US "peace plan" for Ukraine is a complete sell-out to Russia

The United States has come up with a 28-point "peace plan" for Ukraine, which is suspiciously similar to Russia's surrender offer from over 2 years ago. In fact, there are suggestions that it was literally authored by Russia and handed over to the US to push through. Some US senators are saying that this is nothing like the US's real plans for Ukraine, and that Trump is just pushing any old thing to get any sort of "peace", even if it favours the aggressor, just like has plan for Gaza. 

Roughly, the Trump-Witkoff plan involves:

• Official US recognition of Russia's hold on Crimea and the whole of the Donbas region, including parts that they do not even hold militarily after two-and-a half years of war, plus those parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions it currently holds.
• Russia rejoining the G7 group, from which they were ejected after the annexation of Crimea.
• Full amnesty for Russian war crimes throughout the war, and a dropping of the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges.
• The capping of Ukraine's military at a level much lower than currently (so that they are less able to respond to future Russian incursions?)
• A family reunification plan for the thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia during the war.
• The lifting of restrictions on Russian television channels in Ukraine, and on the influential Russian Orthodox Church.

Does Ukraine get anything from this deal? Some ill-defined "reliable security guarantees" from the US, is about all, and would you trust the Trump administration on that?

If you thought that Trump's bromance with Putin was over, you might want to think again: this is another love letter to Putin. It is a  veritable rubber-stamping of Russia's wish list with regard to Ukraine. This is a much worse deal for Ukraine than any previous offers.  Ukraine is left with a stark choice: accept a deal that looks very much like total surrender, or continue to fight a war it is slowly losing.

And the timing? Deliberately to take advantage of a corruption scandal in Zelensky's inner circle, that puts Zelensky on the defensive, and makes his acceptance of any old deal more likely (although still very unlikely - if he were to sell Ukraine out to Trump's deal, his presidency is toast).

JD Vance picks some Canadian cherries

US Vice-President JD Vance felt the need to weigh in on Canada's standard of living on X the other day. While I have little to no confidence in JD Vance's critical thinking abilities - or anything else published on X, for that matter - his post merits comment for its sheer fatuity.

His comments are in response to a post by some other right-wing geezer who happened to get hold of a graph produced by Ice Cap Asset Management, an obscure but outspoken Nova Scotia investment portfolio management company, comparing Canada, UK and USA's inflation-adjusted GDP per capita.

Vance's conclusions (not necessarily Ice Cap's, although one of its analysts did publicly agree with them)?

While I'm sure the causes are complicated, no nation has leaned more into "diversity is our strength, we don't need a melting pot we have a salad bowl" immigration insanity than Canada.

It has the highest foreign-born share of the population in the entire G7 and its living standards have stagnated.

Whew! Where to start.

Ignoring entirely the complicated causes he mentions, Vance plucks a "cause" out of thin air. Immigration = Poorer Standard of Living. Obvious, right? No evidence, or even logic, needed.

And, hold on, since when did GDP per capita become the sole measure of standard of living? A country's standard of living is usually tracked using a much wider range of data. For example the UN uses a Human Development Index, which combines GDP per capita, life expectancy at birth, and years of schooling for children. This index shows Canada pretty much in lockstep with the US and UK.

In terms of "quality of life", which includes such factors as access to food, housing, quality education, healthcare, employment, etc, Canada does much better than either the UK or US. 

So, it really depends on which statistics you want to cherry-pick. But the chutzpah of the Trump administration seems to know no bounds. Put out some vaguely cconvincing-sounding cherry-picked data and the party faithful will lap it up, and even expand on it some. No need for accountability or accuracy or any of that crap; they are past all that. And, soon enough, that cherry-picked, even blatantly erronious, data becomes the conventional wisdom. Voilà. Job done.

Does eveyone hate the USA?

I started with the question, "Do Amercians know or care that most of the rest of the world hates them?" I still don't really know, but presumably the answer is that it depends on their politics, and perhaps their education level. So, most Democrats are cringing at the moment, embarrassed at the image the USA is broadcasting to the rest of the world. Most Republicans - at least the MAGA end of the Republican spectrum - insofar as they have even thought about it, probably just don't care. It's all a part of the selfish and insular mindset that characterizes the MAGA movement that the attitudes of others are just irrelevant.

But then I wondered, " Does the rest of the world actually hate America?" For that question, there is some data available. It's a few months old now, but Pew Research Center has produced a very detailed survey of international attitudes towards Donald Trump and the USA in general. Dating from June of this year, it looks at attitudes towards a whole host of related questions in 24 major countries across the world.

Unsurprisingly, the citizens of most countries have an increasingly unfavourable view of the man and the country. But there are a few interesting anomalies.

