The Peace President has started WW III

I was listening to DefSec... I mean WarSec "Pistol Pete" Hegseth's update on the Iran war. Apparently the good guys are kicking the shit out of the bad guys, unleashing hell, punching them while they're down, devastating them without mercy - as things should be when you're waging a REAL war in the name of God, as opposed to the faggy woke wars America used to conduct under communists like Obama and Biden. Ya, the exceptionalist rhetoric is utterly mind-boggling. I can't imagine God being on the side of warmongering retarded arseholes like Hegseth. But I've been wrong before. Like when I advised my readers to dump their appl back in 2012, and maybe a couple of other times. I've probably got two dozen posts out there over the last 15 years predicting the demise of the wily Erdogan. To my chagrin, not only has the Sultan defied my predictions, he is wilier and more influential than ever. Trump is taking us into uncharted territory. America's loss of every war they've instigated in the past half century hasn't deterred the Orange Ogre from instigating one with Iran, a country far more capable than any of the failed states America has been driven out of over the past 50 years. The American Empire has never looked more precarious.

The wily Erdogan strikes again

Mainstream Western media were full of hallelujas today over Sultan Erdogan's climb-down re Sweden's entry to NATO. What didn't get much attention was the fact this concession was part of a quid-pro-quo; in return, Sweden will press for Turkiye's admission to the EU. Think that through. Turkey has been lobbying for EU entry for fifty years - long before Erdogan's time in power. There's a reason the EU keeps kicking that can down the road. Membership has its privileges. Like visa free travel throughout the Schengen zone. Basically, anyone with Turkiye ID gets free-range travel privileges across the EU. Given the abundance of Islamist radical factions supported by Erdogan's government, having untrammeled access to Europe should be a total laugh-riot! It will be all the more hilarious now that untold numbers of Stingers and Javelins diverted from the always corrupt and ever leaky Ukrainian supply chains are circulating in the black market. What could go wrong?!

A brief history of Sleepy Joe's warnings to the world

As we all know, America is the undisputed leader of the world.

OK, maybe not the actual "world" world, but the free and democratic world; the "good guys." Being global supremo is a heavy burden. It's a lot like herding cats. It takes a lot of stern warnings to keep a lid on things. Allies and adversaries alike need frequent reminders of who's in charge.

Here's the Biden admin warning its Middle East allies not to play footsie with Bashar al-Assad, the evil dictator of Syria. Result? Assad just wrapped his Middle East Friendship Tour of US allies.

Here's a stern Biden warning to NATO ally Turkey to cease and desist ignoring previous warnings, or else!

Result? Business as usual.

Even before he took the oath of office, Sleepy Joe warned India against buying weapons from Russia. Result? India still buying Russian weapons. Also ignores Biden warning not to buy Russian oil by buying Russian oil.

Here's Biden warning China of consequences for support of Russia. Result? China still supporting Russia.

Here's Biden warning the European allies a year ago that America is back. How's that working out for them?

Iran has of course been thumbing their nose at US warnings since 1979, and life goes on.

And here's the most ominous Biden warning of all, warning Putin against invading Ukraine. Result? Putin invades Ukraine.

I think I'm starting to detect a pattern here. Maybe Sleepy Joe isn't the right guy to be leading the world.

Uncle Sam has a serious credibility deficit, and it's making the world a more dangerous place.

Forget Biden-Trump; watch Macron-Erdogan instead

I've been predicting the imminent demise of the wily Erdogan for about nine years now. I'll be right eventually.

I thought he was a goner in 2016, but apparently Putin saved his ass that time around. He's less likely to be as brotherly next time, what with Erdogan mucking up his various efforts in Syria, Libya, and now Nagorno- Karabakh.

Meanwhile, Sultan-in-waiting Fethullah Gulen hopes his handlers at Foggy Bottom give him another chance. While Turkey is indeed a NATO member, it's likely that those handlers are well aware that it would be a far more reliable (read pliable) ally under a President Gulen.

