In Wartime, Dissent Should Not be Confused With Disloyalty
There follows a guest post by Jon Zobenica and Benjamin Schwarz about why those dissenting from the prevailing orthodoxy about the war in Ukraine should not be smeared as traitors. Ben is the CEO of the US Free Speech Union. You can subscribe to the US FSU’s Substack newsletter here.
During the Cold War they were called comsymps, or were accused of being fellow travellers or fifth columnists or maybe just useful idiots – i.e., those who weren’t full-throated enough in their opposition to all things Soviet and whose opinions dared deviate to whatever degree from official American consensus. Senator Joseph McCarthy even referred to them as the “prancing minions of the Moscow party line,” and their deviations from consensus could – and in some cases did – get them accused of treason.
This habit of calling into question the patriotism and loyalty of those who buck consensus is back with full force, only instead of coming from the reactionary right (the likes of Senator McCarthy), such calls are coming from those in the prestige media, academe, and the current White House and State Department – much more liberal players who are merely availing themselves of McCarthyite tactics.
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson has come in for particular abuse in this area. For questioning the wisdom of America’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict (given a lack of vital national interests to the United States), and for validating Russian concerns about proposed NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia (both former Soviet republics), Carlson has been called “America’s Most Watched Kremlin Propagandist” by Slate contributor William Saletan; has been accused of flirting with treason by Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor (emeritus) and former judicial advisor to President Barack Obama; and has been charged by those too numerous to count with parroting, echoing, repeating, mouthing, and so on “Putin’s talking points.” So plentiful is talk of Carlson being on Team Kremlin that one could be forgiven for thinking the slur has become something of a talking point itself.
Professor Tribe’s comments, made in a since deleted tweet posted on Monday, February 21st, were especially regrettable, coming as they did from a person of his position and training. That tweet read:
Led by Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, the GOP’s Trump wing appears to be throwing its weight behind Putin. If Putin opts to wage war on our ally, Ukraine, such “aid and comfort” to an “enemy” would appear to become “treason” as defined by Article III of the U.S. Constitution.
One is tempted to joke, à la Mary McCarthy, that every word of that tweet is untrue, including and and the. Russia, whatever our prevailing national opinion on it, is not a declared enemy with whom we are at war even now, post-invasion. Ukraine, whatever our prevailing national sentiments toward it, is not an official ally. Domestic deviation from prevailing national sentiments and opinions does not come anywhere near the definition of “aid and comfort” as laid out in Article III of the Constitution.
David French – former U.S. Army major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, Iraq War veteran, Bronze Star recipient, and outspoken critic of the Trump wing of the GOP – had this to say in direct response to Professor Tribe’s tweet: “This is completely false. Constitutional text, history, and precedent say this is false. It’s not even in the same ballpark as the truth.” In his tweet, French linked to a page at the National Constitution Center site, where two of the centre’s scholars elucidate the treason clause, Article III:
While the Constitution’s Framers shared the centuries-old view that all citizens owed a duty of loyalty to their home nation, they included the Treason Clause not so much to underscore the seriousness of such a betrayal, but to guard against the historic use of treason prosecutions by repressive governments to silence otherwise legitimate political opposition. Debate surrounding the Clause at the Constitutional Convention thus focused on ways to narrowly define the offense, and to protect against false or flimsy prosecutions.
. . . In other words, the Constitution requires both concrete action and an intent to betray the nation before a citizen can be convicted of treason; expressing traitorous thoughts or intentions alone does not suffice.
Yet just this past Friday, February 25, former New York Senator, former Secretary of State, and former Democratic nominee for the Presidency, Hillary Clinton, was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe parroting Professor Tribe’s flimsy accusations. We need to call out “those people who are giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin,” Secretary Clinton thuggishly remonstrated. She criticised those who question the received foreign-policy wisdom, “who are unfortunately being broadcast by Russian media not only inside Russia but in Europe to demonstrate the division within our own country.” (Our diversity is our strength – except, apparently, when it’s not.) “We have to be much more united,” Secretary Clinton admonished us, because our national divisiveness “plays right into the ambitions” of those who would “divide and conquer the west without ever invading us but by setting us against each other.”
Those whom Secretary Clinton excoriated have very different views from hers about America’s role in the world and the motivations behind Russia’s conduct toward Ukraine. Certainly, she should strenuously challenge those views. Instead, however, she attempted to quash debate by pronouncing that her opponents’ views approximate treachery against the nation because, as she reckons, their dissent objectively – an adverb Stalinists were wont to deploy – supports the ambitions of a country she has defined as America’s enemy. This tactic used to be called red-baiting.
