Sometimes in life there are genuine conspiracies afoot, not mere theories. One of these is the plan to abolish cash. This is happening in plain sight, and governments show little intention of grappling with the problem. Indeed, the U.K. Government’s vapid response is indicative of a broader malaise at the heart of modern governance, in that it indicates both a lack of willingness to make clear rules and a lack of openness about what it is doing. This, as we shall see, centres around a dereliction of duty with respect to the state’s most important task of all: the making and enforcement of law.
The fact that cash is disappearing will be clear to all readers. It is sometimes believed that this happening through market forces alone – as though people are simply spontaneously giving up the habit of using physical money. This may to a certain extent be happening (and it was certainly the case that people, entirely irrationally, gave up using cash during the lockdown era). But anyone who thinks this is the only reason it is taking place simply isn’t paying attention. A concerted effort is in fact being made to stamp cash out of usage entirely (see authoritative overviews here and here), and it is happening, as is often the case, through a bootleggers-and-baptists pincer movement.
On the one hand, the bootleggers. These are the fintech companies and payment processors such as Visa, which, since at least 2017, has had the stated aim of “putting cash out of business” and has been giving large bribes to restaurants and other retail outlets to go cash free. These organisations have been aided and abetted by intensive lobbying by management consultants such as McKinsey, who have been beating the drum for the “war on cash” for a decade. Here, the motives are as clear as mountain stream water: cash is a competitor for cards and digital payments, and therefore the fewer cash transactions there are, the better.
On the other hand, the baptists. These are the central bankers and government advisers – like Daniel Korski, former adviser to then-U.K. Prime Minister, David Cameron – bumptious and breathless (and, it goes without saying, unelected), who extol the virtues of a cashless society. These include ‘increasing productivity’, giving central banks more power to set negative interest rates (the use of cash as an alternative to digital money being a break on this), and combating crime. The motives of such people are probably pure; I think in most cases they genuinely believe they are striving to make the world a better place. They just have a lionised sense of their own wisdom and an incomplete understanding of the foundation of political legitimacy – common failings in ‘men of system’ throughout history.
Governments are of course aware that even while the general public across the world is using cash less, people want to have the option of using it. So very few politicians will come out and say openly that they are in favour of the abolition of cash. What we see instead is a general nudge-nudge-wink-wink approach to those forces who are perpetrating the anti-cash war, combined wih mealy-mouthed commitments to vague principles surrounding continued cash ‘access’, as can be found, for example, in the U.K. Government’s own Cash Access Policy Statement.
This document is a classic in the genre of contemptuous disingenuity. It begins with a lengthy declaration of context. And this context is not “We are committed to continuing to make cash available for use by the general public in perpetuity”. Instead, we get, straight out of the gate, an extended paean to the virtues of digital payments that is worth restating in full with key phrases highlighted:
The adoption of digital payments that has been taking place across our economy and society over the past decade continues to provide opportunities for people and businesses across the U.K. The proportion of the number of payments that do not involve cash in the U.K. has risen from around 45% a decade ago, to 85% as of 2021.
Digital payments can offer people and businesses convenient, tailored and flexible ways of making and managing payments safely and securely. They have the potential to help facilitate enhanced competition in payment services in the form of new entrants and more choice for consumers, as well as innovations that can further improve access to financial services. Increasingly, digital payments can enable and may be accompanied by additional services, such as ways to help budget or keep a record of transactions. Digital payments may also reduce opportunities for the criminal minority who seek to exploit the characteristics of cash for physical theft, evading tax or laundering money. The Government believes that it would be wrong for its approach to cash access policy to impede these many benefits and opportunities, and encourages steps to ensure that digital payment products and services are inclusive and accessible.
Got that? Digital payments are better for a whole host of reasons and, if you are in favour of using cash, then definitionally you are “imped[ing]” these “many benefits and opportunities” and should hang your head in shame. But just in case you are one of the poor benighted fools who still wishes to use cash – perhaps a little old lady, who will soon ideally expire and cease standing in the way of progress – then we will do what little we can to help:
[T]he Government recognises that digital payments may not yet be a suitable option for many people who still rely on notes and coins, for example to manage their finances, do their shopping, or to help out friends and relatives.