Enter NATO member Macron, a man with enough arrogance, chutzpah, and self-regard to give Erdogan a run for his money. Macron has troubles aplenty himself; Yellow Vests, Black Death, and a six-million strong Islamist underclass seething with resentments.

 One of the most cherished values of the NATO nations is freedom of speech. In France this freedom is held in especially high regard when it comes to freedom to mock the religion of that aforementioned seething underclass. This has bubbled into the open once again due largely to the folks at Charlie Hebdo reprinting their infamous cartoons of The Prophet to mark the trial of the crazed fanatics who shot up their offices when they were originally published.

This has given Erdogan the opening to pose as the guardian of Islam world-wide. For better or worse, his message is sure to gain traction in the banlieues. How far will white France go to defend its right to mock the religion of its non-white underclass?

There you have it. In this corner, NATO member France. In that corner, NATO member Turkey...

Something's got to give eventually!

Pot-addled hillbilly knows more about NK war than Canada's Foreign Minister

 Our FM Champagne has stepped up and called out the wily Erdogan.

Stop messing around in Nagorno-Karabakh, or else!

Sure.

First of all, Erdogan isn't just messing around. He's the prime mover.

Secondly, and here's where it's beyond obvious that our humble little democratic corner of the British Empire has faded into complete irrelevance, Erdogan does not in a million years have to give a shit what our FM has to say about the matter.

At this very moment, Erdogan is giving the entire world the finger. What Canada might think or not think isn't even on his radar. If even the Pompeo-Trump combine can't move Erdogan, anything our FM Champagne says means less than nothing.

Democracy dies in darkness

That howler was adopted as a slogan by the Washington Post about a year and a half ago, just months after they released the manifestly fake ProporNot list of 200 fake news sites.

I must admit I don't understand how any thinking person can read that slogan without arching an eyebrow or two. The Washington Post has long been regarded as the unofficial mouthpiece for the CIA, and that was long before it was purchased by the world's richest man, whose connections to the CIA are a matter of public record, at least some of them.

Note how they've painted themselves as champions of press freedom since the untimely demise of their occasional contributor Jamal Kashoggi. That's every bit as hilarious as Erdogan claiming that mantle. Kashoggi was a reliable pro-Kingdom stooge for his entire journalism career, until the palace coup that brought in MBS. Suddenly the Kashoggi clan were on the wrong side of KSA history, and Jamal decided to self-exile himself to DC, there to do whatever he could to further the cause of his side in the internecine struggle for the rulership of the Kingdom.

That's why he's dead now. The irony of his having become a posthumous symbol of journalistic freedom seems to be lost on the public at large. One gets the impression that the vast majority of those shocked and appalled at the Kashoggi murder are folks who can't wait for Assange and Snowden to face "justice" in the American judicial system.

The fact that the WaPo is promoting Jamal as a martyr for "press freedom" tells you that the CIA is, at least for the moment, throwing their weight behind the old guard in the Kingdom.

Having said that, it's good to see that at least some US media outlets get the bigger picture. Unfortunately, those outlets are hemoraging money and won't last much longer...

Sooner or later the CIA will buy them too.

Keeping an eye on the Arabs

This Khashoggi drama sure raises a few interesting questions.

Since when does Erdogan, or Trump for that matter, give a shit about the welfare of journos?

Since about the time Khashoggi walked into that Saudi embassy, as far as I can tell.

The Khashoggi name is quite prominent in Saudi circles. My understanding is they're a clan accustomed to being close to power, and found themselves out of the ruling circle only with the ascent of MBS. That explains why they've developed a sudden interest in a free press.

America's interest in human rights is equally recent. Dave Lindorff has a story on view at Counterpunch today contrasting the US reaction to the Khashoggi murder to their reaction to the murder of Furkan Dogan by the IDF.


While I was flat on my back and hoping for the best the other day, it occurred to me that the profession of eye-doctor seems to be particularly prestigious in the Arab world. I remember reading, just as the German refugee crisis was building up a good head of steam, an interview with the daughter of Albert Speer, who had happily acquiesced to putting up a couple of Syrian refugees in her Berlin home.

