The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Counter-Offensive Begins - But How's It Going?

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

With Trudeau by his side, Ukraine's Zelensky says his country's counter-offensive against Russia has begun.  But very little is known about just how the fight is going.  Brian Stewart explains why and assesses what we know so far. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday, Brian Stewart is here, the Ukrainian counter-offensive begins. What's happening? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Yes, Tuesday means Brian Stewart, and we'll be talking about Ukraine and the counteroffensive in just a moment. But first, these thoughts. In the last couple of days, we've seen Donald Trump indicted. We've seen Nicholas Sturgeon arrested. We've seen Boris Johnson resigning.

All three amid scandals and alleged scandals surrounding their personal and professional activities. Leadership has consequences. It will be interesting to see how each one of these stories plays out. And first on the docket, if you will, of course, is Donald Trump in Miami today, where the arraignment will take place on the 37 indictments that have been leveled by the special prosecutor Jack Smith. Now, it'll be interesting to watch because at the moment Donald Trump does not have a Florida-based

attorney, a Miami-based attorney, and apparently he needs one for this arraignment. He flew into Miami yesterday, spent time interviewing potential candidates for the lawyer's job, offering it to a number, apparently all of whom turned it down. He doesn't have a good reputation for working with lawyers. He doesn't have a good reputation for working with lawyers. He doesn't have a good reputation for paying his lawyers. But there were certainly a number of them lined up yesterday who want the job. So we'll see what happens on that front. There was also some discussion yesterday,

and I don't think it was ever resolved, about whether or not there would be television in the courtroom. Everybody wants that picture, right? And not just a still picture, they want the actual video. So there are questions about, you know, will there be a mugshot? Will there be handcuffs? Will there be this, that, or the other? What's interesting, I think, is after 2016,

the media basically agreed that they'd given far too much coverage to Trump. Free coverage. Every twist and turn of the Trump campaign got live television coverage. They said, we'll never do that again. I can remember watching Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe on MSNBC many times during that campaign, during campaigns since, saying we gave way too much coverage and he's been on a rant again lately but at the same time

he spends a lot of his programming hours talking about Donald Trump now he's not alone it happens in media organizations across the United States and elsewhere. And look at me.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about Donald Trump. And sure enough, you know, I'll be trying to see whatever I can see today to see what happens on that case. But as I said at the beginning, leadership has consequences. And what will the consequences be for Donald Trump this time? He's dodged the legal bullet, if you will, quite a few times before in his past.

This year seems to be that much more difficult, and it's not over yet. There are two other major cases to come, the January 6th cases where there's a special prosecutor looking into it, same guy, Jack Smith, and there's the Georgia election interference case, where the Georgia state officials are looking into it and very well may press charges. There may be indictments there as well. So there you go. Leadership has consequences. What will happen to Nicola Sturgeon here in Scotland?

What will happen to Boris Johnson south of the Scottish border in London he's resigned his seat, will he run again in a by-election either soon or not too far in the distant future he wants the Prime Minhip back again, he says. These stories and the personalities in them are talkers. There's no doubt about it.

But what's more important? Well, what's more important right now, I think, is the situation in Ukraine. The counteroffensive, the long-talked-about counteroffensive by the Ukrainians has started. The question is, what's actually happening on it? Because information is hard to get at. That's part of our conversation this morning with my friend, your friend, correspondent Brian Stewart, and he's got the cred to talk about it. Foreign correspondent for years, war correspondent, he's seen conflicts in different parts of

the world, and he's a student of history. All right. Enough from me. Why don't we get started with our conversation with Brian Stewart. It starts right now. So Brian, I had an opportunity today to talk to a friend of ours, a producer, a Canadian producer in Ukraine covering the war, she was driving with her crew on the road to Kherson. And she made two really interesting points as she was discussing what it's like over there right now. She said, one, it's raining and it's cold. It's June, right?