The condescension is palpable, and the message clear. There are some people who are not yet ready, and are still wedded to their petty notes and coins and their grubby, proletarian concerns (shopping, budgeting, ‘helping out’). They are not like us in Government, who buy everything we need online, have so much money we don’t even know whether we have dipped into our overdraft this month, and whose friends and relatives are just as well-off as we are, thankyouverymuch. But sadly we still have to act as though we care about those people. So we suppose with reluctance we will have to make sure that these deplorables still have access to their precious tenners.
What ‘access to cash’ means, though, has been carefully circumscribed. It most certainly should not be taken to mean “the ability to pay for things in cash”. Rather, it very strictly means cash deposit and cash withdrawal services – i.e., the ability to pay into and withdraw from one’s bank account in cash. This in itself, of course, makes Government policy in this area (undoubtedly deliberately) sound radical, while actually in practical terms achieving very little. Whoever is responsible for the Cash Access Policy Statement knows perfectly well that the ability to make withdrawals and deposits in cash means nothing if there is nowhere to spend it because all the retailers in one’s local area are being bribed by Visa to refuse non-digital payments. This, in other words, has all the hallmarks of a wheeze designed to sound good as an announcement (“We are taking practical steps to maintain access to cash”) while making no movement whatsoever to change the direction of travel.
This alone would be bad enough, of course, but it gets worse. The real problem with the Cash Access Policy Statement is the piece of legislation from which it derives (the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, amending the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000). And the issue here is not so much that the Act is ineffective in achieving its aims. Rather it is that, like almost all modern legislation, it makes the law harder to access and understand, less subject to democratic oversight, more arbitrary and unpredictable, more technocratic and interventionist, and much more subject to the discretion of unelected regulators.
Let us turn to a subject which I have touched on briefly before – Lon Fuller and his famous (to legal scholars) “Eight Ways of Failing to Make Law”, namely:
- Producing no rules at all or making only ad hoc decisions
- Failing to make rules public
- Using retroactive rules
- Producing unclear rules
- Producing contradictory rules
- Producing rules with which it is impossible to comply
- Changing rules too often
- Deciding cases in such a way that outcomes bear no relation to the rules
Fuller’s point here was that law had an ‘inner morality’ which was contingent upon its adherence to the opposite of these failings. A legal system which is based on rules that are public, clear, not contradictory, not retroactive etc. is one which is predicated on respect for those who are subject to the law. It assumes that they are thinking, reasoning, free-willed agents who are capable of understanding rules and basing their conduct upon the existence of them. On the other hand, a legal system which does not comprise rules at all, or in which they are unclear or applied retrospectively or contradictorily etc., is one which has contempt for its subjects: it is totally indifferent to their agency and sees them as mere pawns.
We could, as a parlour game, get a statute book from any of the last 10 years and go through its contents to identify just how many of these Eight Ways of Failing to Make Law are in evidence in each piece of legislation contained therein (take a drink each time one finds an unclear rule). And we have a ready example right here in front of us in the form of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023. Before turning to it, though, it is worth asking briefly what a legislature committed to law’s inner morality would do in regard to the war on cash.
The answer here is not complicated: it would make a short statute providing that for any transaction between a trader and customer under a certain value (say, £300) it is unlawful to reject cash payment, and making any physical retailer refusing to accept cash payment in a given circumstance liable to a fine. This would hardly be perfect (it would, amongst other things, impose costs of handling and storing cash on retailers), and the mode of enforcement would need careful thought, but it would have the not inconsiderable virtues of being clear, simple to understand, and rigid in the appropriate way: everybody would know where they stood, and could organise their affairs accordingly.
It would also actually meaningfully achieve the aim of maintaining access to cash in perpetuity for those who need it or prefer to use it, not in the sense of merely being able to deposit and withdraw physical money, but in the sense of being able to pay for things with it. But, of course, this isn’t really the aim of Government at all, and this can be readily discerned in the manner in which the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 has been set up.
