thelogicalview.co.uk

Tag: Ukraine

  • Ukraine: where exactly do we stand in this geographical conundrum?

    President Zelensky, wearing a suit, in No. 10 Downing Street, with the leaders of the ‘UK’, France and Germany.

    In today’s discussions between the leaders of the four countries, Sir Kier Starmer said, ‘We stand with Ukraine.’ Who are ‘we’, what does it mean ‘to stand’, and where is Ukraine are three questions which jump out of such a woolly statement, and of course there are many others, so many and at such a complexity which is way beyond the ken of this simple pagan blog.

    After Downing Street President Zelensky has met the NATO chief, and the President of the EU, and then to Italy and Rome, all in a few days and at meetings at the highest leadership level of the many organisations, alliances, groupings, opinions, possible support giving and definitely opinionators in this strange patchwork of jurisdictions over the lands north of the Mediterranean Sea and to the borders with Russia, with NATO itself extending over the …. Atlantic Ocean …. to the USA and Canada.

    What does Zelensky want? Money, weapons, opinion to go against Russia, and troops, and to join NATO, and probably the EU as well. Everything from that looks into this strange patchwork as if these few days of discussions could yield a tangible result and within a month a large army of fit and well trained troops would head east and win the war for Ukraine. ‘UK’ politicians are keen on the idea of developing the arms industry, such is the economic plight going on here, and if someone would pay for them, there is probably a large stack of weapons which could be provided. If one weapon followed another, at astonishing monetary cost and destructive to human life, would that end the war and bring a long lasting solution to conflict in that region. News has it that Sir Kier has promised assistance worth £100bn to Ukraine, and that’s something the veterans in the UK wish that just a tiny weeny fraction of a fraction of that would be provided to give them a safe place to live, like other countries honour and care for those returning from traumatic combat. But £100bn can be promised to Ukraine.

    From an outside looking in everything looks simple and uniform – in the sense of that word being ordered and clear and its purpose obvious. From the inside, everything looks different. The grouping of Sir Kier Starmer, President Macron and President Steinmeier with President Zelensky fits no one piece of the patchwork. The ‘UK’ has left the ‘EU’, NATO has the word Atlantic in the title and only the west coast of France faces the Atlantic Ocean, its north coast faces la Manche (the sleeve of water and which it does look like a sleeve) and which the English call not surprisingly the English Channel, and the coast of Germany faces the North Sea. How far does a coastline stretch, even the coastline of a mighty ocean like the Atlantic? Well, a long way in NATO. The Atlantic facing countries of the ‘UK’, Republic of Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, and Canada and the USA on the other side are not one particular grouping at all, and why does Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia not be included in the geographically named North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or at least down to Senegal? Because of course the regions down the west Atlantic coast of Africa have their own cultures, political systems, tribal matters and conflicts and violent wars going on, and are not included in the ‘western’ matters of the geography north of the Mediterranean Sea. And the Irish Republic neither is in NATO, because ironically of the war the ‘UK’ is waging over several centuries onto the land and people of Eire.

    If one unifying factor was to offer troops to Ukraine, would unify the patchwork of terms and acronyms and promises and confusions? There also it cannot be a uniform grouping, because of that matter of uniforms. Troops wear uniforms, it is how they are identified as being for one side or the other, and the uniforms show something of their national origin, and of course there is the flag. The Vexed question of Vexillology gets more and more intractable. Between the four leaders meeting in Downing Street today, Ukraine is undergoing the war with Russia, it’s soldiers are physically fighting, and Germany and France have announced that national service is going to be reinstated, on a voluntary basis, but movement is movement. Intention comes before the sign of movement, and physical movement has a direction. In the chain of four men, one in the east in an active fighting war, France and Germany in the middle, and over La Manche Sir Kier Starmer talking about ‘we stand with Ukraine.’ The problem is that it is the ‘UK’ which does not stand with Ukraine, only in social media and armchair opinions, but in reality, it is the ‘UK’ which cannot raise troops to send over to assist.

    What if tomorrow it was announced that all young people – males and females, and everyone in between in the legality of gender equality, – between 16-35 was to report to their local Forces of Army, Air Force and Navy and begin a quick programme of boot camp training to get into battle ready condition within 2 months, what would happen? Answer: Nothing. In the ‘UK’ we have no cohesion to raise a force. In France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, the young people are within an alignment of government, a functional police force able to do their job, a sense of citizen identity, and there is already the understanding that if mobilisation is necessary then physical readiness needs to be there. In the ‘UK’ where has that national citizen energy gone?

    The last 25 years of Tony Blair ‘uni’s’, the selling off of playing fields where schoolchildren used to run around, the dropping off the radar of national service where young men went through the training and learnt a lot of other things besides while females served the nation in the other equally necessary ways for the functioning of a society, the collapse of the NHS and ‘social care’ resulting in millions of workers being flown into the ‘UK’ to prop up the organisations set up by the Labour government and whose only allegience to coming here is for the salary and the benefits, and who many would not be at all happy if their children were now requisitioned into an army instead of living their new life in the ‘UK’ with all the amenities and ease of this still not too hot or climatically disastrous country. The countries who have one calendar with one predominant belief system, even if folks do believe it or not, but the society does hold together from it, the people move at roughly the same tempo. Here in the ‘UK’ now with so many religions and beliefs and allegiances with so many places on Earth, and so many different views on gender and family structure and cultural norms, it would not be possible to ‘raise an army’ because we have no cultural or societal cohesion.

