Roundup: Jubilee Weekend (not that you’d know it in Canada)

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It’s day one hundred-and-three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Kyiv has once again come under attack from Russian missiles, who claimed this was about hitting tanks donated by Western countries. Ukrainians, meanwhile, say they have reclaimed Sievierokonetsk in a counter-offensive, but this has not yet been verified. Ukrainians are taking losses, between 60 to 100 per day which is more than the Americans took daily than in the worst of the Vietnam War, but this may also galvanize to them fight even harder as more advanced weapons from allies arrive. Here are stories from the southern city of Mykolaiv, where the shelling is constant.

Meanwhile, NATO is kicking off two weeks of naval exercise in the Baltic Sea which will include Sweden and Finland, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has been meeting with Turkey’s president to try and solve the impasse of Turkey blocking Sweden and Finland’s entry into the alliance.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1533516244124590085

Closer to home, it was the celebrations of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee over the weekend, even though the Canadian government kept things as low-key as they possibly could. I have real trepidation about the way in which this government seems to think of Canadian monarchy as an afterthought, because it inevitably leads to politicisation when Conservatives put in more effort, and that is the absolute last thing we want or need. It’s an institution for everyone, and needs to be treated as such. There were, nevertheless, a few CanCon elements in the celebrations in London, as well as some royal Kremlinology about what it all signalled. Tangentially related to the celebration was the 150th anniversary of the Governor General’s Foot Guards in Ottawa, who got their own parade.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau was in London, Ontario, to mark the anniversary of the Islamophobic attack that killed a family there.
  • Mélanie Joly says Canada will increase its presence even more in Latvia and prepare 3,400 more troops on standby for NATO operations.
  • Jean-Yves Duclos has tested positive for COVID.
  • Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Richard Wagner says he’s aware of the danger of people losing faith in the system, which is why he’s pushing for openness.
  • The membership cut-off date has been reached for the Conservative leadership race, and plenty of candidates are claiming huge numbers sold.
  • While Manitoba has officially ended the practice of birth alerts, there has only been a 32 percent reduction in children being taken into care, most of them Indigenous.
  • Justin Ling delves into the embrace of the World Economic Forum conspiracy theories by Conservatives in their leadership race.
  • Jason Markusoff makes the case that Doug Ford’s ability to get out of the spotlight has done him more favours than Jason Kenney’s need to always be talking.
  • Supriya Dwivedi sees the whole Depp-Heard trial as examples of how misinformation get amplified by algorithms, and why that needs legislation.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/HistoricaCanada/status/1533040878595452929

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