Three things that took my mind off the madness this week

We live in a fucked-up world, do we not? There seems to be a whole lot of folks who should know better flirting with WWIII. Because why? Because we can win? Let's get real. As Canadians we are charter members of Uncle Sam's Club. The Nations of Virtue! NATO, G7, EU, Israel and Japan, and the "Five Eyes;" Uncle Sam's bumboys one and all. This is what our media refer to as the "international community." Meanwhile, somewhere out there in the rest of the world, there's about 7 billion people who don't see things the way the golden billion of the Nations of Virtue do. That's why there was such a sparse uptake of those Russia sanctions that Apocalypse Joe promised would turn the ruble into rubble. "Ruble into rubble?..." That's almost poetic! But I digress. I'm finding my screens saturated with propaganda and hate speech. I'm just a senior citizen wanting a quiet life, but my entire information infrastructure wants me marinating in hatred and fear. Lucky for me, three things took my mind off the madness and saved, at least for now, my mental health. Thing 1; Birds. You can't step out on the stoop without meeting the birds. That's a big crew, and includes everything from the geese and Sandhill cranes congregating for their Florida vacations, to the wrens and finches who will hang back and take their chances on our bird-feeders. Here's the key thing. None of these birds have screens, so they don't give a shit about Ukraine or Gaza or THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!! Thing 2; Cattle and coyotes. We've got week-old calves galivanting in the pasture across the road. And every night we hear the coyote choir raising their voices to heaven. Neither calves nor coyotes are addicted to anxiety-inducing news feeds. They just eat and poop and do their thing. Thing 3; Babies. On their own terms, babies aren't that big a deal. After all, a calf is wandering around on their own legs within a couple of hours of leaving the womb. My grand-daughter at six months is still struggling to do what that calf did on day one. The reason babies give me hope is because there's still well-educated and responsible young people willing to have them. If they're smart, they'll keep them away from the screens as long as possible.

What if Putin isn't bluffing?

The cabal of dorkshits who pissed away $300 million every single day for twenty years before cutting and running from the Taliban, now see themselves entitled to dictate what's what to Russia and China.

I don't think you have to be a genius political analyst to see this can't possibly end well.

The Americans spent billions to over-throw the democratically elected government in Ukraine. After decades of encroaching on former Soviet satellites, Ukraine was to be the big prize. If we could turn Ukraine, NATO would be right on Russia's border!

Alas, the "Revolution of Dignity" wasn't much of a revolution, nor did it bring anything in the way of dignity to the people of Ukraine.

The current tensions in Ukraine can be traced back to comments the clown-comedian leader of Ukraine made back in the spring, about re-taking the Crimean peninsula. That's when the first "build-up" of Russian forces on the other side of the border happened.

Since then, Western politicians and media have been recklessly goading Zelensky to make good on his threats. Even as both the UK and USA announce up front they won't back Ukraine militarily, they keep up the confrontational rhetoric and flood Ukraine with hundreds of millions in fresh weaponry. 

The reporting in Western media on last week's meetings between EU, OSCE, NATO, and Russia was dismissive of any Russian concerns. We are, after all, the Good Guys, whereas Putin is an evil dictator looking to revive the Stalin era.

In Canada, the two primary organs of state propaganda, The Globe and Mail and CBC, are full of hubristic twaddle about how we and our allies need to call Putin's bluff and put him in his place.

Canada cut and ran from Afghanistan years before the Americans gave up. Yet somehow, we think it's our job to rally round Uncle Sam as the Americans provoke a military confrontation with an entity that is infinitely more capable than the Taliban?

This will not end well for the self-proclaimed Nations of Virtue.

Canada keen to follow USA over the cliff

There has been a very long debate among political scientists and such as to how much information a democratic government can keep from its electorate and still be considered democratic. The self anointed leader of the democratic world operates on the assumption that virtually anything the government does is none of the public’s business. 

That’s why Assange must die.

Ironically, that was also the approach taken by another Joe, Stalin.

Joseph Stalin famously proclaimed that power is exercised by those who govern, not by those who elect.

Although we have adopted Stalin’s interpretation of democratic governance, the leaders of the Nations of Virtue are very concerned about the current leadership in Russia, which has become unacceptably authoritarian.