• General confidence in Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs is low with an average of 62% having no confidence in the man. Canada, Australia, Mexico and Turkey are the least confident, along with Scandinavia and most of western Europe. Hungary, India, Israel, Nigeria and Kenya, though, seem quite confident in Trump. (This was back June remember, before most of the administration's tariffs began to bite, and before some of the more recent poor decisions, failures and flip-flops.) Across the board, women have less confidence in Trump than men. 
• Favourable and unfavourable opinions of the USA roughly follows that, but less extreme. For instance, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Turkey and western and northern European countries tend to have the most unfavourable views; Israel, African countries, but also Asian countries like South Korea, Japan and India, have the most favourable opinions. On average, it is about 50-50. 
• 
• In most countries, opinions of the USA have become much more unfavourable over the last year, particularly in countries like Canada, Mexico, Europe and Australia. Interestingly, attitudes in the UK, Hungary, Argentina, South Africa and India have hardly moved over that period, and in Israel, Nigeria and Turkey they have even improved a little.
• Over the last 25 years at least, overseas confidence in US presidents has hugely favoured Democrats, with Obama and Biden polling well, Trump and George Bush polling poorly.
• Predictably, supporters of right wing populist parties in Europe have a much more favourable view of Trump than opponents of such parties.
• On average, respondents in the 24 countries polled have little or no confidence in Trump's ability to handle US immigration policies, the Russia-Ukraine war, US-China relations, global economic problems, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and climate change, with their confidence dropping further with each of those listed issues (i.e. climate change is the issue people are least confident about).
• Trump is seen as arrogant and dangerous, but also a strong leader. He is NOT seen as diplomatic, able to understand complex problems, well-qualified, and, more than anything else, he is not considered honest.
• Only Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are seen as worse than Trump in terms of confidence to do the right things regarding world affairs.
• Views on democracy in the USA tend to follow the political inclinations of the countries. For example, countries like Hungary, Poland, Israel, Nigeria and Kenya see US democracy as strong, while most other countries do not, particularly the more liberal countries like Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, etc.

So, of course, to say that everyone hates America is trite. Many people - most people - hate Trump and what he has turned America into. But, don't forget, at least half of Americans facilitated and empowered him. It's hard not to hate them for that.

Little Curaçao qualifies for the 2026 World Cup

The tiny country of Curaçao has become the smallest country to ever qualify for the World Cup.

With a total population of about 156,000 souls, the Caribbean island's improbable qualification for the 2026 World Cup is quite a feat, beating out the previous smallest country, Iceland, which has about 350,000 inhabitants. When you consider that about half the population is female, and an estimated 17% are under the age of 15 and 16% over 65, that leaves an adult male pool of roughly 50,000 by my estimate.

There are mitigating factors, though. Curaçao is technically an autonomous territory of the Netherlands, and not really a country in its own right. Many of its players were actually born and raised in the Netherlands, a world-class soccer nation, but choose to play for Curaçao. (They were granted permission from FIFA under its nationality rules, so there is nothing underhand going on here.)

And, credit where credit is due, Curaçao finished top of its qualifying group, above Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Bermuda. They did have a substantial measure of good luck, with Jamaica hitting the post three times and having a penalty waved off during the two team's last qualifying match. But luck is part of the game too.

I'll be cheering for Canada in the World Cup next year. But there's still a piece of my heart rooting for Curaçao.

Trump's latest flip-flop comes with the usual nonsense

Most things Donald Trump says are ridiculous, and a great many of them are deliberately misleading or just plain wrong. 

It's no great surprise, then, that Trump's latest flip-flip, on a vote to release more files from the investigation into notorious sex-traffficker Jeffrey Epstein - files that are widely believed to include some incriminating evidence against Trump himself - came with more unsupported claims, distractions and sleight of hand, in an attempt to get ahead of what is widely seen to be an unavoidable development.

"It is really a Democrat problem", he blustered, "The Democrats were Epstein's friends, all of them. And it is a hoax, the whole thing is a hoax." 

Wow. "ALL of them"? What a ridiculous man.

And, in case you have your suspicions that Trump is finally coming to his senses over publicly releasing the Epstein files, you should remember that Trump never does anything without an ulterior motive. If he is now, all of a sudden, encouraging Republicans to vote to release the files, after months of doing the opposite, then you should know that there is a plan in place to shield him in some way.

Yes, Trump's apparent change of heart is partly so that he doesn't have to admit that at least half of his party was going against his express instructions (and he does like to appear in control). But more likely, there is a plan to stop most of the incriminating parts of the files being publicly released anyway, despite the vote. 

The most likely candidate for this is a plan to use the files to incriminate Democrat politicians and supporters (as he has already hinted at). If the files are evidence in an ongoing investigation, they cannot be made public. If that investigation goes on long enough, they may NEVER be released (or at least not until Trump is safely out of the presidency). In fact, the "transparency" bill just voted on explicitly specifies that the Justice Department can hold back any files "that jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, providing that such witholding is narrowly tailored and temporary".

Also, even those files that ARE released could be subject to redactions. Again, the bill specifies that the attorney general can "withold or redact" records that "would consitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy". Like Trump's name, for example? Those files that have already been released have had many names and phone numbers blacked out, supposedly to protect privacy. Which makes a bit of a mockery of the "transparency" that the bill is supposed to ensure.

Either way, you can bet that Trump and his tame Justice Department will make sure that there is nothing released that could possibly incriminate Trump.

