Category: World Politics

On the World Stage.

by Peter Lowry

Maybe we really do sometimes have the right actor in the right role. I was talking to a friend the other day about the war for the Ukraine. We began the discussion talking about the on-again, off-again career of former prime minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson. My friend described Johnson as a clown who people laughed at. He said Johnson did not compare favourably to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy who is a professional comedian who people laugh with. We both agreed that the Ukraine was better off for having him.

There is also no question that president Zelenskyy has done a brilliant job of leadership during the Russian invasion. He stayed to lead his people. He has stonewalled the Russian juggernaut. He has used modern technology to lead while Russia’s Putin has relied on gross numbers and brutality.

And while Vladimir Putin has forsaken his humanity, Zelenskyy tells us that he struggles to maintain his. That humanity is obvious in every address he has made to his world-wide allies and the European Union. He knows how to maintain his honor while begging for more tools of war to defend his country.

But it is not just those weapons that Ukraine is using to stop Putin. The Russian troops are not on their own soil. Their enemies surround them. They need to keep looking over a shoulder. Sabotage is a Ukrainian defence. Anti-tank weapons have the time to be hidden. Drones flown by civilians are the early warning system. Every day that Putin’s rockets are killing civilians, the Ukrainians are killing his soldiers.

And what are the Russian soldiers fighting for? Is this their land? Will they be paid more for winning? Will their vodka ration improve? Will they be given land to farm? And who are they fighting for? Its not their brutal leadership. They think of Ukrainians as friends.

But it is a war that nobody can really win. Putin can resort to using nuclear weapons. That can cause nuclear Armageddon. The only people who can end this war with honour are the Russians themselves. They need to remove Putin from power and offer reparations to the Ukraine.

All we can do in this country is watch with horror and support Ukraine. We can hardly turn our backs on Zelenskyy’s Ukraine. War is never a solution.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Bring Back Boris?

by Peter Lowry

It must be the bookies who are running the United Kingdom these days. They are giving 2-to-1 odds on Boris Johnson returning to 10 Downing Street. The Truss solution did not work. Since trusses are often used to lessen the pain of a hernia, it was hopefully assumed she might fix the UK’s herniated economy. Truss gave the UK economy the hiccups. She only made the pain worse.

But Johnson can only be described as a return to a continuing path to disaster for the UK. He has not known where he was headed since Brexit. He neither understands the economic chaos caused by Brexit nor how to alleviate it.

Johnson is not just a man in desperate need of a good barber. He needs some brains to tuck under that mop of hair.

But, sure, bring back Boris. That guarantees the earliest possible exit of Scotland and maybe Northern Ireland from the united islands. Finding him a safe seat to run for re-election next year might be his biggest problem. Re-electing the conservatives would only be his second biggest problem. His third electoral problem is that he is the only UK prime minister to have been found guilty of breaking the law while in office.

Boris made a bollix of negotiating Britain out of European Union. The Brits seem to like him because he is the farthest from the typically reserved Brit you will ever meet. As foreign minister in Theresa May’s cabinet, he insulted friends and showed little judgement. He was famous for making a racist statement about U.S. President Barack Obama and has won the UK no new friends on the European continent.

While there is little sympathy for the UK bookmakers. Their early odds (when a comeback for Boris was considered much less likely) were taken up so heavily that the loss on payouts could be catastrophic.

But who worries about the bookies when the entire country is falling apart?

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Trump Disease.

by Peter Lowry

It has travelled far. It has infected many. They call it the Trump disease. It infects the incompetents, the crazies of world politics. It encourages them to reach for the brass ring on the merry-go-round of leadership. There are no tombs of honour for them. Their light flashes across the night sky and leaves us in darkness.

The infliction of the Trump disease can be at all levels. They challenge village councils and great nations. Their weapons range from sling-shots to rockets with nuclear warheads. They are all braggarts and brook no dissent.