But raining and cold, that's not a good thing. And two, they're getting very little information on the ground about the offensive that's going on by the Ukrainians. And it's this sort of clamp down on information. They're being very careful about what they're releasing, about what's happening. And so they're kind of operating blind in a way, which isn't unusual at a time like this, but still it makes the job harder for

everybody, including us, to try and understand what's going on. Very much so. And, you know, it's causing a lot of anxiety, this media clampdown, not only among the Ukrainian media, but foreign media and also some capitals, because what has been happening to the fury of a lot of Ukrainians is that Russia has seized the information initiative in the information war. It's been getting pictures of smashed Leopard tanks now belonging to the Ukrainians and armored cars and flashing them from different angles as if they were different ambushes. And this has been over and over in the first two, three, four days. And this has many effects.

First of all, there's a morale factor effect. But second of all, internationally, you know, it sort of heightens the feeling of those countries that have been somewhat friendly towards Russia, or at least not that critical, to say, okay, maybe we should, you know, maybe Russia has more chance in this after all, and shores up its support nationally, perhaps. So the Ukrainians have been trying to change that, I think, in the last 24 hours, they've been putting out more information. But the problem is a lot of the generals in the front line are saying, no, you can't reveal that we've taken this village because we haven't dug in yet. You want to rush to the world and say, well, we've just taken village W and next we're

going to take village U. Well, first of all, we've got to drive the enemy out. Then we have to dig in against possible counterattacks. We don't want to announce it back to the world media. You know, and for instance, if you flashbacks, we often do the Second World War comparisons. Then the journalists were all in the military. They were, you know, Canadian reporters following the Canadian Army in Canadian uniform

under essentially Canadian orders well if you've got an international press you can't order them around so the only thing you can really do is deny them the information which Ukraine has been doing but it's been a um definitely I think a setback for for the Ukrainians off the top. You mentioned earlier the rain. That is much more serious because there's now fear that it will rain next week, which will really bog down the Ukrainian tanks and heavy armor, their ability to move across outside of the roads, that is. And the roads are open to ambush all the time. So these are negatives that are, you know, they're always negatives in every military campaign.

There's always that fog of war, the plans don't last very long once the fighting begins. But yes, we're off to an even start, let's call it that, a very uneven start, where the mood seems to be somewhere between upbeat and gloomy. That's going to be difficult news, obviously, for a lot of people who are hoping that this offensive, the counteroffensive by the Ukrainians, was going to move very quickly and rapidly and successfully. Now, we should have learned our lesson, I guess, last year when we assumed the

same thing was going to happen when the Russians started this thing. It didn't. But you're being, I think, is cautious the word that you're expressing here right now? Because it just is too unclear to know what's happening. Exactly so. And I can't emphasize this enough. When major military operations like this get underway, caution is extremely important. Because often you're dealing with news that's already two or three days old, that been kept in the closets before being brought out for the international media. You don't know what weather conditions might be three days from now for sure, 100%. And what really we're seeing now, I think, is we're seeing the start of the big counteroffensive.

But it's only the beginning start of the big counteroffensive, but it's only the beginning start of the big counteroffensive. It's the, you know, reconnaissance in force, but now major force is moved up into setting the pace, feeling out the enemy, finding out where they're strong, where they're weak. To do that, you use fairly light forces to test out where the enemies are strong and where they're weak. To do that, you use fairly light forces to test where the enemies are strong and where they're weak. And in doing that, you're inevitably taking casualties, quite high casualties. It's like the old movie scene, you know, the enemy is across the field, you have to find out where

there's somebody in your platoon has to draw enemy fire. Somebody has to be the one that stick the head out around a corner so the enemy will fire at it. Then you can pinpoint, you know, exactly where the enemy is. The major elements of the counteroffensive, which are grouped in the 9th and 10th Corps, are still well back from the fighting line, waiting for the order to go. So what we're seeing now is, you know, and one should underline this as well, we're seeing some gains in the Donetsk region, at least four villages. They're not much bigger than villages, frankly, but four settlements have been liberated. The push has gone 15 kilometers deep, at least in some areas, which is a lot more than the Russians have been able to push in any one given day over the last year or so. And Ukrainians are also, what we don't

see, are doing an enormous amount of interdicting of the Russian forces, of firing well inside their rear, taking out command posts, ammunition dumps, radar sites. All of that materiel of war has been hammered around the clock by the Ukrainians to weaken the Russians. But, you know, the main defensive lines of the Russians are still, I think we have to pause when we say this, before the Ukrainians actually get to the main defensive lines, they're still 40 to 50 kilometers away. That means the initial fighting has to go through these early defense lines, the feeling of then you bring in your main forces.

