hobot_bobot

The audio clip, a quickie transcript of which is below, is from MacKinnon’s interview  https://www.youtube.coam/watch?v=S-waDc35bKc “Trump Edition Canada fights back - Battle Lines The Telegraph” (after 11:40). MacKinnon’s picture (posted only on Substack) is from the Globe and Mail’s site.

“QUE Can we talk a little bit about how all of this is going down in Canada [in terms of] non-political effects. <...> On Thursday the last week you had this extraordinary scene in the White House where Donald Trump was sitting down with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, who had to quietly nod along to this stuff, which was pretty awkward. [Trump] said: [Trump's voiceover]<...> [Trump] made absolutely clear his intentions to subsume Canada into the United States. [So,] speaking as a Canadian, how that is going down?

MM You mean watching Mark Rutte say nothing? <...> Watching Keir Starmer go to - you know, we're members of the Commonwealth, we share a head of state - having him go to Washington and nod along until there is no gap between him and Mr. Trump and then invite him to Buckingham Palace to meet the Canadian head of state, to invite Trump here... There is a lot of anger in Canada as the first listener expressed because<...> we are a member of NATO, we should not be subjected to territorial threats in front of the secretary general of NATO. We should not be seeing our closest... we look at England and France as mom and dad, as the new prime minister Mark Carney made clear this week by flying to Paris and London before he went anywhere else.  To see the British prime minister - he sent an invitation and presumably King Charles [accepted] it. There is a betrayal on a lot of sides right now, and I think that Britain and the Commonwealth and the NATO are going to figure out what they are for.

QUE That's really interesting. I suppose you don't think about Commonwealth as much but...

MM Not until recently. (Both laugh)

QUE One of the things that really came out is a lot of Canadians died in the 1st and 2nd world wars fighting alongside Brits

MM We didn't declare war the first time, we just went to war 'cause they told us to.

QUE And that's really coming out. There is a sense [that] we should be together in the Commonwealth.

MM Absolutely. <...> So there is a sense that we thought we were in all of this together and then [when] our neighbor turns into a bully, all our other friends are scattering and taking cover.”

Copy of the post: https://archivist.substack.com/p/not-only-ukraine-is-tasting-the-bitter

Fast forward to the present day. Discussing a new deal with Iran, Trump’s envoy Witkoff one day says that the acceptable enrichment level is 3.67%, and the next day he makes an about-face – now it’s zero level (https://www.alquds.com/en/posts/158123).

These wide fluctuations make me think that Trump himself, then and now, may not be really opposed to a deal with Iran but is unable / unwilling to push back against the powerful Israel lobby that wants to see Iran lethally incapacitated on every front. Now there is perhaps mighty jostling around Trump in relation to the Iran issue, as described here  https://www.axios.com/2025/04/16/trump-iran-nuclear-policy-vance-rubio. What's missing in Barak Ravid’s article, however, is a rundown on the donors' positions: who is enthusiastically in favor, who is undecided / indifferent, are there powerful donors who are vehemently opposed. If there is no vigorous, active, energetic opposition among the donors, I guess the issue will be ultimately decided by the United States’ Israel lobby.

P.S. My position is that I don’t understand why Israel should be the only guy with the nukes in the Middle East. I find the aytollahs’ regime abhorring but nor do I like Israel’s militarism, and considering the present-day internal developments in Israel, I’m not sure that several years from now it will not become indistinguishable from its neighbors...

Copy of the post: https://archivist.substack.com/p/my-one-and-a-half-non-expert-thought
And I’m also present here https://x.com/Arhivistka_LJ