Exclusive fake interview with Vladimir Putin

Yesterday, I met in person Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin for an exclusive fake interview with my Agence Fausse Presse. We actually chatted over the phone, since we were each seated at one end of a 75-meter-long marble table.

blogules - 'Thank you for having me for breakfast, and not on the menu'.

Vladimir Putin - 'You're welcome. And don't worry, I don't eat people. Ukrainians do. They're genocidal, war-mongering neo-nazi cannibals, kabbalist pedophiles, and they always distort the truth.'

b - 'If I may, you're the blood-thisrty war-monger pushing massive disinformation campaigns and spreading totally outrageous lies about Ukraine. And as far as neo-nazis go, you're the one helping Assad gas his own people, you're the one playing the Hitler playbook with a fallacious story about 'liberating' Ukraine, just like Adolf invaded Poland under the fake pretext that its German minorities suffered from persecution.'

VP - 'Don't push your luck, I may reconsider my vegetarian habits for breakfast... I'm not Hitler. I'm just a Russian leader defending Russian interests. We're the ones who defeated Hitler, remember?'

b - 'Stalin did play a decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany. He was also a ruthless dictator and Imperialist who spread war across the globe and was responsible for millions of Russian deaths.'

VP - 'I'm not Stalin. I'm not a communist.'

b - 'But you never swallowed the fall of the Soviet Union. Like Hitler with 1919, you're obsessed with reversing 1991.'

VP - 'Russia goes beyond regimes. The Tsars passed, the USSR passed, Russia remains.'

b - 'Putism will pass. Heck, it doesn't even exist. Do you consider yourself like one of the Great Tsars, the way Erdogan pretends to be a Great Sultan or Xi Jinping acts like the new Emperor?'

VP - 'I'm not Ivan The Terrible. My business model is more the mob.'

b - 'Exactly. You don't have a system to sustain or to survive you, you're using smokescreens of ideologies, nationalism, religion, or such obsolete symbols as the Cossacks to cement your power and your image, but basically you're just a mob boss.'

VP - 'I'm simply the G.O.A.T. I don't even have lieutenants or deputies. For the power, I have my KGB-FSB circle at home, and thugs like Ramzan Kadyrov or Alexander Lukashenko nearby. For the money, I have oligarchs: I keep them alive, away from jail, and rich, they give me a fat cut on their wealth. Now I'm much richer than Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg combined. And these losers only have paper when I have gold, properties, real assets. I don't have shareholders to answer to, and my rockets can have a significantly greater impact than their baby boy toys'

b - 'Your nukes definitely can. When you put the World on high nuclear alert, when you threaten even Sweden and Finland, are you deliberately playing the 'mad man', or have you gone full paranoid, on a Nero-tic path? Even if, one day, you win in Ukraine, aren't you already losing it? I mean where's the charming, fit, acute strategic thinker these days? We can only see a vulgar, puffed up egotist with serious anger management issues. Is it steroids? Are you sick, physically and/or mentally?'

VP - 'You, for sure, are utterly crazy. You must know that disrespectful journalists don't live old here.'

b - 'I never pretended to be a journalist.'

VP - 'Well you know how I treat comedians. Ask Volodymyr Zelensky.'

b - 'I never pretended to be a comedian. And Zelensky is not an actor anymore. Unlike you, he's a genuine patriot.'

VP - 'I'm a patriot. You may not know it yet, but Russia has been renamed Putinia. And Saint Petersburg Putingrad. And no, I'm not stopping at Georgia, Ukraine or Sweden. I must reclaim control of the States and put my thug back on the throne.'

b - 'All you're managing to do is to make the EU and NATO relevant and strong again. Trump failed to destroy NATO for you, and Biden will not let that happen.'

VP - 'Joe Biden is already out. My Republican Party is doing a great job at destroying American democracy from the inside, and my local disinformation machine has never been damaged. As for Europe, I still control it.'

b - 'Are you kidding?'

