Another day, another free speech showdown. This time, it’s in the U.S., where the noted free-speech advocate, blogger and founder of the Journal of Free Speech Law Prof. Eugene Volokh is suing New York’s Attorney General Letitia James over a law intended to crack down on “hateful conduct” online. The law would make a large class of website owners responsible for handling and directly responding to claims of “hateful conduct” about material on their website (e.g. in the comments section), and require them to publish a document setting out their policy on the matter. Failure to comply would carry a penalty of $1,000 per day, per infraction. Showing the intention behind this law, the Attorney General declared in October that: “Online platforms should be held accountable for allowing hateful and dangerous content to spread on their platforms.”
This law goes into effect on Saturday Dec 3rd and will affect any website that allows users to share content (a typically vague definition) and which is accessible to New Yorkers – including the Daily Sceptic. Fortunately for the U.S., they have what is the envy of all free-speech advocates around the world: the First Amendment, and the robust case law surrounding it. New York’s law is blatantly unconstitutional (and also contravenes s.230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996), so it stands zero chance of surviving legal challenge.
But then why has New York passed this law – by “Oceania-sized margins” – and why did the Governor gleefully sign it? Stupidity and squalid political posturing would be my answer. After all, this is a legislature that recently banned the sale of bulletproof vests, and the Attorney General has been spending all her time since being elected in going after political enemies, notably Trump and the NRA. But regardless of whether and when this new law gets struck down, they’ll be able to tell their voters that they’re the good guys, because who wants “hateful conduct”, right?
The Democratic Party – which runs New York – would like nothing better than to scrap the First Amendment. Indeed, they tried to do something like that in the U.S. Senate back in 2014, in a move which Forbes rightly described as “terrifying”. This stemmed from Hillary Clinton being upset about the 2008 film Hillary: The Movie, and because the Supreme Court later upheld the film company’s rights in a landmark First Amendment case (Citizens United v. FEC). Had it passed, the amendment would conveniently have prevented the release of the film Clinton Cash next time Mrs Clinton made a bid for the White House in 2016. But it certainly wasn’t just Clinton – Obama and the entire Democractic Party went along with it.
Fortunately, this was just a stunt, because constitutional amendments are extremely difficult to pass: the normal procedure requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and the approval of three-quarters of all the state legislatures (i.e., 38 out of 50). There was never any prospect of that, so the terrifying aspect of the Senate vote in 2014 was really the fact that the Democratic Party thought it was a good idea, and was in lockstep behind it. This New York law is just another example of where the majority of threats to free speech are coming from these days: the “socially progressive”.
Unfortunately, it’s not just the socially progressive. Recently, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) had to go to federal court to successfully challenge the Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis’s Stop WOKE Act, which would have limited freedom of expression on campus in a totally misjudged “socially conservative” way. DeSantis is – I am credibly informed – a very smart guy, and as a graduate of Harvard Law School he presumably understood the Stop WOKE Act was always going to be struck down by the first federal judge who so much as glanced at it, which makes me think that – as in New York – it was “performative legislation”, designed mainly to appeal to the grassroots of the party. This is a destructive and time-wasting attitude – but I rather wish the U.K. Conservative Party took more of that kind of view when it comes to freedom of speech!
And even while we at the Daily Sceptic may detest wokeness in all its forms, we have to thank the redoubtable FIRE for their stand for free speech in the Florida case. (Like the Free Speech Union, FIRE has been non-partisan from the beginning – indeed, like Ira Glasser, Harvey Silverglate is on the left.) And it’s FIRE, once again, who are representing Eugene Volokh in the New York case. Other parties to the suit are Rumble (the Canada-based hosts of Trump’s Truth Social) and Locals (co-founded by Dave Rubin), meaning that for the defendant, Attorney General Letitia James, it’s another opportunity to take a glorious (but doomed) stand against Trump and the alt-right – or something.
As for Eugene Volokh, one of the great stalwarts of the free speech movement in the U.S., I wish him every success in this case, and will watch with interest and (I hope) some amusement. However, I have to mark him down for the fact that his legal free speech filing isn’t nearly up to the standard we’ve come to expect in 2022, which would be the standard set by the magnificent Supreme Court brief in Novak v. City of Parma submitted by The Onion, and which has fairly been described as “the greatest brief ever filed”.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Tragically, the zombified masses may only fully wake up when the lethal consequences of this program are unleashed upon their children.