We have therefore followed a long-term plan to topple that government and install one that is more democratic. This long-term plan has by now brought the Axis of Kindness to the very borders of Russia.

The national newspaper of record today featured an op-ed by three veterans of think tanks sponsored by military contractors. The topic was government secrecy. They believe in Stalin too. Government secrecy is sacrosanct.

Any weakening would put Canada at a severe disadvantage. Our most important intelligence relationship - with the United States, would be gravely undermined by any loss of confidence in the government’s ability to safeguard its sensitive information.

That’s the default position across all legacy media in Canada; we absolutely MUST loyally follow Uncle Sam’s dictats. That’s the reason we need to commit to hundreds of billions in military spending. We gotta stand with our allies when Putin gets too big for his authoritarian britches.

We're the good guys, after all.

It's a shame the opinion pages are so cluttered with writers shilling for the US armaments industry. 

How Canada stands up to Trump

Canadians generally and Canadian media in particular have an ingrained antipathy toward Donny J. We are, after all, a sophisticated, educated, and morally superior nation, and Trump is...well, just so darned yucky and gross.

Today, Jaime Watt's column in the Sunday Star is titled "Trump is running against democracy." Who can even imagine such a thing! Trump is so yucky and gross he is running against the very democratic ideals that make civilization possible.

Star columnist Vinay Menon, meanwhile, advises his (presumably Canadian) readership to "seek out the remarkable healing power of Biden," although evidence that Biden has "healed" much of anything in almost a half century in politics is threadbare at best.

While these A-list Canadian pundits are polishing our smug and sanctimonious superiority complex, the Royal Canadian Navy was, for the fourth time in four months, sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait. While Canada is blessed with an abundance of coastlines, none of them are anywhere near China, so it's not as if we're over there "defending our interests."

No, what we're doing is "standing with our allies" in a signal to the commies that we're a vital part of the coalition of "liberal democracies" ever anxious to keep the Yellow Peril in check. The leader of the "liberal democracies," also known variously as "the free world," the Nations of Virtue, or simply Uncle Sam's Club, is of course America's Donald J Trump.

One could question just how sound America's claim is on either liberalism or democracy, but aside from the ubiquitous Trump bashing, these questions don't come up. It's as if our pundits believe that America was that "shining city on a hill,"right up until January 20, 2017, when the light of freedom was suddenly snuffed. If we all wish hard enough, perhaps it may flicker back to life after November 3rd, when we can once again huddle under Uncle Sam's skirts without embarrassment.

In the meantime, our allies UK and US, sail through the Taiwan Strait on a regular basis, and it is imperative that we "stand with our allies," the same "liberal democracies" currently busying themselves with destroying Julian Assange in revenge for exposing their war crimes.

Here's the problem; talk is cheap. It costs nothing to write anti-Trump op-eds. On the other hand, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to sail a Halifax-class RCN frigate through the Taiwan Strait. And our frigate fleet is getting long in the tooth. We need to upgrade the fleet if we are to continue standing with our allies.

To that end, Canada is forging ahead with plans to build 15 state-of-the-art frigates at a cost of 45 billions. The lead contractor is US military supplier Lockheed Martin. For all our Trump-bashing and anti-American posturing, it is clear that, virtue-signalling aside, Canada's ruling elite remains as desperate as ever to ingratiate themselves with the Big Dog, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

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?

Canada to lead Nations of Virtue in seizing assets of despots and dictators

Perennial do-gooder Lloyd Axworthy has come up with a great idea; lets help ourselves to the frozen bank accounts of dictators and despots and use the money to address the global refugee crisis! Lloyd figures we should be able to raise ten to twenty billion a year from the bad guys on our shit list.

Whose bank accounts we seize is of course a question of politics rather than morality. You'll notice that it tends to be leaders Washington doesn't like who have their assets seized. Maduro and Putin are despots, but MBS and Erdogan get a pass.

As for the refugees themselves, what are they fleeing? In the great European refugee crisis of 2015-16, 75% of the arrivals came from only three countries; Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. What do those countries have in common? They've all been targeted for regime change by those same Nations of Virtue now wringing their hands over the refugee crisis, Canada included. How ironic to read such nonsense on the very day that we're remembering those 158 Canadians who gave their lives in the noble mission to bring freedom and democracy to Afghanistan.