They were ophthalmologists. And they were also great house guests, according to Frau Speer, the message being "hey, open your hearts and your homes, fellow Squareheads! Nothing to fear from these Syrians we've been bombing to ratshit!"

And isn't the evil Assad an ophthalmologist too?... do you see a pattern here? Maybe everybody in Syria aims for an eye-doctor career. The top grads get to bunk with Frau Speer or come to Canada to do eye surgery on the likes of me.

The guys who don't make the grade get to gouge out eyeballs in Syria's secret torture prisons, like the one Canada sent Maher Arar to for the kind of proper interrogation we can't do ourselves.



For obvious reasons.

Most explosive story in the world ignored by US media

Hot on the heels of Erdogan's announcement that Turkey is sending 5,000 troops to Qatar, comes news that Pakistan is sending a further 20,000.

Ostensibly they will be there to discourage any untoward moves by Qatar's suddenly hostile neighbours. In reality, who knows?

Maybe they're just there to ensure first dibs on the looting of Qatar as soon as they get the green light from DC? After all, if you think Donny J is unpredictable, try following Pak or Turk politics for fifteen minutes.

This is the most important story in the world at this moment. Our GCC allies are turning on one another with a vengeance, but you don't see much about it in American media because everyone is obsessed with the Comey non-story unfolding in Washington.

The wily Erdogan meets his match

The Trump-Erdogan gab-fest was all but missed by the mainstream news purveyors today, mainly because they are busy having fake shit-hemorrages over Trump's supposed spilling of top-secret beans to Lavrov and the Russian ambassador last week. Another media-manufactured tempest in a teacup, but it's a good one, isn't it?

First Donny J fires FBI boss Comey to kill that investigation into his collusion with the Ruskies, and then he turns around and shares national secrets with those very same Ruskies!

Holy moly... this man must be stopped, at least if you take your cues from the NYT and the Washington Post!

Those commies... er, I mean Russians, obviously have Trump by the short and curlies.


Trump must be tempted to take a few tips from Erdogan on how to deal with pesky media. In America the Trumpists chant lock 'em up. It's a feel-good thing, much along the lines of chanting "go Leafs go!" In Turkey they're just locked up indefinitely, thereby proving that America still has something called a "free press."

Erdogan dodged a few bullets last summer, quite literally, when his former pal turned arch nemesis Fethulla Gulen launched a surprise attack on this government. Gulen has been cooling his heels a couple of hours north of CIA HQ for what, twenty years now? Does anybody really believe that this leader of a global socio-religious educational organization with millions of followers worldwide could enjoy US hospitality for that long without the express connivance of the highest levels of America's multi-faceted  spook infrastructure?

The CIA may not have invented Gulen, but they've certainly nurtured him over the years. Had things gone to plan, the ornery and unpredictable Erdogan would have given way to the infinitely more pliable Fethullah Gulen.

The failure of the coup last summer was a bitter pill for the Deep State, a disappointment trumped only by the election of you-know-who in November.

The string-pullers must have been seething today, and the "free press" did their bit by ignoring the Erdogan-Trump shindig.

Shouldn't take more than a few days for the Times and the Post to front-page a list of state secrets Trump spilled to the Turks today.

How do you solve a problem like Erdogan?

Spring has sprung and the air is thick with booga-booga.

The world is awash with bad guys. Who will threaten America's security next? We're fighting off despots and evil-doers on all sides... Assad, Putin, those towel-heads 'o terror in Iran, the nut job in North Korea. What is poor Donald to do?

Meanwhile, on the fringes of Europe, an even greater despot than any of the above gets a free pass. Why? Because in spite of everything, Erdogan's Turkey remains a NATO stalwart. Remember NATO? That combine of anti-communist nations bound together by our shared values?

Shared values like freedom and democracy and a free press and all that shit?