And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you’re going to fall Update – January 24th 2022
https://bakerstreetrising.home.blog/2021/02/15/covax-through-the-looking-glass-part-4/
Beware the Covid turncoats crawling out of the woodwork
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/beware-the-covid-turncoats-crawling-out-of-the-woodwork/
James Delingpole
The big danger is that this fake normal stays
Join the friendly resistance before it’s too late
now is not the time to give up
Yellow Boards By the Road
Junction Long Hill Road,
New Forest Ride & A329 London Rd
(near Mercedes Benz)
Bracknell RG12 9FR
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Mark Twain:
Relief for families planning trips abroad during school break.
No Covid passports required, you think? Nope. Lucky 12-15 year olds are now eligible for them.
Relief? Who thinks like this?
The Waitrose Set.
Putin is not trying to rebuild an empire. That is complete bollocks. He just doesn’t want nuclear missiles placed in Ukraine a few minutes from Moscow. Same thing the US didn’t like when the USSR put them in Cuba sixty years ago.
And Washington recently said there would be a harsh reaction if Moscow placed forces in Cuba or Venezuela. Toby shows he’s on the side of the warmongers with his choice of news for the round up.
Where is the Telegraph’s condemnation of the US/NATO/EU overthrowing a democratically elected government in Kiev in 2014 to make way for one more amenable to the West?
Agreed, Putin may be X USSR KGP but for twenty years he has just been an old fashioned Russian nationalist not wanting NATO on the same borders that were agreed by the Bolsheviks at the end of WW1.
“Putin may be X USSR KGB“
Here’s what Russian patriot and conservative, and genuine anti-Soviet dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said about that:
“Yes, Vladimir Putin used to be a security officer but he was neither a KGB investigator, nor a GULAG camp chief. Notably, international, so to say, external services are dispraised in no country, on the contrary, they are often praised. No one ever upbraided George Bush Sr. for his being CIA director in the past.” (interview with Der Spiegel of July 2007).
[Actually plenty of people have pointed to Bush I’s CIA connections, though perhaps not much in Soviet dissident circles, but in rather a different context, and the point nevertheless stands]
Solzhenitsyn also pointed to some realities of the situation Putin found himself in when he came to power:
“The president knows only too well what incredible difficulties, both domestic and external, he has inherited and which are to be avoided today. I would like to praise the prudence and soundness of his decisions and judgements. At large, he has a quick mind and agile wit and has no lust for personal power, no thrill of power. <…> He really works hard. Hard because the tasks are extremely hard to accomplish.” (interview with the Russian television dated September 21, 2000).
“Reverse efforts to save the country’s lost statehood began to be taken under Putin. Some of these attempts however looked rather face-lifting but later they became more rigorous. The foreign policy, bearing in mind our situation and possibilities, is quite reasonable and more foresighted. But in terms of what has been inherited from the predecessors, much is still in shambles. The general situation people are living in is still hard and chaotic.” (interview with the Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper dated April 28, 2006).
Thank you Mark, I will have to take this in later and get back to you.
Quite. I read another expert in a US paper ridiculing Putin for his concerns over NATO coming into Ukraine. He was paranoid, it said. NATO was not interested in deploying assets in post-Soviet states.
I mean, come on now. I can’t help feel this Goebbelsian level of hubris and propaganda must surely come before a fall.
And yet Russia is a threat to Ukraine – from whom she has stolen territory – and all her neighbours.
Don’t let fashion turn you towards RT propaganda.
Tightly policed Russia posts. Hmm
Fools or GRU? One and the same!
Russia is (possibly) a threat to the borders of Ukraine drawn up by Lenin and Kruschev.
Crimea was Russian before the current constitution of the United States was adopted, and the Donbass was included by Lenin.
So what? Russia has been an aggressor for centuries. If a Russian commie gave Crimea to Ukraine, is Ukraine supposed to give it up when another Russian takes it away?
Before Russia, tbe Crimea was a Muslim khanate. Should Ukraine now give in back to the Tartars?
Beware playing into unjust Russian narratives! That way – appeasement.
“So what? Russia has been an aggressor for centuries.”
Pretty much all major countries have “been aggressors for centuries”, where they have been powerful enough. This is just the reality of a world without government or police.
So why are you justifying it?
Ukraine has not beem an aggressor.
Ukraine has barely existed as a state in most of world history.
“So why are you justifying it?“
I’m not “justifying it” here, all I did was point out the absurdity of basing policy on Russia today on it having “been an aggressor for centuries.”
Most especially on a British forum! I’m a patriot and a defender of our history, but only an idiot or an outright liar would try to pretend that we weren’t “an aggressor for centuries”. We were just very, very good at it – none better, arguably.
Look, Mark, I’m Polish as well as a British citizen. Yes that explains a few things, but not everything.
Ukraine never existed as a state until after WW1, granted. But was once part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – dismembered by Russia amogst others.
Does that justify prejudice against Russia today? No, but it will always be relevant, unfortunately.
