The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Why Did No One Know Their History?

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Watching what happened in the House of Commons last Friday is still shocking.  No one picked up on the Speaker's incredible blunder.  Not MPs, not the audience and not the media.  Why?  Why don't we know our history?  Also as always on Tuesdays, Brian Stewart drops by to give us his latest take on the situation in Ukraine.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Why did no one know their history? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. The Tuesday episode of The Bridge coming up on Tuesdays means Brian Stewart, and Brian will be by in the next few minutes' time. You know, I don't know about you, but every once in a while, you start seeing the same thing played back over and over and over again on television or clips on radio, or digitally you see the same stuff. And at a certain point you go,

you know, I just can't watch this anymore. It's too disturbing. And I've kind of come to that already with the repeating nature of the video from last Friday when the speaker spoke shortly after the President of Ukraine had spoken to the House of Commons in Ottawa.

And you know what it's about. You know why a lot of people are upset. The Speaker basically introduced to great applause somebody who fought for the Nazis in the Second World War. Now, the Speaker clearly didn't know the proper background, or I'm sure he would have thought twice about it. But he wasn't alone, you know. There was a whole house full of MPs

who stood there applauding and looking up and waving and smiling at this 98-year-old guy who was a member of the Waffen SS, the Galicia Division, the SS 14th Waffen Division in Ukraine. And that unit was responsible for mass murder, crimes against humanity during the Holocaust.

That's according to Canada's Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Now, my point is this, and it's not just MPs, it's everybody else who was in Parliament that day, or anybody who was watching, that includes all the media who were watching, because the Speaker clearly said he introduced this man as a Canadian and a Ukrainian war hero who fought for the 1st Ukrainian Division. Well, the 1st Ukrainian Division, as it turns out, is notorious. And your history books tell you that.

And if you'd Googled 1st Ukrainian Division, you probably would have found it out. But nobody did. Not the Speaker. Not the Speaker's staff. Not the MPs. Not the Prime's staff, not the MPs, not the Prime Minister's office, not the leader of the opposition's office. They all stood there, smiling and clapping and looking up at this guy.

It was in the gallery above the House of Commons. So did President Zelensky and it would be 48 hours before somebody would say you know what this guy's a Nazi he was a Nazi during the war he was a part of a unit that committed crimes against humanity responsible for mass murder those were the people

of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. It's a reminder to all of us about the importance of history. There are those who ignore history. There are those who ignore history. But as I said, there was everybody

who in any way saw part of that event on Friday. Whether they were there or watching on television or read about it online. And that's everybody, including the media, including me. I was sort of half listening that day. But I mean, if you thought it through,

this guy fought for the first Ukrainian division. Well, who was he fighting? I mean, if he wasn't slaughtering people, who was he fighting? He was fighting the Russians. Well, if he was fighting the Russians, he must have been in the direction of somebody, the Germans. They occupied most of that area. to be in another direction of somebody, the Germans, they occupied most of that area. These were Ukrainians

fighting for the Nazis. History. We can't ignore history. I'm not sure how this whole thing will end, but it will end. The speaker may have to resign. Perhaps he's already resigned. But he's almost certainly going to have to resign

at some point. There'll be a motion of non-confidence put in on the speaker by somebody. Might even be by the liberals. Who knows? We'll see. Okay. That's the point I wanted to make, history. We've said it a number of times on this show.

Ignore history, you'll repeat it. All right. Moving on. It's Tuesday, Brian Stewart is with us, and there's lots to catch up with Brian, so I think we should perhaps get right to it. Brian Stewart, war correspondent, foreign correspondent, fellow who's seen it all over many years.

He's been helping guide us on the Ukraine story. So let's get to it now. So Brian, watching Zelensky last week, he was in both Washington and Ottawa. But in Washington, at one point he said, if the United States stops supporting us, we will lose this war. Now, it's a pretty blunt statement. And, you know, in some ways that's been kind of the theme for the last two years. But it was very blunt and very direct at a time when clearly there is some dancing around the question in Washington, especially by the Republicans,

but not solely by the Republicans. So talk to me about that statement and what you made of it. Well, I think a lot of it was theatrics, but with a very serious message behind it. I think Ukrainians felt quite openly that they were getting a bit of a cold shoulder in Washington. The reception was not as warm as they were used to. There was a number of war, their former strong allies are wondering why they're not doing a little better in the war. There's a sign of war fatigue in Washington.

