Oopsie! My bad! Turns out Epstein was working for Russia, not Israel!

Ya, I obviously got it wrong. Seems all that stuff I read over the years, claiming Jeffrey was Mossad, was Russian disinfo all along! I should have known! Silly me! My face is... not just red, but bright cherry red, or maybe even fire-engine red!... or, God forbid, "red" like Red China! The New York Post spilled the truth today. In hindsight, it's so obvious. All those billionaires and famous people flocking to Jeffrey's island were closet commies hoping to support Putin's rebuild of the Soviet Empire! I noticed traffic to the previous post stopped a couple of hours after posting. Hopefully this confession will fix that.

In both Ukraine and Gaza, US-led peace negotiations are a hoax

From the BBC to CNN to CBC to Fox News, our free press agree the main obstacle to peace in Ukraine is Putin. Everybody else wants peace, and Bad Vlad won’t even negotiate! Didn’t he hear Marco Rubio? Peace requires compromise. I’m not so sure. What compromises did Canadian General Charlie Foulkes offer the Germans when they surrendered to him in the Netherlands? None that I’m aware of, yet peace ensued. In war, compromises are made by the losers, not the winners. The pique over Putin’s refusal to negotiate is because Western elites can’t bring themselves to admit defeat. Instead, they float ever more desperate fantasies about NATO boots on the ground to keep the peace that Trump is so tantalizingly close to achieving - if only his good buddy Putin would cooperate. Generally speaking, any legitimate peace negotiations require a neutral mediator. How does anyone imagine the Americans to be a neutral mediator in the Russsia- Ukraine conflict? NATO and the USA are parties to the war, not impartial observers. The entire “Trump is trying to broker a deal” charade is an insult to our intelligence. If that’s a ridiculous farce, America’s pretend efforts to “broker a deal” in Gaza is absurdist tragedy. Supporting Israel’s genocide is a genuine bipartisan project in Washington. Even as American officials profess their “hearts are breaking” at the wanton slaughter of women and children, they continue to veto one UN ceasefire proposal after another. All the Americans need to do is stop the flow of money and weapons to Israel, and you’d see a ceasefire within hours.

The folly of trying to spend our way into Donald Trump's good graces

Mark Carney has a two-part strategy to get Canada off Trump’s shit list. It’s been a humiliating ordeal for every decent Canuck to hear those “51st state” jibes over and over again, even after our king politely hinted to the American king that many Canadians didn’t like it. Part one is spending a shit-load of money on what we call “defence.” This is considered a viable strategy because we know one thing Mafia Don really and truly respects, even more than women with big boobs, is shit-loads of money. Part two is hiding Part one from decent Trump-hating Canadians. Hence the “mis-direction” about turning to Europe for defence partnerships. That’s kinda rich, because, while CBC and the Globe would rather keep you in the dark, every leader in NATO is literally begging Trump to re-commit to America’s leadership role. That’s because they know they don’t have a hope of vanquishing Putin without him. The bad news is they won’t defeat Russia with him either. Here’s some numbers NATO fans should keep in mind. In 2021, the year before Putin’s full-scale and fully unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, combined NATO/USA military spending was 1.22 trillion USD. Russia’s was $66 billion. By 2024, Russian military spending had more than doubled, to 149 billion USD. That’s an $80B USD boost. NATO spending went from 1.2 T to 1.56 T. In other words, while Russia bumped spending by 80 billions, NATO bumped spending by almost 400 billions. And what happened on the ground in those two years? NATO and their Ukrainian patsies are making Russia look great again, that’s what! The only reason the war continues is because admitting defeat would mean the end of NATO, and there are far too many Important People collecting fat pay packets to ever allow that to happen. ONWARD FREE AND DEMOCRATIC NATIONS - TO THE LAST UKRAINIAN!

Trump-Zellensky and the Angels of Death

I’m pretty sure the entire script for Trump 2.0 is coming out of Dana White’s WWE writer’s workshops. If you can get your mind around that, it explains a lot of otherwise inexplicable shit. Like how a scene that was cut from Godfather III showed up at the Pope’s funeral. Everybody knows that’s how history works. The protagonists sit down alone, and hammer out the future mano a mano. The future of Crimea is Russian. The future of Odessa is Russian too. Unless… As the Great Men of History shape the future there in the Vatican, it’s just Trump and Zelly and some random dudes in swishy floor-length black gowns. Those are the angels! Alas, not all of the angels are working in the employ of Heaven. In fact, there is reason to believe that at least some of them are Putin loyalists. Not sure how Dana’s people will handle that plot twist. Remember in that infamous beat-down in the Oval Office how JD and DJ were tag-teaming Zelly with the “you ain’t got no cards” mantra? Today Trump was admitting he doesn’t have any either. Which leaves the Free World with a stark choice. Do we admit defeat? Or do we make a deal with Putin and call it victory?