The provisions of the Act concerning cash access can be found in Schedule 8. And here we immediately find ourselves in Lon Fuller’s dystopia: the diametric opposite of the elegance, simplicity and clarity of simply prohibiting the refusal to accept cash. For here there are really no rules at all. Instead, we find the classic modern regulatory approach, with all of its pitfalls – a framework handing discretion to unelected ‘experts’ (in this case, largely the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a company) to make ad hoc rules in view of broad standards, and giving licence to organs of the State (in this case, the Treasury), to make sweeping statements of ‘policy’ of ill-defined legal status.
The way the Act works is as follows. First, it provides that the Treasury must prepare the aforementioned Cash Access Policy Statement (131P) after consulting the FCA and “having regard” for any reports it has issued. The Treasury can then review the statement and revise it as it sees fit. Next, the Treasury is given the power to “designate” any current account provider that it deems appropriate (131R), again after consulting the FCA, and “having regard” to the distribution of cash access services in the U.K. (meaning, to repeat, services allowing deposits and withdrawals). And the FCA is then given the power to subject designated current account providers to rules, “as necessary or expedient”, based on the overring purpose of “seeking to ensure reasonable provision of cash access services in the United Kingdom” and also to “direct” them to take specified actions, refrain from taking specified actions, or take “remedial action in respect of past conduct” (131U, 131V and 131W). And it must do this, again, “having regard” to the Cash Access Policy Statement.
In short, then, the Act in effect makes no rules of general application at all, but essentially delegates power to the FCA to command current account providers as it sees fit by decree, in view of the nebulous overarching objective of making sure that cash access services are “reasonably provided”, and on the basis of broad statements of policy issued by the Treasury. Note how the elected legislature plays no part in the process; note how there is no democratic oversight beyond the Treasury itself (which is to say, the executive branch); note how wide a discretion is granted to the regulator to determine what “reasonable provision” of cash access services requires and what rule would be “necessary or expedient”; note how sweeping and poorly-defined the powers of the FCA are in respect of the “specified actions” it may “direct”.
But note also how many ways of Failing to Make Law are on display in the Act’s contents in this regard. Are these rules clear? Are they sufficiently transparent to be called ‘public’? Is it possible to comply with them in advance? Might they be changed often, and arbitrarily? Are they even rules at all – or are they merely licence for ad hoc decision-making by the regulator? In the Failing to Make Law drinking game the Act would therefore be a popular choice, although it has many recent competitors in its flagrant disregard for law’s inner morality and the contempt for the agency of its subjects which it correspondingly displays.
The more immediate point, of course, is that this is a piece of legislation which is not designed to make clear rules, but rather which is designed to give Government more direct, flexible and pervasive tools with which it can more minutely regulate society as it considers appropriate. There is no need to belabour the reasons for this at length, as it is a subject which I have written about extensively before (for example, here). Suffice to say that the modern state, for philosophical reasons which are deeply ingrained – and which indeed are essential to its makeup – is driven to seek to render society transparent to its action, and that minutely managing the extent to which cash is made available, and is or is not used, is an important element of that process.
More broadly, of course, the war on cash and the failure to make law are closely related. The state despises physical cash because it is intrinsically anonymous, cannot be directly controlled and acts as a break on the monetary policy levers which Government functionaries love to pull. It can also, to a certain extent, function as a hidden source of wealth and a means of avoiding the tax man. In short, physical cash is the tool of a people who are, to a certain extent at least, opaque to state action. The state despises law – meaning the making of clear, intelligible rules of general application – for much the same reason: rules constrain its field of action, and preserve and respect the agency of those who are its subjects. What the state likes is not law, but discretion, so that it can rule more directly and responsively. The relationship between cash and law is therefore intertwined, and it is no accident that the state has both in its sights.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. He is the author of the News From Uncibal Substack where this article first appeared.
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A look at our ever-dwindling freedom of speech in the West and the facade of democracy;
”Over the last five years, American, British, Canadian and Brazilian governments unleashed unprecedented waves of repression against political opponents using martial law, military occupations of major cities, government censorship of the internet, nationwide manhunts, televised raids and extended detentions without trial. Most of those arrested were guilty of political speech and protests generally far less violent than leftist riots by regime supporters.
