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.

Make no mistake; Russia is winning in Ukraine

Sleepy Joe announced, in his catatonic way, another 33 billions in aid for the plucky Ukrainians yesterday. Of the 33b, 20 is for US military supplies. The chances of any of that 20b in Raytheon and friends product actually getting anywhere near the front lines are 100% non-existent. So this is just free money for the war profiteers. Meanwhile, the CBC-Globe&Mail propagandists, in sync with “free press” among the American satraps generally, (the same ones working overtime to make sure Julian Assange never again sees the light of day) keep piling on the bullshit about how those plucky Ukrainians are actually winning this American war on Russia. Another twenty billion to Lockheed and Raytheon should do the trick. The war is lost, but the seriously deluded continue to delude themselves. That’s why both the CBC and the Globe were pushing the Navalny narrative today. Apparently there’s a new doc we should all watch, all about how Putin’s #1 rival is once again exposing Putin’s perfidy. CBC had on the director of said doc, explaining how Russian military intelligence and it’s military in general are nothing more than “professional morons.” That’s why they’ve failed to assassinate him after trying so many times. Sure. The last time he was almost assassinated, the German medivac plane that flew him to Germany was chartered days before he was poisoned, not that the doc will confuse you with that factoid. As far as I know, Navalny has never polled above 6% approval among Russian voters, even in his heyday. Since America’s Ukrainian war went hot, Putin’s approval has gone from high 60s to low 80s. This war was effectively won by Russia in the first few days. All we’ve been doing since is ensuring more Ukrainians will suffer and die in the interest of USA/NATO geopolitical objectives.

Nursing home attendants and dump-truck drivers can still buy homes in small-town Canada

Yes, we certainly have a housing affordability problem in Canada. Big picture, we’ll be having one till supply meets demand, and don’t worry, experts are busy studying that right now. When you zoom in from the macro to the micro level, things look a bit different. Friends of ours recently sold a tidy three bed, one bath, on a modest lot in Wiarton for a price in the mid 300s. I remember having Italian neighbours in Guelph who got an entire year’s worth of tomato sauce out of their gardens, who lived in smaller houses on smaller lots. According to the TD mortgage calculator, the monthly freight on a 300k mortgage runs $1,600 per at the just-raised rate of 4% plus. That means the young couple applying for that mortgage is going to need a combined annual income in the 70k range. How hard is that to achieve in a place like Wiarton? Wiarton is a twenty minute drive to Owen Sound. Punch “Owen Sound” into the Canada Job Bank and you get over three hundred replies. What kind of jobs are available to the “most vulnerable,” ie the least educated applicants? Here’s a shocker. PSW jobs that pay $18/hr in Toronto pay the same locally. Dump truck driver jobs that pay $22/hr in Toronto pay the same here. In short, anyone who came within a whisker of a high-school diploma and is willing to work can make 40k a year. When the dump truck driver marries the PSW, they’ll qualify for that 300k mortgage. I get not everybody wants to live in Wiarton, but if home ownership is important enough to you, you’ll give up your big-city dreams and take a closer look at the small towns you never noticed before.

Clayton gets a beat-down

Clayton was a Black kid who worked on my unit at the Irving shipyard in Saint John. In fact, he was my apprentice for a spell, training up to be a "marine steel-fitter." He was a bright kid and a fabulous athlete. We played on the same slo-pitch team. He also played some considerably more substantial ball with a local team, but this was just a way of goofing off with the work-mates and getting free beer. Our team was sponsored by Moosehead Breweries. We all got free Moosehead ballcaps and a couple cases of beer for every game. Clayton liked his beer and his weed, so occassionally we found ourselves spending time together. This guy's family arrived in Canada about 150 years before mine, so there was never an issue about who was more "Canadian" or any identity shit like that. He had a second floor walk-up a few blocks away. One night we're sitting on his balcony having a toke and a pint,and some youthful drunken rowdies proceed down the sidewalk, making quite a ruckus. We sit in silence as they pass by. Then he tells me this story. He'd been sitting out there one eveing, and a particularly boisterous gang of rowdies was passing by. He admonished them to shut the fuck up. They replied with that most debilitating racial slur of all time, the one that today scars young Black kids with PTSD for life. Further insults, slurrs, and taunts were exchanged. "So I figure it's time I go down there and kick some ass. I mean, they're so shit-faced they can't walk a straight line. How hard can this be? After I came to in the hospital I realized my judgement might have been a little impaired too. That's why I just let the drunken assholes go on their way now." Good call, dude! Lost touch with Clayton after I left Irving's shipyard, but I have a hunch he fared out OK.

