Putin against the world

Our corporate media had a good week of it moaning about Putin's latest aggression against the hapless Ukrainians, so anything I read in Doug Saunders me-too column in the Globe today I'd already read several times. I guess Doug is down to one weekend column due to his employer finding efficiencies. Don't sweat it, Doug, the new Amazon warehouse in Vaughn will be hiring soon!

You'll be fine.

Anyway, taking a break from sowing generic chaos and instability around the world, Putin has once again gone out of his way to pay special attention to the immediate threat on Russia's doorstep, Poroshenko's model democracy next door. That's because he's afraid that the Russian people will sooner or later realize that life is so much better there, and they too will demand a Nuland/Payette democratic transfer of power to someone more amenable to taking direction from Washington than the habitually recalcitrant Putin.

Then life will be good!

This line of reasoning, and it is certainly not original to Doug Saunders, as his contemporaries in other major media outlets have been beating this drum all week and Doug had to wait for his weekend slot, contains an inherent contradiction that the apologists for American exceptionalism tend to avoid addressing, which is this; if Putin is indeed "weak and isolated," as we are continuously led to believe, then how does he manage to sow all that global chaos and instability? And not only that, he manages to sow world-wide mayhem with a war chest not 10% of the USA military budget!

Clearly, the man is a genius!


Either that, or our mainstream pundits are full of shit.

The crux of Saunders' imaginary thesis is that Putin is at his most dangerous when cornered, as he is now. How do we know we've got Putin cornered? His approval rating is down to 60%.

Let's apply that logic to the cornered career criminals in the Nations of Virtue. Macron and Merkel are under 30%. The greatest leader since Moses is in the high 30s. Trump is in the low 40s. Our own PM Fluffy is barely over 50%.


But Putin is on the brink because he's only got a 60% approval rating?

Globe and Mail tells you twice, in case you missed it the first time

The folks on the bridge of the Good Ship Globe & Mail want you to believe that the USA was a benign hegemon from 1945 till January 20 of this year. Sure, those Yanks may have made a misstep here or there once or twice, but that's to be expected when the weight of the world is on your shoulders, and besides, even those missteps were clearly cases of good intentions gone sour - through no fault of America, of course.

Yup, for over seventy years the planet basked in an unprecedented era of peace and freedom and democracy and prosperity, thanks to America's leadership.

Then Donald ascended to the oval office and darkness descended on the planet.

Just how dark is it?

Oh, dark enough to give Doug Saunders some prime Focus section real estate in today's paper. Chances are if you're a regular G&M reader you already know Doug's opinion on Trump, so there's nothing new here.

Maybe that's why the guys who make the big decisions at 351 King decided to commission an article by an actual history professor from U of T to run right beside Doug's rant saying more or less the same stuff.

See! Doug's not full of shit; real live history professors from Canada's number one university agree with him!

In fairness, Doug does see a bit of a silver lining; "the West may regroup," whereas our U of T historian claims "the fracturing of the transatlantic relationship is a disaster for the world."

What's been a disaster for much of the world has been the last seventy plus years of American leadership. Sure, Western Europe has enjoyed relative peace and prosperity, but there's more to the world than Western Europe.

How has Southeast Asia enjoyed these last seventy years of US leadership?

Or Central America?

Or Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya?

How are our European allies enjoying the refugee crisis that US foreign policy has gifted them?

How are the people of Greece enjoying the austerity enema that our idol Angela has been forcing on them for the past few years?

Yes, great things will happen if the West "regroups" behind the leadership of big-bank toadies Merkel and Macron!

Doug, I fear you are sadly mistaken.

Night did not fall on the 20th of January. In much of the world, it's been getting darker for a long time.

Trump is a mere symptom.

"American exceptionalism" is the disease.

The unspoken option in the Muslim migrant emergency

That migrant emergency is hogging the headlines these days.

Trump is gonna build a wall.

But that leaves Europe defenceless.

Europe, the beating heart of Christianity.

Muslim migrants are groping and raping their way across Europe.

Groping and raping the Christian Frauleins...

If they're not groping and raping, they're blowing up airports and subway stations...

Everybody from Hollande to Merkel to Trump has the answer; bomb them more and bomb them harder and for God's sake, build bigger walls!


Here's the unspoken option.

Maybe we should stop bombing them.

Gute Nacht, Frau Merkel!

Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of the reign of idiocy concocted by international banksters and imposed in Hitlerian fashion by Frau Merkel.

The elections today were as much about Merkel as they were about Sarko and the Goldman Sachs stooge who has been following orders in Greece.

Enough is enough!

First day of 2012 and sky still falling: NYT

First day of a brand new year, and oh my God, it's the same old same old all over the front page of the NYT.

The euro-crisis. It didn't quite sink us in '11, but for sure it's gonna get us in 2012. That she-beast of Berlin, Angela Merkel, spent her first day of the new year wagging her finger at the lazy Greeks and reminding them they need to make more sacrifices to save the German banks.

And if that's not bad enough, this will blow your socks off: IRAN SAYS IT HAS PRODUCED NUCLEAR FUEL ROD!!!

Oh my God, run for the bunker... they've got a nuclear fuel rod? Why, they must be, what, mere days from a nuclear weapon, and then they're going to start WIPING US OFF THE MAP OH MY GOD!!!

And remember, Ron Paul WANTS them to have nuclear weapons.

Microphones accidentally pick up Netanyahu comments at G20

A technical gaffe at the G20 summit last week resulted in some undiplomatic comments by Benyamin Netanyahu being overheard by the press corps. Although all present were required to pledge an oath of secrecy the story has been leaked by some outraged French journalists.

Canadian PM Steven Harper remains the only G20 leader on speaking terms with Netanyahu, so the two spent quite a lot of time chit-chatting. Here is a transcript of their conversation.

BN: That Sarkozy, he is a midget. He wears elevators in his shoes.

SH: Heh heh, good one Bibi!

BN: And that Merkel, what is the matter with her? Needs a good you-know-what if

       you ask me…

SH: No doubt, Bibi!

BN: Now that Silvio, he is a man’s man, eh?

SH: A man’s man Bibi… still with the bunga bunga at his age!

BN: And Obama... A black man in the White house! And he wants to lecture me?

SH:  For shame, Bibi, for shame...