They can use the bigotry and tribalism of a François Legault in Quebec to refuse the tolerance and openness and bilingualism of Canadian society. They can choose the path of a Poilievre in using the freedom convoy’s ignorance to further his ambition. Or is it as silly as the Wildrose retread, Ms. Smith in Alberta, who talks of an impossible separation by a land-locked province. Her sympathies for the unvaccinated falling on deaf ears.

Closer to home here in Barrie, we have a failed councillor, a failed MP, a boy in need of a job, his name is Nuttall, seeking to follow his mentor Patrick Brown into Barrie’s mayoralty. I could not think of a less competent person for the position.

The Trump Disease rampages world-wide. Modi, a religious intolerant rules the crowded lands of India. Liz Truss, a foolish libertarian, is the un-elected leader of the United Kingdom. Xi Jinping thoughtfully considers the offer of another five years as dictator of China.

And, worst of all, dictator Vladimir Putin of Russia threatens nuclear holocaust if he is not allowed to destroy the Ukraine for rejecting his offer of annexation.

It all comes back to the Trump debacle in the United States. He proved while in the White House that American politics are more corrupt than anywhere else in the world. From the pleasure domes of Las Vegas to the crumbling streets of New York, the almighty dollar rules. In lands without compassion, without love and without democracy, our world has little future and little hope.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Putin’s War.

by Peter Lowry

Where does Putin get off here? He is losing a war that Russians do not want. He murders civilians and complains when somebody attempts to damage his bridge to the Crimea. His Russian conscripts are adding to the refugee crisis in neighbouring countries. He is no Josef Stalin.

Josef Stalin won with starvation. He is reported to have starved 3.9 million people in the Ukraine in the early 1930s. He took their crops and left them to starve. While Putin was celebrating his false annexation of more of Ukraine, the Ukrainians were busy taking some of the area back.

What we have learned from Putin’s war so far is that the Russian Army is a sham. The conscripts do not want to fight. There is no honour for Russia in Putin’s war.

Putin is waging a war of rockets against a civilian population. If the West could have closed the skies over Ukraine at the beginning, the war would be over by now.

Throughout the Cold war of the late 1900s, the West was threatened in Europe by Russian tanks poised to sweep across the continent. They turn out to be a sham. Tanks need intensive training. When they sit, they rust.

The difference we see in this war is that the Ukrainians have a leader. The Russians have a dictator with delusions of grandeur. The Ukraine is fighting for its homeland. The Russians are fighting for a dictator they dislike.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Other Kind of Truss.

by Peter Lowry

They never learn, do they? They are a never-ending line of false economists preaching the same fool’s gospel. They could be a Reagan, a Thatcher, a Truss or a Poilievre. They all preach the same drivel: “Get aboard our freedom wagons. Just bring money.”

 They preach smaller, less caring government, fewer regulations and open markets. They want tax cuts for the rich that can be paid for later. The working stiffs will inevitably pay the bills. The rich will just get richer.

And what do you think of this new girl in town in Westminster? Her first act as prime minister in the United Kingdom was tax cuts for people earning more than £150,000 per year. She said the money lost to the Treasury can be borrowed and paid back later—much later. The hew and cry for her head on a pike, the imploding pound, the economy tanking, convinced her of the error of her ways.

But the Brits never learn. Ever since the stupidity of Brexit, the world has watched the once-proud country’s economy dance on the head of a pin. And the last vestige of stability on the island has been laid to rest. Long live the king?

But England’s Truss is no different from the false gods before her or those who will trail after her. She was amazed at the outcry for her head. She withdrew her crowning gesture. She said she was not that kind of girl.

But what about this loud-mouth in Canada, Pierre Poilievre. He thinks he should replace a prime minister who has yet to give up his training wheels. Poilievre preaches freedom. He promises small government, low taxes, less waste on those unworthy of patronage. He promises a Bitcoin economy in a land where the central bank knuckles under to political direction.    

And the poor will pay the cost of an economy written for the rich. It is the new freedom that he promises the rabble-rousers, the trouble makers, the anti-vaxxers, the anti-immigrants, the bigots—and the youth who do not understand the extent of the freedom they already have.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Anger and the Anguish.

by Peter Lowry

Canada is caught in the maelstrom. We are trapped between rage and remission, revocation and respite. The pandemic has taken its revenge in the destruction of our hospital services, the lost years of education for our children and the ever-growing and lingering lists of the dead. Looking forward, the world is teetering between recession, inflation and war.