Secretary Clinton did bring up a good point, even if she did so unwittingly. Our national divisions have long been exploited by clever and ambitious propagandists from the Soviet Union and then from the Russian Federation. Civil Rights marchers protesting the status quo in the Jim Crow South made for great footage that highlighted American divisions and hypocrisies for Soviet Bloc audiences, all the more so when – with Gandhian sangfroid – the marchers put themselves in circumstances where they were sure to be attacked by the reactionary forces of the status quo. Would that make Martin Luther King a useful idiot or a fifth columnist? (Some on the reactionary right tried to paint him thus. And remember, this all happened during the height of the Cold War, when the great powers were competing globally for potential client states, not least among the newly independent and predominantly brown-skinned nations of the once-colonial Global South.) More recently, Russian propagandists have availed themselves of the words and actions of groups ranging from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter, words and actions that have brought to light further divisions within America – economic divisions, racial divisions, etc. Are members of groups like these culpable for the uses to which their (domestic) social and political critiques are put by foreign propaganda mills? Are they to stifle such critiques for fear of finding themselves accused, like Tucker Carlson, of flirting with treason?
Treason, of course, involves waging war against your home nation or providing aid and comfort to an enemy of your home nation in time of war. So what about those who explicitly, vociferously protested our involvement in Vietnam? In that case, American military forces were directly engaged with those of a foreign government, that of North Vietnam. The United States alleged that North Vietnam was the aggressor, having violated the border between north and south (established in 1954) by providing men and materiel to the Vietcong, who were taking up arms against an independent South Vietnam. The United States therefore entered into a military alliance with South Vietnam to repel these attacks, in a fashion that included bombing targets in North Vietnam.
Were kids who took to the streets and campuses to protest the war giving aid and comfort to the enemy? What about their moms who supported them by joining Another Mother for Peace – and such people as the former Miss America Bess Myerson, the celebrated paediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, and the actors Debbie Reynolds, Donna Reed, Dick van Dyke, Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman, and Lauren Bacall, all of whom actively supported those moms – were they giving aid and comfort to the enemy? Many Americans at the time thought so. Many who were alive then still do. But those protesters weren’t guilty of anything like treason, and in fact many Americans celebrated them, and still do, for the stand they took and the divisions they pried open. What, however, of Jane Fonda’s visit to a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery (a weapon used, of course, to shoot down American pilots, many of whom, at the time of Fonda’s visit, were being held as prisoners of war)? This was an act of commission. Unlike civil-rights and antiwar marchers, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protesters, or Tucker Carlson, all whom might find (or have found) their words and actions put to Russian uses without their intention, Fonda traveled to enemy territory of her own volition and allowed her visit to the gun emplacement to be filmed. The footage shows her – in all her Hollywood fame – seated behind the gun sights and surrounded by applauding North Vietnamese soldiers. She looks as delighted as a birthday girl at Disneyland.
It’s not a good look, which Fonda herself came to realise. It may even have been somewhat comforting to the North Vietnamese, though nowhere near to the degree that it was distressing to Americans. Whatever the case, Jane Fonda was never charged with treason. Many despise her for what she did, just as many despise Tucker Carlson for what he does. But our culture and our society have found ways to coexist with them both, and even to let them thrive. It is by far the better option than dumbing down our concept of treason, the better to set upon each other’s throats. That’s the very divisiveness and national self-destruction that Secretary Clinton, with one breath, claims to fear and, with the other, exacerbates with her loose talk about giving “aid and comfort” to Vladimir Putin.
Some words must be said about these Putin talking points people are supposedly parroting; for Tucker Carlson isn’t alone in finding himself so charged. Several weeks ago, President Joe Biden’s White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, accused Republican Senator Josh Hawley, of Missouri, of “digesting Russian misinformation and . . . parroting the talking points of Russian propagandist leaders.” (This came as a result of Hawley’s suggesting that, for strategic reasons, the United States should consider withdrawing its commitment to expanding NATO into Ukraine.) At nearly the same time, State Department spokesperson Ned Price leveled the following remark at an Associated Press reporter (after being rankled by the reporter’s unyielding skepticism regarding a report Price had just made about alleged Russian misinformation): “If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government . . . and want to find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do.”
The unavoidable takeaway from all this is that parroting isn’t the actual problem in the eyes of officialdom. In fact parroting is preferred, almost insisted on. But you must parrot Us, officialdom asserts. Anything less, and we’ll accuse you of parroting Them. Not only is this incompatible with the principles we presume to stand for at home and abroad (those relating to freedom of speech, an independent and even adversarial press, etc.), but it also betrays an ignorance of the long public debate around foreign policy as it relates to Russia. Working backwards chronologically, here are but a few highlights from that debate.
In a 2016 then President Obama said, “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” He added that “we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.” One can agree or disagree with these assessments. But at the time they were offered, it probably didn’t occur to those who now find Russian disinformation hidden in every lampshade to claim that President Obama was naught but a Kremlin mouthpiece.