All I am saying about Russia is that a leopard rarely changes its spots. I dont hate these people but they have tyrannised the Poles and others.
If Putin truly wants friendship, fine. You can see I am sceptical however. His attitude us far from constructive, and he is a dictator.
As to RT: yes it has its good points, but it is ALSO blatantly biased. Which sort of tyranny should we prefer: so-called ‘West’ or so-called ‘East’? While we can choose what to watch, what does your gut say?
There’s no point us descending into mutual hostility over this.
I hope we can move on, even if we disagree.
“There’s no point us descending into mutual hostility over this.
I hope we can move on, even if we disagree.”
Certainly. We might disagree on this, but we probably agree on most of the other important stuff, which is why we are both here.
You being Polish in origin certainly explains (partially, as you say) having a rather different perspective on Russia. Poland’s situation is very different from Britain’s.
I don’t say that Putin “wants friendship”, nor that he is necessarily in any way a “nice” person (though I do view him as both a Russian patriot and – somewhat – a social conservative, albeit an authoritarian one). My opinion from watching events for decades is that Putin wants what most rulers of countries want (in addition to protecting their own personal position and power, of course) – respect for his nation and its power and its borders, and security. And he is competent and hard headed.
What he emphatically is not is some kind of megalomaniac expansionist of the Hitler kind.
Poles have an understandable level of concern about Russian power (and in due course you will face the same concerns about German power again – that’s just the consequence of their location). My own view is that you would be better served by seeing Russia stable and secure, rather than forced into defensive paranoia by US sphere aggression. You can’t win from that either way – if Russia falls apart you will be swept up in the resulting chaos. If Russia triumphs, you’ve turned them into something much worse than they would have been otherwise.
Disagree, by all means, But please don’t insult everyone’s intelligence by coming out with childish accusations of “Putin apologist” and laughable false parallels with 1930s Germany and appeasement.
Thanks for explaining your point of view. Sometimes that is all that is needed, to avoid ‘childish’ and ‘laughable’ responses.
So the ongoing indiscriminate slaughter, over several years, of its own population of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine – men, women and children – by Kiev backed militia (supported literally and metaphorically by the West) is fiction or inconsequential?
Five forum posts in 15 months from Dodderydude.You have to be a bit more active than that if you want to keep getting those cheques from St Petersburg.
Not sure what you’re looking at but I’ve just counted up my tally and I’ve posted 16 times in the past fortnight, not including ‘daily ‘Update’ posts. Maybe try to respond constructively to the point I made? Thousands of civilians killed in Donetsk and Lugansk over the past eight years and families still live in fear of death and destruction every day. Or have I got that wrong? Presumably you’re someone who doesn’t believe what Western Governments and mainstream media tell you about the ‘pandemic’ but you believe everything they tell you about Putin and Russia.
That’s five more forum posts than you’ve got registered. 663 blog comments from me to be precise, four times as many as you.
Does it justify a Russian attack?
Who claimed it did?
Your post was a little melodramatic, and did not mention Russian culpability.
Russia is a threat to the Ukraine only because of the behaviour of the Ukraine. In the same way as the US was a threat to Cuba because the Cubans invited Soviet nuclear forces in.
“RT propaganda“
This kind of childish smear is exactly akin to accusing people resisting the covid “vaccines” of being victims of “antivax” propaganda.
The reality is that those who don’t understand that the problem in the Ukraine is entirely the fault of US policy since the end of the Soviet Union are victims of US sphere deep state propaganda.
Here is the reality, from a realist:
Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer
You are childish and have a screw loose to be a Putin apologist.
Wake up, Colonel GRU!
Using terms like “Putin apologist” is as childish as “vaccine” pushers accusing dissenters of being “antivax extremists”. It means nothing of any substance and merely indicates that the speaker has bought into the elite propaganda.
Much as those who opposed the literally stupid, disastrous and mass murderous attack on Iraq were smeared as “Saddam apologists”, and those who opposed the almost equally stupid wars on Libya and on Syria that have cost so much were smeared as “Gaddafi apologists” or “Assad apologists”.
Anyone who seeks to identify as a sceptic should be able to see through such empty propaganda tricks.
You are unquestioningly accepting a Russian narrative, indicating self-contradiction.
“indicating self-contradiction.”
Eh?
“unquestioningly accepting a Russian narrative“
That’s exactly what those insisting there was “no evidence for WMD in Iraq” were accused of. But in fact they were just correct, and basing their opinion on reality rather than on propaganda.
Same with the US sphere propaganda over Russia and the Ukraine. Reality is not on the side of the US sphere elites. Yet again.
Seriously, how many times do they have to lie to you before you start to question what you are told?