Three of those leftist governments, the Biden-Harris administration, the Starmer and Lula regimes, unleashed crackdowns after taking power using various pretexts. The fourth crackdown, in Canada under the Trudeau regime, took place during an election year.
The pretexts, J6, Brazil’s election protests or the UK’s anti-migrant rallies, are far less significant than the pattern of leftist regimes taking power and launching crackdowns against opponents who disputed elections or, in the case of the Starmer regime, protested against policies.
Governments that moan about “authoritarianism” abroad eagerly adopted every element of the authoritarian playbook from endless investigations of political opponents like Trump and Bolsonaro to declaring states of emergency over political protests and censoring speech. They often justify their authoritarian measures as necessary to stop their “authoritarian” opponents.
In the first stage of authoritarianism, the law is applied unequally, in the second stage of authoritarianism, inequality is written into the law, and in the final stage, the regime is the law.
The only thing free about any of this is that there are still elections and people are still allowed to vote in them. But democracy, as residents of North Korea’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea could tell you if they had any free speech, isn’t actually freedom. Bringing democracy to Iraq just turned it into a totalitarian Islamic state run by the Shiite majority. In actual free countries, people have more political freedom than just casting a ballot once every few years.
A democracy without a meaningful political opposition able to speak out, advocate for its views and protest is like a race with only one runner. It’s the end of a contest, not the beginning of one.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/an-iron-curtain-is-descending-on-us/
Bringing democracy to Iraq …
After bombing the place to smithereens on how many occasions? Akin to bringing democracy to Libya, Syria and so on: were they asked if they wanted our version of democracy?
And we ourselves are experiencing that democracy has its faults, i.e. that leaders are chosen who are only voted for by a minority in the country, as well as the recent US problems with mail voting and voting without confirmation of identity.
Democracy somehow needs a bit of fine tuning.
How do you ask the citizens of a totalitarian state if they want ‘our version of democracy’?
‘The speaker for Albania stressed that, “when you vote at gunpoint, the process is more expedited”.
U.N. So-Called Referenda during Armed Conflict 2022
An interesting question. A necessary clarification is what is meant by ‘totalitarian’? Google states it is “relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state”, which is a pretty accurate description of the current UK government!
In the days of the Cold War, any criticism of a communist country would be answered with the standard “You are interfering in the internal affairs of the country”. With increasing age, I have come to fully support this attitude, i.e. leave others to get on with their own lives, unless a country is really committing some awful crime, like murdering its own citizens (e.g. Ukraine), in which case a remedy needs to be found.
USA considers itself very much to be the world’s ‘international policeman’ but it only intervenes to its own benefit: there has to be oil involved or a lack of subservience to the US system for it to apply sanctions or intervene.
Are the Arabian states totalitarian? Many would say “yes” but is anyone bothered? If you read books written by people who have escaped from North Korea, you would definitely class North Korea as totalitarian but does anyone care? Is anyone attempting to change anything there?
Many regard Islam as denigrating women’s rights but is anyone going to march into all the muslim countries and ‘sort them out’? It is less than 100 years ago that women were allowed to vote in UK. The last person to be tried under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 was in 1944, so I am not sure we should regard ourselves or our way of life as superior to the rest of the world.
To summarize, I think we should let people get on with their lives and decide how they want to live without us imposing our ideas of ‘civilization’ on them.
I asked ‘how’, not whether the question should be asked at all; an entirely different matter.
The answer, which you avoid, is, of course, that you cannot ask the citizens of a totalitarian fascist dictatorship whether they would prefer democracy.
You can never know what system of government they prefer.
‘Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity. It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts.’
Mussolini 1932
I agree that overseas interventionism is, for the most part (with exceptions: the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and in 2000 that of Sierra Leone) a very bad idea.
That is only one (although a very good one) reason why I believe the barbaric and inhuman Russian invasion of Ukraine to be a criminal undertaking.
‘In public, the Kremlin tries to present the war as a battle for Russia’s survival as a sovereign nation. The most important stake, however, is the survival of the Russian ruling class and its model of political capitalism…….Political capitalism is characterized by the exploitation of political office to accumulate private wealth.