In 2015, John J. Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor of political science (and a West Point graduate), gave a lecture titled “The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis.”
In that lecture, he cited the 2008 Bucharest Summit (in which NATO pledged to one day incorporate Ukraine and Georgia) as a proximate cause of the 2008 war in Georgia and a contributing cause of Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea and its military support of pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.
The Bucharest Summit Declaration, from April 3rd, 2008, reads in part: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” Reflecting the Russian foreign-policy consensus, Vladimir Putin has consistently said that he would never allow that to happen, that such an action would be considered a direct threat to Russia. And Professor Mearsheimer doesn’t wonder why, reminding us that the United States has for two hundred years proclaimed the rights of a hegemon within its own hemisphere (via the Monroe Doctrine), that we have spent more than sixty years in a state of pique over the fact that a socialist (and, for a long time, Soviet-allied) Cuba sits just off our southern shore, and that we would never allow, say, Canada or Mexico to enter into a military alliance with Russia or China against us. Ukraine, as both Professor Mearsheimer and President Obama note, is a core interest of Russia’s. It is less obviously of vital national importance to the United States. It was not treasonous for Professor Mearsheimer and President Obama to say so, and it’s not treasonous for Tucker Carlson to do so either.
One is free to agree or disagree with the geopolitical and historical analysis offered by Mearsheimer – analysis largely echoed by such disparate figures as the British historian and sociologist Perry Anderson; the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock; the historian and foreign-policy expert Ronald Steel; the editorial director and publisher of the Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel; her late husband, the historian of Russia Stephen F. Cohen; the British Russia scholar and journalist Anatol Lieven; the former New Republic columnist Robert Wright; the MIT political scientists Barry R. Posen and Stephen Van Evera; the Texas A&M political scientist Christopher Layne; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief David K. Shipler – but such analysis long predates Tucker Carlson’s supposedly treasonous broadcasts on the Fox News Channel. In fact, such analysis long predates Vladimir Putin’s involvement in world affairs.
In 1959, no less towering a figure in twentieth-century American diplomacy than George F. Kennan joined a debate with former Secretary of State Dean Acheson in the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine, on the subject of potential U.S. military disengagement from western Europe. Kennan was one of the architects of America’s containment policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, but as he made clear in Foreign Affairs, such a policy – in his eyes – had been aimed at improving America’s negotiating position, from which containment (and its inherent tensions) might eventually be eased in favour of compromise solutions and a more lasting and stable peace, for both the United States and the Soviet Union, and for the nations of both eastern and western Europe. The policy as he imagined it was never meant to be permanent. “Perhaps the deepest issue at stake in this whole problem of disengagement,” Kennan wrote, “resolves around this point.”
Kennan’s article was written against the backdrop of, among other things, ongoing tensions over West Berlin and the crushed Hungarian uprising of 1956 – events that in the eyes of Kennan’s opponents militated against his proposals for disengagement. Kennan made sure to note, however, that it was also written against the backdrop of ongoing U.S. military presence in West Germany, of West Germany’s then recent (1955) admission into NATO, and of the absence of any agreement regarding the diplomatic status of nations that might manage to extricate themselves from the Soviet Bloc. “The sharpness of the challenge which was presented to Soviet interests,” Kennan wrote,
was heightened by the fact that any Soviet withdrawal in the face of the respective pressures would have had the nature of a forced unilateral retreat unattended by any comparable concessions, or indeed by any concessions at all, on the Western side. Not only would a yielding to pressures of this sort have been immediately humiliating, but there was the further danger, against which Moscow had no visible protection, that territories thus released from participation in the Warsaw Pact might end up by joining the Atlantic Alliance [i.e., NATO], thus effecting a major alteration in the world balance of power. [Emphasis added.]
One didn’t have to be sympathetic to Soviet designs to see how unacceptable such a lopsided eventuality would be to the Kremlin. Yet, as Kennan noted, Soviet behavior in response to such proposed lopsidedness was characterized by many as mere Soviet aggression. Nor was it realistic, Kennan continued, to assume that the Soviets would view their own interests and security in precisely the terms the United States conceived of those matters for them. Ergo, the Soviets “will be unlikely to regard as a fit subject of negotiation a mere retraction of their power in favor of the extension to . . . Eastern Europe of the international military, political and economic arrangements now prevailing, under American aegis or encouragement, in the western half of the continent.”
Replace the word Soviet with the word Russian in the following, and you have a perfectly melancholy comment on the current crisis in Ukraine: “We may be paying, here, a bitter price for our tendency over the whole span of Western-Soviet relations to dismiss all Soviet ideological statements as ‘just propaganda,’ and to discuss with Soviet leaders everything but the main thing.”