We're looking at a counteroffensive that is surely going to last through the entire summer and perhaps into the fall. So I'll be getting hopes up, hoping for a breakthrough. It's just best being very calm as this war, as this fighting develops. In some areas, Ukraine's doing quite well. In some areas, it's doing not well at all. In some areas, and this is, I think, even more worrisome to the Western capitals, the Russians are defending much better than they have shown in the past. They're better at defeat defense than they are at offense. That may change, though, because we know in war, nothing is more demoralizing and debilitating to troops than a combination of fear and sleeplessness. And what these attacks across hundreds of kilometers by the Ukrainians are doing is they're hammering the Russian defensive lines night and day, round the clock, giving the Russians very little chance for sound sleep.

So that gets piled upon, you know, the regular disorder and fear element. And you could be seeing the Russian morale dropping quite substantially day by day in this. If, you know, if we try to measure what knowledge we have of what's going on on the ground, is it all a ground conflict at the moment, this counter-offensive, or air involvement as well? There's enormous amount of air involvement from the drone factors, which has become, of course, a major factor of modern war. When you talk about an air campaign, you now include drones because they can do so much precise damage that they're in many ways superior to aircraft you know air-to-ground attacks but there have been more russian uh

fighter planes and bombers showing up uh over the lines there have been more helicopter russian helicopter uh air-to-ground attacks. And these are very serious. So this is a very serious concern for the Ukrainians. I've always been convinced that at some point the Ukrainians will unleash a goodly portion of what's left of their fighter force, perhaps 50 at once, for a major air-to-ground attack, combined with hundreds of drones to really rattle the Russians before a significant breakthrough. But we're not near that point yet. And the dam, you know, in the run-up to the beginning of the offensive, there was and has been, continues to be, much talk about the dam and what happened to it.

It was burst. There's serious flooding. There's still this sort of question of what actually really happened there. Was this a planned attack? Was it a planned attack by the Russians? Was it a planned attack by some other force not not necessarily ukrainians um what do we what do we know with any certainty about i'd say we know very very little with certainty except that it was an likely an internal explosion see there seems to be about 90% probability that it was blown up from inside.

But whether it was meant to be blown up or it blew up by malfeasance, a bit like a Chernobyl nuclear plant run down by accident, the Russians are quite prone to accidents of a big nature. And so this may have been, they may have been hoping to set off a small release of, much smaller release of water than they actually released. I mean, the irony is, of course, the black irony is they've swamped far more areas of Russian defensive than the Ukrainian defensive, because the Ukrainians are on higher ground than the Russians. So the Russians across an enormous swatch had all their trenches just flooded,

and the regiments were just fleeing to get out of there. Now, that works both ways. That has left that part of the cross of Dnieper more open to Ukrainian attacks, but they can't get armor across, so they would have to be quite light attacks by commandos and the rest of it. But they also have freed up a lot of Russian troops to move out of that area, of the Kherson area that they were controlling, and to bring reinforcements to areas further north, where they're expecting the Ukrainians to attack.

It's also caused enormous damage to other aspects of Russia. I mean, the Russian area that Russia hopes to hold has been badly flooded in terms of agricultural lands. Mines have been washed all over the place, so there's almost nowhere safe. And the water canal, the drinking water canal to Crimea is drying up. So the Russians will have to somehow be supplying 700,000 people in Crimea with drinking water at a time when they're having trouble getting regular supplies in. So it's a mess all around.

