PHOTOS: Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland during her visit to Edmonton in the midst of the 2015 federal election. Below: Former Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Who would ever have imagined major Canadian media companies would conclude collaborating with the Nazis when they were on
Continue readingTag: Crimea
We Pivot: Stop Giving Trump Chances To Be Civil
He won’t. We already gave him two. His whole campaign: many of us wrote him off as a lark. I imagined only 30-35 million people would vote for such a clown. Until I realized that we can’t underestimate clowns. But … [Read more]
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Major Cheerleading For Obama By Our Star Struck and Obedient MP’s
There has been much hype about the Obama visit and his great speech to our parliament. Wild clapping and chanting ‘Four More Years’ from our MP’s and others and not one utterance of concern over Read more…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What’s next? F-35 boondoggle to land on the deck of a Canadian Mistral carrier?
PHOTOS: The F-35, possibly the worst military aircraft ever made, dollar for dollar or pound for pound, photographed to make it look less like a brick. A hovering version of the same plane. A not-quite-finished Mistral-class helicopter carrier. SANTA FE, N.M. I suppose a hotel in the desert, just down
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: You’ll Never See Vlad Putin the Same Way Again
If there’s one guy who doesn’t get any slack from the Western media, it’s Russian strongman, Vlad Putin. We vilify Putin at every turn and, while he certainly brings some of it down on himself, we make sure to depict ourselves as the guys in the white hats while we
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Obama Comes Clean. Putin Didn’t Plot to Seize Crimea.
Go Ahead, Pick One. Oh my, my, what comes out of the mouth of that man! The Western narrative we’ve been force fed by liars like Harper and his collaborators on the other side of the aisle, is that Vlad Putin plotted to use the unrest in Ukraine to seize
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Why Denmark fears militarization of Arctic islands means Canada could soon control almost all of Hudson’s Bay, and other tall tales
If we just listened to Stephen Harper and the BBC, what a wonderful world this would be! Below: Catherine the Great, USAF Gen. Philip Breedlove. Last Wednesday, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported in shocked tones on its online news site that “NATO’s top military commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove, has warned
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Scotland, Crimea and the Right To Self-Determination
Do the people of Scotland have the right to vote in a referendum to determine their own future? Of course they do. Just as the people of Greece had, and have, the right to vote in a referendum as to whether or not to stay in the EU. And do
Continue readingHarper—not a man for our time
Vladimir Putin is a corrupt bully and I don’t like the guy. Nor do I like the mischief he’s up to in Ukraine. Nonetheless, I am not impressed by Stephen Harper’s self-righteous ranting about him. I find Harper very hard to agree with even when he’s on the right side
Continue readingAlberta Diary: A meditation on the parlous state of the prime ministerial belfry: is he batty, or what?
Psychological-political portrait of Prime Minister Stephen Harper by Edmonton artist William Prettie. (Used with permission.) Below: The young Vladimir Putin; the young Stephen Harper. When I ponder our prime minister’s mental state nowadays, my mind spontaneously offers up a rude phrase about the things bats leave behind in belfries. Prime
Continue readingdrive-by planet: Atrocities committed by Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine: video footage you won’t find in mainstream media
According to the accompanying blurb this video and others like it have been “the object of censorship.” The blurb also notes that “…in the media’s coverage of unfolding atrocities directed against civilians in Eastern Ukraine, the words Nazi, Fascist or Neo-Nazi are a taboo. They have been eliminated from the
Continue readingdrive-by planet: Use of Putin-as-fuhrer meme part of effort to demonize Russia: prince Charles’ Nazi relatives
Bottom right: Charles’ great uncle Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson fawning over Adolf Hitler During a recent 4-day visit to Canada, Prince Charles visited the Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax. In the course of speaking with a volunteer named Marienne Ferguson whose family fled Poland in advance of the
Continue readingIs Putin playing to the gallery?
That Vladimir Putin laments the loss of the Soviet empire is well known, so adding a few bits back in no doubt appeals to him. He also has a perfectly legitimate reason for playing tough on Russia’s western front—security. Russia has suffered a number of devastating invasions from the west
Continue readingThe Great Game—did Putin outplay the West in Crimea?
In the 19th century, the British and Russian empires’ strategic rivalry for supremacy in Central Asia was referred to as the Great Game. The game has never really ended as Russia has continued to vie with Western powers for influence and control in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. And in
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Ukraine: Some Commensense on Dealing with Russia
Putin’s Push: Reality versus Rhetoric Congratulations to Thomas Graham, a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute, who was the senior director for Russia on the US National Security Council staff 2004-2007. He has shrewdly analyzed the Russian push under Putin, in its historical context, and outlined the steps that the
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Why Russia’s Crimea is different from America’s Iraq
Today President Obama said America’s invasion of Iraq is nothing compared to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Coffin makers agree. In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq, a stable country, claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the US invasion was illegal and
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Why Russia’s Crimea is different from America’s Iraq
Today President Obama said America’s invasion of Iraq is nothing compared to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Coffin makers agree. In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq, a stable country, claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the US invasion was illegal and
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Why Russia’s Crimea is different from America’s Iraq
Today President Obama said America’s invasion of Iraq is nothing compared to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Coffin makers agree.In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq, a stable country, claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The UN Se…
Continue readingdrive-by planet: Yulia Tymoshenko leaks vitriol in taped call: ‘kill Russians’ and reduce Russia to a ‘scorched field’
Yulia Tymoshenko, the ex-Ukraine PM and one-time billionaire “Gas Princess” has been accused of everything from murder to forgery. More recently she has been outed in a leaked phone call. She is heard chatting with former government official Nestor Shufrych and venting about the situation in Crimea. In the course
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: On The Crimea Referendum
Okay, Crimea has had its referendum, and apparently over 95% of those who voted, chose to align with Russia. I don’t know the full context of the politics in Crimea. I do understand that Kruschev signed control over Crimea over to Ukraine back in the 1950s, so I’m sure that
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