All long gone in NATO stalwart Turkey.

Where is the outrage?

Where is the armada (powerful) steaming towards Turkey's shores?

Not happening is where.

The current hit-list for the Masters of Empire looks something like this, in order of importance: Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Iran.

Turkey doesn't even make the long list, never mind the short list!

So how do you solve a problem like Erdogan?


What problem?

Gulen v. Trump; how will they square the circle?

NATO's biggest challenge going forward won't be President Trump. It will be President Erdogan of Turkey.

NATO, the militarized face of The Nations of Virtue, at least 25 years past its best-before date, is dealing with "incoming" threats for the first time in its history. In the shape of the incoming president of the United States.

Trump seems less than convinced that NATO serves any useful purpose. That's got a lot of NATO careerists nervous. And that's a lot of nervous people. From the top-shelf bosses in Brussels to their multitudinous support staff to the minions in the NATO liaison corps in each of the 28 member nations (could be 29 - is Montenegro in yet?) we're talking many tens of thousands of nervous people.

NATO member Turkey's wily President Erdogan claims that last summer's coup attempt was organized by Fettulah Gulen. Gulen is an international man of mystery who has been cooling his heels at an idyllic compound a couple of hours north of Langley for the past twenty years or so. The think tank here at Falling Downs gives Erdogan's suspicions a 9+ on the ten point plausibility scale that we use to winnow the wheat of real news from the chaff of fake news.

Mr. Erdogan has been insisting that the US extradite Gulen from his Pennsylvania hidey-hole to face "justice" in Turkey. That line would have been funny when Midnight Express came out almost forty years ago. It's exponentially funnier today!

So NATO should probably toss Erdogan over the side (which they arguably tried last summer), Trump is luke-warm (at best) on NATO, Erdogan is cosying up to Putin once again, and Trump (according to mainstream American media) is already in Putin's pocket.

Where does this leave Gulen?

High and dry, you'd be tempted to say, except for a couple of little things. Gulen is the polar opposite of Trump in many ways. One is a under-the-radar introvert, the other a vainglorious attention hog. But they are much alike in other ways. Definitive financial statements for either of them are equally difficult to pin down, for one thing.

Gulen is one of the biggest charter school operators in America. And who did Trump just nominate for Secretary of Education? Why, Betsy DeVos, America's number one champion of charter schools!

So, will Trump dispatch Gulen to face justice in Turkey? Or will Gulen force Erdogan out of office?

It's hard to see how Trump can square that circle.

Fake-news fairies whisk little Bana out of Allepo into the arms of Erdogan!

You gotta admit the wily Erdogan knows a good photo-op when he sees one.



If nothing else, this story proves that the roads from "rebel held" areas of Syria to the capital of Turkey remain wide open, in spite of the fact that Turkey has allegedly joined the fight against Daesh. How else to explain the fact that Bana was only evacuated out of Aleppo two days ago, on a Syrian government bus, and transferred to rebel held territory, and finds herself on The Sultan's lap in Ankara a mere 24 hours later?

That's truly amazing!

But in annals of the wily Erdogan's amazing adventures, it's par for the course. This is the guy who heads the second largest military in NATO but is conniving with Bad Vlad in all sorts of nefarious goings on in the neighbourhood. He's fighting ISIS but fighting the Kurds even harder, even though it's universally acknowledged that the Kurds are fighting ISIS harder than anybody. The guy who embodies the shared values of NATO even while wreaking havoc on his Kurdish population, side-lining democracy in his own country, and jailing more journalists than any despot in the world...

Sometimes it's hard to figure out where the truthiness ends and the fake news begins, isn't it?

While Obama plays golf, the wily Erdogan plays Obama

Funny how the biggest crisis to hit America's foreign policy establishment since the Cuban Missile Crisis rarely makes it to your evening newscast.

Somewhere between 50 and 90 nuclear warheads stored at Incirlik Airbase have been effectively out of US control for well over a month now. That's a situation that should be more than newsworthy, but you pretty much have to rely on piddly blogs like this one for the story, because some lying US swimmers in Brazil are sucking up all the news air on the US networks.

