Western Civ trapped in Biggly Heap 'o Shit

I'm kinda an armchair doom-scroller, who follows international geopolitics because I've lost faith in professional sports. I mean, at some point you can't explain decades of Leaf failures without resorting to conspiracy theories. While I am not at all surprised that, as playoff season rolls around, the Leafs suck harder than ever, it does shock me to read that games are deliberately tossed in order to nab the top draft prospects. That's gotta be Russian propaganda for sure! I don't know about you, but for me personally I'm kinda coming round to the view that, all things considered, what we call "Russian propaganda," tends to be more accurate, more timely, more relevant than the usual same-old from ABC/BBC/CBC/CNN/Fox/etc. According to the Rooskie propaganda, they are winning the war in Ukraine. Ya! And if that's not foolishness enough, some of our adversaries are secretly supporting Iran in their futile defiance of God, America, and Israel, not necessarily in that order. Of course they are, but here's the scary part. I think many of America's traditional allies are secretly rooting for Iran too.

Sniffing out Putin's propaganda

Not many days pass in these tense times that the CBC doesn't issue one or more stern warnings about Russia's propaganda push to brainwash us. Today is no exception. Putin's lies are everywhere. Lucky for us, elite professional fact-checkers are on the case.

Bellingcat, the collective of citizen journalists and computer nerds founded by Eliot Higgins.

Bellingcat has an origin story that gives the virgin birth yarn a run for the money. Eliot Higgins was an unemployed high school drop-out in England. He used his abundance of free time doing what a lot of layabouts do; binge watch YouTube videos.

Specifically, Eliot spent his long lonely hours watching videos from the war in Syria. Turned out he was something of a savant in the field of video analysis. Before long, he was making discoveries that had eluded the best and the brightest in military intelligence agencies across the Western world.

His career took off!

Eliot has been affiliated with the US think tank Atlantic Council since at least 2016. The Atlantic Council is funded by, among others, the governments of NATO member states Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, UK, and the US, a gaggle of defence contractors, and Chrystia Freeland's favorite Ukrainian oligarch, Victor Pinchuck. The "honor roll" of major donors appears on page 54 of their most recent annual report.

So rest easy, folks! Independent non-partisan fact-checkers are on the job to protect you from Russian disinformation!