobel died in 1896 leaving his vast fortune (he invented "dynamite") to fund in perpetuity the Nobel Prize Committee and the nearly one-million dollar award each of the six laureate takes home. 

Five of the awards are presented through Swedish institutions. The sixth, the Nobel Peace Prize, is awarded in Oslo Norway.²  For the first five awards, the  Committee gathers information and consults experts, beginning in September of the previous year, to decide who will be the laureates the following year.

 

THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE process is different from the other Nobels: Between October and January the Committee opens up its nominations and announcement cycle so authorized institutions and individuals can put forward their candidate for consideration. Instead of the Committee compiling a list of nominees itself, the NPP is thrown open to members of legislative bodies, international courts, university professors, etc., for nomination of possible candidates. In February the  Committee compiles a short list of roughly twenty or so candidates and over the course of several months one candidate is chosen for the prestigious award. Note: Institutions and organizations can also be nominated, for example the International Criminal Court and the government of South Africa are two 2025 nominees. Trump is nominated a couple of times for peace deals he more or less arranged, one notably between Israel and Hamas at the start of his second term. (It was a temporary ceasefire.) He was nominated for the award by the arch war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, and in a cringe-worthy exchange at the White House in early July, the Israeli PM gave Trump a copy of the letter he sent to the Nobel Committee nominating the American president. [After watching that, I needed to wash out my eyes. Ed.] 

OTHER nominees include everyone's favourite genocidal grandmother, Daniella Weiss, a rabid and racist Israeli settler who's just salivating on getting to remake Gaza into a Zionist paradise. My choice for this year's Nobel Peace Prize would be Francesca Albanese,  "for her work as the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, and her tremendous and courageous work to highlight the destruction of Gaza by Israel." You go girl!👍

 

INTERESTING INFO: The "short list" of about thirty candidates, supposedly representing those names compiled by the Nobel Committee from 224 individuals and 94 organizations nominated for the 2025 NPP, is speculation. The Committee does not give out information on the nominees or the short list, nor does it divulge its selection process. Those names found in Wikipedia and elsewhere have been publicized by the nominators for one reason or another, and in some cases demanded by nominees. Currently, the Committee is debating on the short list and there is no telling who is on or off the list, and who remains in contention. BTW, the winner of the NPP is often controversial, one reason why no details of the Committee's vetting process may be revealed for fifty years when all the Committee members are dead and buried in their graves! 

The Committee will make an announcement in October and the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony will take place in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. It's interesting that during his lifetime, Nobel was known as "the merchant of death" for his work developing explosive munitions used widely in militaries throughout the world to this day. 

But, who knows? Maybe a leopard can change its spots?

 

 

    "EVERYONE'S A WINNER!"

 

 

      

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.