For Putin, this is essentially another stage in the process of post-Soviet consolidation that he began in the early 2000s by taming Russia’s oligarchs.
There was no way to integrate post-Soviet political capitalists into Western-led institutions that explicitly sought to eliminate them as a class by depriving them of their main competitive advantage: selective benefits bestowed by the post-Soviet states.
By launching the war in Ukraine, (Putin) protects the rational collective interests of the Russian ruling class……..To put it crudely, one cannot steal from the same source forever.’
Behind Russia’s War Is Thirty Years of Post-Soviet Class Conflict
VOLODYMYR ISHCHENKO
How? You can ask anyone anything. Under circumstances, it may be prudent to be aware who else is listening to your question.
Firstly, living in a totalitarian state is not necessarily a bad thing. Secondly, how really democratic are many democratic governments? Did any government ask you if you agreed to your country’s industry being destroyed to ostensibly save the planet, or if you agreed to mandatory vaccination, or if you agreed to financing the war in Ukraine (I am sure you agree but I am also sure nobody asked)?
Pavel Durov, the Telegram CEO, told Tucker Carlson that he was happiest working in the United Arab Emirates because it was the only country where the government had not attempted to influence his work, as opposed to the other, ‘democratic’ countries, such as USA, France, and other places I forget, which he had all had to leave because of their interference (and threats).
The UK government (among others) is becoming increasingly totalitarian: ask Julian Assange or anyone protesting against immigration.
So where is the ideal place to live, with a minimum of government interference? I have no idea.
Two-tier justice: Exhibit 731;
Remember the couple who threw a bottle at police during a protest? The lady got 20 months and the man banged up for well over 2 years? Maybe it’s a combo of chucking a projectile at the ‘far right’ and being called ‘Mohammed’ that gives you an automatic ‘Get out of jail free’ pass;
”A man has been jailed for his role in last month’s riot in Bristol city centre. Mohamed Osman, of Easton, admitted throwing a can at protesters in Castle Park on Saturday 3 August.
The 37-year-old pleaded guilty to violent disorder and was sentenced earlier today at Bristol Crown Court to a two-year prison sentence suspended for nine months and was also ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work.”
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-riot-man-sentenced-disorder-9533517
Check out the lenient sentences here as a comparison. It seems posting memes, shouting at dogs and throwing a single bottle, all while being white and protesting government policies ensures you’ll always get a lengthier sentence than a Muslim that beats up a white person. If this were vice versa you can bet the farm white people would be sent down for much longer. Do judges just pluck these sentences out of their backsides, I wonder??
”Two men have been jailed for attacking an innocent man during violent disorder in Darlington.
Arian Ahmed and Mujmain Uddin chased the man before attacking him in what was described as a ‘racially motivated’ attack.
The violent assault was captured on CCTV and showed the man being knocked to the ground before being kicked and punched.
The pair wrongly thought the victim had been making racial slurs towards them during violent disorder, which happened on the evening of August 5 in the North Lodge Park area.
Dozens of police officers were deployed to the area after small pockets of serious violence erupted between two groups of mostly males.
Ahmed handed himself in to police after seeing his picture posted in a police social media appeal and was later charged with violent disorder, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and possession of an offensive weapon.
Uddin was also arrested and charged with the same offences.
The pair pleaded guilty and appeared at Teesside Crown Court on Monday (September 2) for sentencing.
The judge sentenced 19-year-old Ahmed to ten months detention in a young offenders’ institute, while 21-year-old Uddin was jailed for 12 months.”
https://www.durham.police.uk/news/durham/court-results/2024/6.-september/two-sentenced-for-assaulting-man-during-violent-disorder
Does Estonia have more prisons than the UK despite being a much smaller country, or less prisoners?
Why not extend this idea to Nigeria? There, if a person is given a custodial sentence and is tall, they are incarcerated in a ‘short prison’ where facilities such as beds are just too small for comfort. If they want a drink they are given a mug filled with dirty water.
Surely such a country would be ideal to house these ‘far-Right’ white incendiaries who want to burn down the Reichstag or something.
There would be the added benefit that whoever we send to Nigeria would not be subject to racism. Only white people can be racist.