And I'm not sure who in the long term will benefit. Maybe it'll be a negative-negative for both sides. You know, we often, as you mentioned already in today's podcast, we often compare things to what happened in the Second World War. And those who know even the littlest bit about the Second World War know about the famous dam busters raid. The RAF and the RCAF, because there were a lot of Canadians in that raid, took out a bunch of dams along the Ruhr Valley, caused what appeared to be a serious amount of flooding.

But the Germans fixed it pretty quick. You know, and the over, I mean, it was a huge morale victory for the British. But in terms of, you know, long-term, even medium-term damage, it didn't cause that much. Things got back and organized fairly quickly. That does not appear to be the case. And that was more than one dam, right?

That was a series of dams. But in this case, it appears this has taken a long time to fix. And the devastating impact of it is felt in a large area. Enormous area. And, you know, what the Germans did not have after the dams were blown up was artillery fire coming in from the opposition into its civilian areas, which is happening in this case, which is, you know, talking about war crimes that the Russians have been firing on actual areas where the Ukrainians are trying

to save lives, get civilians off roofs, and move them out of medical centers and the rest of it. These are coming under artillery fire, where they know very well there's no real chance of the Ukrainians attacking across this vast, wide, flooded Dnieper area. But, you know, and you're right, it's incredibly hard, though, under this kind of situation where that area has already been so damaged by war, now it has flooding on top of it. And we've only been dealing in pictures with basically the flooding of the water down from the dam, which has flooded over villages and the rest of it, upwards from the dam, of course, it's drying

out. And you're getting large, vast areas now going suddenly dry, that may open a whole manner of military operations that nobody had conceived of until now, and may do even more agricultural damage to Ukraine. I think, you know, just in line in passing, we should note that on top of all the other worries for the world right now, the UN Secretary General is warning the Russians may now refuse to sign that treaty, allowing Ukrainian grain to be shipped to the rest of the world, which will present a real problem on food prices coming up next year if that happens. So, one day after another, the world gets more reason to worry. And that has been the worry all year, that that was going to be happening. But there seemed to be a feeling that the Russians were

going to let that grain out. In fact, they did let some of it out, but now that threat sort of hangs over the situation again. I want to talk about the Russians, but we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, I want to talk about what's happening inside Russia, not in the battle area, but in the, well, I guess close to the capital, where there's a lot of the talk about what's happening on this war continues to be talk that isn't necessarily good for Putin. We'll be back with that right after this.

And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode. That means Brian Stewart is here with his regular weekly commentary on the conflict in Ukraine. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. All right, Brian, what are we hearing? I mean, you listen in on some of these military bloggers that talk about the morale inside Russia, morale inside the Russian army, and other important commentaries that come out on a weekly basis. And there seems to be more of a freedom, actually, to speak one's mind on Russian state television. And it's not necessarily good for Vladimir Putin these days. Indeed not. And there seems to be a sign of growing unease and worry, borderline fear,

among the elites in Russia, mainly around Moscow and Leningrad. I think the country has been rattled by several factors. First of all, of course, the Ukrainians have been fighting far better than anyone anticipated in Russia, in particular, the counteroffensive now has many people, sweaty palms, you know, quite worried, but also these drone attacks on Moscow itself. And, you know, as brought the war home to people who regarded the war as just somewhere off in the distance, far away, but you're now getting where, let's say, 12 months ago, you would have not got more than two voices speaking out in any critical way. Now you've been able to count half a dozen. And these are fairly prominent voices coming out, raising questions about the direction of the war and the

morale. I'll just give you a small example. There's an MP who's very close to the intelligence chiefs there, Konstantin Zetulin, who notes that of all the goals that Putin set off to make war on Ukraine with, demilitarize it, neutralize Ukraine, not one of those goals has been met. And the war is becoming senseless. That from a fairly prominent MP. You have Daniana Stanova, Stanovana, I'm sorry, a political analyst quite prominent who says the mood is very gloomy now among the elites. Quote, they don't understand what Putin's plans are and doubt whether he is adequately dealing with the situation. The worry is building. Margarita Simonian, who I noticed quite, perhaps I have given it more importance too but i think she may be very important because she's had a russian rt as russian television the propaganda