Fun and games in the Canadian Parliament

Another major test in Parliament for the minority Liberal government yielded a show of faux brinkmanship. 

Today's vote on the 2025 federal budget was a confidence vote, and a failure could have resulted in a new election just six months after the last one. Given that pretty much no-one - from the official opposition Conservatives to the much-reduced and leaderless NDP, the Bloc and the Greens, to the Canadian voting public in general - wants an election right now, or any time soon for that matter, all parties had to be quite careful about how they voted. Neither the Conservatives nor the NDP are in any position to fight a new election at the moment.

Yes, of course, the oppositon parties wanted to demonstrate to their voting base their opposition to the government, but they didn't want to do it in such a way that the Liberal government was brought down, thereby triggering an election. The Liberals are two seats short of a majority, so a straight party line vote was not an option. The vote also came hard of the heels of the Conservatives' loss of two of its caucus, one crossing the floor to the Liberals and one resigning completely.

In the end, two NDP members and two Conservative MPs abstained from the vote, thus allowing the Liberals a slim victory of 170-168, while still allowing the opposition parties to say that they voted against the bill. The sole Green MP, Elizabeth May, agreed to vote in favour of the bill after a last-minute agreement with Prime Minister Carney to beef up the Liberal's climate change agenda, which Carney has been gradually trashing since he assumed power. The result of all this wheeling and dealing is that the budget bill passed by a slim two-vote margin, with no Christmas election is in prospect.

You could call it smoke and mirrors. You could even call it a travesty of democracy. Or you could call it realpolitik and democracy in action, depending on your predilections. Yes, it was a rigged vote, but a vote rigged with the explicit permission of all parties. It's anybody's guess what would have happened if MPs had actually voted with their consciences, but this vote was all about optics and little else. Conscience just didn't come into it.

African names

We are currently on a swing through Botswana and Zimbabwe - safaris, guided walks dug-out canoe trips, that kind of thing - and, amid all the other delights, one thing that has struck me is some of the names that people luxuriate in here.

In among Ronald, Sisa, Mia and Jonathan, our guides, helpers and drvers have rocked names like Precious, Gift, Blessing, Peace, Law, Talent and Forget.

At first, I thought these were Christianity-derived names, along the lines of common female names from Victorian England and America like Faith, Hope and Charity, Grace and Joy, Chastity and Mercy., Constance and Prudence. But these are strapping guys, from twenty-somethings to middle-aged. And apparently, religion doesn't come into it. 

The names are inspired by events, situations and stories occurring around their births or before, or the circumstances of the family. There are southern Africans with names like Lovemore, Enough, Smile, Honour, Energy, Godknows, Wind, Passion - even Hatred and Funeral - and many more. And, arguably, they are better, and more appropriate, names than choosing something from a "1,001 Baby Names" book.

Is the US back in the business of regime change?

As the Trump administration continues to blow up fishing vessels in the Caribbean (at least ten so far), vessels that it maintains, without much evidence, are Venezuelan drug traffickers bound for America, and as the US continues to build up planes, warships, aircraft carriers and troops off the Venezuelan coast, the likelihood increases that President Trump intends to launch a full-scake invasion of the South American country, with intent to remove President Nicolás Maduro, who Trump bramds as a narco-trafficker, drug kingpin and terrorist.

The 60 Minutes video does a good job of encapsualting the basket-case that is today's Venezuela. and the enormities carried out by Maduro's security forces against its people. Hunger, power blackouts and a scarcity of medicines are now a way of life there. Triple-digit inflation and years of government mismanagement has meant  that over 70% of the population now lives in poverty, in what was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world. A fifth of the country's population has fled the scary police state that Venezuela has become over the last decade or two.

Elections last year were marred by violence and, although an estimated 70% voted for opposition leader María Corina Machado.(recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize), Maduro clung to power anyway, setting off a brutal crackdown on political opposition, involving arrests, torture, even murder. Machado is now in hiding, although there are reports that she is planning some kind of "peaceful transition" with US help, although it is hard to envisage a scenario that doesn't involve American boots on the ground.

As reports are leaked of American forces massing offshore, the Venezuela people clearly feel like something big is about to happen. Government troops are actively mobilizing in large numbers, and they are urging civilians to prepare for combat. A $50 million reward for Maduro's arrest shows how serious the US is. 

Despite Maduro's combative recent public appearances and his stridently anti-American rhetoric, Trump maintains that there have been private negotiations with Maduro, who has offered the US a stake in Venezuela's huge oil reserves in return for security guarantees. He is also happily accepting Venezuelan deportees from the USA.

Meanwhle, American F35s continue to pick off Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, a tactic that many argue amounts of extra-juducial killings (court cases are pending in the US). The American admiral in charge of Caribbean operations mysteriously quit his job two years ahead of schedule, almost certainly as a result of this (and possibly future US plans).

I lived in Venezuala about 30 years, and it was a mess then. It's much more of a mess now. But is the US really going back into the business of regime change - think Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua - after all these years?