Could everyone please shut up about World War Two.
It was a lifetime ago. Most people now living in Britain were not alive at the time, nor do they know anyone who was an adult then. Moreover, the people who lived in Britain during the War were vastly different from us today.
Britain’s part in the War is dredged up from the abyssal depths of history to serve the politics of today. Just as in Germany, though it isn’t full of national socialists, the electoral success of new parties is constrained by raising the spectres nazism as if the country was still in 1949 and having to deal with those who still lived at that time.
Harking back to the War and the different world in which it happened prevents the challenges of today being addressed with the novelty and flexibility these new situations require.
Certain Americans have never been keen on Churchill. Some have lived in the White House. However, Churchill was not responsible for the mess he inherited in 1940, whatever else he can be criticised for.
History is everyone’s servant, before becoming their master.
Many of the problems of today’s Europe derive from WW2.
Nevertheless WW2 led to the long peace in Western Europe.
Just about everyone would like to get back to ‘The Long Peace’
The post WW2 settlement in Western Europe shows us the way:
‘Opposite this (Russian) Army in Central Europe, the nations of the Atlantic Community maintain an army structured into 26 divisions and about 1600 tactical aircraft…….for almost 30 years, it has accomplished the basic mission for which it was formed-to deter (Russian) attack on Western Europe.
Can we any longer accept maldeployments; lack of war reserve equipment; shortages in ammunition stocks; inferiorities in artillery, tanks, chemical and electronic warfare capabilities; nonstandardization of equipment and tactical doctrine; and vulnerabilities of lines of communication? It is not just the current but the future effectiveness of this army which is in question. While agitation for the reduction of US forces in Europe has subsided for the moment, it could rise again if within the US it is thought or perceived, however fairly or unfairly, that Atlantic partners are not bearing an equitable burden.
Erosion of the effectiveness of the Atlantic army will inevitably result in an erosion of political will, strategic flexibility, and freedom of action. As a bare minimum, it is the role of the Atlantic army to replace the strategic nuclear deterrent as the instrument with which the attack option is foreclosed to (Russia).
But that is a bare minimum. In a modern strategy the Atlantic army must provide for the West a sense of security to a degree that will encourage it to act and react in respect to global events with confidence. That forecloses to Russia the options of intimidation, blackmail, and political leverage.’
LAND FORCES IN MODERN STRATEGY by LIEUTENANT GENERAL DE WITT C. SMITH, JR. US ARMY 1977
The British Army on the Rhine was the army of Churchill, Alanbrooke and Montgomery.
That army has been destroyed by dim witted, short sighted and self serving politicians
And guess what?
The shades of war now loom once more to our East.
‘Those who ignore the lessons of the past, will be doomed to repeat them.’
Santayana
The truth about World War II
‘In Mein Kampf, during the lead-up to the war, and even through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact years, Hitler had planned eventually to invade Russia, destroy the Soviet Union, put an end to what he called Jewish Bolshevism, and annex and then eventually resettle almost all of European Russia.’
The German totalitatian dictator told the world what he intended at a very early stage.
‘Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity. It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts.’
‘Fascism is therefore opposed to all individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism; and it is opposed to all Jacobinistic utopias and innovations……It does not believe in the possibility of “happiness” on earth.’
“The Doctrine of Fascism” (1932), Benito Mussolini
The Italian totalitarian dictator told the world what he intended at a very early stage.
‘And, if you believe the forecasts and the estimates are based on actual work, the real work of people who understand this, who have devoted their whole lives to this, in 15 years, there may be 22 million fewer Russians. I ask you to think about this figure: a seventh of the country’s population. If the current trend continues, the nation’s survival will be in jeopardy’
In his first address to the Federation Council in 2000, Putin framed demographic problems as a threat to national security
And then told the world what he was going to do about it:
“First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,”
“We are a free nation and our place in the modern world will be defined only by how successful and strong we are,”
Putin 2005
And Russian state security agencies then began the implementation
‘While the 9th Directorate of the FSB’s Fifth Service Department for Operational Information prepared for the occupation of Ukraine from July 2021, the 11th Unit of the Department for Operational Information, responsible for Moldova, was assessing plans for the next round of operations under the direction of Major General Dmitry Milyutin.