Please see my above post.
Putin is (most likely) willingly playing theatrics with the West.
On a lower mid-management level, I’d theoretically compare Russia and the West to a single very large corporation with one CEO in charge. A couple of floors of office space (Ukraine) with very nice views has come up for grabs, and the managers of different departments within this corporation (Russia, UK, EU & US) are competing and fighting for it.
The CEO might enjoy watching his middle managers compete and hone their Machiavellian traits as they compete for this office space, with the added bonus that his millions of lowly workers are distracted from the penury that the CEO’s irrational policies has inflicted on them over the last two years.
I wonder if you’ll have the same feelings when the gas is cut off or the internet goes down or the mushroom clouds appear.
Russian navy is preparing for a live fire drill 240km south west of Cork on February 3rd.
“I wonder if you’ll have the same feelings when the gas is cut off or the internet goes down or the mushroom clouds appear.”
When you go along the path of confrontation, you can never guarantee that you can control the scope and consequences. But that said, I’d say both of those are relatively unlikely here.
If Russia invades the Ukraine, imo the most likely response from the US sphere will be similar to Crimea (but with an attempt to foment an ongoing proxy war there which didn’t happen in Crimea because there was essentially no resistance and the move was broadly accepted by the population there. Basically, the US sphere will try to leverage the war to demonise Russia and legitimise more sanctions and tightening constraints on Russia, and propagandise against Russia to politically enable further militarisation of the frontier states. Also to justify harder crackdowns on internal dissent in the US sphere generally.
What I think is very unlikely would be any open declarations of war on Russia, or significant direct formal military assistance to the Ukrainian side (although it’s possible there could be a de facto partition of Ukraine).
Without that, as long as Germany et al continue to pay for Russian oil and gas it will imo keep flowing, as long as the extra-Ukraine channels are kept open. So disruptions to supply will be limited and probably bearable. And likewise without open war there will be no open military attacks on NATO targets outside the Ukraine.
Escalation to those situations obviously cannot entirely be ruled out, especially if economic and political attacks on Russia and assistance to Ukrainian forces are intense, effective and drawn out, which is why gambling with such confrontation is criminally negligent on the part of US and US sphere governments.
Bad ole Putin is just off the western coast waving a large gun around.
Boo hoo.
Would you not think it’s very stupid of Putin to show up like that and reinforce the perception in the British people that he’s an aggressive tyrant that poses an existential threat?
By the way, Putin if far from stupid. In fact, by far he’s probably the most intelligent leader in the world today.
Here’s a hint for you: When the Soviet Union collapsed, a senior Kremlin official said off-handedly, “We have done the United States a great disservice, we have deprived it of an enemy”.
Since mediaeval times, rulers have used foreign wars or the threat of these wars to keep their subjects distracted and/or onside. It is a well-known ploy for rulers to use people’s inherent patriotism and sense of competitiveness to coerce their citizenry to go along with what the ruler’s ultimately want – and what the rulers want doesn’t always be in the citizenry’s best interests.
Putin is an idiot. Absolutely everything he’s attempted has ended in disaster. He’s been waging war in Ukraine for seven years now and got nowhere. Crimea doesn’t even have its own water supply.
Putin’s problem is that he believes his own internet posters. He thought the Russian-speaking populations of ports such as Mariupol would rise up in support. They didn’t. They hate him, hence Crimea still being cut off, and him now having to assemble 120,000 troops to bail out the situation.
He thought Odessa would rise up for him, but as the Russian-speaking inhabitants pointed out, as part of Ukraine they are the only free Russian -speaking city on Earth, and they’d like to keep it that way, thanks very much.
In Georgia he’s lumbered himself with two provinces, Abkhazia and S Ossetia, of no economic value and requiring vast subsidies from Moscow. And for that he fought a war.
Putin rules a country with every natural resource imaginable, but with an economy half the size of the UK’s.
Man’s an idiot.
“Putin is an idiot. Absolutely everything he’s attempted has ended in disaster.”
Interesting perspective from a nobody, on the man who has held down perhaps the most difficult job in world leadership for over 20 years, taking Russia from a failed post-Imperial state to a solid global power whose attitude has to be considered in any matters pertaining to its interests.
Let’s consider the points raised here:
“He’s been waging war in Ukraine for seven years now and got nowhere.”
He recovered the Crimea for Russia overnight in a superlatively well executed manoeuvre that took the entire word completely by surprise and left the sole superpower with egg all over its face, completely impotent. And despite strong backing from both said superpower and the neighbouring economic superpower, the German dominated EU, the Ukraine has been unable to crush the remaining areas of pro-Russian dissent, thanks solely to Russian backing.