And I think that statement was really meant more than anything else to shock the Americans into realization that, you know, it's not just holding up Ukraine that's at issue in this war. It's defeating Russia. Now, you still have to recognize that Russia is still probably primarily your greatest adversary, China, of course, is maybe the number one, but in the world, and we have significantly weakened Russia by standing up to its aggression. If you were to pull out, you would be risking your potential future adversary winning a victory. You don't want to see that happen. But I don't think he really believes, I don't think the Ukrainians really believe the Americans will entirely pull out. They might, under a new president, certainly show more resistance to big numbers and big amounts of

money. But I think he thinks that even if, say, Trump was to bargain to try and end the war, he wouldn't just hand a victory over to Putin. You know, Trump doesn't hand victory over to anyone. You know, he'd want to get concessions from Russia. It would get messy. Pretty soon, America would be having to support Ukraine to some extent. But I really think it was a wake-up call for America. Let's look at all the big odds of this war. And for heaven's sakes, don't start weakening now when we're just accepting the fact this is not going to be a short war. This is going to be a very long war. And it's going to be a war of endurance. The winners will be those who can endure the longest and the toughest. I'm intrigued by the fact that you find Trump almost rational in the way he may go about entering the fray if he gets reelected president.

But we'll leave that for another day in case. I wouldn't say rational. I would say he'd want to get something out of Putin in return. So what can Putin give but give up some territory? That kind of thing. Ukraine would still likely refuse. I'm not saying rational, but I don't think American support would just vanish overnight like that.

There's too many links between the Pentagon and Ukraine and too many Republicans, hardcore Republicans even, who want to support Ukraine and don't want to see Russia win. Just a pullout. I'll tell you what he'd get out of Putin or what he'd want out of Putin. He'd want silence out of Putin about all the things Putin knows about him. Anyway, let's not get into the Trump story. It just drives some of our listeners crazy. Anyway, moving on.

Well, first of all, in terms of the cold shoulder, the biggest cold shoulder he got in Washington last week, Zelensky that is, is when the Speaker, the House of Representatives, turned down his request to speak to Congress. That's a pretty big cold shoulder. And with a message to it, you know, don't take us for granted anymore. Right. Okay. It was also a message that I have to look after my fractured party in this house, and a good part of this fractured party, about 15 members of it, are dead set against any further support at all for Ukraine. So I have to play with the cards of them now. Now, in the background of

this, you pointed us in this direction last week. This assumption, especially on the part of Americans, but not just Americans, that it's the United States that's doing all the supplying, or the vast majority of the supplying, whether it's money or weapons to Ukraine, where in fact that's simply not the case. And this softness on support does not appear to be happening in Europe the way it seems to be happening in Washington. No, indeed. Excuse me.

And that's the other side of the coin. If America was to significantly soften, there might be, in fact, a hardening in Europe, and there might be a lot more coming out of Ukraine itself. But in Europe, the mood is significantly for support for Ukraine. Across Europe, it's 64%, which is, you know, in this day and age of splitter societies, very high indeed. In France alone, it's 58%. You know, pretty close to 60% up there. Some European countries like Sweden is up over 90%. Portugal is up over 90%. So there's a lot of solid support within Europe for supporting Ukraine. There's a rush on really

to get Ukraine inside the European Union. Real negotiations are going to start, I think, in December. They're already progressing much faster than anyone expected. And there is an awareness in Europe that not only they better hang together in Europe or else we know what happens against Russia. But also the wealth of the West and the wealth of those supporting Ukraine is still so much greater than Russia's wealth, GDP and the rest of it. That really supporting Ukraine is the smart thing to do. Not just really the only sensible strategic thing to do, but the smart thing to do. So the support is there. That's one thing.

