2022-07

Friday February 25, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 25, 2022

Decision to invade Ukraine raises questions over Putin’s ‘sense of reality’

March 4, 2014

Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a catastrophic new European war, combined with the sheer weirdness of his recent public appearances, has raised questions in western capitals about the mental stability of the leader of a country with 6,000 nuclear warheads.

They worry about a 69-year-old man whose tendency towards insularity has been amplified by his precautions against Covid, leaving him surrounded by an ever-shrinking coterie of fearful obedient courtiers. He appears increasingly uncoupled from the contemporary world, preferring to burrow deep into history and a personal quest for greatness.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is well-placed to analyse changes to Putin’s demeanour. Macron once drove a cooperative, if self-conscious, Putin round the gardens of the palace of Versailles in a tiny electric golf cart in the summer of 2017 and welcomed him to his holiday residence at a fortress on the Mediterranean coast the following summer, where Putin descended from a helicopter carrying a bunch of flowers and complemented the Macrons on their tans.

February 17, 2022

After Macron held five hours of talks with the Russian leader in Moscow at opposite ends of a 15-metre table, he told reporters on the return flight that “the tension was palpable”. This was not the same Putin he had last met at the Elysée palace in December 2019, Macron said. He was “more rigid, more isolated” and was off on an “ideological and security drift”.

Following Putin’s speech on Monday, an Elysée official made an unusually bold assessment that the speech was “paranoid”. Bernard Guetta, a member of the European parliament for Macron’s grouping, told France Inter radio on Thursday morning, after military invasion began: “I think this man is losing his sense of reality, to say it politely.” Asked by the interviewer if that meant he thought Putin had gone mad, he said “yes”.

Guetta is not alone. Milos Zeman, the Czech president and long one of Vlaldimir Putin’s staunchest supporters, denounced Putin a “madman” after the invasion.

July 22, 2014

“All our Russia-watchers, watching his press conferences, think that he’s descending even more into a despotic mindset,” another European diplomat said.

Vladimir Ashurkov, a close aide of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent opponent who is now in a penal colony, described Monday’s rambling speech by the Russian president about Ukraine as “really bizarre”.

“It’s unprecedented in the rhetoric of world leaders, but also for Russia. It’s quite strange,” said Ashurkov, who is executive director of Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, and lives in exile.

August 10, 2007

“Why would you spend so much time, you know, looking back into the past, when we now live in the 21st century? We should be looking into the future. It puzzles me as to what audience is intended for such a speech, because it’s not going to resonate with Russians and it’s rubbish for an international audience.”

“I think he’s in some sort of self-induced concept of reality that is very revanchist, based in the past, and in the trauma of the dissolution of Soviet Union,” he said. “Frankly speaking, we are in a situation where the leader of a major nuclear country is living in his own world.”

In a crisis, it would be very much up to Putin how to react and whether to escalate. Like a US president, he has access to a nuclear briefcase, the Chegets, with nuclear launch code. According to an analysis by the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey, the defence minister and chief of staff of the armed forces are also supposed to be involved, but in Putin’s Kremlin it is unclear whether they would act as any kind of brake on his actions.

“Nuclear weapons are an interesting exception to the general rule that the psychology of world leaders is less important than the systems they work in,” Foley said. “Don’t assume that this could proceed in an orderly fashion. It could spin out of control very easily.” (The Guardian) 

 

Wednesday February 23, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 23, 2022

Was funding for Canada’s vaccine protests linked to Putin’s plans for Ukraine?

Joe Biden’s administration had two different and seemingly disparate international crises on its hands Friday when Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, strode to the podium in the White House briefing room.

January 22, 2022

Sullivan’s message was chilling: If Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to invade Ukraine, he said, it could happen before the end of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, which are scheduled to wrap up this coming Sunday.

At the same time, the White House had grown worried enough about the COVID-19 protests blocking vital commercial trade corridors at the Canada-U.S. border that it urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take a harder line.

Experts in both countries are wondering if the two situations have more in common than an initial glance might suggest.

Bessma Momani, a political-science professor at the University of Waterloo and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said she sees earmarks of Russia’s foreign interference techniques in the social-media maelstrom surrounding the protests in Canada.

“The Russian strategy has always been about divide, right? Sow dissent from within,” Momani said in an interview Monday.

February 11, 2022

The goal, she said, is to feed and foster the narrative — already well on its way in the U.S., but less so in Canada — that western-style democracies are prone to instability, insecurity and social upheaval.

“They picked up on this idea of culture wars and identity politics being yet another demonstration that democracy doesn’t work. And so it really is part of their strategy.”