And do we understand the anger? The hopelessness? Can we cope with the insouciant climate deniers, vaccination deniers, peace deniers? Is peace, order and good government just something from another century?

Do we countenance the American use of Murder Inc. to kill Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri? How many innocents were killed as collateral damage? And how much was paid for his betrayal?

Too bad Murder Inc. does not have the address of that gentleman in the Kremlin who thinks it is alright to kill children so that he can have Ukraine as part of his domain. After all, if Americans have a talent with weapons, why not flaunt it?

Why should that talent be wasted on children in school, people peacefully shopping or people of a particular colour, engaged in their prayers? Or is this talent reserved for those wishing to kill people who might not shoot back?

Mother Nature is certainly getting back at us. She is burning the trees that are needed to give us oxygen. The same trees that gave us shade from a blazing sun. Her tornadoes tear across our landscape, destroying homes carelessly placed in their path. What she cannot inflict with fire, she floods. Those of us she doesn’t drown, she leaves destitute and homeless.

But Mother Nature is a pussycat compared to humans. The first thing we should do is take the guns away from the police. It might be our only chance at finding out who really are the bad guys.

The police can be tasked as community helpers. They can find shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, a future for the despondent. The challenge to all of us is to help make this a better world.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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In the Mix of Metaphors.

by Peter Lowry

It started out with a title drawn from the Uncle Remus tale of the Tar-Baby from the late 1800s. I had not got past the title and the wife was accusing me of a racial slur. It’s not,” I replied. “The tale is a metaphor for entrapment by what you are fighting.”

And this is my stock in trade. I love the English language and I often come at my readers with metaphors that, hopefully, help in the understanding of a point of view. I do not ask you to always agree with me. I have fascinating correspondence with those who threaten to never read my diatribes again. They come back.

But back to the Tar-Baby. I have now forgotten what I was going to write about. It was something political of course. So instead, I will refer to the situation in Ukraine. Foolish, mean and autocratic dictator Vladimir Putin of Russia is displaying the metaphor in the Ukraine. The harder he pushes his army in the Ukraine, the less progress he is seeing. He is fighting with a Tar-Baby.

What frustrates Putin is that he is fighting with Ukraine as a proxy for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He dares not fight NATO itself as that would lead to a self-destructive nuclear holocaust. In effect, he is actually strengthening NATO. NATO’s commitment to supporting Ukraine grows stronger every day. New countries such as Finland and Sweden are getting in line to join NATO.  Those artillery shells landing among Soviet forces are courtesy of NATO.

As much as the Russian leader might complain that his generals are incompetent and his soldiers unmotivated, he is looking for a way out and there really is no redemption for him. He started the war—thinking it might mean a few weeks of cleaning up. Here it is months later and he has killed thousands of civilians and soldiers, earned the country’s long-term enmity and only blocked its grain shipments and is having a see-saw battle in the eastern region of Donetsk.

You would expect by now that there is intense pressure on Putin within Russia to settle for keeping the Donetsk and bring what is left of his army home. The only problem is that Ukraine is going to want billions in reparations. When you mess with a Tar-Baby you are marked for years to come.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Weaponizing Information.

by Peter Lowry

There is no more powerful weapon than information. It is used by the good people as well as the bad. It can be used by a Donald Trump to spread crass rumours and misinformation. It can also be used by president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to defend Ukraine from the overpowering might of Putin’s Russia.

And if you are in a war with an overpowering force, you need any and all weapons possible. You can imagine Putin railing at his generals for not finding and silencing Zelenskyy. The constant pleas by the Ukrainian president to the world for arms and aid, broadcast from Kyiv, are having effect.

It little matters whether the Russian flag ship on the Black Sea, Muskova, was just damaged or sunk by Ukrainian forces. It gave the Ukraine a victory that they sorely needed.

