Ukraine is no longer occupying the news media 24/7. We now hear how Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers last quarter, resulting in a plunge of its stock value on Wall Street. Elon Musk and others blamed this on Netflix's "wokeness," which is becoming as tiresome an expression as "snowflake." Meanwhile, the South African megabillionaire is trying to buy out Twitter so that he can liberate it from said "wokeness." Trumpists delight as they hope it will mean the return of their savior if Musk can round up enough cash, $43 billlion and counting, before the "poison pill" Twitter voluntarily took doesn't make its cost prohibitive even for a man of his immense means. It makes you wonder that if Musk has so much money to spare, why not arm Ukraine himself? Not just provide his Starlink satellite dishes for better communication.
It seems we are losing the magnitude of the situation in Ukraine, as we return to our comfortable lives, feeling we have done enough to help the cause, and that it is now up to the Ukrainians to fend for themselves. This while 5 million Ukrainians are currently stateless, spread throughout Europe and even reaching into North and Central America. This is an exodus that matches that of Syria during its recent bloody civil war, but has taken place over a two-month period with many more persons likely to be displaced in the coming months.
CNN featured a Syrian-American doctor, Dr. Monzer Yazji, who was going to Ukraine for the third time to help relieve the medical crisis in the country. He had served in Syria as well, and said in many ways the situation is worse in Ukraine because it is occurring with such rapidity. It's like Russia's military strategy in Syria on steroids (my words). Doctors are coming from all over the world to help out the overwhelmed hospitals in Ukraine. Lithuania recently sent another contingent of doctors as part of their ongoing effort to relieve the situation. This is a war that won't end any time soon.
It's understandable that viewers have become fatigued and would like to see other forms of news on television. After all, there are plenty of crises in this world, not just Ukraine. Massive mudslides in South Africa have resulted in at least 400 deaths with another 40,000 still missing. Hello, Elon! The government is mobilizing its military to the KwaZulu-Natal province to aid in the relief effort. The world doesn't stop when one tragedy occurs. Many others are occurring at the same time.
Nevertheless, the importance of Ukraine cannot be overstated. We haven't seen this kind of reckless imperial overreach since WWII. Sure, there have been other wars with overwhelming body counts, genocide, and vast destruction, but what we are seeing in Ukraine is a replay of Poland in 1939, although Putin sees himself as a Soviet liberator. Russian soldiers without the slightest trace of irony are hoisting Soviet victory flags in fallen Ukrainian cities, and we see these banners on display at pro-Russian demonstrations around the world, including one in Canada. Putin is quite literally playing into everyone's worst fears and now threatening "economic war" on the world.
Apologists will say that Putin is simply responding to the unprecedented sanctions being placed on his country. The same apologists that have said Ukraine could have avoided this war if it had simply let go of Luhansk and Donetsk and recognized the annexation of Crimea, which Putin has continually demanded. These useful idiots ignore that Putin has been planning this incursion for quite a long time, and that Ukraine is not the only country he wants to pull back into the Soviet, I mean Russian, orbit. In Putin's addled mind, everything was better in the realpolitik sense, and that the US, UK and EU should have never meddled in Russia's sphere of influence. Of course, he has Western supporters of this view, which the Kremlin greatly appreciates.
More worrisome is all the indecision taking place. Germany, which should know better than anyone what such incursions lead to, has chosen to take a back seat. After nearly two months of vacillation, Chancellor Scholz has decided that Germany won't send any military aid to Ukraine after all, but it will still work with NATO to train Ukrainian soldiers to use NATO equipment. Germany is also boosting its own military budget in the event this war spills over Ukraine, which his country vehemently opposes. Talk about having your cake and eat it too.
It should never be lost that German interests are one of the root causes of this war. The development of NordStream to bypass the Russian natural gas supply through Ukraine is one of the principal mitigating factors. As long as we do business with Russia, we support Putin's imperial ambitions. It's that simple. This is why you now see protesters in front of German embassies around the world. Only when Germany cuts its economic ties with Russia will we see a turning point in this war.
I understand that's not so easy to do. After all, we are talking about decades of economic integration that can't simply be undone overnight. However, Germany, and for that matter France and the Netherlands, haven't shown much commitment in this regard. Austria none at all. It's chancellor recently met with Putin, supposedly to give him the unvarnished truth in Ukraine, but so far his country has made no movement whatsoever in cutting its economic ties to Moscow. Until it does, Putin won't pay any attention to what Mr. Nehammer or any other European leader has to say about Ukraine.
For decades, Eastern European leaders have warned Western European leaders that Putin doesn't respond to diplomacy. He simply uses international precedents to justify his actions. Of course, we can say that other countries have been bad actors in this regard as well. We can look back at the attempt by the US, UK and Spain to strong arm the UN security council into approving an invasion of Iraq as one relatively recent example. But, Russia voted against that resolution. Now, it wants to use this horrible example as precedent for its unjustified war.
This is what you are dealing with in the Kremlin and why negotiations are fruitless. Germany and France brokered Minsk II in an attempt to resolve the conflict in Donbas in 2015 after the first talks broke down. Russia simply uses these talks to buy time and further develop its strategies of containment. It has never shown any willingness to abide by these agreements. This is why Zelenskyy extended an invitation to Merkl and Sarkozy to visit Bucha to see the aftermath of these agreements. Mariupol is many times worse.
But, we indulge ourselves with Elon Musk's hostile takeover of Twitter, and the $50 million defamation suit Johnny Depp has brought against Amber Heard (a former mistress of Musk as well). Very few of us are asking why Musk so badly wants this social media website for his own? Is he jealous of the control he has stated Mark Zuckerberg has over facebook, and desires the same absolute authority over Twitter, not content to sit on its board of directors with his 9 percent share? In this way, he is no different than Vladimir Putin, who similarly demands absolute authority. If Musk is able to complete the takeover, will he make the social media website open to everyone, including Russian state media, so that once again we are overwhelmed with Russian propaganda as had been the case before the war? I suppose in Musk's libertarian mind, all is fair in love and war, sitting back with his Cheshire's grin as the world descends into chaos.
We've seen what a mess an unbridled social media has turned out to be. How easily it can be exploited for anyone's gain. How it has made computer geeks like Zuckerberg, Cook, Page, Brin, and Dorsey multi-billionaires with very few qualms over how their media is openly exploited. Yet, they have maintained a virtual monopolistic hold over their creations, letting their companies go public simply because they thought there was no one rich enough to mount a hostile takeover. But, there was Elon ready to pounce on the smallest one in the lot and make it his own. Sound familiar?
This rapacious greed not only drives internet entrepreneurs but autocratic world leaders alike. They share the same DNA. It's like the old song by Tears for Fears with the video taking place on an open road on a lazy afternoon, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. The only question is whether for good or evil?
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