The future is sand, my friends

I had no idea. Been so consumed by the impending WWIII and the global famine that’s just around the corner, not to mention that lingering pandemic, the climate emergency, or, God forbid, a Trump comeback, it was inconceivable that we could be made even more depressed. But I was watching Al Jazeera for a spell, and by golly, apparently we are on the brink of a global sand shortage. Don’t laugh. Apparently sand is the most-utilized commodity on earth after water. You can’t build a road or an apartment block without it. Anywhere. Now that I think of it, I remember being on holiday in Myrtle Beach, thirty years ago, and reading something in the local paper about sand being barged in from Florida or somewhere. So I guess the problem has metastasised. Seems to me this isn’t so much a matter of an absolute sand shortage, but rather, there’s lots of sand, but no easy way to get it where it’s needed. I’m guessing Goldman Sachs has field teams staking out the vast expanses of desert in Saharan Africa and the Gobi desert. Sand merchants will corner the market and become the new billionaire class. The future is sand, my friends.

Global famine coming soon

There's experts all over the place making that prediction. Costs of crop inputs are going up exponentially. That was ramping up due to supply line issues etc, even before Putin's war. That's just turbo-charged the downward spiral. Between Ukraine and Russia, you've lost 40% on next years wheat from the international market. Oh, and 40% of the world's fertilizer supply! So there's gonna be less food. Which means what food there is will be way more expensive. You know who gets to skip meals when that happens. Poor people. Not typical middle-class whingers. Neither they nor their pets will go hungry, although they'll be feeling a bit of a pinch and will accordingly be squeaking the loudest. The people who will pay the price are those already food-security challenged. WE've had record food-bank visits year after year in Canada, and those were fat years. When we go into the coming lean years, it's gonna get serious. Around here we keep the supply lines pretty short. There's two farm stores on the next concession. We can source most of our poultry and beef within five miles. The "Eat Local Grey-Bruce" folks take care of the rest. They can actually deliver real Toronto bagels. Not sure how that's considered local, but they're good bagels. And just for good measure, I think this is the year to put in a serious garden, and finally build that chicken coop. Not only that, but me and one of the neighbours were recently lamenting all those tons of apples that fall to the ground up and down the concession roads all around here. We're contemplating going haves on a press. We'll have apple sauce and apple cider out the ying-yang in perpetuity! So, we're good to go around here. Come what may, we'll be living large on eggs, apple sauce, and home-grown carrots and potatoes.

Honey, we broke the weather!

The thermometer got darn close to 80 today, yet there’s a risk of snow flurries in the days ahead. That’s fucked up! It was so summery today I got my plaid cargo shorts out of the bottom drawer. Ya, it was that warm! In fact, the Farm Manager ridiculed my get-up. Apparently the plaid of the shorts clashed with the horizontal stripes on my shirt… When I enquired whether my outfit made my fat look ass, she rejoindered that I did indeed look like an ass. But you gotta bear in mind this assessment comes from a woman, that half of the species whose favorite shoes are always the ones that hurt their feet the most. But back to the weather. It does look a little f’d up, doesn’t it? How do you go from balmy to arctic in 24 hours? It’s gotta be this global warming thing they’ve been warning us about for fifty years. For fifty years we didn’t believe them. Now it’s here.