Call it propaganda, if you wish, but Zelenskyy is winning the information war. His biggest help in this is president Joe Biden of the United States. There is no reason for the U.S. to remain silent about their information gathering capability. Anything that embarrasses the Monster of Moscow is grist for the mill. Whether the information is from spy satellites or human spies that are gathering the information is immaterial. The Americans are delighted to help embarrass Putin.

But no matter the outcome of this conflict, Putin is very limited as to where he can travel afterwards. There are charges of war crimes against him. There are simply too many correspondents feeding information to the world about what they are seeing and recording in Ukraine.

The propaganda from the Kremlin is made much less effective considering the weak attempt his regime is making in trying to keep the Russian people on side. There are just too many losses of Russian soldiers to make a case for the supposed assistance they are providing to the Ukraine. The Russian people are also not entirely convinced that the Ukraine needs that much rescuing.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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“Teach Your Grandma!”

by Peter Lowry

Prime minister Justin Trudeau went to the source of democracy, the European Parliament, to teach about democracy. He was teaching his grandmother how to suck eggs. They needed no lessons on democracy from Justin Trudeau. What they needed was North American solutions and North American resolve. Did you note the small turnout of parliamentarians?

North America is technically self-sufficient in oil and gas. The European Union is not. The European Union is reliant on Russian gas and oil to keep their homes warm and their industries producing.  There are no overnight solutions.

And if anyone knows why democracy matters, it is the European Union. Europe’s history is written in the blood of war. Peace is a democratic solution. Nobody needs Justin Trudeau to tell them that governments need play a positive role in their peoples’ lives. He needs to be in Canada to see what souring inflation is doing to peoples’ lives on this side of the pond.

Of course, Justin can point to Putin-the-Denier as attacking democracy. Putin has seen the weaknesses. He has specialized throughout his life on attacking the weaknesses of democracy. He uses totalitarianism as his tool of choice. He uses military might to get his way. He turns democracy against his enemies.

Vladimir Putin is a denier, a liar, a monster and a psychopath. He attacks us all. He gives no quarter. Our problem and the problems facing our allies in Europe is our lack of facing reality.

The world needs to redirect all ocean-going oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) tankers to Europe to help them bridge to summer needs. At the same time, Europe needs to know that North America is united with them. They need speeches of support, not lectures on democracy. You can save those speeches for next time you are invited to Russia.

And Ukraine needs all the help we can give. Our resolve has to be with them. They are facing the monster. They need not face the monster alone.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Would ‘Wetworks’ Work?

by Peter Lowry

There seemed to be a common message in readers’ comments on my story last week on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s adventures in Ukraine. I never think of my readers as being particularly blood-thirsty but they seemed to all be in favour of dear old Vlad being offed. And they did not even seem to care who did it.  

One suggestion was that the Russian oligarchs might be first in line for the honour. After all, no oligarch likes to be denied their God-given right to a vacation on the French Riviera. They hardly want to spend all of this miserable winter in Moscow. And to have their millions tied up in reprisals might limit their credit line at the casino. We certainly hope they have enough cash left in the kitty to hire a Russian hitman. They might also need a few rubles to bribe some of the guards at the Kremlin. It could be done.

As for the United Kingdom’s storied Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), I can only advise you that there is no such thing as an 007 agent. There are no licenses to kill. It has always been a question as to which country’s creative writers could come up with the more improbable scenarios for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) or the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II?

I think I had the most skeptical conversation in my life with a chap who was introduced to me as an American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent, based in Quebec City. If he had not been introduced by someone whom I knew in the Pearson Building on Sussex Drive in Ottawa, I might have just walked away laughing. What convinced me he might be real was when I asked him how he got his intelligence reports on Canada. His answer was “by reading your daily newspapers.”

A good friend of mine since we were young adults was a chap who was born in Ukraine and served in the Canadian Air Force. It was interesting to meet his mother who was Russian. He took her back to Ukraine and to Russia before she died. He told me some interesting stories about the Donetsk region of Ukraine when they got back to Canada. Maybe Mr. Putin will drop by the region to show that he is invincible. It might be a good time to prove he is not.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]