RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/03/how-to-launch-a-revolution-and-lose-it-too/

“The ledger of ruinous edicts enshrined as public policy made no distinction between dying ‘with’ or dying ‘of’ COVID. Next came the suppression of medical information at variance with orthodoxy, censoring dissenting scientists and constant, taxpayer-funded ad campaigns ‘nudging’ the populace to accept lockdowns, curfews, closed borders and social exclusion as rational, essential and never, ever to be questioned.”

The last time I checked, there had been recent mass protests against governments and their anti-Covid regulations in cities in France, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Italy, Australia, the United States and most influentially in Canada where a “Freedom Convoy” of Canadian and US truckers had snarled up the parliamentary district of its capital city, Ottawa, by parking in force and hooting their horns.

I had previously thought that the height of Covid policy silliness had been reached in Melbourne when a policeman entered a friend’s garden where he was digging responsibly alone and threatened him with a fine unless he put on a mask. But no. The flame that torched the truckers’ protest in Canada was the mandate from the Canadian government that truckers must be vaccinated before driving their long and lonely way along the vast interstates of North America. 

Why was the mandate both an overreach and a serious political error?

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/03/dividing-the-kingdom-britains-game-of-

“There is disunion and distraction in Downing Street as the Prime Minister struggles to explain his cavalier attitude to lock-down rules. Meanwhile, amid growing divisions at home and absent efforts to broaden and deepen ties beyond Britain’s shores, the Commonwealth faces the prospect of dissolution. The unavoidable surmise is that policy-makers and bureaucrats are either asleep at the wheel or actively hostile.”

After Brexit, government policy-making was supposed to focus on securing the national interest. Those who supported leaving the European Union assumed the United Kingdom would resume control of its territorial borders, reassert parliamentary sovereignty and return to its historic role as an independent sovereign state with a commitment to a rule-governed international trading order.

Indeed, the Johnson government embarked upon a desultory effort to re-establish the UK’s economic and political links with the world beyond Western Europe. It forged “bespoke” free-trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand and Japan and has applied for membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/03/11/canadas-real-prime-minister-n1565874

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland furnishes an interesting case study in an apparently contradictory dynamic of incompetence and competence. As a high-ranking minister, she is clearly incompetent, having, for example, nearly deep-sixed our NAFTA treaty talks with Donald Trump. Her insistence on the inclusion of “progressive” policies, such as gender equality, labor union safeguards, a chapter dedicated to indigenous peoples, and favored environmental standards only ensured that Canada got the short end of the renewed accord. Her attempt to enact Liberal policy was politically inept.

She also exhibits a sentimental tendency to tear up at critical moments. She is famous for walking out of the EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada, fighting back tears—though as former NDP Premier Bob Rae tweeted in Freeland’s patronizing defense, “Crying is not a sign of weakness, it is a natural emotional response to a lot of different situations.” Her valediction to her conference confrères was risible beyond belief. “Canada is disappointed, I am personally very disappointed, I have worked very, very hard. We have decided to go back home. I am very, very sad, really. Tomorrow morning, I will be at home with my three children.” So there!

Being on the verge of tears for not getting her way with a team of alpha males is not how the representative of a G7 nation in the midst of a tough bargaining session is expected to behave. Rather, we are witnessing the hoary cliché of the spoiled little girl whose wishes Daddy has denied, but who will eventually pout her way through any setback. This is Canada’s finance minister.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/03/eric-zemmour-the-insiders-outsider/

“The last thing you would expect a French Jew to do is declare Dreyfus guilty and Pétain a saviour. Very well, and thanks for the candour. We now know how far the maverick presidential candidate is prepared to go to establish in voters’ minds his nationalist credentials and his distance from any other identity. If identity politics is the sleep of reason, it certainly brings forth monsters.”

Every politician must, I suppose, have a view of history. The radical tends to see the past as a tale of woe in which improvement, if it has occurred at all, is thanks to such as he, while the conservative tends to see it as a tale of triumph spoiled only by the like of his current opponents. As in one of those drawings beloved of perceptual psychologists, which the viewer can see either as a vase or two candlesticks but not as both, so it is with politicians’ version of history: glory or damnation, but not both.