Online news startup Grid reported last week that a single, stolen account was responsible for administering four of the most prominent Facebook groups at the centre of organizing and promoting the protests, which have entered their third week.

And NBC News has reported that the protests, originally branded as a “trucker convoy” comprising drivers angry at being forced to get vaccinated against COVID-19, were being promoted by fake accounts connected to so-called “content mills” in Bangladesh, Romania, Vietnam and elsewhere.

July 23, 2020

Momani said she suspects Canada’s global reputation as a stable liberal democracy in proximity to the U.S. has made it a tempting target for Russian hackers. She added the ensuing pandemonium has also provided Putin with a welcome distraction as he continues to amass troops, equipment and weapons near the Ukrainian border.

“If they were not patient zero behind this, they certainly helped add oxygen because the timing was appropriate for them,” she said.

“It’s going to be hard to pinpoint it, to completely say it’s all Russian intervention, but I have absolutely no doubt that they have their hand in this in some way.”

January 30, 2020

John Weaver, a professor of intelligence analysis at the York College of Pennsylvania, said it’s difficult to determine with any precision if Russia has been involved in sparking the social unrest on display in Canada.

But the fact that Canada is a prominent U.S. ally and trading partner, a G7 nation, a NATO member and part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network would make it a perfectly viable target, Weaver said.

“I believe it’s highly probable that they have some skin in this fight, but the degree to which that they do, I just don’t know,” he said. (National Observer) 

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to enter the Russian-controlled areas of southeast Ukraine following a decision to recognize the territories as independent states.

The decision to dispatch his troops to perform “peacekeeping duties” will be viewed in Ukraine and by other western allies as an occupation of the region and likely trigger tough sanctions and a Ukrainian military response. (The Guardian) 

 

Saturday February 19, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday February 19, 2022

Majority have lost faith in Canada’s ability to keep peace and order in wake of trucker protests: poll

February 10, 2022

After weeks of protests snarling downtown Ottawa and blockading border crossings, nearly two-thirds of Canadians have lost faith in the ability of the country to maintain peace, order and good government and 53 per cent have lost faith in the enforcement of the law, according to a new poll.

The Maru Public Opinion poll, done from Feb. 15 to Feb. 16, found that 71 per cent of Canadians would vote for a “strong-willed person” who will enforce law and order, regardless of what political party they’re from.

This view is strongest in Quebec (86 per cent) and in British Columbia (74 per cent). In Ontario and Alberta — both provinces with conservative premiers — this number drops to 66 per cent, followed by 63 per cent in Atlantic Canada and 62 per cent in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

“Whether people know it or not, our daily politics and our ability to do things in this country is founded on the principle of peace, order and good government,” said John Wright, executive vice president of Maru Public Opinion. “That speaks to the door that opens to some form of populism that exists in other countries.”

Friday February 18, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 18, 2022

Canada beats rival U.S. to reclaim Olympic women’s hockey supremacy

Canada waited four long years for Olympic women’s hockey redemption.

February 20, 2010

In 2019, it failed to even reach the final of the world championship. That’s when the countdown began — literally.

General manager Gina Kingsbury gave each team member a clock displaying the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the 2022 Olympics.

Now, after the clocks hit zero, there’s Olympic gold medals around Canadian necks once more after beating the U.S. 3-2 on Thursday in Beijing to claim their first title since 2014.

Captain Marie-Philip Poulin scored twice — including her third career Olympic game-winning goal — while Sarah Nurse’s goal and assist pushed her past Canadian great Hayley Wickenheiser for most points in a single tournament with 18.

It was quite the journey even since the clocks were distributed. Canada won its first worlds since 2010 in August. Last October, it centralized with a group of 29 players in Calgary to prepare for six months for the Beijing Olympics. In January, that centralization became a bubble following a COVID-19 breakout.

Thursday February 17, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 17, 2022

Putin’s Long Tables Explained

January 22, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s every move is dissected as fears escalate that he’ll soon order an invasion of Ukraine, but attention has recently turned to why Putin sits across from a comically large table during meetings with other world leaders, the most recent instance of which came Tuesday during a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. 

The issue took global spotlight last week after Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron sat at opposite ends of a table pegged by Reuters to be 20 feet long during their meeting in Moscow.

The extreme social distance came after Macron refused to take a Russian-administered Covid-19 PCR test, and Reuters reported Thursday it was because France didn’t want Russia to have access to Macron’s DNA, citing two anonymous sources close to Macron.

Another French official told Reuters the protocols were due to Putin living a “strict health bubble,” and the Kremlin confirmed the extreme distance is to protect Putin.

Scholz met the same distanced fate as Macron during his Tuesday meeting in Moscow, sparking memes and providing comic relief during otherwise tense negotiations.