In November 2020, the FSB’s strategic objective in Moldova was to bring about ‘The full restoration of the strategic partnership between Moldova and the Russian Federation’
FSB Outline of Operational Aims and Means, 21 November 2021.
“In Australia, the tobacco war has been a disaster”
If only we had previous examples of what happened when you (mindlessly, well-meaning even…) prohibit lawful products enjoyed by a large section of the citizens.
Fortunately, we have plenty of examples of what happens when damaging ‘products’ are, effectively, made lawful:
‘Marijuana is the second most widely used intoxicant in adolescence, and teens who engage in heavy marijuana use often show disadvantages in neurocognitive performance, macrostructural and microstructural brain development, and alterations in brain functioning….’
Effects of Cannabis on the Adolescent Brain 2014
‘Teens who use cannabis recreationally are two to four times as likely to develop psychiatric disorders, such as depression and suicidality, than teens who don’t use cannabis at all.’
Recreational Cannabis Use By Teens Linked to Risk of Depression, Suicidality 2023
‘In 2022, 30.7% of US high school 12th graders reported using cannabis in the past year……Cannabis use has been linked to a range of mental health problems, such as depression and social anxiety.2 People who use cannabis are more likely to develop temporary psychosis (not knowing what is real, hallucinations, and paranoia) and long-lasting mental disorders, including schizophrenia……’
Cannabis and Teens 2024
Of course the aim is not to stop smokers smoking but rather to force them in to semi criminality and the sort of violence that is occurring in Australia. These authoritarian and freedom depriving measures are deliberate and intended to enrage.
“Offenders could serve sentence in Estonian prisons to ease overcrowding”
And how does a small ex commy country have ample prison space compared to the UK? Because its justice system works, and I’ll bet it has far tougher sentences than the soft uk! Deterant works!
I guess they would smash through your door with their jack boots and drag you off to a long long prison sentence for serious crimes!
We all know that we won’t send prisoners out to Estonia. The human rights lawyers will say it breaches their right to a family life by not being able to have visitors and cause mental distress. And it will harm the prisoners’ children by preventing them seeing their parent.
That’s actually true, if we consider prison as the remedy for burglary, GBH and the like, most of whom are young offenders. Even more so when we think of today’s political prisoners. Were I banged up for my writing, to be denied prison visits from my family because I’d been sentenced to transportation to a foreign land would be more than double the punishment.
The upside is that Estonian jails may be state-run corrective institutions, whereas our prisons are criminal-run hell-holes.
This BBC News article, about the possibility that Lucy Letby may be innocent, makes two statements as if they are indisputable facts:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3d93kpkl83o
“Letby, a former neonatal nurse, is one of the UK’s most notorious modern serial killers.”
“At the end of her first trial, Letby was sentenced to multiple whole-life terms, meaning she will spend the rest of her life in prison.”
Very odd.
The primary purpose of the press appears to be to instruct us who to like and who to hate, and so discourage us from asking questions about truth.
The motives are seldom entirely clear, though in Lucy Letby’s case covering up the gaping holes in the hull of NHS Glorious is a strong possibility they consider worth destroying a young life for.
Celebrities like Prince Harry’s and Meghan’s characters are actually irrelevant, but keeping public hatred (or in other cases adulation) on the simmer is an effective distraction from significant issues.
We have been taught to hate Donald Trump mindlessly (even recently a “well-educated” friend was scandalised to hear someone, ie me, actually defend him). We have been taught to hate Tommy Robinson in an utterly consistent and successful campaign ensuring that very few know anything about him except that he’s bad. We have been taught to hate Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban as anti-democratic when both have stronger voting mandates than any Western globalist puppet. And of course we’ve been taught to hate imaginary bogeymen like the “Far Right” (to the extent that even sceptics condemn the “Far Right rioters” before speaking up for ordinary folk, rather than wondering if black-clad hooded gangs might actually be agents provocateurs).
In every case a little research reveals blatant lies from the press – not to mention from elected representatives, police and intelligence chiefs, judges and leaders of other institutions strangely lock-stepped.