This is not a fact that the Axworthys of the world address or even acknowledge. So long as disinterested experts like Ahmed Chalabi or Bill Browder can be trotted out to spin scary stories, that's good enough for Lloyd.

Here's an alternative funding source for staunching the refugee crisis; a modest tax on international weapons sales. Since eight out of ten of the top weapons purveyors are in the Nations of Virtue club, reaching a consensus on such a tax would be a snap!

Refugee crisis solved!

Even better, although "thought leaders" like Axworthy can't seem to get their heads around the concept, we in the virtuous West could end most refugee crises simply by minding our own business and giving up the idea that it's our right to meddle in other countries.

Neo-colonialist Bernard-Henri Levi gets Globe & Mail platform to spew his neo-colonialist rubbish

The Globe's opinion page has been invaded by foreign prognosticators, which I suspect has more to do with Globe management cutting costs than anything else. After all, we've got plenty of competent pro-capitalist, pro-empire prognosticators right here at home.

But they generally want to be paid a living wage. Printing stuff from outside sources is a neat way around that.

Which might explain why the widely esteemed asshole BHL got a slot in today's paper. Maybe David Shribman is on vacation or something.

The gist of BHL's missive in the Globe today is that "we," meaning the Nations of Virtue, should be all in for granting the Kurds their own statelet in the Middle East, to be carved out of the countries we've been bombing to ratshit for the last twenty years or longer.

After all, the Israelis absolutely love the Kurds.

If the apartheid state of Israel is on board, we should be too, goes the conventional reasoning.

I'm not so sure.

Ya, they might hate Arabs, but check out this site re: female genital mutilation in Kurdistan.

Aside from hating Arabs, do we really have any common ground with the Kurds?

I think not so much.

How is it the responsibility of we in the West to meddle in the Middle East even more than we already have to ensure that a greater Kurdistan becomes a reality?

Haven't we caused enough damage?

Waiting for Corbyn

According to what's being reported on exit polls in the UK, Ms. May is heading for victory in the election, but with a greatly reduced number of seats. That win is as good as a loss going by what she said when she called this unnecessary election. She wanted a strong mandate to negotiate Brexit. Instead, she'll have a substantially weaker hand than she might have had if she'd left well enough alone.

Anyway, it'll be a few hours yet before we know anything for sure. In the meantime, let's have some fun speculating about why the prevailing political order in the Nations of Virtue has taken such a tumble over the past couple of years.

In the UK the fortunes of Labour have had a remarkable resurgence under that fuddy-duddy Jeremy Corbyn. I would have thought that anything Labour would be toast forever once the country woke up from the long night of Blairism. But no, the most boring man in British politics has breathed new life into the left-for-dead Labour Party. About the kindest thing you can say about Corbyn's public profile is that he's a Bernie Sanders without the charisma.

At the same time, the man speaks some indubitable truths. When is the last time you heard a mainstream pol state the most obvious of self-evident facts; we'll never defeat Islamic terrorism as long as we're busy terrorising Islamic nations. If I'm not mistaken, British bombs have rained in abundance on Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen over the past fifteen years. Hundreds of thousands have died, millions have been displaced, but at the end of the day, it's all for the greater good...

But it's a complete shock, an unmitigated outrage, and a heinous crime against humanity when a Muslim detonates a suicide bomb that claims twenty-two in Manchester?

Anyway, Corbyn is that rarest of rare birds; a politician willing to speak uncomfortable truths. Long may he prosper!

Across the channel the establishment media are still congratulating the "newcomer" Marcon, who we are told incessantly has brought a fresh approach to politics. Being of neither the left or the right, he will guide France into a brave new world of non-partisan consensus.

What a load of hooey! The same media outlets trumpeting the arrival of the Savior Marcon forget that France has essentially suffered one-party rule for decades. The line between Republican and Socialist was effectively gone long before Macron supposedly erased it. What is the number one priority of this "new" force in French politics?