Is NATO over?

That wasn’t a mere turd JD Vance dropped in the punchbowl in Munich last week; that was a full-on double-barreled shit. So, is NATO over? It should have been over 35 years ago, obviously, but keeping it chugging along served a useful purpose for the American Empire. It made America’s adventures in Yugoslavia and Libya look like there was more behind them than America’s lust for destruction. It also kept the money flowing to America’s military contractors. As anyone even peripherally acquainted with the facts of the Ukraine war will know, without Washington’s policy of NATO expansion, there would have been no war. Lucky for Uncle Sam, NATO has long absorbed the Baltic chihuahua’s, whose ever-shrinking populations haven’t diluted their historical Russophobia. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, with a combined population less than the greater Toronto area, and no military capabilities to speak of, are the loudest voices for war with Russia in all of NATO. So it’s no surprise they were blindsided when Vance broke the news Washington doesn’t love them anymore. It’s quite a slap in the face to the American Empire Loyalists in the heights of media and academia in Canada. Until very recently, we were treated to multiple Globe and Mail opinion writers exhorting us almost daily that we need to spend gazillions of dollars on fighter jets and submarines so we can “stand with our allies.” Now that we understand how Uncle Sam really feels about us, ie, 51st state if we’re lucky, we’ve suddenly realized all those sacrifices to the national treasury we’ve been demanding, would be made so we can “stand with” Latvia and Lithuania? And we haven’t even got to the best part; Trump and Putin are now solving the Ukraine war without consulting the EU, NATO, or even Ukraine. This absolutely, positively, has to be the last nail in NATO’s coffin. But yet… Just how frightened are the vassals now that Uncle Sam has dumped his Ukraine war in their laps? Are they scared enough to cough up 5% of GDP for US weaponry? Are the scared enough to up that to 10% if the Empire demands it? I have a hunch Trump-Putin negotiations may not end to America’s liking. Uncle Sam could well need a posse again in the near future. If so, look for a lot of kissy-face hypocrisy as the Big Dog and the poodles make up.

Mysteries of the "deep state"

As you know, the folks who run America’s democracy theatre have a big event coming up in a few weeks; the election. You know the main characters; in the red corner, the Black Hat, Donald J Trump. And in the blue corner, the White Hat, Kamala. Due to the limited intelligence of the average American voter, the script-writers like to keep things simple enough that your typical WWE enthusiast can follow the action. Polls tell us the race is too close to call. In order to shake things up, the brain trust running the White Hat’s campaign sent her out on a media blitz recently. I’ve seen the Opra interview, the 60 Minutes interview, and her appearances on Colbert and The View. Sending Kamala out to meet the people has been, in my opinion, a tragic mistake. The woman has exposed herself as a complete airhead. “So what will be your policy priorities, Kamala?” “Well… before I address that, I just want to say how much I love the American people. I grew up in a middle class home, and you know, ambition and work ethic! I love the American people because we have dreams… we have aspirations… we work hard… we have dreams…” Other than that, and badmouthing Trump, she ain’t got nuthin! Meanwhile, what’s the Black Hat up to? As we know, Trump is a bad guy who can’t wait to end democracy in America. What do you expect from a Putin fanboy? And he’s ready to stab Ukraine in the back! Who can even imagine such an outrage? Ukraine, the plucky little country fighting Putin so democracy can survive, not just in Ukraine, but all over the world! And Trump wants to pull the plug on our support for this bravest of all democratic nations! And let’s not forget that Trump’s number one backer is the odious Elon Musk, the world’s richest man! The man who bought liberal, freedom-loving Twitter, and turned it into a hate-spewing fascist propaganda organ! There you have the broad outlines of the narrative, the plot, so to speak, for the Big Show. Now let me step back for a moment and play theatre critic. Aside from being the world’s richest man, and an enthusiastic promoter of far-right conspiracy theories, who is Elon Musk? Why, he’s the beneficiary of $hundreds of billions in financial support from the US government for his various deep-state-adjacent enterprises. Like Space-X. If you suspect NASA was privatized and Elon ended up with it, you wouldn’t be wrong. Which brings me to the Atlantic Council. That’s the “intellectual” think-tank arm of NATO. It is funded by the US government and a gaggle of defence contractors. It is 100% committed to the doctrine of American exceptionalism and is a “deep state” creature through and through. Every year, on the occasion of the UNGA shindig in NYC, the Atlantic Council celebrates a few world leaders for their service to Empire by bestowing upon them the “Global Citizen Award.” This year, one of the recipients of the Global Citizen Award was PM of Italy, Georgia Meloni. If you recall, when she was elected, the mainstream media couldn’t give you enough scare stories about how she was the reincarnation of Mussolini! Pro-Putin and anti-American! Fortunately, on winning the election, she came to her senses and soon embraced the urgency of standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes. And who presented her the award? None other than that anti-establishment rebel, Elon Musk! Yup, the same guy bankrolling Donald Trump, the anti-establishment once-and-future swamp-drainer! Wow! Well, clearly this two-horse race could go either way. Luckily for freedom, democracy, and human rights, these two diametrically opposed candidates can agree on one crucial thing; they both 100% support Israel, no matter what.

NATO promises to fight Putin to the bitter end of the last Ukrainian

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was a guest on Face the Nation today. NATO is “celebrating” its 75th anniversary with a big shindig in DC. You’ll be seeing a lot of Jumpy Jens on the news in the week ahead. Jens assured us that every NATO member was devoted to peace on earth. There can not, however, be peace on earth until Putin is defeated. To that end, NATO members will make numerous commitments this week to ramp up support for Ukraine. We will especially increase our training of Ukrainian troops, and our supply of artillery shells and air defence systems. The AD systems will have to wait till we ramp up production, and that takes time. Ditto for ammo. Years. The good news is we can go full bore on the training immediately! The only flaw in this plan is Ukraine is pretty much out of recruits to train. Besides, NATO has been inflicting their training on the Ukraine military since 2014. There’s a widely held belief in Ukrainian circles that NATO training is bullshit, but they go along with it because they need the non-existent hardware that’ll arrive when new munitions plants are built in the USA. When you bear in mind that the root cause of this war is NATO’s relentless eastward expansion, you’d think Ukraine would have wised up by now that their best interests are definitely not front and centre in DC. Meanwhile, NATO member Hungary’s PM was just in Moscow for a cozy sit-down with the very Putin Stoltenberg promised NATO would vanquish on the battlefield! In contrast to Stoltenberg’s promise of war, Orban, the back-stabbing Putin-appeasing traitor, made the ludicrous claim that “Europe needs peace!” Can you imagine! NATO is not as united as Mr Sec-Gen wants us to believe. The “most successful military alliance in history,” according to Jens, is being successfully demilitarized by their proxy war with Russia. And Ukrainians are paying the price.

More signs US influence is fading

This week 17 African heads of state will sit down with Russian president Putin. They'll discuss topics of mutual interest, no doubt including the Ukraine war. The African nations trotted out a peace plan for the war about a month ago. That was dismissed in Western media as a fool's errand because the Africans fell short of demanding Russia vacate all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. In fact no African nation thus far has joined America's call to cease and desist trading with Russia. We are led to believe that Ukrainian grain exports are essential to preventing famine in Africa. In reality, virtually all grain exports over the past year went to rich countries, mostly as cattle feed. That's why Africa doesn't buy the bullshit that Putin is starving them. It'll be an interesting meeting. Isolated Russia is non-stop engaged with high-level meetings with countries around the world. Mainwhile, America's top diplomat, Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken, is in Tonga (population 125,000) bragging up the new US embassy building and the partnership with Tonga to contain China. While Russia forges alliances with Africa (population 1,250,000,000), America forges alliances with Tonga.

Newsweek pushes "FBI corruption" conspiracy theory

We know FBI corruption is a conspiracy theory because no less an authority than the FBI has told us so. So why is Newsweek promoting such egregious misinformation? Check it out; "FBI Gaslights America Over Twitter Files." What’s more, since when does mainstream media use expressions like “wrongthink?” That term is a clear signal that the writer is up to no good. If the media gatekeepers were on their toes, this article would have been “pre-bunked” before it saw the light of day. What’s going on here? We obviously need much more regulation of not only the internet, but media more generally. Otherwise all sorts of nonsense is likely to be spread by the likes of Newsweek. If we can’t even trust the FBI, what’s next? The CIA killed JFK? Putin and Trump not secret lovers after all? The mind boggles…

What trading a basketball player for an arms dealer says about US-Russia power dynamics

What it says to me is that one side holds a significantly more potent hand than the other. This exchange is a symbolic manifestation of American decline. Americans generally won’t notice. After all, every American knows Putin is evil, and freeing a Black lesbian from the clutches of an evil homophobic dictator can be sold to the US public as a triumph of Western values. You know; democracy, human rights, freedom of speech… all that good stuff that our ruling elite squelch at home but promote abroad. PM Fluffy is all for anti-government protests in Iran and China, but God forbid, not in freedom-loving democratic Canada. By all accounts, the Russian arms dealer was a serious person. He made serious money arranging the delivery of serious weapons to a variety of the enemies of Western values, resistance groups all over the world. The American basketball player was just a basketball player. This exchange occurs in the shadow of the US/NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. Western media have assured us Ukraine has been winning this war since February. It is considered impolite in the American vassalsphere to question that fundamental truth. After all, we have been treated non-stop to reportage praising the many glorious imaginary victories of the UAF. They drove the Russians out of Kyiv and Kharkiv and Kherson. They have the momentum! Momentum or not, their geography has shrunk by 20% and their GDP by 40%. How is that “winning?” How is that momentum? Ukraine lost this war in February. The collective “West,” the aforementioned vassalsphere, orchestrated by Washington, has invested many billions of dollars in keeping it going. If our US masters, leaders of the “free world,” trade a basketball player for an international arms trafficker, I’m reading weakness on the cusp of disintegration. American exceptionalism and the empire it spawned are well past their stale date. Canadians should consider how tightly they want to tie their ship of state to an empire in obvious decline.

Uncle Sam takes Europe down the garden path

If you heard the words of that tedious mediocrity Borrell recently, you'll appreciate the garden reference. I’m aware my take on the Ukraine war doesn’t follow the mainstream template. Putin desperate to reconstitute a Russian empire? Nah… far more likely; a desperate American empire hoping against all evidence to maintain the status quo. The usual mainstream experts, every one of whom has a vested interest in promoting a particular narrative, have been telling us since February Ukraine is winning the war. The reason they keep telling us that is because America’s rep is on the line here. The entire point of Uncle Sam’s Ukrainian adventure, aside from further enriching the usual suspects, is to demonstrate to the world that the World Boss is still the world boss. That’s been a hard sell ever since the Greatest Military of All Time folded the tent in Afghanistan. Having lost a twenty year battle with semi-literate religious fanatics, Uncle Sam decided to reclaim his mojo by taking on Russia and China. After all, those are autocratic bad-guy states, and America leads the democratic and free world, and therefore we must ensure freedom, democracy, human rights, and US hegemony prevail. This battle for the preservation of America’s global leadership is playing out far away from America’s borders. It’s playing out in Europe. How and why European elites have bought into this scenario is another matter, but this is where we’re at. When Europe realizes the price they’re paying in the battle to preserve American exceptionalism, there may be some hard feelings. No where more than in Ukraine. No less an authority than Henry Kissinger once opined that to be America’s adversary is dangerous, but being America’s friend is deadly.

Chrystia Freeland's brain farts don't add up to a "doctrine"

Deputy PM and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland dropped by Brookings Institution the other day to share her thoughts on this perilous new world Putin ushered in with his “barbaric violation” of international norms last February. Brookings is the grand-daddy of US think-tanks, and very rich. In the course of her introductory remarks, acting Brookings President Amy Liu thanked Chrystia for funding from the Government of Canada. I was surprised to learn my tax dollars were going to a US think-tank cum PR outfit sitting on well over half a billion USD. Her talk was the predictable nothing-burger one expects from Chrystia. Lots of gratuitous trash talk aimed at “autocrats” generally and Putin in particular. Repeated shout-outs to the heroism of the Ukrainian people. And lots of Green Transition hot air, as any progressive pol must include in every speech these days Most of all, it was a pastiche of talking points out of the recycling bin of US propaganda. After the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a “sunny season” embraced humanity. For thirty years we were fat and happy and pretty much the entire world was marching towards Liberal Democracy. Then, in the early hours of Feb. 24, Putin wrecked everything! Yup, in one fell swoop, Putin destroyed humanity’s sunny season and took the planet all the way back to the 19th century. Pretty much what you’d expect from our deputy PM, and what you’d expect a Brookings audience to applaud. None of these people pause to consider what that thirty years of sunshine looked like from the perspective of the global south. That thirty years of sunshine saw Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yugoslavia destroyed by the freedom-and-democracy-loving Nations of Virtue. In every case we promised paradise but delivered destruction. Chrystia divided her cliches into “three pillars” of the way forward. We must strengthen our interdependence with fellow Liberal Democracies. Translation: cling ever more tightly to Uncle Sam’s skirts. We must remain welcoming to “undecided” nations. Sorry to break it to you, Chrystia, but if you care to look, there’s not a lot of those around. The vast majority of the Global South wants no part in this mission to save American hegemony. We must remain resolute in our determination to isolate and defeat tyranny, starting with Putin, and that means standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes. In a nutshell, the Freeland Doctrine is just more of the same old same old the rest of the world is beyond fed up with. That’s a far better summary of Chrystia’s visit to Brookings than you’ll find at CBC, another recipient of my tax dollars. The think-tank here at Falling Downs proposes that our government cease squandering tax revenues on vanity projects and put the money into addressing the many crises enveloping our society.

China's LNG companies selling Russian gas to Europe at 1000% mark-up

By now even the dullest news consumers are aware that Europe is suffering an unprecedented energy crisis. Everybody knows the general outlines. Putin unleashed his brutal and totally unprovoked attack on Ukraine. To push back, the international community unleashed sanctions on Russian energy exports. According to the leader of the free world, Mr. Biden, this would crush the Russian economy, reducing the ruble to rubble, crippling Putin's war-making ability, causing the Russian people to rise up and overthrow the evil dictator. By all accounts, these sanctions, formulated by the sharpest minds in the free world, six months on, are strengthening the Russian economy, but crippling the economies of our European allies. Those allies are scrambling to replace their Russia-sourced energy. According to a story at China's biggest English-language news platform, Global Times, at least some of that replacement energy is coming from... Russia! But instead of paying pipeline prices, they are paying 100X more to buy Russian gas in LNG form. Here's the headline; "China's LNG companies ramp up supplies amid rising demand from Europe." Here's the money line; "Empty bulks (LNG carriers returning from Europe) will be delivered to Russia's port city Nakhodka, where they will be loaded with LNG before returning to China." Got it? China is a net importer of LNG. The only way they can export any is by importing more. Guess who's got lots of gas for sale at deep discounts? Buy cheap, sell dear... looks to me like the Chinese commies have way more business savy than the retards who came up with these sanctions!

I thought pounding out your weaker neighbour was bad?

It's certainly bad when Putin is doing it to Ukraine. So where is the outcry when Israel does it to Gaza? There is none. Silence befalls the media landscape. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, don't ya know. So shut-up. End of discussion. I propose that to show the world they're not a bunch of two-faced hypocrites, US/NATO lend the same support to Gaza as they do Ukraine. Let's fix the underdogs up with thousands of Javelins and Stingers, and what the heck, maybe even a few long-range howitzers and some of those HIMARs. That "democracy" whoo-whoo is pretty funny when you think about it. The democracy in Ukraine is so democratic it required a US-engineered coup in 2014 just to keep it on the democratic path! The Ukrainians are showing their gratitude by willingly sacrificing themselves in America's war with Russia. You wouldn't want to inspect Ukraine's "democracy" bona-fides too closely. The Z-man has banned all political parties except his own, and shut down all not-government news channels. Israel, on the other hand is a real democracy. Americans only get to elect a new leader every four years. Israelis get to elect theirs every few months! Clearly, that makes Israel the most democratic democracy in the world!

Putin crashes Canada internet and cell service

At least if you're a Rogers captive. And even if you're not, apparently all the big banks are, so good luck getting your debit card to work today! Shows you how dependent you are on these electronic grids, grids wide open to hanky-panky by you-know-who. You don't imagine it's mere coincidence this outage comes on the very day Tamara Lich, that Freedom Convoy witch,was ordered to remain in jail till her trial, do you? As we all know, thanks to the brilliant journalism of the CBC, Lich is a white supremacist funded by Putin. Today's cyber-attack is Putin's revenge.

Pfizer announces safe and effective Monkeypox vaccine

You gotta wonder when they’re gonna stop bullshitting us about Ukraine. For three months we’ve been hearing Ukraine is winning and just a few more billions in US weapons should put paid to Putin’s totally unprovoked war, in a glorious victory for Ukraine and her NATO backers, and a humiliating defeat for Putin. Never before in history has there been such a clear example of the eternal struggle between good and evil. Sure. And we’re the good guys, of course! Western media have from the beginning declared imminent victory. In the first week of the war, CBC and all the rest were full of stories about that stalled Russian military column north of Kyiv. The stalled column soon became the first great victory for Ukraine. The plucky Ukrainian resistance, mostly artists and writers who had never picked up a weapon before, had beaten back Russia’s attempt to seize the capital! And it’s been all downhill for Russia ever since. There was another lesson that might have been drawn from the “stalled” column. The fact that 50 miles worth of Russian armour parked in the open for over a week was not decimated spoke volumes. If the Ukrainians had anything to attack it with, they would have. That was the first week of the war, and Ukraine has been winning ever since, as the idiotic hyperbole about “Ukraine fighting for the very survival of democracy worldwide” continuously assures us. But a narrative shift is afoot. There’s been a couple of op-eds in the NYT in the past week suggesting we turn down the volume on the “Ukraine is winning” story. That’s gonna be a tough sell, after the NYT and virtually the entire Western mediaverse have been pumping the Ukraine saga nonstop. We’re gonna need something really scary to change the channel… How about MONKEYPOX!!!

Globe and Mail reveals who is behind anti-Putin documentary "Navalny"

Barry Hertz has an interview with the Canadian director of the must-see documentary “Navalny” in the paper today. It’s an up-close look at the inner workings of Putin’s depraved, malevolent, paranoid, and incompetent inner circle. It made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival, and is now at Hot Docs in Toronto. It’s being heavily promoted by both CBC and the Globe. Director Dan Roher, a youngster with one previous doc under his belt, explains how the film came together. I was sitting around in lockdown, trying to figure out my next move… when in September 2020 I was invited to Vienna to meet this Bulgarian journalist, this Sherlock Holmes character named Christo Grozev. That trip turned into a visit to Kyiv. Christo said he might have a lead for Navalny. A week and a half later I met Alexy and it was now my job to convince him that not only was a documentary a good idea, but that it should be me who leads the project. It obviously wasn’t Dan Roher who lead the project, it was that “Sherlock Holmes character” Christo Grozev. Grozev has been “lead Russia investigator” at Bellingcat, which wants you to believe it is a collective of independent investigative journalists, since 2014. Oddly enough, this collective of independent journalists is funded by the US government via the National Endowment for Democracy. Odd, because the Assange case shows us all we need to know about America’s respect for independent journalism. Then again, it’s probably expecting too much of the journalists at CBC or the Globe & Mail to connect the dots.

Putin has looted trillions from Russia

When Bill Browder showed up on CBC recently, I thought Brodie Fenlon’s CBC News must be the last news network to give this charlatan any cred. I was wrong. Here he is on MSNBC; Putin's a mafia boss trying to hold on to power. Bullshittin’ Bill has a whole new take on the Ukraine war, not to mention a new book to flog. Apparently this war isn’t about NATO expansion or any of that stuff, not at all. Instead, it’s about Putin the mafia boss desperately trying to stay in power. Hmm… Well, Bill should know a thing or two about mafia bosses. “His” Hermitage Capital was the wunderkind of a couple of Israeli mafia bosses. If you drew a venn diagram of Israeli and Russian mafia bosses you’d see an extraordinary overlap. They had a decade of salad days looting post-Soviet Russia. They originally supported Putin on the mistaken assumption that he would allow the party to continue. He didn’t. Bill got most of his ill-gotten loot out of Russia in the nick of time, and reinvented himself as a human rights crusader, a discredited schtick that apparently still has traction at CBC and MSNBC. Here’s a NYT story about the much-suppressed doc about Browder, The Magninsky Act; Behind the Scenes. You can still find it online if you make the effort. My favorite scene is near the end, where the pudgy middle-age Jew leaps out of his limo and sprints a hundred yards in nine seconds flat to avoid a guy trying to serve a subpoena! Bullshittin’ Bill still bills himself Putin’s enemy #1. If that’s the case, Putin doesn’t have much to worry about.

IN A WORLD OF PUTINS BE A ZELENSKY

That all-caps exhortation has been taunting me from the sign in front of the Kemble United Church since late February. Kemble is one of those cross-roads country hamlets that sprung up in the pioneer days. The pick-up trucks are big and black, and the tractors are green and yellow. It’s home to the oldest functioning chapter of the Women’s Institute, an interesting historical factoid. The Kemble WI built that beautiful lookout just south of town where Grey Road 1 turns down to the bay. The folks are hard-working regular people, many of whom can trace their local roots back multiple generations. I’ve taught a lot of their kids over the years. Until recently you could buy a house at an affordable price. I can think of a few that changed hands for under 100k as recently as five years years ago. Those days are gone. By and large, they’re folks more interested in the livestock report than the international news, and insofar as they consume any, it’s most likely courtesy of CBC News. So what would they know about Putin or Zelensky? They would know that Putin is a tyrant, a dictator who launched a totally unprovoked war on the peaceful and prosperous democracy next door. They would know Putin’s thugs mostly target civilian infrastructure, especially kindergartens and hospitals. They would know that Putin’s plans to seize the capital and remove the democratic government were thwarted by the fierce resistance of the Territorial Defence Units rallied by Zelensky himself. They would know these bold commoners, mostly actors, artists, and writers who never before picked up a weapon, put the run to Putin’s criminal thugs. They would know that Ukraine is winning the war. And while they’d never vote for Justin Trudeau in a million years, when they hear him promise away another hundred million of their tax dollars because the heroic Zelensky needs more weapons, well, they figure it’s a worthwhile cause. When you get your news from CBC, you never have to trouble yourself with names like Nuland or Pyatt and their role in the coup that took down a democratic government in Ukraine. You never have to trouble yourself with the disturbing idolatry of Stepan Bandera among Ukrainian nationalists. You never question that latest hundred million dollar gift of weapons to Ukraine, a gift that has precisely zero chance of ever getting to the front lines, because CBC forgot to mention that the Ukrainian army ceased to be a cohesive fighting force in the first twenty-four hours of this war. So ya, under the circumstances, that sign in front of the Kemble United Church almost makes sense. In a make-believe world threatened by evil tyrants, we all want to be Zelensky.

Real time vs. screen time

That’s quite a budget-cum-propaganda exercise Agent Frida unleashed yesterday. Sure, there was some run-of-the-mill empty promises. The “experts” have apparently noticed housing starts haven’t kept pace with population growth for at least a quarter century. It boggles the mind how many millions have been spent studying the matter. My hunch is experts will still be studying the matter ten years from now. The experts can’t figure out how to get clean water to Indigenous communities, and they’ve been studying that one for at least fifty years. Don’t hold your breath waiting for an affordable place to live. But where Agent Frida truly broke new ground was in her assertion that the tyrant Putin needs to go. This was her prelude to the announcement that the Ukraine military will henceforth be partially funded out of Canada’s military budget. Eight billion fresh funding for the CAF over five years. That’s 1.6 billion annually, and you can bet most of that is weighted towards the end of that five year projection. If the half billion is earmarked for Ukraine’s immediate military needs, that means most of our increased military budget in the immediate future is for the benefit of Ukraine, not the CAF. But what the heck… if we can help the plucky Ukrainians stop the Rooskies in Ukraine, we won’t have to fight them on the Plains of Abraham. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the doyenne of the dog park had bad news when me and Bruno showed up this morning. She’s a blunt-spoken old gal. “Some fucking cunt stole the shit-shovel. That’s gotta be about as fucking low as you can go.” That is bad news. Not every dog poop lends itself to pick-up with one of those poo-bags they conveniently leave at the gate. I’ve used that shovel myself when Bruno has had maybe too much fruits and vegetables and KFC the previous day. Anyway, after that somewhat abrupt welcome, me and the Big Boy enjoyed a happy hour of me walking around in circles, and him cavorting with his canine friends. On her PR mission to Kyiv today, President of the EU Princess von der Leyen announced she and PM Fluffy would be co-hosting a fundraiser for the benefit of Ukraine. I’ll be pitching in for a new shit shovel instead.