“In Georgia he’s lumbered himself with two provinces, Abkhazia and S Ossetia, of no economic value and requiring vast subsidies from Moscow. And for that he fought a war.”
The Russian war with Georgia was also generally regarded as a well executed military operation that restored a lot of credibility to the wrecked post-Soviet Russian military, and successfully destroyed any chance of enacting the policy backed by Bush II of bringing Georgia into NATO.
“Putin rules a country with every natural resource imaginable, but with an economy half the size of the UK’s.”
Although all comparisons of economy size are open to criticism, non-stupid people generally prefer ppp (purchasing power parity) for straight comparisons between countries, since otherwise they change dramatically overnight as the currency shifts. Here are the 2020 World Bank numbers for national gdp, ppp:
Russian Federation: $4,133,083.56
UK: $3,082,001.92
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD
Now I’m not a Putin hagiographer – I regard him as just a human being, not any kind of superman or hero, nor doubtless is he a particularly nice person in many senses. But his competence as a world leader is beyond honest dispute. Even if you regard him as evil and as your enemy, you should face up to reality. The worst error to make is to underestimate your opponent.
The usual propagandist ploy is to make a stupidly overstated attack on the enemy leader like the one above, and then when it draws a response like mine pointing out how stupid it is, to say: “Ah look, he’s defending [the demon of the moment], so he must be a Milosevic/Saddam/Gaddafi/Assad/Putin “apologist” or “agent””.
So let’s just consider that dealt with here.
I’m speaking from the perspective of a man with family throughout Ukraine. A cousin in Sumy who has somehow built up a business designing and exporting industrial control systems in a country blighted by actual and threatened Russian violence. He has multi-lingual twin daughters training for the diplomatic corps. And all that having grown up under Russian rule in an impoverished rural family from near L’wiw/Lvov on the other side of the country.
And the whole thing is now threatened with violence and extinction – the business, the prospects for education and for living in a modern democracy, and the dream of living with the sorts of freedoms and comforts you spend your days on here complaining you haven’t got enough of.
Putin wrecks everything he touches.He’s transformed the SE of Ukraine from a prosperous industrial heartland into a world of trenches and mortar fire. He’s turned Crimea back into a primitive society where electricity is an intermittent luxury. And now he wants to blight my family the same way. And you, relaxing in privilege 2,000 miles away, with nothing to fear, cheer on this destruction as evidence of shrewdness.You haven’t a clue.
(Well, you will when you discover that Ukraine has become the world’s second-largest grain exporter since freeing itself from Russia; and you find out what happens to food prices when that control is handed back to your hero.)
“I’m speaking from the perspective of a man with family throughout Ukraine.”
Well that rather explains your hatred, but you merely hating does not make the object of your hatred “stupid”.
Nor does your partisan need change the reality of which side is responsible for the problems in the Ukraine. The people to blame for the consequences are the nationalists who were not prepared to compromise in 2013 and 2014, and are not prepared to compromise now, and the external forces seeking to use them as a weapon against Russia. Putin initiated none of this. All Putin has done is refuse to accept the transition of Ukraine to the US sphere.
“your hero“
He’s not “my hero” any more than Saddam Hussein was a “hero” for those correctly pointing out the stupidity of invading Iraq, though many self-interested war promoters then, like yourself now, dishonestly claimed it to be the case in order to try to discredit their wise words and protect the war agenda.
If you don’t want your adopted country destroyed in war then you should be desperately fighting against those US, nationalist and other interests trying to use it as a weapon against Russia.
120,000 troops, AFVs and aircraft assembled by a dictatorship which spreads poverty and destruction wherever it roams; and all that force to invade a democracy which voluntarily went from the third-biggest nuclear power in the world to now begging for weapons.
And it’s all their own fault for being ‘nationalist’, eh? And they should tell the US they don’t need their weapons, because it’s interference? And the country which unilaterally disarmed poses a nuclear threat to Russia?
Good God.
I find it hard to understand the blind admiration of so many online Englishmen for Putin. Partly they seem to share in his deluded obsession with lines on a map rather than economic destruction on the ground; partly it’s the comfort of being a long way away from it all; and just a bit, I suspect, it’s about the thrill of a man taking his shirt off for you.
Again, if your partisan hatred is too strong for you to overcome your need to misrepresent simple reality as “blind admiration”, then objective analysis is clearly not to be expected from you.
“And it’s all their own fault for being ‘nationalist’, eh? “
That’s the history of 2013 and 2014, and since.
It’s perfectly clear both which side you are on in that quarrel, and that you are incapable of objectivity on the topic.