Labour reform. He wants to do for France's working class what Thatcher did for Britain's; destroy it. It's something both the governing parties have failed at after many years of trying. This is the extent of the fresh new thinking in French politics. The kindest thing to be said for Macron is that he thus far has not hired on BHL as an advisor, at least not that I'm aware of.

Here in Canada, I must admit I was one of many who succumbed to the anybody-but-Harper movement in the last election. Yes, by all accounts the Harper era was a dark decade. At least the Harper cabinet was blessed with many larger-than-life cartoonish villians like Old Vic and Big John Baird, guys who were easy to lampoon.

Sunny Daze Trudeau is a different kettle of lobster, and his faux feminism and cheery disposition have given him more or less a free ride for the first year and a half of his run. But what's he actually accomplished?

How are things moving on the marijuana file?

How are things looking on the indigenous education and health care files?

And does anybody know what our foreign policy actually is?

What can be gleaned from the major speeches delivered by two of his star cabinet appointments this week?

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was first on the soapbox. Freeland is famously Russophobic and was already banned from Russia when Sunny Daze made her Foreign Affairs Minister. Is that the kind of appointment you make when Russia is supposedly our adversary? Even Harper wouldn't have made that appointment.

Freeland comes by her Russophobia honestly. Her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator of note. She was brought up on the teat of Russophobia. We don't necessarily need her to change her opinions, but we don't need a bear-baiter to be Foreign Minister either.

According to the delusional speech she delivered, Canada is preparing to step into the void left by Trump's withdrawal from the world stage. That is so stupid on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin with a critique.

That was followed up by a major speech by our Defence Minister. The guy wears a turban and so is obviously a walking testament to Canada's world-beating experiment in multi-culti. But what did he actually say?

Oddly enough, he announced major defence spending increases that will bring Canada much closer to that 2% of GDP that Trump was haranguing the me-too NATO nations about in Brussels just a few weeks ago. Yup, on Tuesday the Foreign Affairs Minister announces we're stepping into Trump's shoes in this post-USA world. On Wednesday the Defence Minister announces we're following Trump's orders. Try to follow that without risking a nasty case of whiplash.

It was always great sport making fun of Harper's plans to refit our Navy. He set 26 billions aside for the project. They never built a ship, although that didn't prevent them from holding "naming ceremonies" for imaginary warships on multiple occasions. Mr. Sajjan has tossed Harpers budget and promised 60 billions to refit the Navy. We'll see if that's about actual ships or more photo ops.

There's also oodles of dollars for new jets and drones and all manner of war-toys. Why? Whether we spend 26 billion or 60 billion, we'll always be a pip-squeak on the world stage, so why bother?

Well, because we have to support our allies, ie NATO, that American invention designed to spread the values of the Nations of Virtue across the world. What values? Why, respect for democracy, human rights, and unfettered winner-take-all capitalism of course. In just the last few years NATO has successfully spread those values to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. How could Sunny Daze not want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to remain a part of that club?

NATO has become something far removed from the values it ostensibly promotes. What values do we have in common with Erdogan's Turkey? What values do we have in common with the newest NATO member, the corruption infested gangster state of Montenegro?

I for one would be far happier if we turned our back on NATO and used those hundreds of billions to address the needs of folks right here at home. One new jet fighter would put clean drinking water on tap in every indigenous community in Canada. Forego a couple more jet fighters and we'd pretty much have the native housing crisis licked.

But don't get me started. War is stupid and war toys are a criminal waste of money. I think a lot of Canadians share that belief. Sunny Daze Trudeau isn't one of them.

Time to turn on the TV and see how things are going for Corbyn.

Surfing a tsunami of lies

We in the Nations of Virtue, ensconced as we are in our comfortable lives, are shocked that the evil-doers have yet again managed to strike at the soft underbelly of our civilization, this time in Manchester.

Twenty-two dead. The death toll in Europe from attacks by various strands of "Islamic terrorists" now stands in the multiple hundreds. Every one of the dead was a sister, a brother, a mother, daughter, son or father much missed by those they left behind.

Our grief and outrage know no bounds. Just watch BBC or CNN for a while and you'll see what I mean.

The death toll in the Islamic world from attacks by the Nations of Virtue over the past fifteen years stands in the multiple hundreds of thousands, quite possibly millions. Every one of the dead was a sister, a brother, a mother, daughter, son or father much missed by those they left behind.