main network kind of like cnn and fox all thrown together or something um but she spoke on television last week that ukraine is now too strong to defeat and is getting stronger. Russia should freeze the war, she says. Go on to talks. The worry is building that if they lose their land bridge, that's the bridge from Russia to the Crimea, things could be absolutely perilous for Russia. So now's the time for Russia to freeze the war and get into talks, have referendum in the held areas, and get out with what Russia can best get out with. And one last one, Sergei Barkov, who's a well-connected political consultant with the Kremlin, has warned that at some moment, and I think this is one to underline, infighting among factions in the elite

could spiral out of control. Because as you pointed out, what we're getting is a lot of these complaints coming in from military bloggers, ex-service people, people who have a high standing in the right-wing nationalist area of Russia. And not to mention, you know, our old friend, Prigozian, the head of Wagner. I say friend because we bring him up every few weeks when he does another denouncing of Russia's war effort. You know, he's head of the Wagner group, has now basically mutinied,

according to some of the military bloggers, by refusing to have the Wagner group sign up with the Russian military as members of it. He wants to fight on his own because he says the military is so mishandling the war, it's basically treasonous. I mean, can you imagine this happening in another country, all the while Putin is sort of rarely seen on television now. He comes out, makes an odd statement. He recently, just I think yesterday, called for the appeal to Russian patriotism during these, quote, difficult times. And we haven't heard Putin talking about difficult times before. And I think, you know, that's one of the things clearly that puzzles me, but I bet it puzzles

a lot of our listeners. You know, a year ago, you would never have heard people speaking out like this. And here you're getting not just one, you know, the odd lonely voice, but seemingly some pretty influential commentators speaking out

about the state of the war, the state of the Russian forces, the state of the conflict as it is, and saying great things about Ukraine in terms of its army and its strength. What do you assume is going on there that these kind of people can speak out the way they're speaking out in influential areas on state radio, television, whatever? Well, I think you've put your finger on it right there when you said influential areas, because I think these are all influential people. And that gives them a certain amount of protection, particularly as they're mainly associated with not progressive left or anything like that, but more nationalist right.

I mean, Simone is a really interesting case, the head of the RT, the propaganda service. She was fiercely for the war at the beginning, absolute war hawk. And suddenly she starts talking around now that we can't win this war. So we have to negotiate ourselves out of the war. I mean, it struck me when I first heard that. It's the Russian Cronkite moment. Those with memory will remember during the Vietnam War. It was in February 1968 when Cronkite was gave at the end of one of his broadcasts. This Walter Cronkite, head of CBS News, Mr. Broadcast America, said, in fact, that America had to face the fact it had tried its best.

It had done its honorable best, but was not going to win this war and would have to negotiate. And that had a major impact on building up the anti-war effort and causing a lot of demoralization. In fact, two months later, LBJ decided he wouldn't run for president again. So I think what we're seeing in Russia, to get back to the main point here, is the elites themselves are really rattled because they're not doing well under this war whatsoever. Leave the military bloggers aside. But the billionaires are having to pay more money now to help float the Russian government because it's not getting the revenues from oil and gas it used to get. So it's going more to the shaking down the billionaire elites. The other elites have seen Russia become a piranha in the war or pariah in the war and see it more and more restricted.

And they're seeing a level of leadership in Russia, military leadership, and also Kremlin leadership by Putin himself that is not impressive. I mean, whatever you say about Putin's handling of the war so far, it has not been impressive. And whatever you say about the top military commanders handling the war so far, it has been even less impressive. So the elites are saying, what's happening to Russia the great? Russia, we're so proud of. Russia, we want to be beating the drums for around the world. We're going down the reputational hooves. Last point.