“And they should tell the US they don’t need their weapons, because it’s interference?“
If you don’t want to have a long drawn out proxy war fought on your territory, yes that’s absolutely what you should be doing. Ask Vietnam or Afghanistan if the US abuse of their country for such purposes turned out to be a good thing, and that was against actual communists and an actual superpower rival, not just people of different ethnicity. Though the winners write the history and you will find plenty of Afghans willing to insist it was all worthwhile. Of course, they are mostly the islamist fanatics, who were the ultimate winners.
But certainly don’t dishonestly pretend we in Britain have any national interest in getting dragged into a confrontation with Russia to protect the nationalist zealotry and interests of your presumably adopted family.
“And the country which unilaterally disarmed poses a nuclear threat to Russia?“
Ukraine doesn’t, but the US absolutely does.
A nuclear armed superpower that is the only nation which has actually used nuclear weapons to destroy cities, with a clear and recent track record of military aggression against countries that refuse to toe the line, and a systematic engagement in anti-Russian propaganda and subversion? Duh!
“just a bit, I suspect, it’s about the thrill of a man taking his shirt off for you.“
If you mean to say that people who disagree with you on foreign policy must be gay, then why not have the courage to say it openly?
It’s not about disagreeing with my views. It’s about your uncritical endorsement of Vladimir Putin’s.
No “uncritical endorsement” of anybody’s views. Just a hardheaded realist analysis of events and the situation, as per the presentation of Prof Mearsheimer in 2015.
Personally, I’m only interested in Putin’s views at all (as far as those can be inferred from public info) because it’s a guide to how Russia will act.
I could also mention the numerous “P-Asian” paedophilic grooming gangs that operate freely and almost without any interference from the judiciary in the UK.
One “P-Asian” paedophile was given a 21-year prison sentence in the UK for brutal crimes against children. He was released having served less than 3 years and within days had raped another child.
Whilst the UK authorities don’t much impede these gangs grooming and raping underage White females, they do immediately pounce on and imprison any citizen that has the temerity to question and record them on a public street outside a court house.
If the average Ukrainian citizen actually knew how disgustingly fu*ked up the West is, they’d realise that Putin’s Russia couldn’t possibly be any worse.
You’re really out of touch.
Putin is reacting to an ongoing attempt at what’s commonly known as a Colour Revolution in the Ukraine. This is being instigated, funded and provoked by the US and UK. You might have heard of multi-billionaire global pimp George Soros who pumps billions of dollars into “revolutions” such as this.
It was the same in Georgia. The US and its CIA – with the UK cheerleading from behind – had just installed one of their typical sycophantic puppets as leader. Putin couldn’t tolerate a Western puppet government in Georgia, just like the US could not have tolerated Soviet nuclear missiles being based in Cuba.
As for the witless idiot the CIA had installed as leader of Georgia prior to the Russian invasion, who’ll ever forget him wringing his hands and shaking like an autumnal leaf and crying on live TV as he displayed his infantile emotions and shock at the invasion. As far as his political savvy went, the CIA might as well have chosen a wino from the gutter to be leader.
And what about the current president of Ukraine? Just a short while ago he was a two-bit local actor and comedian. He’s highly narcissistic, loves himself and assumes everyone does too – it’s actually eerie that this fellow is such a carbon copy of the perverted Trudeau and the debauched Macon.
Only God knows what type of blackmail material the CIA holds on him. But this fool would not mind; the end-all and be-all of life for him is to be the centre of attention. The CIA put him where he wants to be and he’ll be completely obedient as long as they keep the spotlight on him and remind him about the blackmail material every now and then.
Are you kidding here? What has the West left in Iraq, Libya or Syria, other than penury and wreaked economies. When in the last century did one country invade another solely to improve the financial lot of its citizens? Don’t source your theories on topical and historical affairs from comic books.
You totally lose the reader when you start claiming that you knew what Putin was thinking at any given time. Reading people’s thoughts after the fact is the domain of tarot card readers. But funny you should mention a port in this area, considering a British destroyer was recently chased out of Crimean waters by Putin’s military.
In your own society at the moment they are instructing kids as young as 4-years-old to question their biological sex, and also teaching them that acts such as sodomy are normal. They are taking clearly mentally unstable males who claim to be females from the streets and bringing them into schools and libraries to “talk” to kids. There was one recent case in a Western country where a transvestite wearing a dress and no underwear sat spread-eagled in front of children in a library exposing his genitals to them – and anyone that uses a male pronoun to refer to this disgusting male POS is liable to a criminal conviction.
You think the Ukrainian people will be at a loss to not be part of the West? You’re wrong there, mate. There’s many people who would choose a lack of running water and less money over having their children subjected to this satanic filth.
I hate to think of myself defending TY, but I don’t think he’s personally responsible for the round-up maybe he gets final OK, I dunno.