Wayward nukes vs. wayward swimmers...

What's the bigger story?

Erdogan has been making nice with Russia since the failed coup. Been making nice with Israel too, which fact should be snapping necks in the Beltway, but apparently is not. We're not far from Uncle Sam holding his pecker in his hand outside the tent while his former supplicants plot the future inside the tent.

A future that relegates the aging and increasingly irrelevant Uncle Sam to a rocking chair on the front porch of irrelevance while his former minions plot a new course for world affairs?

It's about time.

Has Erdogan been reading this blog?

You'd almost think so.

Here we are almost four years ago speculating that Erdogan would be sold down the river. Now, not even us paranoids here at Falling Downs saw the coup coming, but it was obvious that, with Assad bunkering in for the long haul, Erdogan and his puppeteers had a problem.

The puppeteers thought they could solve the problem 15 July. After all, you knew they'd play the Gulen card sooner or later.

Alas... HE'S BACK!!!

Now what?

Here's some news you won't see on your evening newscast

How are things shaking out at Incirlik air base over there in Turkey? As far as we know, the place has been locked down since the coup attempt two weeks ago.

"Locked down" means that the 50 to 90 US nukes on site are not under the control of the US military establishment. Yes, they're still being guarded by some 1500 US troops on site, but what's that worth? They're under lockdown too.

That's why you had Marine General Joe Dunford, who happens to be Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over there kissing ass this week. Normally you'd expect a trip like that to end in photo-ops and lovey-dovey joint pressers. What did you hear after Dunford's trip?

Nothing.

The think tank here at Falling Downs believes the wily Erdogan is holding out for the extradition of Fethulla Gulen before he lifts the lockdown on Incirlik. Will that happen?

Who knows. No question that the rogue Islamic cleric has been a CIA asset being groomed for big things. I suspect the big things he was being groomed for were expected to unfold two weeks ago. That obviously didn't unfold the way we expected.

Now Uncle Sam is up a stump.

Erdogan is talking normalized relations with Russia, Iran, and Syria.

Uncle Sam can't let that happen at any price...

Hold onto your hats!

The closed loop of the military-industrial-media complex

That pre-DNC dump of hacked emails should have been a game changer. After all, those hacked emails removed all doubt about whether or not the Clinton camp resorted to skankery and slime to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders.

Of course they did!

So what was the fallout in America's mainstream news sites? Did they say anything at all about the skankery and slime?

Nope. Instead, mainstream screens were overflowing with speculation about how Putin engineered the hack to help his good buddy Trump.

That story originated with Hillary campaign guru the Mookster, and by God, it was a stroke of genius! This little episode is gonna be a case study in Polysci classes for decades. Beautiful work, Mook!

You succeeded in taking the eyeballs of the electorate off your corrupt candidate, who the emails reveal as doing dirty by Bernie, and making the discussion about Trump's cosy and totally imaginary relationship with the evil dictator Putin!

Alas, there are some major challenges ahead for the ABCNBCCBS wankers who truly believe re-cycling press releases equals news reporting.

First of all, it looks like America's formerly reliable bum-boy Erdogan has gone completely off leash. As of right now, he's holding hostage a number of American nuclear weapons, variously reported as anywhere from 50 to 90.

He's also holding hostage hundreds of US troops who are supposedly guarding those nukes at a Turkish air base.

The Turkey situation right now is the biggest crisis of US foreign policy since the Cuban missile crisis. What is the media establishment telling you about it?

Nothing.

But they've got lots of theories about Putin's support for Trump.

Did Obama just stab BFF Erdogan in the back?

There were stories floating about in the past few days about how Erdogan's government was going to try to mend fences with Assad.

Insofar as there was any truth to that, (and the denials were immediate and multifold) Erdogan would be biting the hand that feeds him; his American paymasters, his NATO overlords; the folks who decided years ago that Assad must go.