Day two or day three of the counteroffensive, might even have been day one, who's standing beside Zelensky? Justin Trudeau in Kiev in the Ukrainian parliament. Now, I'm not sure what exactly that says about Canada-Ukraine relations, but I do wonder how important that was in that moment because as you hinted to us earlier, there were more than a few people in different parts of the West

kind of wondering about how this was going in terms of the Ukrainian side. Yeah, very much so. And it was a very emotional reaction to Canada. I mean, all Canadians should have seen that moment, you know, when the Prime Minister Trudeau got something he's not used to these days, I guess, standing ovations, almost everything he said, and at least two groups were holding up the Canadian flag. There is an enormous emotional attachment to Canada. It was the second earliest country to come on side when Ukraine really went independent back in 1991 from the Soviet Union. It has, I think, the second largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world. Ukraine really went independent back in 1991 from the Soviet Union. It has, I think, the second largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world.

And it's given relatively generously throughout this war insofar as it can. So I think the Putin, sorry, Trudeau still is to Ukrainians a figure of hope, youth, vigor. And he speaks well for Ukraine on an international forum. He knows that wherever Trudeau goes, he speaks very strongly for the Ukraine. So, you know, I'll leave it to your political analysts to wonder if there was also a benefit for Trudeau to leave Ottawa at this particular time and show up in the Kiev parliament, but certainly on an international standing. I think these were legitimately strong pro-Canadian feelings. And he has to take some credit for that because he has been a good ally

as the Ukrainian seer. You know, in the last month or so, I think he's been out of the country more than he's been in the country. And he's probably enjoyed that to a degree because whenever he's in the country, it has not been going very well for him. And in fairness, every single Western leader, when they show up in Kiev, you can usually trace it back a few weeks earlier. Some real political problems were going up I mean it's natural for political politicians to uh to sort of uh you know stage manage these events to help the mode at the same time I mean after all the successful politicians can in fact chew gum and walk at the same time and this is

what they do when they go to key they got two missions one is at home and one's abroad. You really believe they can walk and chew gum at the same time? To survive, they have to do that. Yeah, they do. And you and I have seen enough of them over the years of all the various political stripes. And sometimes they can surprise you about what they are able to accomplish in difficult times. All right, Brian, thank you so much for this, as usual, for your regular Tuesdays. Last Tuesday was extremely successful, even though we never mentioned the word Ukraine once.

We were talking about the anniversary of the D-Day landings. Next week will be our last one for a while as we take a break. So hopefully we'll have a clear indication of how things may be going on the offensive. Although you did warn us very correctly here that this could take a while, could take weeks or even months before it's clear exactly how this one's going to play out. Anyway,

Brian, thank you so much. We'll talk to you in a week. Okay. My pleasure. Thanks. Brian Stewart with us as he has been on almost every Tuesday since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine. When you think back to my remarks before we started that conversation with Brian, you can add now a new name to that list.

We had Trump indicted, Sturgeon arrested, Johnson resigning, all because of some form of scandal or alleged scandal around them. Now we add Putin to the list, right? And his decision to go to war in Ukraine and the blowback that he's now facing from his own supporters, some of his own supporters. So once again, leadership has consequences. Okay, time for a couple of quick end bits. Found this one interesting. The New York Times had a big feature piece last week. Its headline was Caribou Meat and Moon Signs,

Inuit Lessons for Soldiers in the Arctic. And it's, as I said, a feature piece. The New York Times went to Rankin Inlet in Nunavut and followed the training exercises that were being taken by some of the Canadian military with their counterparts in the Arctic, the Canadian military, with their counterparts in the Arctic, the Canadian Rangers, who are Inuit hunters who work basically part-time for the military,

and they are Canada's permanent military eyes and ears in our north. And, you know, are in a way part of our attempt to show sovereignty in the Arctic in areas that are vastly underpopulated and are contested on the part by some in terms of our waters, the international waters, the Northwest Passage. The Americans believe those are international waters. We believe they are sovereign Canadian waters. But what's interesting about this piece is it makes the connection between Canada's present

and Canada's past. I recall, and perhaps you do, because I took the bridge up there with me when I was working on a documentary two summers ago in Canada's Arctic and going through the Northwest Passage, but I also spent some time with the Canadian Rangers. This has been a part of Canada's history. It didn't suddenly happen last week when the New York Times discovered it,

but it's been going on for a number of years. And we spent some time with the rangers, or one group of the rangers, out of Pond Inlet in Nunavut. And, you know, it was fabulous watching them talk to the military contingent that had been sent to the Arctic to learn from the Inuit, to learn from the rangers on how to live in remote areas, what to do with seal meat, caribou meat, all of that.

