COVID-19 has Putin running scared

Well, not really, but check out this entirely speculative CBC "analysis" of how Russia has handled the pandemic.

One of the challenges facing the usual Putin-bashers now that coronavirus has sucked all the oxygen out of the news space is there's little room left for Putin-bashing.

Solution? Bash him with made-up coronavirus stories! The charges levelled against Russia's government, or the Putin regime, if you prefer, could be made against virtually any government today. Some of it may even be true, although writer Chris Brown's sources seem to go out of their way to stress they're working with hunches rather than facts.

Where Brown drops the ball is in failing to report the links between the Doctors Alliance of Russia, and Russia's most high-profile opposition activist, Alexei Navalny. He notes the Doctors Alliance rents office space from  Navalny's organization, but then tells us that the Doctor's Alliance itself is apolitical.

This is not the case. There are ample stories out there detailing the links between Navalny and Doctors Alliance. Here's one from The Economist, in May of 2019, Russian Trade Unions get Political, that pretty much debunks what we just read at CBC.

Is this just lazy journalism, or is it something else?

Navalny's "movement" has impeccable connections to mainstream Western media via the offices of the National Endowment for Democracy and the like. All Navalny, or more likely, a personal assistant has to do is make a call, and miraculously, the same anti-Putin story shows up uniformly across the Western media firmament.


That's how the "free press" works!

I'd like to thank all my lawyers and everybody else who worked so hard to make this song a hit

I'm watching the Billboard Music Awards.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do hate myself...

But I did actually hear somebody say those words in the title. If I'm not mistaken it was some guy named John Legend.

I think these awards shows are important. Now that America has been reduced to a couple of dozen hedgie gazillionaires and 300 million "middle class" peons alternating between welfare and minimum wage shit jobs, this kind of spectacle is more important than ever.

It proves that the American Dream is alive and well.

After all, without that illusion, America's formerly working class would have been storming the White House back in the days of Rockin' Ronnie... the only labour leader who ever became president of the United States.

Yes, in America you can in fact put shit on a stick and call it cotton candy... and sell millions!

Oops, gotta go.. Chris Brown is on!

TTFN!

Bullets for Bieber?

It's not hard to figure out who the real target must have been when you read between the lines of this news report.

Who would possibly want to do harm to the cuddly Suge Knight?

Nobody!

Or the loveable Chris Brown?

Well, er...

But really, who was the most obnoxious person in the room?

It could only be Bieber! The man-boy has got making enemies pretty much down to a fine art. Everywhere he goes he leaves a trail of graffiti, urine, abandoned pets... broken glass, broken hearts, you name it; the dude is a one-man environmental disaster!