The day before the Manchester massacre President Trump stood before an assembly of Western-backed Arab despots in Riyadh and brazenly claimed that day was night and night was day. They, the un-elected tyrants of the Islamic world, were our friends and allies in the fight against terror.

The Republic of Iran, which had just elected a moderate president in a free and fair democratic election, is the prime sponsor of terror, not the sheikhs of Saudi Arabia or Qatar who have generously supported every Islamic terror outfit from Al Qaeda to Al Nusra to ISIS.

Democratic Iran must be relentlessly sanctioned and bullied and provoked at every turn.

Our autocratic terror-enabling sheikhs in Riyadh will be gifted with hundreds of billions worth of US weapons to help us win the war on terror.

What could go wrong?

How many more Manchesters will it take before we come to our senses?

In the shadow of the crooked pine

Winter is a bummer. But without winter, we wouldn't appreciate summer.

I appreciate all four seasons. That's why I live here.

We've got a crooked pine along the driveway. I've been many times tempted to cut her down. She tilts noticeably to the north while all the other pines along the driveway are straight up and down.

Crooked pine vs. straight pine...

But I love that crooked pine!

She's still standing.

Crooked...


I usually head out to the front stoop early in the afternoon, glass in hand, after I've digested the daily news, and if necessary, posted a blog or two.

The daily news today is chock-full of bad news from South Sudan. That's the "newest" country in the world, don't ya know!?

They're having a famine crisis.

The reason South Sudan is the newest country in the world is because a pack of assholes in the US State Department connived long and hard to break South Sudan away from Sudan. Follow the links in this blog post to find out about their tactics and motivation.

Point is, Uncle Sam is the baby-daddy of out-of-wedlock South Sudan. Without the interference of all those smug American "wonks," there would be no South Sudan today. Too bad the citizens of this newest nation are on the brink of starvation.

Will Uncle Sam be held to account!

Of course not!

 But you can bet your bottom dollar that US armaments manufacturers are pocketing profits aplenty from both sides of the Sudanese civil war.

That's a big part of the exceptional nation's reason for being in the modern era; stir up hatred and violence and then sell guns and bombs to both sides.

After all, the USA and the Me-Too states don't really export much else. (Except the Germans of course...)

It's how we roll here in the Nations of Virtue.


In the afternoon the sun eventually goes down behind that crooked pine, at least till about the first of May. I am happy to report that with the advent of Spring and the sun getting ever-higher on the horizon, its evening trajectory now clears the top of the crooked pine.

Yup, I'm bathing in sunshine all afternoon long.

Too bad about those starving folks in South Sudan...

Trump doubles down on Muslim travel ban

All responsible media outlets in the Nations of Virtue are howling with refreshed outrage over Trump's renewed ban on tourists from a small handful of Muslim majority countries. Trump's alleged rationale is that visitors from those countries might want to harm America.

And why wouldn't they? America's foreign policy fiascoes over the past half century have killed millions in those countries. What I can't understand is how Pakistan and Afghanistan avoided the list. Perhaps we'll soon see Trump Towers sprouting in Kabul and Karachi?

How is it no one in big media can imagine why someone from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya or Yemen might hold a grudge against America?

Maybe it's because those big media types never take off their red-white-and-blue "exceptional nation" blindfolds. That's also why, in the oceans of ink slopped all over the alleged refugee crisis, it's extremely rare to find a candid discussion re WHY those folks are refugees. I'll tell you why they're refugees; they are refugees because they think the USA won't be able to bomb their homes and kill their kids once they're snuggled up in Minneapolis or Dearborn... and they've been right!

Till now, anyway...

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.

What we really mean when we say we're training foreign fighters

The Nations of Virtue have spent many years, trillions of dollars, and thousands of their own soldiers' lives bringing peace, prosperity, freedom, democracy, and stability to Afghanistan.

The result?

Afghanistan does not enjoy peace, prosperity, freedom, democracy, or stability, but the Taliban control more of the country today than they have since the first few glorious months after our invasion fifteen years ago.