    What if Sir Kier Starmer took back his offer of £100bn assistance and said sorry, we can’t afford it, and instead waved from the English side of La Manche and said good luck, not a great situation you’re all in over there, but here on the Atlantic we’ve got a lot of problems going on and after all, charity begins at home? It is not likely he would do that, but in the chain of events and the chain of people all meeting in these few days, someone talking about the relevance of geographical and oceanic terms would be such a welcome relief.

  • Leaders of nations, Leaders of tribes

    President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin

    In the current times where conflict is everywhere it seems, what’s in a name? The two men above are both Presidents of their respective jurisdictions, and both are often shortened to ‘Trump’ and ‘Putin’.

    For this blog, which measures human activity to the baseline facts of Helios, Earth, and gravity, these times of complete and utter chaos in the human realm of the life zone on the planet called Earth are very illuminating. There is the western world, under the general umbrella of Christendom, and within that the overall division of Catholic and then all the variations which have come about since the 1500s, and the western world looks out onto the Middle East and China, which it could be said really generally still hold their own place as not being under Christendom or Empire. Sure the west drew lines through the Middle East with the resulting chaos now, but in belief and practices, still it can roughly be said that China and the ‘Middle East’ still maintain their own identity.

    Where does that leave the northern latitudes? Scandinavia is seen as sort of pure, uncomplicated, practical, not the region which is generating this catastrophic dimming of the life zone, And Canada also, the great outdoors, vast wilderness, and any stresses between French and English are far over in Quebec. But in between those two is the might Russia, and this last week of news headlines is raising a question which this human finds deeply interesting.

    The zone of conflict between Ukraine and Russia on a map is a fairly small area compared to the measurement of the land mass of Ukraine, and definitely a small area of the land mass of Russia. Information states that some in the conflict zone are Russian in heritage and language, and wish to be back within the perimeter of Russia. The fairly small conflict zone, to which most non Ukrainians or Russians have never been, is writ large on the agenda of the west, especially Britain who has been opinionating way above any functional ability.

    The really useful thing about Donald Trump being the President of the USA is that a top down measurement is now placed in the western world, and of course therein lies the dividing line between those who hate him and those who admire him. For the point of view of this blog, the increasingly complicated conflicts are increasingly complicated because the baseline of Earth is not considered relevant anymore. And if it is, quickly the terms populist, racist, radicalised, extreme right wing are thrown about, because politics has so completely removed itself from Earth itself.

    The two Presidents, of the USA and of Russia, are providing the clearest illumination on what is a leader, and on the different realities within the human zone in 2025. President Trump has spent several days in the mid latitude of Britain, from where this blog is physically written into the entirely tenuous digital realm (dependent on electricity, and which will disappear in a second along with the rest of digital tech at the first big Solar flare). This juxtaposition of the last week, with President Trump here, within latitude 55′-56’N, from where this writer inhabits, and ‘here’ because his ethnicity is half Scottish. He is also half German, which is not a million miles from the sites he visited, yet he is President of the USA, a vast land mass, until a few hundred years ago the lands of native tribes, as was all of Earth until a couple of thousand years ago, give or take some larger groupings in the Euphrates region and in what is now called South America. But all measured fully to Earth. Where else would they measure? And President Trump is certainly a leader, performing the role of a leader, and cutting through the bloated democratic west with the return of simple one liner facts. But he is still the President of a jurisdiction within the ‘west’, the major power of the ‘west’ actually, and it is the ‘west’ that engages and opinionates with the USA.

    President Putin, now put as the one obstructing peace in Ukraine, is again the bad boy, even though it is said both men get on pretty well, which they would do, being both leaders in personality and ability. So, why this public impasse? Why has President Donald Trump found himself in this position of being unable to bring an end to the war in Ukraine? This blog is looking at governance from the baseline of Earth, which is governed by Helios and gravity, and so this last week has been endlessly fascinating. The question of where does power arise is in nature not something the participants have to ask or analyse, because it arises from within the life zone. The questions the two Presidents have to ask themselves are showing as either side of this line. President Putin only answers to the land and the people of the land, whereas President Trump answers to the land of America, but which is organised within the beliefs and practices of ‘the west’, and which is not ultimately measured to the land but to the zone of politics, and with that global trade, global movement of people, a dumbing down through the use of English as the common language, and the firm belief that digital tech will create a nirvana. Russia on the other hand, never does not believe that it is not land. If that sounds Irish (and it might do because this writer has quite a lot of Irish in it) that is meant to say that a Leader from the Land has less questions to ask and answer, because the land itself asks and answers the questions.

    The impasse between the two Presidents is illuminating, and although the role of a leader is top down in every sense, it is the leader of a land who has the advantage of a pyramid base arising from geography while the leader arising from a western development of 500 years has only the top down. In this historical juncture with President Trump reasserting the need for clear jurisdictions and the welcome (for some of us) shake up that has been, who holds the cards in ‘a solution for the Ukrainian situation’? Will geography reassert itself, as the ultimate definer and arbitrator? Can another power ever successfully solve a regional zone, in which the ‘UK’ has its own going on that is for sure, and can one latitude arbitrate for another, one latitude which lives by heating and large appliances, while Russian latitudes can go all winter without heating and the ease of modern living. It’s a curious equation when the powers which criticize Russian leadership are dependent on buying the energy which is taking down the life zone, and the leader of the USA who is acting like a leader amidst the detritus of democracy ideals is the product of Scottish and German fortitude, along the same latitude, but born into the western realm which is now so truncated from geo-graphy. Who will prevail in the Ukraine situation? On the world as now a stage, it is revealing the baseline again, which has never changed.