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.

Why Jon Stewart is wrong about Dylan Roof's terrorist cred

The word "terrorism" is one of those slippery handles that serves many masters.

It is always a term intended to heap shit on the people you're talking about. I think the English teachers call that a "pejorative."

It's a propaganda term, a political term.

That's why we time and again see last year's terrorist morph into next year's statesman, as has happened in the Middle East and in the UK, and most noticeably to Nelson Mandela.

Terrorist today. Icon of freedom, hope, democracy, everything good under the sun the next day.

So what happens when we apply this slippery propaganda term to Dylan Storm Roof?

As in, "Dylan Roof is a terrorist."

What does that word mean to America?

Terror/terrorist/terrorism.

That's what America has been fighting a no-holds-barred battle against since 9/11, is it not?

Terrorists.

Evildoers.

When we affix that label to Dylan Roof, we excise him from the body of that great dysfunctional family known as America. That label marks him as an outsider, an enemy, someone we've been fighting for years.

That's not who Dylan Roof is.

Dylan Roof is very much a member of that dysfunctional family.

Dylan Roof is every bit as American as apple pie and the second amendment.

Calling him a "terrorist" allows America to avoid looking at itself.

Mandela, Bronfman, Kalashnikov, Rizzuto; 'tis the season to bury giants

All these guys were way larger than life, whatever the fuck that means.

Out of the four of them I suspect all the others were acquainted with the work of Kalashnikov.

I also suspect that all of them had at one time or another sampled the wares of Mr. Bronfman.

Mandela is of course a global icon. Enough said.

That leaves Rizzuto. An old-school Mafia boss, he lived by a code that those other guys would intuitively understand.

I'm not sure that can be said of the new guys coming up.

And that's a loss for all of us.

On the passing of Nelson Mandela to a better place

First I heard of Nelson Mandela was in the early sixties, when he was making news headlines in the west on account of ANC "terrorism" in South Africa.

Apartheid South Africa was at the time a member in good standing of both the British Commonwealth and the community of nations at large.

That terror label was to stick for another twenty years or so in some circles. Mandela meanwhile spent most of his adult life in prison for standing up against what today is seen as a self-evident injustice, namely that some people may be deemed more worthy than others simply by dint of the colour of skin they were born into.

The last twenty years of Mandela's life were part triumph, part tragedy, and part farce.

The greatest triumph was the sweeping out of the Apartheid regime and the establishment of a racially inclusive democracy in South Africa.

Tragedies were plentiful enough, from his personal disappointments to the disappointments of his heirs in the ANC. But Mr. Mandela was never one to dwell on disappointments.

The farce has been continuous in the constant stream of senior politicos from the many nations who had condemned him as a "terrorist" making pilgrimage to Africa to touch the hem of his raiments and bask in the Great Man's refracted glory; all at the behest of their PR consultants of course!

What struck me most about his wonderful autobiography was the complete absence of anger or self-pity. Surely the man had much to rage against and much to rage about and even more reason to feel sorry for himself.

Nothing!

That was what I found most inspirational about Nelson Mandela.

Let Mandela go

The politics of Nelson Mandela's imminent passing are offensive in the extreme.

Mandela's legacy is already the focus of a tug-of-war among opportunists of all stripes. The extended family is warring among themselves on how to best capitalize on their connections to him. His one-time political heirs are upping the ante and hope to gain both financially and at the ballot box.

What a shameful spectacle!

Battle lines drawn over multi-million Mandela estate before the poor bastard is even gone!

One of the little details that the Thatcher hagiographers downplay is her virulent opposition to Nelson Mandela and everything he stood for.

As far as the Iron Lady was concerned, Nelson Mandela was a communist and a terrorist.

Period.

End of story.

This unseemly tale out of South Africa would have had Maggie high-fiving her minders.

And it is an unseemly tale. I am surprised that the left-tilting Guardian would frame this story as being about Nelson Mandela. The story is about some of his offspring, who capitalized on their father's famous name, using the courts to grab whatever advantage they can against perceived business threats.

It's not about Mandela at all.

But apparently the temptation to slander the iconic freedom fighter who spent most of his adult life in prison for his opposition to apartheid was too much even for The Guardian.

The single most important threat to Israel

Is not the Iranian bomb.

It's a Palestinian prisoner serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for terror crimes.

It's the guy Uri Avneri labelled the "Mandela" of the Middle East.

Avneri wrote him up because of his call for non-violent resistance to the occupation. In mainstream Western news there really isn't any occupation. Maybe some disputed territory or something.

Avneri knows better, as does Marwan Barghouti.

Since his call for non-violent resistance last week Barghouti has been moved into solitary confinement.

Looks like his Israeli jailers are determined to make that Mandela comparison come true.