That's why I'm ceaselessly amazed at how the public buys in when our political masters decide that while it's time to cut and run, we need to keep a few trainers back to train the Afghan Armed Forces.

Seriously?

If, over 15 years, we can't defeat a bunch of towel-heads in sandals wielding WWII era Soviet assault rifles, why would the the Afghans want us to train them? Shouldn't they get the Taliban to train their army?

I've always thought there's got to be ulterior motives. Like maybe keeping the ruling elite in power in those places where we train the armed forces of the ruling elite. They may be thoroughly corrupt and utterly incapable of delivering peace, prosperity, freedom, democracy, and stability... but hey, at least they're OUR bumboys.

That's why I found parts of Adnan Khan's story at Maclean's rather interesting. Especially this part;

But Canada’s relationship with the Zeravani also appears to be on shaky ground. While Zeravani commanders laud the contribution Canadian soldiers made during the Mosul offensive, they criticize Canada’s failure to provide the training and materiel they were promised. “The training they gave us was nothing new,” says Ato Zebari, the deputy commander of the Zeravani forces in Khazer. “We went through it expecting they would also provide us weapons. Then they promised they would set up a commando brigade of Zeravani. They said they would equip it and train it. That never happened.”

Seems our training is "nothing new." What they were really hoping for was weapons, weapons they didn't get. 

This isn't the first time the Nations of Virtue have lead the Kurds down the garden path, only to toss them to the wolves when it becomes politically expedient to do so.

We are not afraid

"We" being a bunch of multi-millionaire pop-culture superstars who have signed on to the project of convincing the masses that refugee/immigrants are nothing to be afraid of.

And they don't have anything to be afraid of. After all, the likes of Keith Richards or Yoko have so many levels of handlers between themselves and the public that it's unlikely that they'll ever set eyes on a refugee, never mind having their bottoms groped at a public bath. And it's not as if a recent immigrant is gonna be bumping them out of their jobs or anything, is it?

Note that lovely second paragraph; "We are not afraid" is a global campaign aimed at raising funds for the refugee crisis and victims of political and religious violence.

And where are all those refugees coming from, pray tell? Why, mostly from Islamic states that have been in the cross-hairs of America's "war on terror." Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan...

So our governments here in the Nations of Virtue continue to pursue the policy of bombing Muslim countries, and our pop-culture mega-stars are going to rally us to provide alms for the refugees our policies create? Almost looks like a perpetual motion machine, doesn't it?

And just what has it cost to create the refugee crisis? Here's a timely story from The Atlantic. Writer Uri Friedman posits that the actual bombings and invasions have run to about three trillions post 9/11, and the all-in cost when we factor in the war debt will run closer to five trillions.

Five trillion dollars to create a refugee crisis, and then our entertainment industry elite will put on a full court press to raise a few millions to ameliorate that crisis?

Sounds like bullshit to me.

Here's an idea; why don't we just stop bombing those people? I mean, with all due respect to W and the rest of the elite cretins who claim not to understand why those people hate us, I think they hate us because we've been bombing them to ratshit for the last fifteen years.

Stop that and you'll stop the refugee crisis.

Canada looking to shoulder bigger share of White Man's Burden

According to the lead story on the front page of my Globe and Mail today, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan is off on an eight-day fact-finding mission over in the Dark Continent. I know, you can probably find out all the facts you'd ever need from the comfort and safety of your keyboard, but as we've noted before, Mr. Sajjan is a hands-on kinda guy, so lets cut him some slack.

Purpose of the mission? To find out where and how Canada can contribute a military presence to buff up its international brand. Writer Steven Chase points out that Canada's participation in "peace-keeping" missions has pretty much gone to nothing over the past twenty-five years, and now that we've got that spunky pothead Justin at the helm, we want the world to know WE'RE BACK!!!

And what better venue to burnish the brand than the Dark Continent? Just check out the Defence Minister's itinerary:

• Congo
• Mali
• Central African Republic
• Uganda
• Tanzania
• Kenya

In every case, a country where the savages are tearing apart their fellow savages or the savages next door, or even the savages two or three doors over! One thing that's for sure is that the savages need intervention from the Nations of Virtue in order to keep them from one another's throats, and what better intervenor could there possibly be than the most virtuous of the Nations of Virtue, Canada?

