By Conrad Black
National Post February 26, 2022: ....As I wrote here two weeks ago, the truckers were right to be outraged at the escalated requirement for the 10 per cent or so who are unvaccinated to quarantine for two weeks when returning from the United States. That provision is oppressive and malicious. The truckers also acted for millions of other Canadians in rising up against the compulsive and imperishable authoritarianism of the substantially failed Canadian COVID regime and the smug acceptance of it by much of the media. The truckers have an absolute right to protest. But as I warned two weeks ago, neither they nor anyone else has a right to strike against the public interest, and especially to shut down or impair traffic between Canada and the United States, nor any right to inflict unnecessary inconvenience on the residents of the nation’s capital.
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The prime minister’s characterization of all the truckers as they approached Ottawa, on the basis of no knowledge or reliable information, as racists, sexual bigots and misogynists was inexcusable and disgraceful. The recourse to the Emergencies Act was unnecessary, oppressive and unless the highest echelon of our judiciary has disintegrated completely, it was likely also illegal. The truckers should have gone to greater lengths to protect themselves against imputations of holding fascist or other extreme views and somewhere around Winnipeg they should have elected a leadership committee and formulated a reasonable list of demands. The prime minister should have offered to meet them. The government’s response to an uneven outpouring of populist energy was a dismal and pompous failure.
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As the trucking crisis was abating in Canada and the Ukrainian crisis arose ....
Related:
Putin Ushers in the New Geopolitical Game Board
Does the Ukraine War Mark the Onset of WWIII?
Russia And China Aren't The Natural Allies Many Assume Them To BeRex Murphy: Trudeau's inexplicable use of the Emergencies Act must not be forgotten
The fact that Russia's GDP is smaller than Canada's could explain Russia's use of the nuclear threat. It is potentially not going to be a long, protracted war, too expensive for the poverty-stricken Russians to maintain.
ReplyDeleteInternational comparisons of GDP are of limited significance.
DeleteRussia's GDP may be smaller, by some counts, than Canada's, but still Russia feeds four times the population while exporting more grain. Moreover, Russia's defense budget is three times Canada's, that's measured in US dollars. By purchasing power parity, Russia's defense budget is about ten times Canada's and equivalent to that of Britain, France and Germany combined.
And if you look at hardware, the idea that Russia is an insignificant power is ridiculous: over thirteen thousand battle tanks to America's six thousand, Ukraine's, two thousand and Germany's three hundred. The balance between Russia and Ukraine looks just as uneven in nearly every other category of hardware, aircraft, warships, military satellites ...
Why Russia is putting its nuclear forces on alert is likely a warning to the US the keep out. Without NATO intervention, the outcome of the battle in Ukraine will surely be an early Ukrainian capitulation.
Great points. Thank you.
Delete"Without NATO intervention, the outcome of the battle in Ukraine will surely be an early Ukrainian capitulation."
ReplyDeleteDo you notice how overly-optimistic the early reports are? As if Ukraine will be able to go it alone and thwart Russia.
But Ukraine is not going it alone. NATO high tech weapons are flowing in as, presumably, is NATO satellite and other intelligence data. How much difference does this make make?
ReplyDeleteYears ago, it seemed to be widely believed that Russia could roll-up Ukraine's army in five days. Today is the fifth day, but Ukraine has yet to capitulate, and so must believe they still have a chance.
But how enthusiastic are the Ukrainian people for the Kyiv regime? That hundreds of thousands have fled Ukraine indicates widespread lack of patriotic fervor that will likely be reflected in the performance of the military.
Although Western Ukraine has been, on and off, Russian territory since the nine -- not nineteen -- hundreds, Does Putin want to assimilate the crazy quilt of mainly Russia-hating ethnicities in Ukraine's North West?
Russia's objectives have not been spelled out, but the circumvallation of Kiev may be a diversion, while Russian forces secure as much of the East as they want.
A better solution than violence would have been a referendum in each oblast to determine how the people want to be governed. But by preventing such a civilized solution, the NATO nations have succeeded in compelling Russia to actions that will restore Russia's normal standing as a pariah state.
Off course to settle the fate of Ukraine according to the will of the people was unacceptable to the Brandonites, since it would have resulted in a Let's-Go-Brandon result from most, and probably all, of the Russian-speaking-majority areas, i.e., the South East as far West as Odessa.
DeleteRather, the West prefers the Zelensky regimes genocidal anti-Russian policy: genocidal, that is, in the sense that Canada's residential school policy of getting the Indian out of the Indians was acknowledged by Brandeau to be a cultural genocide.
Canada, incidentally, provides a way of understanding how things in Ukraine look to the Russians.
DeleteSuppose:
(1) That at the time of the 1995 referendum, Quebec had voted to split from the Canadian Federation;
(2) that the mainly English-speaking communities along the Ontario border had then opted to split from Quebec;
And (3) that Quebec had then shelled the break-away Anglophones for years, killing many hundreds, including children.
How would Canada have responded?