And what's interesting is the connection between the present and the past, which the New York Times talks about, is our colonial past when the European explorers were coming into the Arctic looking for the speedy route to China, right? They weren't looking for Canada. They were looking for a route to get to China for the spices, etc. Well, they didn't, in many cases, they weren't sure where they were going. In some cases, they ended up dead, like the Franklin Expedition, that just got lost and starved after a number of years.

And what they didn't do is they didn't learn from the Inuit. And when you listen to the stories that have been passed down by Inuit elders, about the Franklin story in particular, when Franklin's crew of about 130 men abandoned their ships in the passage, frozen by ice, and they ended up on King William Island and started walking, and they ran out of food, and they were starving and dying. When you listen to these stories passed down by the elders,

there was a moment when they met a group of Inuit hunters who tried to explain to them and show them what to do with seal meat and caribou meat. But the Franklin fellows, we don't need to learn anything from these wild people. And so they ignored the advice. They ignored the advice and they died, right? They starved to death because they had no food. So in a way, what's happening here on these kind of training sessions is in part not only learning to live on the land,

learning to fight on the land because of the fears of Russian and Chinese forces coming this way at some point. They're learning how to survive on the land and off the land. So it's interesting the way those two things tie together, right? Our past and our present. And the New York Times does a great piece. I'm not belittling it at all. It's a great piece.

And some great visuals, too. Some great pictures in it. So if you go back, if you're subscribed to the New York Times, or if you can track it down through Google or what have you, it first aired on June 4th. It was first printed on June 4th. It's online. Early morning on June 4th. And the headline is Caribou Meat and Moon Signs, Inuit Lessons for Soldiers in the Arctic,

the New York Times. Okay, got a minute left for one other end bit. How are you about tipping? There have been a number of pieces lately about tipping there's one on the cnbc site right now called americans push back against tip creep it's time to take a stand experts say now part of the problem here is you know we've watched tipping creep up it used to be like and i'll show my age here but it used to be like 10 then 15 then 20 became the norm now it goes much higher than that um but that's not the issue for

some people the issue for some people is you're kind of being forced into considering tipping in the most unlikely of circumstances. It's almost anything that you pay with by your credit card that's from the service industry. There's a tip option. And it says, you know, you can tip 15% or 20% or 30% or more. Name your own figure. But it's almost as if you have no choice. Of course you have a choice. You can just pass, say no, and move on to the next screen.

But that the screen is even there is what has some people upset. Because we're talking about things like, you know, getting a takeout coffee, you know, or grabbing a donut on the run or whatever it may be, or other forms of service too, not necessarily food or drink, you know, haircut. Yeah, that's always been the case to a degree, but here it is already in the system. So that's got some people pushing back and saying this is too much. We've got to reconsider the whole issue of tipping. Now, tipping in the States, that's the CNBC article,

is a little different because of the lack of minimum wage laws or a very low minimum wage. And therefore, for some workers, this is their only way of actually struggling up in the cost of living fight. That's tipping and getting tips. Anyway, I'd be interested to see what you think on the tipping issue. So if you have a thought on it, drop me a line, themansbridgepodcasts at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcasts at gmail.com, and I'll see what you have to say.

All right. That wraps her up for this day, but not this week. Tomorrow, Wednesday, Smoke Mir Mirrors, and the Truth. Bruce Anderson will be by. Thursday, your turn. Could be letters about tipping. Could be letters about Ukraine. Could be letters about yesterday's broadcast with Janice Stein.

What are we missing? So that's Thursday, as well as the random ranter Friday of course is your turn with Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson so don't be shy give us a call give us a write give us a listen I'm Peter Mansbridge thanks for so much for listening today we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.