And also Europe is building up its weapon systems, its weapon manufacturing. They're a tremendous upgrade at the moment. They're starting to produce more shells, more ammunition, more weaponry. Even Germany that was sort of flagging in support started uh in just the last couple months promising the ukraine more in terms of uh armored vehicles and the rest of it therefore uh there's support there and there is then the other question what about ukraine itself

okay well let's get to that i'll just just add Poland to the list of countries you mentioned, mainly because of a trade dispute. Poland has backed off kind of linked to an issue of a dispute between the two countries over trade, they're assuming that that's going to get fixed. But Poland is, as you pointed out many times, a very important part of the European picture right now. But let's get to Ukraine, as you said, because, you know, we all tend to assume that Ukraine is only able to do anything because of all the money and the weaponry that's going into Ukraine. That's true to a degree, but Ukraine also, you know, has its own economy and has, as a result of its economy, has the ability to buy some of these arms and weapons themselves. Yeah, this is something, you know, we're trying to talk about before that Ukraine, one of the reasons Ukraine was so badly underestimated when this war broke out was that people had forgotten that, sorry, during the Cold War, Ukraine was one of the great military industrial complexes on Earth.

It had over 700 military enterprises. It was the fourth largest arms exporter, arms systems exporter in the world. It produced everything, you name it, from wonderful tanks to shells, artillery systems, the rest of it. Well, that all came to sort of an abrupt end in 91. But at least over the last eight years, they've been building that back. And it's really starting to take on some momentum right now. You know, the shell production has gone up three times in just the past year. Drones, over 120 times more drones now produce them a year ago.

A year ago, there were seven firms producing drones. Now there's 70. It's also starting to attract in a lot of arms manufacturers from outside. BAE and United Kingdom, for example, which produces artillery systems, very advanced artillery systems, some of the best in the world, that's opening a factory in Ukraine, working with Ukrainian suppliers. Rheinmetall in Germany produces armoured vehicles of all kinds. It's opening facilities inside Ukraine. So there's that ability of itself

to grow stronger. It's starting to export again more. That's part of the problem with, of course, Poland. But it's not only hitting, it's not only producing more arms, but a lot of the arms is starting to produce like these long range drones or arms that will hit deep inside Russia itself and go after the Russian factories and Russian supply systems and infrastructure. So again, this is not a weak nation that's going to just cave in. I think if American support starts to weaken, I think they'll have a rally around in Europe to some significant extent. And I think by next summer and the year after that, I expect the war will likely still be going, you're going to see a much stronger Ukraine producing very, very advanced weapon systems of its own.

At the risk of throwing you a bit of a curveball, given what you just outlined in terms of where Ukraine is and what it's getting and what it's supplying itself, is there a comparison at the moment between, you know, which side is best equipped or is able to sustain the situation right now? There's been lots of talk over the last couple of months of a lack of supply on the ammunition front on both sides. But the Russians have been trying to, you know, get better supplies coming into their country, whether it's a deal with China or a deal with North Korea or a potential deal with Iraq. Not Iraq, Iran. What's the balance of military power between these two countries at the moment? Is there any way of gauging that at the moment?

I think you'd have to say Russia still has more. between these two countries at the moment. Is there any way of gauging that at the moment? I think you'd have to say Russia still has more. Ukraine has more precision, more. There's that balance. But there's no question Russia has been upping its game significantly in terms of production. It's been turning out a lot more shells than in the past. It probably will produce Ukraine on the artillery shell level and the air systems to some extent.