Anyway, everything else you say is correct. They’ve been poking the Bear for years to provoke a response. And why would anyone believe, the largest country by far on the planet. With huge wealth in untapped natural resources, would have any interest in imperialism.
Russia is becoming a superpower again, just as it was in the USSR era & it terrifies neoliberal globalists.
Beware: you cannot trust the Tsar.
You can’t trust anyone seeking power, power corrupts, power is corrupt!
I prefer the ‘West’ to Russia, without denying what you say.
Agreed that the Ukraine issue is the result of the US/EU’s imperialism, specifically the 2014 coup, BUT the situation in Russia is difficult for Putin just now. As elsewhere there has been massive overreach in Russia in imposing vaxpasses and other WEF policies, but unlike in the West there is negligible support from the Russian people. The federal government backed off from vaxpass mandates recently but this is largely symbolic because they’ve been implemented at the regional level instead https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com So it might suit him (and the WEF) to start a war to keep people in line.
The Russians will execute an invasion if they feel it is necessary and effective to halt the ongoing push towards NATO Ukraine. The context for that decision certainly include the political position within Russia obviously.
There’s a real possibility of a Russian invasion at the moment, it appears. But the fault still lies with US and Ukraine regime policies, long term.
There could be a false flag, to justify a Ukrainian attack on Donetsk and Luhansk which would in turn drag in Russia https://off-guardian.org/2022/01/24/pandemic-narrative-over-false-flag-in-ukraine-next/
We can expect all kinds of dirty tricks from both sides. though the chances are the ones they choose to do won’t be the ones we expect.
Exactly so. Russia is not an empire and evicting anti-Russian government from Ukraine would not make it so.
We face a similar campaign of lies pushing us towards confrontation with Russia as we do over covid, and similarly there are things believed as Gospel truth by the masses about Russia that are simply untrue.
“Russia is Germany 1930s and Putin is Hitler” – both laughably untrue in almost any conceivable aspect, and certainly in any aspect of any substance. If you hear someone make this argument or any of its derivatives, such as falsely conflating opponents of confrontation with 1930s appeasers, then the person making the case is either a liar or a gullible fool who has fallen for lies.
“Russia is a military threat to us” – this is nonsense, since Russia has no conceivable interest in aggressive war with us and no capability for meaningfully “winning” a war of aggression against a state with a second strike nuclear capability. The only way we could end up in a war with Russia is if we try to support the US push to constrict and ultimately destroy Russia, and in particular to extend its reach into Ukraine. Russia will fight to prevent that if necessary.
The fact is that just as there are hugely powerful and wealthy interests pushing behind the scenes to manipulate opinion on covid and the “vaccines”, so, for a much longer period, there have been such hugely powerful and wealthy interests pushing to draw us into confrontation of Russia, and to demonise Russia in the US sphere and globally. Our own security elites are very obviously a big part of this, as demonstrated by such theatrical nonsense as the Salisbury buffoonery and the entire “Russiagate” lie in the US (in which the British security deep state were deeply involved). .
All this is yet another occasion wherein the nefarious particular interests of such forces operate directly against our real interests and those of the US. The only currently plausible superpower rival to the US is China. Driving Russia into the arms of China is massively counterproductive for the future of that rivalry.
If our rulers successfully push Russia into an invasion of Ukraine, the subsequent initial war will likely be brief but bloody, with Russia quickly crushing Ukrainian forces and pushing in as far as they wish, probably to the Don but nobody really knows their plans. But the goal of the US sphere will probably be to push a mass murderous, drawn out proxy war in Ukraine against Russia that will be catastrophic for Ukraine in particular (but those in the US pushing for confrontation have no real interest in the well-being of Ukrainians, and those who foolishly support it on that supposed basis are mere dupes).
The worse that goes for Russia, the more likely it will spill over into areas outside the Ukraine theatre. Meantime the economic and social consequences in the US sphere will be dire. We will be on a war footing, and war is the health of the state (not the nation), especially the security state. Dissent and liberty will be crushed even further.
For anyone who wants to understand the basic processes underlying all of the recent history in Ukraine, this is a good start:
Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer
[Dnieper not Don, obviously]
Please point out these parents who think it’s a great thing that their children can have the privilege of using a medical spying app. For a weeks holiday. I want to be able to avoid them!
Roundup 2 “Downing Street Police give damning Partygate evidence” Telegraph.
Although I believe Partygate to be of no particular interest or concern, except for feeding media frenzy, it was obvious from the start that lurid descriptions would emerge from the Police, Tory Party Security and the invited Press.
The only surprise is that it has taken so long.