And let's not forget that Erdogan has not been seeing eye to eye on the Kurdish question.

Is that why it is Erdogan, and not Assad, who is going today?

And let's not forget, he's not gone yet. Erdogan didn't fake those election victories. He has a massive popular base. They will see this coup attempt as a US plot to replace Erdogan with someone more pliable.

Will Erdogan hop on a helicopter and fly to asylum in... Saudi Arabia? Germany? Russia?

Probably not. I think he knows he has a support base that can delay this regime change that's been orchestrated by his NATO bosses.

That could mean civil war in Turkey.

A double dose of Drumpfobia in today's Globe and Mail

Rolled into Wiarton this morning to fork over five bucks to The Korean for my Saturday Globe. Ya, I know, I can get the whole damn thing online, but I'm one of those old-school guys who just prefers to turn pages, even at that extortionate rate. Hell, I remember having the Globe and Mail delivered to my door every morning for twenty-five cents per.

Times have changed, and not for the better.

As luck would have it, the line-up at Timmies was way shorter than you'd expect in tourist season, so I ducked in for a medium with milk.

The folks who run this franchise made what is to me an incomprehensible decision recently; they spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on putting a second order board in the drive-thru. There's still only one drive-thru window, but now two cars can place their orders at the same time. Overall, this doesn't improve service or speed up your trip through the drive-thru, but it does provide the illusion that the line-up is shorter than it actually is.

It also makes a trip through the drive-thru far more stressful than it used to be. I don't care what kind of a peace-loving pacifist fairy you might be, you'll be pissed off when that car that pulled in after you makes it to the window before you. Frankly, I'd give up Tim Hortons altogether, but I'm addicted to whatever it is they put in their coffee. (Rumours were rife not long ago that the magic ingredient is nicotine, but corporate HQ denies this.)

Stopped at the Wiarton International Airport on the way home. They were having their second annual cars, planes and motorcycles show. Unfortunately, the cars, planes and motorcycles were far fewer in number than what I was promised in the promo piece the Farm Manager read me out of the local paper yesterday. Three hundred cars? It was more like three dozen.

Must have been the weather... or maybe I just showed up too early.

But at least I got to go home and tuck into my Saturday Globe earlier than I'd expected.

The most jarring thing about today's paper was that I read Southey's column just before I read the style section. Southey's dad was my economics prof in one of my past lives, and he used to bring little Tabatha to campus from time to time, so I feel a certain affinity.

Little Tabatha became a writer for the Globe, and apparently she's currently on a tour of Madagascar. Her reporting from Madagascar is bleak in the extreme. That's why the promos for $700 sandals in the "Style" section left me feeling somewhat discombobulated. Seven hundred bucks for a pair of sandals? Really? Most people who live in Madagascar do so on less than that. For a year.

I must say I really appreciate that automotive writer Pete Chenney has got his car column into the style section. Today he had a fine article about the hardtop version of the Shelby Cobra. Well worth a look. His column is generally the most interesting thing in Globe Style.

But let's get on to the Drumpfobia, shall we!

Today's Globe and Mail Trump-bashing is left to the husband and wife team of Elizabeth Renzetti (page two of the main news section) and Doug Saunders ( page seven in the Focus section).

Liz has a nice piece on view about how a couple of grannies are gonna put the boots to grandpa Donald Trump. It's kind of pleasant in a vapid way if you're a Clinton fan, which I'm not. But at the end of the day, I'd say if American politics comes down to Grannies bashing Grandpas, maybe America is really a gerontocracy, and not the plutocracy or oligarchy that so many sentient observers claim.

HRC getting the endorsement of Elizabeth Warren does do wonders for Clinton of course. It's almost as important as Trump getting the endorsement of establishment GOP guys like Newt or Chris Christie. Hillary is so far to the right of Trump that most of the PNAC crowd has no compunction whatsoever about supporting her, which tells you everything you need to know about Hillary. Getting the nod from one of the few genuine "progressives" in the Dem camp means the world to her campaign.