VP - 'Never with business. Germany? Dope pushers hooked to my fossil fuel. And that Olaf Scholz is such a joke... Like Macron, he just came for his national credentials. Macron is not dumb, he doesn't get confrontational. He knows I didn't want him to win in 2017, he knows how easily I got rid of Juppe and Barnier in the primaries (yeah, this year, I had to make dead people and even a dog vote, but still no sweat), he knows how I can destroy him by putting gullible masses on the street. Yellow Jackets, antivaxxers.... piece of cake. But Macron also knows how to flatter egos. Look how he impressed Trump with the Invalides and that military show. Look how he had me tour Versailles and our new Russian Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris - by the way the mayor was so easy to corrupt on that one. Did you see how the golden dome of my church outshines the Eiffel Tower along the Seine river? How could you frogs let that happen?'

b - 'I see. Let's not even talk about the UK...'

VP - 'I sent them back to the Jurassic with Brexit, and Boris Johnson is clearly more a Fred Flintstone than a T-rex. We own London, corrupted it to the core, and they won't have the guts to pull the plug. I'm not worried about sanctions anyway. We've got them all already sorted out with Jinping, Narendra, and Ali (that's Khamenei).'

b - 'If you always have your usual partners overseas, you're losing support at home. Old Russians in rural areas may buy your propaganda, but the urban youth knows that you won't be here forever, and more and more people start questioning your mental state...'

VP - 'Bah. I'll probably have to create yet another hostage crisis. You know, like at the Moscow Theater or at that Breslan school. Nothing like it to boost the ratings. Otherwise, I can still lose a few more millions Russians; our demographics are not so good anyways. Yes, they can't be all put to rest with a gallon of vodka, like I did with Boris Yeltsin, but I already got rid of hundreds of thousands during the pandemic. Only 'good citizens' got good vaccines. Why do you think we push antivaxxers, beyond undermining Western democracies? We need to compensate our lousy vaxxes, so if they're 60-70% efficient only, turning 30-40% of your populations into antivaxxers brings you and your economies down to our level.'

b - 'And as for more surgical strikes, who's the next Alexei Navalny on your hit list beyond Zelensky, Vitali Klitschko, and friends?' 

VP - 'Adam Kinzinger. Couldn't find any kompromat on him. I had kilometers of reels for Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell only required wads of cash, but this guy is a disgrace for my new and improved GOP.'

b - 'So what do you have about Trump?'

VP - 'A lot of kompromat, but I don't even need that to manipulate this pathetic loser. Not even all the money we gave him to keep him afloat, or his ties to the Mafia. You know, this crybaby truly dreams of becoming a mob boss too. How cute.'

b - 'I also have questions about human rights and the environment.'

VP - 'I don't have time to answer. Anyway you know where I stand: I don't care about human rights, and I'm a strong believer in climate change.'

b - '?!?'

VP - 'I'm investing in facilities to harvest the methane liberated by the melting permafrost, and accelerating climate change to anschluss all arctic routes. Since all the icecap has already melted, we had to plant our flags on the ocean floor.

b - 'But then, where will you organize the Winter Olympics in 2036?'

VP - 'In Alaska. Ivanka has already agreed to sell it to us during her fourth mandate. Now you must go.'

b - 'Okay. I guess thank you for being as honest as an expert propagandist dictator can be.'

VP - 'You're welcome. And obviously you liked the breakfast. Did you know my granddad cooked for Lenin and Stalin? I saw you ate all the cookies, but could you taste the Novichok?'

blogules 2022
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)
Enjoyed my neuroses? Check my prose: dragedies.com.

John BOLTON submits draft to Vlad

John Bolton sent a draft of his memoir to the NSC at the White House for review. In the heat of the impeachment trial, it confirms Trump's quid pro quo on Ukraine. Perfect blackmail time to get a reward from Uncle Vladimir... 

Three-Quarter-Term Elections

Obama's back from Europe, where he managed to score rare photo ops: with Pope Francis in Rome, and with the Shinzo Ehud Abe - Park Yasser Geun-hye duet in The Hague (see "The Tripartite Summitulacra").

Historic handshake between war criminal grandson and dictator daughter - Nobel Prize winner observing (twitter.com/theseoulvillage/status/448630575683751937 20140326)

The POTUS went out of his way (literally only) back to the States to say goodbye to Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud (90), who just nominated the successor of his successor Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (79): don't expect stupendous reforms from this young Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (69), the former head of the local intelligence agency...