One of the prominent (and most controversial) candidates in the forthcoming French presidential election, Éric Zemmour (above), is definitely a history-as-triumph man. In part, this might be explained by his background. The son of Jewish Berber immigrants to France not long before Algerian independence, he has gratefully seized the opportunities offered him by the country of his parents’ adoption. He has by application, high intelligence and talent carved out a brilliant career for himself as a patriotic polemicist and broadcaster whose books now sell by the hundreds of thousands. (It may be, of course, that the causative relationship went, and goes, partially in the opposite direction: because he believed in the French Republican model of meritocracy, he was enabled or encouraged to seize whatever opportunities were going.)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18228/turkey-cyprus-agression

“The air and sea invasion yesterday devastated the resort strip of tourist hotels on the north coast of Cyprus. Greek Cypriots and foreigners huddled under mattresses in the cellars of ruined buildings.” — The New York Times, July 22, 1974.

“But back in Ankara today, the newspapers were full of photos of smiling Turkish troops clustered in front of tanks draped with the star and crescent flag, holding their weapons high, and of Greek Cypriot hostages being given water by Turkish soldiers.” — The New York Times, July 28, 1974.

Currently, Turkey appears to be targeting the rest of the Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union. The government of Cyprus is now dealing with an “illegal immigration crisis” which it says Turkey is orchestrating. Government authorities state that the majority of migrants entering the free part of Cyprus are being smuggled illegally through the Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus.

Meanwhile, according to Turkish media, Turkey is planning to construct a military naval base in the Karpasia Peninsula in the Turkish-occupied north.

Despite the uncountable war crimes Turkey has committed in Cyprus, the Turkish government has condemned the UN for having its “peacekeeping forces” there.

The West, however, remains silent — not merely empowering Turkey to commit further atrocities but rewarding it. The US recently killed, at Turkey’s request, the EastMed natural gas pipeline project, which would have transported gas from US allies Israel and Cyprus, via Greece, to Western Europe. The EastMed pipeline would have been particularly important in light of Russia’s ability, with the Nord Stream and other pipelines, to blackmail the continent in winter by cutting off much of its gas supplies.

Turkey will now be able to continue its crimes against the Yazidis in Iraq, the Kurds in Syria and the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh with no repercussions.

“Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus has now become the first modern Islamist fundamentalist attempt to capture Western world territory and resources.” — Philip Christopher, president of the International Coordinating Committee – Justice for Cyprus, Ekathimerini, May 20, 2018.

https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/ultranationalist-appeasers-le-pen-melenchon-zemmour-side-with-russia-a-discussion-with-nidra-poller/

On the cusp of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, there were disturbing revelations about this issue in the French Presidential election campaign in this our fifth monthly discussion with Nidra Poller, on February 18th There were statements by ultranationalist candidates on both the far left and far right dismissing the looming threat of Russian President to the Western alliance and world order.

President Macron shifted into high gear in diplomatic initiatives having an audience with Putin in Moscow and on the eve of Russia’s invasion Macron made a 105-minute phone call with Putin followed by one with Ukraine’s President Wolodymyr Zelensky, who promptly announced that he would meet with Putin. Zelensky made a sudden trip to the Munich Security Conference the same day, chastising Western appeasement of Putin pressing for immediate imposition of sanctions. He remarked:

“Ukraine is longing for peace, Europe is longing for Peace, the world is saying it doesn’t want any war, while Russia claiming she doesn’t want to intervene – someone here is lying.”

Zelensky got his answer that evening. Backed by Russia’s Duma, Putin signed treaties with the unelected leaders of the two breakaway Ukrainian provinces recognizing their “independence.”  Brushing aside last-minute calls for diplomatic initiatives, Putin used the pretext of “false Flag” Ukrainian actions to send in so-called “peacekeepers” followed by tanks, vehicles and more. The reaction was a salvo of world critical of Putin’s demarch followed by a veritable fusillade of economic and financial sanctions directed at key Russian Banks and oligarchs close to Putin announced by US President Biden, the UK, EU, Japan, South Korea. Even China’s Xi-Jinping urged “caution” to his erstwhile geo-political partner. Ukrainian President Zelensky announced a State of Emergency mobilizing his 250,000 troops to oppose the 190,000 Russian forces surrounding his country on three sides. We knew what would come of this Russian action given Putin’s precedents in the 2008 War against The Republic of Georgia, which resulted his seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and in 2014 seizure of the Crimea and sending in troops to support the rebels in the breakaway eastern Donetsk and Luhansk region. French philosopher and activist Bernard-Henri Lévy penned a Tablet op ed, “The Rape of Ukraine.”  His dour forecast: “Taking Putin’s grievances seriously would be nothing more than a death wish for a return to the terrible 20th Century.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18283/germany-russia-policy

The measures represent a complete reversal of Germany’s post-Cold War Russia policy — which focused on pursuing economic ties rather than confrontation with Moscow — and mark a definitive end to the era of former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“We are living through a watershed era. And that means that the world afterwards will no longer the same as the world before. The core question is whether power is allowed to prevail over the law. Will we allow Putin to turn the clock back to the 19th century and the age of great powers? Or can we muster the strength to keep warmongers like Putin in check. That requires strength of our own. Yes, we fully intend to secure our freedom, our democracy and our prosperity.” — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Bundestag, February 27, 2022.