It can probably outproduce it in armaments. But as you know, a lot of the armaments, such as tanks, were not seen used as much as was expected anyways. It's thought Russia has already lost 2,000 tanks in this war. Well, it produces 200 a year. So, you know, it could take, you know, a decade before it got its full system back. But so I think they're in a vague way, slightly rather even, but in different areas,

they're strong. The Russians are better at air, for instance, air attack. Ukrainians are better at precision artillery, and drones are better at that. So you have, as you usually do in war between two major powers, you've got the strength of one side to beat each other, and that kind of mixing and matching goes on. But I think to some extent, they're both weary. They're both battered. You got to keep that in mind. Both have taken ferocious casualties. Both are manning a ridiculously long front line of like 800 miles, which means, for instance, Ukrainian forces are stretched out. Sometimes 100 troops, 100 soldiers are trying to man a length of, say, almost two miles

in front. Well, that's really very, very difficult to do. So they're both weary, and they're both attriting each other. They're both suffering attrition. So which side's going to suffer most of the attrition soonest? And at the moment, that does look like the Russians are suffering a lot more in sheer attrition than the Ukrainians. All right. The one thing we've rarely talked about over this last almost two years is a sea war.

And there's lots of reasons why we haven't. But of the late, especially in the last week or so, it has come to the forefront. So we want to talk about that, but before we do, we're going to take a quick break. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode. Brian Stewart is with us.

You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Wherever you're listening, we're glad to have you with us. Okay, you know, sea power. The Ukrainians basically attacked the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. Was it last week? I think it was last week. Several weeks in a row they've been attacking ports and port areas and Russian ships.

In fact, they... Go ahead. Talk to us about that. Yeah, because I'm trying to see the significance of it, the impact of it, and what it says about the Ukrainians' ability to do this. It's not like they, do the Ukrainians have a Navy? No.

Well, they do, but they don't have ships for the Navy. You know, they don't have actual naval boats, but they have a lot of small craft and stuff like that. They lost their Navy when the Russians took over the Crimea. Crimea, of course. 2014. And really, it was thought there would be no contest at all in the Black Sea. The Russians have a significant naval force there. They looked like they could dominate not only in firing scud missiles and such into Ukraine, but could completely dominate the waters.

It turned out not to be the case when the Ukrainians suddenly sank the Moskva, their big flagship of the whole Black Sea, back in the beginning of the war. And since then, they've been pounding ports like Sevastopol, where the naval ships have been hunkering down because they're afraid of missile attacks at sea. And several have been hit, damaged at sea.

So they go in the harbor and the Ukrainians have been sending in, you know, what do you call it, drone boats coming over the water at night and attack submarines and regular boats. So they've been badly hit, the Russians, at sea, and they've been really hammered in their headquarters. The last attack was on the basic headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and it appears to have taken out a number of senior officers and really damaged that building.

So the Russians are a little bit on their back foot, feet I guess it is. Let's see. And the Ukrainians are starting to do daring things now that nobody thought possible. We all assume, all right, the Russians say they'll attack any Ukrainian ship, even if it looks like a grain ship, because it will be seen as a ship of war. Well, the Ukrainians have started to dare launching some ships going right at sea to Turkey. You know, that's to cross out through the Black Sea, the opening and into Turkey. That's how grain would get out. Well, now the Ukrainians are sailing grain ships. They've done two or three so far, very close to the shore, and then right close to the shore of Romania and Bulgaria. And that takes them right to the opening of the

Black Sea where they can escape out to Turkey. Now, those two countries are vitally important, of course, because they're members of NATO. And of course, Russia would not want to attack so close to within the national waters, say, of NATO countries. So it looks like for the moment, Ukrainians have figured out a system where if they can do it without casualty, they'll be able to get their shipment of grain back to 70% of the post war abilities. And that'll be an enormous money trade. Russia's going to have to try and stop that. I don't know what they're going to do, though. It's going to be very risky

for them to go in. They're hammering at Ukrainian ports now, trying to really just demolish them, so there's nothing to ship from. But the Ukrainians keep rebuilding quickly and moving the shipments from one little port to another little port, and then down the coast and out.

Can we just go back for a moment to the Ukrainian attacks on the Russian naval vessels in that major seaport? I'm still puzzled a little bit at how these drone attacks work. I mean, when we think of drones, I mean, there's the sophisticated big drones that the Americans have that are used in Afghanistan, they're used in Iraq, that are basically flown by guys in Texas, right?