So Renzetti's story about the grannies getting together to take out the evil grandpa has at least some element of human interest.

Husband Doug's column, on the other hand, is just plain silly. Yup, time to erect a "cordon sanitaire" around the buffoon. After all, that's how they've been side-lining the radical right in Europe...

Really?

Perhaps Saunders' analysis had some legitimacy a couple of years ago. But the so-called anti-immigrant radical right has been radically on the up-tick since the refugee trickle became a flood. And whether that influx is a trickle or a flood depends entirely on the whims of Sultan Erdogan, our erstwhile anti-democratic NATO ally, who alone has his hands on the refugee taps. Europe has been busy trying to buy him off, but the wily Erdogan knows when he's got his adversaries over a barrel... and does he ever!

Yup, it's a mess, and it's gonna get way messier, especially if HRC's greedy grasping hands ever seize the levers of power. Which is not to say that things would be better with Trump at the helm. Trump is an unknown quantity. He might be better; he might not. At least with Trump there is a glimmer of possibility that America might change the disastrous course it's been on. With Hillary it will be full steam ahead.

So even though there were only a few dozen cars on view when I got to the Wiarton International Airport, a couple of them were very nice. There was a very pretty 1970 Cyclone GT. Unfortunately it had the 351 two barrel. That's not gonna stir up a lot of wind, nevermind a cyclone. The Mustang 50 I drove to the airport would probably have ten lengths on it over the quarter mile.

There was also a lovely '68 Impala SS with a 396 and four speed. I'm a sucker for the full size Chevy's from that era. Drove a '67 Impala SS for awhile, with the 327 and a powerglide. Also had a '67 Belair wagon for a few years, with a 283 and the powerglide. Paid two hundred for it, drove it for a couple of years, and sold it for two hundred.

That's cheap driving!

Is the jig just about up for the wily Erdogan?

How ironic that on the very day that Erdogan wings his way to America, America advises her nationals to get the fuck out of Turkey.

Even more ominously, Israel just did the same thing.

This does not bode well for NATO ally Turkey. Obviously, the double-dealing Erdogan's shit is about to hit the fan of public exposure.

Not to mention crippling blow-back.

How convenient that he is out of the country at the moment!

Putin's billions

Just last week we were shocked to learn that a secret British inquiry into the death of former Russian secret agent Alexander Litvinenko ten years ago concluded that his demise was "probably" approved by Bad Vlad.

This week the news gets even worse; not only is Putin probably responsible for the death of Litvinenko, he's probably corrupt as well! Yup the tried, tested, and possibly somewhat true fable of Putin's billions is making its annual fly-past!

Here's today's story a year ago at Business Insider; Putin worth $200 billions.

Here's Bloomberg in 2013; Vladimir Putin: the richest man on earth.

And here's The Guardian speculating about Bad Vlad's billions all the way back in 2007!

So why does this old story, notably devoid of any actual facts, reappear on such a regular basis? Easy! It takes the Western news consumer's eye off what's actually going on in the world. Right now Putin is playing a role in two unfolding stories.

In the US, where Putin-phobia is a well-established psychosis, the political establishment is using Putin as a stick with which to beat Donald Trump. Yup, Trump must be nutso 'cause he says he admires Putin. Let's remind the public just what a murderous embezzling whack job this Putin chap is and hopefully they'll come to their senses about Trump. Worth a try at least.

The other story giving our elites a spot of indigestion is the exposure of our dear friend, ally, and NATO partner, the wily Erdogan, as a back-stabbing double-dealing fraud. Since Russia joined the war on ISIS in September, it's become completely obvious that Erdogan's "war on terror" has not been on ISIS at all, but on the Kurds, generally considered "our" most effective anti-ISIS ground forces. That's a story that could shake NATO to its foundations...

Heck, if enough folks ask enough questions, this could throw the entire NATO project into disrepute!

Quick! Let's wave Putin's billions around for a few days to get their minds off the real story.