And if I'm not mistaken, every one of those benighted nations is host to one or more Canadian mining companies, busily providing development for the local ingrates with absolutely no thanks whatsoever. In fact, there is a wide swath of opinion in the Dark Continent that holds Western promises of "development" are just a cover for a loot-and-plunder agenda!

Who can even imagine such a thing?

The fact that Canada would seek out such a mission in the face of that kind of rancid cynicism speaks volumes about our altruism. Yup, we're gonna put troops on the ground and restore law and order whether the savages appreciate it or not. 

And, just between me and you, don't be surprised if our "peacekeepers" end up based in close proximity to our mining interests.

NATO founders on shoals of irrelevance

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization really hasn't had much to do these past 25 years. But, like any organization, (and this is just Sociology 101) it's been working hard to find reasons to keep itself keeping on. In fact, they're just putting the finishing touches on a new two billion Euro HQ in Belgium, (only 100% over budget!) so you can bet there's a lot of desk jockeys hoping to enjoy their new digs at least till they hit pensionable age.

Meanwhile, actual war-type stuff on the ground has been hard to find. Ya, there was a bit of action over Yugoslavia back in Bill's "wag the dog" phase, and that victory in Afghanistan, and that other victory in Libya, but even those inclined to give every NATO/US initiative a reflexive rubber stamp have to admit none of those theatres were anywhere near the North Atlantic.

So here's a pro-war pro-NATO puff piece from the Financial Times informing us why NATO is still relevant and how it can be even more relevant.

The title seems a little ominous; I mean, what does it mean for the political leaders to be "as ready" as the soldiers? Luckily, the article spells it out for us; NATO's political leaders have to be prepared to swing into action even when "events on the ground are murky."

The background is of course the threat of a Russian invasion of Western Europe, which the Financial Times and myriad other war-promoters in Western media have been peddling  as an actual threat. Weren't the NATO gang caught flat-footed by Putin's annexation of Crimea? Perfect example of events on the ground being murky, I suppose. If we had a nimble and virile NATO political command in place, we would have gone to war with the Ruskies in March of 2014!

That "annexation" schtick has always struck me as a bit of a red herring. I'm old enough to recall two Quebec referenda, where our neighbours in Quebec were permitted to vote on whether they wanted to remain a part of Canada. Both times, the stay-in-Canada side won. So, Quebec remains in Canada and we have precedents for holding referenda on sovereignty.

So why is it "annexation" when a referendum in Crimea resulted in a 95%+ "leave Ukraine" vote?

Here's why; because the NATO gang and its tens of thousands of comfy-cosy desk pilots need a reason to live, and by God, Putin is the reason du jour!

Yup, after his "annexation" of Crimea, he's got his beady greedy eyes on the Baltics, probably Poland, maybe even France and Germany! Yes, he's the new Hitler, set to annex the whole of Europe to make Lebensraum for Ruskies!

So we in the Nations of Virtue need to buck up and arm up. Yessir, outspending the Russians 20:1 on bombs and bullets isn't gonna give us the margin of safety we need. Every NATO member state needs to ramp up military spending!

To send Putin a message... and even more important, to send Lockheed and Boeing and Raytheon and the rest of the American war profiteers further hundreds of billions of dollars!

Only then will we be able to sleep soundly.

.

How to shut down the Towelheads 'o Terror

It was more than a little discomforting to hear Mr. Hollande, he of the spurs etc, not to mention the really expensive haircuts, promise to avenge the Nice travesty by ramping up the bombing of Iraq and Syria.

Apparently there's a lot of folks in our leadership circles here in the Nations of Virtue who fail to connect cause and effect.

As vile as the Nice attack was, you have to admit that a terror attack in Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan that killed a hundred people would not so much as raise an eyebrow here in the Nations of Virtue.

That's because white lives matter so much more, regardless of how much brown or even black lives matter.

So here's a thought; perhaps, if we in the virtuous West are serious about combating "terror," we begin by stopping our terrorising the Islamic nations.

All of them.

Now.

Is there hope for Germany?

A couple of years ago it was easy to find stories about Israelis emigrating to Germany.

