Back Story Newsletter
Good morning,
Ukraine - Russia
Russian President Putin spoke out yesterday on Ukraine after 6 weeks of silence and just as Russia is to respond formally to U.S. proposals to defuse the crisis. He essentially said we are still talking but Russia is not pleased over the refusal of NATO to keep doors open to future Ukrainian membership.
"It is already clear that fundamental Russian concerns ended up being ignored," Putin told reporters after talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow.
Putin wants NATO to roll back its membership to 1997 levels, but he must know that a ridiculous notion. But when your’e negotiating you ask big and settle for less. The less is no more NATO expansion including Georgia and Ukraine.
British P.M. Boris Johnson visited Kyiv yesterday to meet Ukrainian President Zelenskiy. Standing next to Zelenskiy who has suggested fears of an invasion are being over stated, Johnson denied the US and the UK were exaggerating the scale of the Russian threat, saying they were not trying to “big up” the intelligence. “The grim reality” was that Russian troops were “massing on Ukraine’s border. This is a clear and present danger,” he said.
Russia will keep denying an invasion of Ukraine is in the cards while it carries out land and naval exercises, and increases troops on Ukraines border, all as a pressure tactic on the U.S. and NATO allies. Current discussions include the American missile defense system, short range missile placements in Europe, and Ukraine.
Meantime as my analyst friends all point out the price of oil and gas is soaring which directly benefits the Kremlin. Follow the money…
Whoopi Goldberg
Comedian Whoopi Goldberg was suspended for two weeks by ABC’s ‘The View’ yesterday after she had said the slaughter of jews in WW2 was not about race. She quickly had to apologize.
"On today's show, I said the Holocaust 'is not about race, but about man's inhumanity to man'. I should have said it is about both," Goldberg wrote in Twitter apology late Monday.
"No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi's systematic annihilation of the Jewish people - who they deemed to be an inferior race," tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League.
"They dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering six million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous," he added.
Monday's discussion was sparked by a Tennessee school boards decision to ban a novel about Nazi death camps.
The school board said it banned the book because its profanity, nudity and depiction of suicide was inappropriate for 13-year-olds. The school board misses the point entirely, that the horrors of the holocaust need to be understand not hidden because of a nude photo.
Amnesty and Israel
Amnesty International has responded to Israel’s accusation is is antisemitic after the human rights group accused the Jewish state of imposing “apartheid” on Palestinians.
A new report alleges Israel has maintained "a system of oppression and domination" over the Palestinians going all the way back to its establishment in 1948.
Amnesty says antisemitic charges are a lie.
Canadian Truckers
In Ottawa they gathered by the thousands to protest vaccine mandates, but the protest led by truck drivers, has been mired in controversy, after they defaced war monument statues and some flew nazi flags.
The Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who tested positive for Covid Monday, accused them showing “disrespect to science” and championing “hate, abuse and racism” hours after announcing he had tested positive for Covid-19.
In the Western Province of Alberta, the Premier called on truckers to stop blocking the U.S. border point, and briefly that blockade turned violent when the police tried to arrest protesters.
“This kind of conduct is totally unacceptable,” Jason Kenney said during a news conference in Edmonton. “Without hesitation, I condemn those actions and I call for calm.”
Freedoms are everyones right, but one persons freedom to demonstrate stops at the rights of others to live peacefully and to be free to conduct business, travel, and to have safety from a pandemic.
Covid mandate rules were put in place to protect the public from the spread of the pandemic, including the travel of truckers back and forth across the U.S.-Canada border. Most truckers got the vaccines in Canada.
But this protest shows a lot of frustration in society by those who somehow feel silenced while many of us who alternatively feel lockdowns and vaccines save lives and protect people.
Welcome to information disconnect and the angry voices of the aggrieved. I just didn’t expect to see it in my Canada.
That’s a quick run at the main stories of the day. Have a good day everyone.
Dana
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-695203
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/truck-blockade-continues-at-u-s-border-as-rcmp-ready-to-make-arrests-tow-vehicles
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/02/01/putin-says-west-ignoring-russian-concerns-but-hopes-for-solution-a76226
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60209527?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA