Putin reeling as sanctions from heck inconvenience some Russian banks

This is how their masters in the West "stand with Ukraine."

President Biden, leader of the free world, uncorks the "mother of all sanctions," but strategically omits Russia's main exports, oil and gas. Why? Because pain at the pumps would stir unrest among his populace, the vast majority of whom couldn't find Ukraine on a map and couldn't care less.

The raging chihuahuas of NATO's peanut gallery demand a ban on Russia's inclusion in SWIFT, the global interbank clearing system. Today's headlines inform us the deed is done.

Bravo!... well, not really. It's not Russia that's kicked out of SWIFT, nor the Russian banking system, but a handful of individual banks.

Oh wow! That's gonna give Putin pause...

Meanwhile, Uncle Sam's Club is promising to flood the country with lethal weapons. How those are to be delivered with Russia in control of Ukrainian airspace is a closely guarded secret. What we can be sure of is that any actual deliveries will either be seized outright by the Russians, or blown up in their warehouses.

That is of course a moot point for American arms manufacturers. There's plenty more where those came from!

And while the pundits wring their hands over the largest ground war in Europe since WWII, they should be grateful that Putin didn't take a page out of the NATO playbook, and simply bomb the country to ratshit as NATO did in Serbia over ten weeks in 1999.

 

Pounding the R2P war drums

Canada's national newspaper of record today features an op-ed by two lifelong political hacks, Loyd Axworthy and Allan Rock.

They argue that the west needs to intervene in Syria, and that the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine can serve as a useful fig leaf for such a manifestly illegal adventure. According to messrs. Rock and Axworthy, R2P has proven itself, being the excuse the west used both in the "successful" Libya mission and in ending "the mass killing of civilians" during NATO's war on Serbia in 1999.

These are far from unambiguous success stories. Libya has transitioned from being the African state with the highest standard of living pre R2P, to a failed state. This is success?

Anyone who takes time to acquaint themselves with the basic facts of the NATO war on Serbia knows that wholesale ethnic cleansing of Kosovars did not begin until after the bombs started falling. This would seem to be evidence against "humanitarian intervention" rather than for it.

Sadly, this op-ed isn't about what is best for the people of Syria; it's about trying to find the best excuse for launching another war on a Muslim country that is unwilling to take orders from the Nations of Virtue.