Lately, not so much. Instead, global media have been inundated with stories about the Islamic hordes walking and swimming and boating and floating to that inestimable bastion of European values.

But here's a spot of good news at last; more and more of those Islamic refugees are heading home.

As in going back to where they came from.

And who can blame them.

Every time a suicide bomber explodes in Europe, who gets blamed?

The Islamic immigrants.

Every time a gang of jihadists shoots up a nightclub or a supermarket, who gets blamed?

The Islamic immigrants.

So who can blame them for packing their bags?

And look on the bright side, you folks returning to your bombed-out countries; sooner or later the levers of power here in the Nations of Virtue will find themselves in the hands of agnostics who don't consider bombing Muslim nations an existential imperative.

Hell, once that happens, your homelands could become habitable again!

Five years on, NATO's criminal destruction of Libya still Gaddafi's fault

After all, he forced our hand. Had the Nations of Virtue not dispatched the vile ogre, he'd still be slaughtering his own people in their millions to this day...

At least that's the nonsense professional apologist for Empire Dr. Guma El-Gamaty has on view at Al Jazeera today. He trots out all the usual canards that he's been trotting out for the past five years; the mass rapes, the imminent genocidal massacres that NATO stopped in the nick of time, the claim that "no Western troops set foot on Libyan soil." (A lie that was debunked even as the war was going on.)

Mr. El-Gamaty's sour grapes are understandable. When he became a much-favoured "Libya expert" on mass media back in 2011, he hadn't been to the country in almost thirty years. He was a British academic with no profile whatsoever in Libya, but for a few brief months he seemed destined for great things. The neo-colonialist "liberators" had him pegged for a prominent leadership role in the new era of democracy they were ushering into Libya.

Must have hurt to see his glorious future go up in smoke.

Speaking of going up in smoke, the record shows that the "rebels" were a lot less enthusiastic than what El-Gamaty recalls. I remember news stories about hash-addled rebels keeping their powder (and their hashish) dry while waiting for the NATO big dogs to do the heavy lifting.

The Libyan revolution was a fraud perpetuated by the Nations of Virtue on the people of Libya, who continue to pay the price today. From the highest standard of living in all Africa, free or deeply subsidized housing, health care, and education, to a bankrupt, violence-ridden failed state, only an idiot could continue to claim our liberation of Libya was a positive accomplishment.

Meanwhile in Cairo

Two and a half years ago the Nations of Virtue, hyperventilating hypocrites forever prattling about the virtues of human rights and democracy, applauded as one while Generalissimo Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi dispatched the only democratically elected government in the history of Egypt into the dustbin of history.

That military coup allegedly saved Egypt's nascent democracy, as military coups often do, especially when the deposee is out of favour in the capitals of the West, as was Morsi.

The consensus among people who follow these matters is that human rights in Egypt are under al-Sisi worse than under Mubarak and much worse than under Morsi. Yet the Generalissimo is made welcome when he travels abroad to visit with the Prime Minister of England or the President of France.

It was therefore interesting to see how that great liberal news purveyor, The Guardian, handled two separate but related Cairo stories today. Pile of trouble; gigantic red carpet stirs up Egyptian media storm is about the Cairo authorities laying down a few miles of red carpet so that the presidential motorcade could drive to an engagement... on the red carpet!

Is that messed up or what?

That's the kind of wanton display of excess and tastelessness that you'd expect from a bankrupt banana republic, isn't it? Which perfectly describes Egypt, although I'm not sure they grow bananas in their banana republic. Guardian editors even found the story worthy of a little punnery, if you'll notice. And of course, it goes without saying that any country where a media storm of anti-government outrage can still be stirred obviously has a reasonable level of press freedom.

Obviously!

We'll call that the "good news" story.

Here's today's other Cairo story; Thousands of academics demand inquiry into Cairo death of Giulio Regeni.
Regeni was an Italian citizen and a student at Cambridge who had as a sideline the writing of critical stories about the Generalissimo's fascist state under a pseudonym. His remains were found in Cairo bearing obvious signs of torture.

My question is this; will the fate of Giulio Regeni in any way cast a chill on the warm welcome al-Sisi receives when he next visits the capitals of the Nations of Virtue or the pages of The Guardian?