hollande putin
Hollande would be a lot more popular if he did more of the above, and less of what his masters tell him to do.
A group of renegade French MPs recently stunned the world (or at least the few who noticed) by visiting Crimea, thus demonstrating that said MPs are not completely spineless. Crimea, of course, is that alleged victim of an odious, brutal and illegal Russian takeover and military occupation. The poor Crimeans supposedly were forced at the barrel of a gun to vote for joining the Russian Federation, in an un-democratic practice that history would do well to forget, lest large powers get it in their minds that the will of the people can be so shamefully manipulated.

It's all nonsense of course. The reunification of Crimea with Russia was one of the shamefully rare examples of real democracy in generations; it wasn't violent (like Maidan), it wasn't coerced (like Maidan), and there is no military occupation (like Maidan). And the two-day delegation of French MPs to Crimea led by French National Assembly member Thierry Mariani showed just that. Naturally, this raised the ire of his colleagues in the French government.

So what were Mariani et al. thinking? Western nations - and by Western I mean the U.S. and its spineless vassal states - just can't tolerate this sort of insubordinate rabble-rousing. They have a propaganda line to maintain! So when someone like Yves Pozzo di Borgo, a member of the French Senate from the Centrist Union, says the following:
I am very happy that I came here, because listening to you [residents of Crimea], I understand the position, which is not expressed anywhere - in any of the media in Europe, in none of the Parliaments of Europe, nor in the European Parliament or the Council of Europe, nor the OSCE.
...naturally it's bound to ruffle some feathers. di Borgo doesn't seem to get it. When your country's policies, official statements, and media representations are manufactured out of whole cloth and bear no resemblance to actual reality, you can't just go around telling the truth. It totally defeats the purpose! Someone should really remind these people what democracy's all about: the freedom of the people (i.e., a small percentage of smarmy perverts who flatter themselves by thinking their genetic deficiencies predispose them to rule over other people) to create reality out of a barrage of bald-faced lies, totally ignoring the will of the people they 'rule'; the freedom to manipulate the 'will of the people' by using NGOs to create the appearance of a public opinion that is manufactured in the office of some Western think-tank owned and operated by the same smarmy perverts.

Get in line, guys! The U.S. has an empire to maintain here!

But seriously, this story is only a story because the official Western discourse on pretty much all topics of local or global significance is so laughably juvenile. It's something of the equivalent of an American delegation heading to Africa only to discover that most of the people there have dark skin. It's only in our modern era of total information warfare that completely obvious facts are almost totally ignored and twisted into their opposite. Jerome Lambert, one of the French parliament members to make the trip, told Sputnik:
The US is trying to deploy in Europe and counteract Russia. The American point of view is understandable. And when there is an understanding of this, there are explanations to American propaganda, the propaganda of some US allies in Europe.
How sad is it that it takes a quasi-official French delegation to tell us something that any marginally conscious individual has known all along? And how disgraceful is it that none of the media, parliaments, or other official groups in Europe acknowledge such obvious facts?
French farmers
© Jacky Naegelen / ReutersFrench farmers block roads with manure to protest low prices, Russian sanctions.
It only goes to show that democracy is a complete joke. Another recent development in France makes this all too clear:


It's not only the French farmers righteously angered over the damage caused by the ridiculous sanctions leveled on Russia (Russia is not the aggressor - NATO is; Russia did not shoot down MH17 - Kiev did; Russia did not invade Ukraine - the U.S. State Department did). The French Institute of Public Opinion recently conducted a poll that found that 81% of respondents thought France should have a better relationship with Russia, that economic ties between the two countries are important.

Russia listened to the 96% of Crimeans who wanted back into Russia. 89% of Russians support their president and his decisions. There's a reason no Western leader or government can boast the same level of popular support: they are not real democracies. So, ironically, the biggest so-called 'dictator' alive today is running a country with infinitely more democracy than the countries of his critics, who languish in covert totalitarian states and rally behind empty words, endless lies, broken promises, and deviant psychopathic behavior.