Orban/Putin have ‘stronger voting mandates than any Western globalist puppet’
Hmmm……let’s see……..
Orban:
‘For most of his twelve-year rule, Orbán’s base of support has hovered around a third of the electorate. Orbán has not had majority support at any point in his tenure…’
‘As the 2022 election neared and the unity of the opposition coalition became clear, Orbán adapted again: He changed the voters without changing the districts. He did this by means of a November 2021 law that legalized “voter tourism.” Suddenly, voters could register to vote anywhere in the country even if they did not live in their new district.’
‘In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights judged Hungary’s practice of fining the opposition for attempting to speak in parliament to be a violation of freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights. Years later, nothing has changed……
‘Orbán’s 2022 election giveaways were so expensive that they put the state budget deeply in the red. He has already spent much of the money that the EU had allocated to Hungary in the current budget cycle, but the European Commission notified Hungary the day after the election that it would start the procedure to cut Hungary’s EU funds. While Russia has come to Hungary’s aid in the past, sanctions for the Ukraine war will limit Russia’s largesse. China has also been a big funder of Hungarian projects, but a coming global slowdown may limit China’s willingness to foot Orbán’s bills.’
Journal of Democracy 2022: How Viktor Orban wins
Putin:
‘As many as half of all the votes reported for Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election last week were fraudulent, according to Russian independent media reports using a statistical method devised by analyst Sergey Shpilkin to estimate the extent of voter manipulation.’
‘All three estimates suggest that “fraud on a scale unprecedented in Russian electoral history” was committed, added Matthew Wyman, a specialist in Russian politics at Keele University in the UK.
The three news outlets all used the same algorithmic method to estimate the extent of voter fraud. It is named after Russian statistician Sergey Shpilkin, who developed it a decade ago.
Shpilkin’s work analysing Russian elections has won him several prestigious independent awards in Russia, including the PolitProsvet prize for electoral research awarded in 2012 by the Liberal Mission Foundation.
However, he has also made some powerful enemies by denouncing electoral fraud. In February 2023, Shpilkin was added to Russia’s list of “foreign agents”
Those don’t look like strong voter endorsements to me
As the learned gentleman from Albania said:
“When you vote at gunpoint, the process is more expedited”
Is an algorithmic method the same as data modelling? We all know the accuracy of modelling.
Home secretary chairs summit on tackling boat gangs says the BBC.
I’ve had a brilliant idea! Why don’t we make people smuggling illegal?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89wneepgj3o
Taking the firkin piss.
“Offenders could serve sentence in Estonian prisons to ease overcrowding”
Well, that’s handy for Two-Tier and the Great Replacement Project!
You can be sure that the ones he wants to send to rot in Estonian prisons, as far away from their families as a Russian Gulag, are NOT Third World criminals in Britain, but the Indigenous English, Welsh, Scots & Irish who dared to protest against the Mass Third World Invasion that nobody ever voted for.
Two-Tier is following in the footsteps of Closet Stalinist Clement Attlee, who started rounding up 100,000 English children from poor families after WW2 and transporting them to Australia like tiny criminals.
Then Attlee and his successors started importing 200,000 Third World ethnics to replace them (which eventually turned into millions), threatening English War Widows with heavy fines and imprisonment for refusing to welcome Indians and Africans into their homes as Bed & Breakfast lodgers, sleeping in the empty beds of the widows’ children killed in WW2.
Funny how that is never taught in history lessons, at school or university.
“Prepare for Starmer to let in millions more migrants” – We must leave the ECHR and cap immigration, writes David Frost”
No, Mr. Frost, we have been promised “caps on immigration” for years now, and we see the result.
We need a TOTAL MORATORIUM ON ALL ASYLUM SEEKERS, REFUGEES, and other THIRD WORLD PARASITES, for at least Five Years, renewable indefinitely, and a total ban on any kind of welfare benefit for anyone except BRITISH CITIZENS.
We also need the Coast Guard, the Royal Navy, and civilian volunteer seafarers to board and arrest the crew of any RNLI lifeboat or other craft going out into the Channel in order to operate a ferry service for hostile, criminal illegal aliens in dinghies.