Globe and Mail reveals who is behind anti-Putin documentary "Navalny"

Barry Hertz has an interview with the Canadian director of the must-see documentary “Navalny” in the paper today. It’s an up-close look at the inner workings of Putin’s depraved, malevolent, paranoid, and incompetent inner circle. It made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival, and is now at Hot Docs in Toronto. It’s being heavily promoted by both CBC and the Globe. Director Dan Roher, a youngster with one previous doc under his belt, explains how the film came together. I was sitting around in lockdown, trying to figure out my next move… when in September 2020 I was invited to Vienna to meet this Bulgarian journalist, this Sherlock Holmes character named Christo Grozev. That trip turned into a visit to Kyiv. Christo said he might have a lead for Navalny. A week and a half later I met Alexy and it was now my job to convince him that not only was a documentary a good idea, but that it should be me who leads the project. It obviously wasn’t Dan Roher who lead the project, it was that “Sherlock Holmes character” Christo Grozev. Grozev has been “lead Russia investigator” at Bellingcat, which wants you to believe it is a collective of independent investigative journalists, since 2014. Oddly enough, this collective of independent journalists is funded by the US government via the National Endowment for Democracy. Odd, because the Assange case shows us all we need to know about America’s respect for independent journalism. Then again, it’s probably expecting too much of the journalists at CBC or the Globe & Mail to connect the dots.

Make no mistake; Russia is winning in Ukraine

Sleepy Joe announced, in his catatonic way, another 33 billions in aid for the plucky Ukrainians yesterday. Of the 33b, 20 is for US military supplies. The chances of any of that 20b in Raytheon and friends product actually getting anywhere near the front lines are 100% non-existent. So this is just free money for the war profiteers. Meanwhile, the CBC-Globe&Mail propagandists, in sync with “free press” among the American satraps generally, (the same ones working overtime to make sure Julian Assange never again sees the light of day) keep piling on the bullshit about how those plucky Ukrainians are actually winning this American war on Russia. Another twenty billion to Lockheed and Raytheon should do the trick. The war is lost, but the seriously deluded continue to delude themselves. That’s why both the CBC and the Globe were pushing the Navalny narrative today. Apparently there’s a new doc we should all watch, all about how Putin’s #1 rival is once again exposing Putin’s perfidy. CBC had on the director of said doc, explaining how Russian military intelligence and it’s military in general are nothing more than “professional morons.” That’s why they’ve failed to assassinate him after trying so many times. Sure. The last time he was almost assassinated, the German medivac plane that flew him to Germany was chartered days before he was poisoned, not that the doc will confuse you with that factoid. As far as I know, Navalny has never polled above 6% approval among Russian voters, even in his heyday. Since America’s Ukrainian war went hot, Putin’s approval has gone from high 60s to low 80s. This war was effectively won by Russia in the first few days. All we’ve been doing since is ensuring more Ukrainians will suffer and die in the interest of USA/NATO geopolitical objectives.

Anti-Putin fabulists at Globe and Mail still shilling for Navalny

The Globe's Senior Internet Correspondent Mark MacKinnon has a news flash for us; Alexei Navalny is now Putin's "No.1 political threat - and a symbol of hope for many in the country."

I guess the good news is the narrative managers have quietly deposed Bullshittin' Bill Browder from that role, and not a moment too soon! The main problem with Browder's shtick is that, aside from being risibly self-serving, it failed to get any traction whatsoever inside Russia.

MacKinnon's fluff piece paints a glowing picture of Navalny's rise to imaginary influence. "Comparison's have been made between Mr. Navalny and Nelson Mandela..." 

Really? The only people making such an asinine comparison are the aficionados of Washington's ceaseless regime change machinations. A more apt comparison would be to Juan Guaido, the US-sponsored stooge being passed off by the Americans and a handful of lackey states as the "legitimate" leader of Venezuela.  

As a professional journo who does his homework, MacKinnon must have seen this story at Reuters. It discusses the latest Levada Center polling on trust in Russian political figures. Putin doesn't have much to worry about, at least from Navalny, who rings in at No. 6 on the list of leaders Russians trust the most. 

Sure, the polls may call Navalny No. 6, but once you apply the secret Globe and Mail anti-Putin math formula, he mysteriously becomes No. 1. That's because their mission here is not to inform us of what's actually going on in Russian politics, but to reinforce the anti-Putin narrative that corporate media have been cultivating for the past twenty years.

Someday the curtain will come down on Putin's political career, but it's not likely the Russian people will ever choose a leader whose puppet strings are as obvious as Alexei Navalny's.

Bullsh@ttin' Bill still golden at NYT

 I look forward to my Sunday Star. Not only is it half the price of a Saturday Globe and Mail, it comes with a dollop of big-league journalism in the form of The New York Times International Weekly at no extra charge! I especially look forward to their Opinion and Commentary section, just to see how many fresh ways they can come up with to tell us that their president is a despicable a-hole.

The highlight yesterday was Bret Stephens' recycled op-ed from Sept. 5, "US should pass a Navalny Act." This would be an upgrade of the Browder-driven Magnitsky Act, and would serve as a response to the alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny. As you recall, that's where Putin's minions gave Navalny's tea a spritz of the deadly nerve agent Novichok. Then, when the deadly poison failed, they shipped Navalny to Germany for treatment.

I'll reserve judgement on the plausibility of that scenario, but confess I am inclined to think that if Putin really wanted him dead, he would be. Stephens has no such reservations, and reveals that he personally came up with the idea of a Navalny Act, and that when he ran it by Bill Browder, "... he jumped at the possibilities."

I'll bet he did! While it's not acknowledged in North American media, Browder's star has been in decline elsewhere. Here's Denmark's Berlingske on Browder. Here's an insight into Browder's recent brouhaha with Germany's Der Spiegel. 

European journalism clearly holds itself to a higher standard than does The New York Times.