The significance of the German U-turn cannot be overstated: Germany will become the biggest spender on defense in Europe.

In a major policy reversal, the German government has also decided to suspend technical certification of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea.

“Olaf Scholz is changing decades of German foreign policy in a single speech. Russia went too far and now Germany is waking up. Incredible.” — Marcel Dirsus, German political scientist.

“I have to say I don’t recognize Europe as it responds to Putin’s gangsterism against #Ukraine. This is my second tour in Germany and all of a sudden I see the Continent grow a spine. Way to go!” — Andrew Michta, veteran transatlantic security analyst.

“Watching Scholz in Bundestag today is watching decades of German foreign policy change in a few minutes before your eyes.” — Andrew Gray, politics editor for Politico.

“Putin knew well why he invested so much in friendly relations. Germany was open to that. But the attack on Ukraine changed everything. Comes certainly as a shock to Putin.” — Ulrich Speck, German foreign policy analyst.

“It is hard to overestimate how much Putin’s attack on Ukraine changed Germany. Less than a week ago Nord Stream 2 was still alive, delivering lethal weapons to Ukraine taboo & cutting Russia out of Swift out of the question. Putin’s invasion changed Germany. Turning point.” — Michael Knigge, German journalist.

“Germany basically doing what Donald Trump demanded that they do — to widespread ridicule — for the four years of his Presidency. I know it galls people to hear it, but Trump was right about some very big things.” — John McGuirk, Irish political commentator.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced a paradigm shift in German defense and energy policies in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that Germany will substantially increase defense spending and take immediate measures to reduce its energy dependence on Russia.

https://www.gq.com/story/improbable-rise-endless-heroism-volodymyr-zelensky?utm_source=pocket-newtab

As I write this, Volodymyr Zelensky, the most improbable national leader in the world, just might be the world’s most popular. By now everyone knows his life story’s surreal outline: a comedian who rose to fame with a portrayal of a president becomes the real thing, then transcends it.

A huge part of Zelensky’s global resonance is that he seems to fit a type everyone knows the world over, because, thanks to millennia of persecution, the type exists the world over: a Jewish wiseacre. The idea of one of those (of us, I should say), becoming a wartime icon is in itself a perfect Jewish joke. It’s Woody Allen in Bananas, it’s Dustin Hoffman in Ishtar, it’s Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder. Except in real life. Risking real death.

The true story of 44-year-old Zelensky’s rise is a tad more complicated, and speaks more to the incredibly messy cultural tangle that exists between Russia and Ukraine than to any easy stereotype. His business and comedy roots lie in KVN, a longtime Russian showbiz phenomenon whose title is an acronym for a musty Sovietism—“The Club for the Jolly and the Resourceful.” KVN is a bizarre but admittedly original concept: Imagine if sketch comedy functioned as a pro sport, with city teams battling one another for a spot in the major league, and the top matches televised.

Zelensky’s troupe, called Quarter 95, repped Kryvyi Rih—a Ukrainian city—but performed in Russian, which was then considered not only normal but expected. He was team captain (under the nickname “Vovan”). Once Quarter 95 hit the big time on Russian TV, Zelensky and two partners, Sergei and Boris Shefir, formed a production company under the same name. Their studio produced dozens of shows and events for both countries’ markets, including the Ukrainian Dancing with the Stars, which Zelensky himself won in 2006 (and yes, that would be like Simon Cowell winning America’s Got Talent).

Around the same time, Zelensky began to produce, co-write, and sometimes star in trashy Russian comedies, most of them directed by a U.S.-educated filmmaker named Marius Vaysberg. The first one is representative: 2009’s Love in the City, about three friends living it up in New York when a curse from a magic fairy (played, in a moment of either inclusivity or homophobia or both, by flamboyant pop star Filipp Kirkorov) leaves them impotent until they find true love.

Even as he turned toward politics, Zelensky didn’t exactly leave his comedy career in the rearview.