I mean, it's all done by computer. But what are we talking about in terms of the kind of drones that the Ukrainians are using? You mentioned something about drone boats. Yes, there's several kinds. Ukrainians make an enormous variety of drones that go by air and go by sea. They're basically like little miniature motorboats

filled with ammunition. So they're very hard for radar to pick up. They scoot across the surface of the water at night at very high speeds. And they've been able to hit a number of Russian ships at sea. And now they've actually managed to get inside harbors, like a harbor in Russia, with precision, to hit the ships at port when they're tied up. So the Russians don't feel very safe anywhere they are right now. That's one drone. The other ones are the airborne ones, which are fairly easy to shoot down.

But when you send them in groups of like 30 or 40 at once, high rate of you just overpower the any aircraft, any drone fire and several get through and several getting through with precision it's enough to do the kind of damage uh you just need to do remember fairly small damage can put a major modern warship out of action it's going to be repaired it may take two years to repair it and the third thing I should say is it's not just drones. They're firing in missiles like the British missiles that have been sent. They're basically cruise missiles going out with extreme precision, just taking out the naval headquarters in the Crimea. That was remarkable.

Two of them hit, one after the other, and apparently caused major damage. So when the Russians are having to deal with that, they're not being as offensive as the world had expected them to be. to risk my ships out there. They're getting knocked off too quickly. What do you can't have them sitting in port? They'll be coming after you in port. All that kind of debating will be going on. What do we have the ships for? All you do is sit around in port. We all know from our own militaries how these arguments can be conducted. All right. Here's the last point for this week. And it's surprising there hasn't more hasn't been heard about this, but you pointed it out to me in the last couple of days, that there are a couple of new military studies that have been released

and authored in the last little while that talks, and not in a positive way, about the kind of training, tactical training, really, that is being given to Ukrainian forces by some of the NATO countries. Talk to me about that. Yeah, one of them was the famous British Rusi and another one was an American one. They point out that, you know, the kind of training that was given to the Ukraine officers was based on the 1980s Cold War NATO strategy,

American and NATO strategy to beat back the Soviets. Well, the NATO, Americans and NATO, all of NATO did not train to attack, it set peace Russian defense lines of masses of mines, of traps for tanks, of pre-positioned artillery. The whole NATO defense was based upon the fact that the Soviets were going to attack. NATO was never planning to attack the Soviet Union, despite the propaganda from the other side. They expected a massive attack from the Soviets. That's when NATO would attack, a moving enemy army outside

of its own defensive lines. So they'd have no experience in the West, really, of fighting the kind of terrain and the kind of enemy that we now expect the Ukrainians to fight with the kind of swiftness that we show in things like the Gulf War or in Iraq. It's just unfair. They don't have the air superiority NATO is used to. And they're not used to NATO. Americans have not fought a war against, in modern times, a defensive line like the Russians have built in their occupied Ukraine.

They haven't done it, and they would have trouble doing it if they didn't have air superiority, which they always had. So we think we may have trained Ukrainians to do heavy attacks when heavy attacks were simply not possible. As we pointed out in some of our first Bridge Broadcast, when the war broke out, you can't mass armor nowadays or large forces of troops because of all the intelligence from satellites, various listening posts, and the heavy artillery and the minefields. They just get slaughtered. So what the Ukrainians have had to do is devise their own tactics, which NATO advisors didn't like at first, but are now coming around to see, well, maybe in fact they're doing the only thing they can do, which is to move slowly and carefully to keep their own losses as low as possible while they continue to attrit the Russians as much as they possibly can. Because what's their alternative? Bring in 40 tanks together with armored vehicles, another 100. Bring in 15,000 troops and then get pounded for days by Russian missiles, air attacks, artillery. It's just something that would flop and fail. This is an awkward feeling that, yes,

NATO has been bad-mouthing a little bit for some this summer. Ukrainian's lack of progress, realizing they wouldn't do any better in the Ukrainian position. Well, you know, we should have learned that lesson, and you pointed it out often. At the very beginning

of this war, when the Russians moved across the border, big lines of tanks, and they got basically clogged up outside of Kiev. And the Ukrainian forces were sort of picking them off left, right, and center. The simple weapons, shoulder-fired missiles, stuff like that. Every move the Russians took could be seen on satellite imagery and drones with cameras. Well, the Russians have satellite imagery, and they have drones. So they can spot every move of one of our donated Canadian tanks, Leopard 2s, for instance, go into action.