Indeed, why did it take 18 months for this story to come out, why are the police involved now but were not at the time, where was the media outrage when the G7 summit went ahead without masks last summer while “Freedom Day” was delayed
Very soon now, the word ‘Covid’ is going to be replaced with the word ‘Ukraine’.
Well, I’ll be fucked if I’ll wear a mask for that.
And on that day the weather forecast fro London may be “cloudy and ten thousand degrees.”
24% more deaths in the 2-14 year-old bracket over the five year average. The question we ask is, if these deaths are censored out of existence by a state-controlled press, did they really happen?
Consider The Possibility That This Is Already The Dystopia You Fear
The Covid Physician definitely is worth reading in full. The anger of the one righteous person.
His side-swipe at Archcovidian Dustbin Jellybaby is spot on:
“…A 21st century medical apartheid sponsored by the inverted archbishop Welby who insists he loves thy neighbour. What is a faith when its head stands for nothing in particular?”
What, indeed?
Yes, he’s great – full of fluent fury.
We see you Carol Malone, along with the others back pedalling furiously.
The TCP blog is jaw-dropping. (“Covid, The Strange Death of Medicine”). I’ve spent the last 2 hours reading it and I’ve no-one to talk to about it!!!!
Sound take from Toby there, and if we had a liberal, small government regime, I’d be hopeful about those lobbying efforts.
Given what we do have, I fear it will take multiple judicial reviews of the actual laws (where any exist) backing Kangaroo Courts, and some very public and very big-ticket wins over Company Commissars to reverse the policy of innocent-until-proven-accused.
Our courts tend to make awards in the tens of thousands for unfair or constructive dismissal. California award hundreds of millions for hurty feels. Somewhere in the middle would be nice.
If anyone bothered to click the link to the ABC story about WA, I hope you liked the pictures. Fuck all actual news in there. Nothing about the buggered hospital system; no questions about where Canberra’s $455 million boost for said health system has been spent.
Lockdowns have been few and brief. But Masky loves the old one-two. A few days of lockdown followed by another week of masks – on public transport, indoors, whatever. He seems to make it up as he goes along. Like the rule that banned dancing – except at weddings.
As I said, some nice pics but the rest is just a gentle tongue bath.
Have to laugh at Carol Malone in the Express. She’s been one of the worst Covidians in the media, but now trying to frantically back pedal.
We saw you Carol. We heard your poisonous demands that the unvaccinated be demonised and marginalised. We won’t forget.
Piers Moron has done the same, ‘slamming’ Ardern for imposing new strict rules in NZ. I really don’t know how they’ve got such bare faced cheek to reverse ferret so thoroughly and think people won’t notice.
Yes, I saw that. Almost as ridiculous as his attempts to pretend he wasn’t ‘Captain Lockdown’ are the responses from people who think Arden has good ideas.
Yes, I saw that. Almost as ridiculous as his attempts to pretend he wasn’t ‘Captain Lockdown’ are the responses from people who think Arden has good ideas.
He’s also condemning Sleepy Joe having been his Fan boy for ages.
He’ll be supporting Spurs next.
For those still bemused by the push to war in Ukraine by US sphere elites, with very similar levels of similarly dishonest propaganda to the push for war with Iraq twenty years ago to, this piece by Peter Hitchens from 2017 contains some excellent information to enlighten you as to the underlying realities.
Lemmings, NATO, the Russian Threat and the Merchants of Death
Some things people believe just aren’t true
Read it, and watch the piece I Iinked earlier by the excellent “realist” international relations expert John Mearsheimer, and you will be in a much better position to see past the increased flow of demonisation and panic propaganda we are beginning to see over Russia and the Ukraine, soon to become a torrent of frantic hysteria if Russia actually responds militarily to the pressure they are facing.
One thing in Hitchens’ piece that is less accurate than it was when written is about Russian weakness. It’s still true that Russia is not a superpower on the level of either the US or China in any aspect except nuclear weapons capability, and it never will be again in our lifetimes. It is nothing like the Soviet Union in any regard (except nuclear capability). But Russia has been steadily recovering its conventional military strength over the past couple of decades, and is more than capable of defending its territory and border areas, and certainly of crushing the Ukraine’s military quite quickly.
Proposal to charge over 60s for their meds from April according to the Evil Beeb. Op Depop continues…
And now Jacinda can have her Wedding at the home of a billionaire with Lorde singing without being accused of abandoning an ordinary kiwi venue.
Watch this space. (NZ is a village!).
One can say that no one has died of covid in NZ due to strict control of the border, but as you can see she cannot now open up without risking death sweeping through the country.
Being 77 I am quite relaxed about the situation, and if anyone thinks NZ is north Korea your nuts. We live well. Very well.