So Barack Obama lets John Kerry cope with Putin's adventure in Ukraine, Park and Abe sort things out directly together, and the Saud clan stew in their own juice (now that the US of A have their own shale gas to dirty themselves with...).

Back home, the President keeps his eye on the ball: neither climate change, nor gun control, but Obamacare, The Reform That Must Work Before The November Elections, save the Senate majority, and end the House stalemate.

I bet Hillary Clinton is also praying for the success of this landmark healthcare reform. 

OFA's last call

blogules 2014
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)

Follow Us

Is Iceland really melting ?

Strange. 

The first ally Iceland turns to turns to be Russia.

Not Europe, not the IMF. Russia. Without any warming.

Medvedev-Putin happily oblige.

Maybe Iceland's financial system is melting. But Russia seems to be building a stronger front around the North Pole. 

Keep your eye on the ball, Europe. Not Georgia, not Ukraine. The ball at the top of the Kremlin.

Red blogule to the 2006 Cold War - Gazprom and Gazpogrom

Because Viktor Yushchenko refused Putin's diktat, Gazprom just cut their Ukrainian pipes. Vlad the Impaler wanted Yushchenko dead but could just alter his face : now he doesn't care whether people die in this indecent and unfair armwrestling contest.
Russia is back to fascism but no one seems to care. Germany ? Gerhard Schröder just joined the board of a Gazprom subsidiary. The US ? Dubya can't locate "Ukrainia" on the map of Texas and has trouble translating his one-size-fits-all terror / freedom / democracy speech in Uzbek (hell, making friends with local despot Islam Karimov fulfills his understanding of Islam agenda). France, then ? Duh ! We're not interested in human rights either... actually, we're not even fighting for our gas or oil supplies anymore since we found the best way to solve both heating and gas consumption problems : we burn our own cars.
Sign of the times, Jews are fleeing Russia. Those who didn't reach Israel's shores land in Germany, where the Berlin community is blooming a beautiful way.
Back to Red Square One. So much for the U-turn of the Century.

Red blogules to Empire Strokes (Back to Back)

On one side, 440 m² and 768 inhabitants experts in holy sacraments (but don't expect a single birth nor a wedding there). On the other, 1,950 m² and 33,084 inhabitants experts in tax evasion (here again, a pensioners' heaven) : the World's two smallest countries lost their rulers.
Something to worry about for the next on the list : Gibraltar (7 km²), Tokelau (10 km²) and Nauru (21 km²). Liechtenstein has plenty of time ahead (14 th on the list with its huge 160 km², the Isle of Man is safe with its impressive 572 km² territory (42 nd spot), and "43" can have as many pretzels as he wishes thanks to his 9,629,047 km² domain (rank : 230 th). But the mother Russia of them all (16,894,741 km²) gives Putin quasi-eternity. "The Pope ! How many divisions ?" asked his role model Joe. The answer : about 4 million people flooding Roma and 1,3 billion supporters across the globe. How many will turn out for Vlad's farewell party ?
Let's not be too unkind to Putin : Russia does have quite a few divisions to exhibit. Ask him about Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan or even Chechnya.

Red blogule to the "Bush doctrine"

The big question nowadays is : was Bush right ? Is the man responsible for democracy's tidal wave in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan...?
The answer is yes, the US did play a major role, but not the way they dreamed it.
Washington did invest in the opposition in former soviet republics, and keeps laying greenbacks over Iraq (even watering them with the blood of honorable marines and local citizens, but I'm not sure it will help them grow). But the US also made their point in revealing their own weaknesses : here is an allmighty warlord getting humiliated, losing face (faith ?), uniting the international community against this negation of respect. Bush even managed to pass for the bad boy while fighting Bin Laden and Saddam. This man did everything he could to crush the Palestinian side during his first mandate. And when his top aides dare say about Lebanon elections cannot be considered democratical when held in an occupied country, how do you think Iraqis should take it ?
The world knows well the US are not likely to repeat their Iraqi failure that soon, that their military forces are far too stretched to allow one more "shock & awe" mission right now. The world knows the US are no more the center of the world, the only economical superpower. The world knows the US are weaker than ever.
But the world knows the world is watching. Not necessarily with enough strength to avoid the abuses of a Bush or a Putin, but with enough intensity to make it count.