They'll be able to watch every move it makes and decide at what junction point they'll blast it. That's why they have to really use them carefully in small numbers at the moment until they get a wide breakthrough. Now, it could be that after they break through the next line, there'll be fewer minefields to face. That's when they'll start risking more armor together. A bigger punch will come together.

But that's going to take an enormous amount of brilliant officer-led calculation that, you know, it's going to be something to see if it happens. It's going to be very difficult, but they may pull it off. Well, on that note, we're going to wrap it up for this week. We covered a lot of ground there today, Brian. I appreciate it. I appreciate it very much.

Brian will be back next week. Take care, my friend. Brian Stewart. And very much. Brian will be back next week. Take care of my friend, Brian Stewart. And yes, he will be back next week. Tuesday of next week. I'll check in with him again to see what angles he has on this story. By the way, I'm really looking forward to another event next week, not on the podcast, but in Toronto. And I can tell you it's already sold out, so don't write in saying, how do I get into this? But there's going to be the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto next week.

There's going to be a special panel one evening on the role of the war correspondent and how reporting has changed over the years. And listen, who better to be on that panel than Brian Stewart? I'll be moderating it. There are a number of other distinguished correspondents and reporters who will be on it as well. And looking forward to that for sure.

Okay, we have time for an end bit. And I hear from you guys every week that you like end bits, so here's an end bit for you. Do you use Netflix or any of the streaming services for movies? Prime, Amazon Prime, Netflix, BritBox,

CBC Gem, there's lots of them, right? Netflix in many ways started this. But they started not with streaming. They started by sending out DVDs. And there was this piece in the New York Times the other day. In a nondescript office park minutes from Disneyland sits a nondescript warehouse. Inside this nameless, faceless building, an era is ending. The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million

DVDs a week, employed 50 people, and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease this coming Friday when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes. Remember those? Or did that sort of pass you by where you were kind of a blockbuster person who rented DVDs and had to have them back by a certain day. Well, Netflix started in 1998. The first movie shipped was Beetlejuice. No one in Hollywood expected the company to eventually upend the entire entertainment industry. It started as a brainstorm between Reed Hastings and Mark Randolph,

successful businessmen looking to reinvent the DVD rental business. No due dates, no late fees, no monthly rental limits. And it was a huge success. It did extremely well. Like, I never rented from Netflix. But clearly, a lot of people did. Oops. That's a little accident in the studio here.

What does it say in terms of how well they did? Before the strikes that have kind of shut down Hollywood, they seem to be over now. Before the strikes, streaming had rendered DVDs obsolete, at least from a business perspective. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service's fifth largest customer, operating 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations that allowed Netflix to serve 98.5% of its customer base with one-day delivery. Today, there are just five such facilities left.

The others are in Fremont, California, Trenton, New Jersey, Dallas, and Duluth, Georgia. DVD revenue totaled $60 million for the first six months of 2023. In comparison, Netflix's streaming revenue in the United States for the same period reached, wait for it, $6.5 billion. Well, it's all coming to an end, the rental business at Netflix.

I've got to tell you, I assumed it must have ended years ago, that everybody was streaming. No, apparently there's still people who rent DVDs from Netflix. Go figure. All right, there's your end bit for today. Tomorrow, Smoke, Mirrors, and the truth. I imagine we may still be talking about the speaker story to some degree with Bruce. We'll see. What's dropped off the face of the earth? The India story replaced by a different scandal. The speaker story., we'll see what happens by tomorrow. Bruce will be by with SMT, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth.

Thursday, it's your turn and the random renter, and for your turn, I need your letters. So don't be shy. Send them in, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And please keep them short. There have already been a few this week coming in, and they're, like, really long.

I read them, or I read as much as I can take. So drop me a line. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's Thursday. Friday, of course, good talk. Chantel and Bruce will be here with the week's big political stories. But that's going to wrap it up for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.