Given his perspective and reasoning, it’s no wonder that four decades later Kennan characterised America’s push to expand NATO eastward – a policy, contrary to repeated U.S. pledges made to Russian officials at the end of the Cold War, that Russia today sees as prompting the current crisis in Ukraine – as “the most fateful error of American policy in the post cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected . . . to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.” Once again, wise people can disagree – and have disagreed – with such analysis as Kennan’s. One could argue that it is misguided or even dangerous. It is certainly not truth beyond questioning. But neither is it disinformation or misinformation. It is intelligently conceived and articulated information, of the sort that is vital to informed debate and an informed citizenry. And an informed citizenry is never more important than in times of national and even global tension, when prudence and the consideration of complex realities must not give way to Manichaean passions and simple if stirring invocations of “values.”
As Kennan wrote in Foreign Affairs, “National interest, not sentiment or emotion, forms the normal basis for policy; and nations must not be expected to ignore the most vital of their own interests.” It is a view that has been expressed as well by everyone from President Obama to Charles de Gaulle, who famously remarked, in essence, that no nation has friends, only interests.
Cold and unsentimental that may be, but it is not a new idea, and again, it has been voiced by people all over the political spectrum, including – yes, more recently – Tucker Carlson. That such an idea is now being recast as treasonous indicates a great and alarming degradation of American discourse, and an even more alarming instinct to stifle debate when debate is most needed. That such degradation and such instinct to chill speech are emanating from high officialdom, the prestige press, and academe bodes ill for free and informed expression in the United States right now. Alas, our history is replete with instances – from the Alien and Sedition Acts through the wholesale destruction of civil liberties during the First World War, from the witch hunts of the early Cold War to President George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleisher’s warning that “people should watch what they say” when questioning the Global War on Terror – of a pathological tendency to suppress dissent and to demand conformity by conflating criticism of national policy with disloyalty or treason. That we presume to embody values that must be defended abroad but that we can’t tolerate at home reveals something fraudulent – wilfully blind and potentially dangerous – in our amour propre.
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Of course the same arguments apply when your country is “fighting a deadly pandemic”.
You beat me to this point.
And I think it’s a good illustration of the value of “Lockdown Sceptics” morphing into the “Daily Sceptic” and dealing with non-covid topics, because there are lots of parallels.
I have emailed Will and Toby and given them my “attaboy” for re-branding this site …. so that it could take on ALL the faux or dubious narratives circulating around the world.
This site will never run out of important topics – or faux narratives – that need to be challenged by someone.
Indeed, and in many ways the covid scam was a symptom/outcome of a long term trend – a logical development rather than an anomaly. That’s what is worrying. Freedom of speech is the big one – hardly anyone really believes in it any more, if they ever did.
This is one of the rare places where, for the most part, people can agree to disagree. At the moment, it’s one of the closest things I know to a civilised, reasonable conversation.
They were disappearing before 2020: people curbing their speech for fear of “errors” that would amount to heresy; reciting what was “politically correct” without believing it; and deciding that those who disagreed with them must be stupid, mad, infantile or evil.
In no time at all, the attacks on Covid dissidents reminded me of those on climate sceptics.
I find Tucker Carlson loud but often good value and he has an enthusiasm in his style which is more than can be said for many UK commentators. On this subject he is right as this excellent article portrays.
I have been saying from the outset of talks that the USA would think very differently if Cuba, which is geographically in its underbelly, accepted WMD from Russia. It is is the same for the Ukraine which sits in the same geographic position to Russia as Cuba to the US, so it should not be surprising if Russia is very unhappy and reacts the way it has with the continuing threat of Ukraine and others joining NATO.
While I disagree with its actions, I cannot disgreee with Russia’s sentiment but it is not make me a traitor for thinking it.
Agree with this. Good to see that Daily Sceptics is welcoming diversity of views, even if the editorial position seems in line with the corporate media narrative on this topic.
However, I seem to recall that the original position on vaccines was very pro. However, recent articles make me believe that the editorial position has rightly changed. I think it will on this topic too.
The quotes about “interests” are spot on. Palmerston from the mid nineteenth century is the statesman who tends to get quoted here with his comment that “we have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
In the absence of corporate media brainwashing everyone to see Putin as yet another new Hitler, it is hard to see what true national interest is served by pumping up Ukraine versus Russia, fomenting Revolution there back in 2014 and arming it.
“Diversity of views” used to be standard procedure in this country before it became the Johnson Cabal Tyranny, answerable only to Biden, Bill Gates and the UN.
We had more sovereignty and a free uncensored media – not saturated with and overwhelmed by lying propaganda – when we were in the in the EU Parliament ‘ noisily dissenting’!
Anna De Buisseret explains in great detail and erudition the illegality of everything being done to us under the Johnson Cabal which trashes our Common Law Human Rights and the freedom of journalists and the press – people should listen to her.
The BBC having lied to the people and brainwashed them over “Covid” has now reached new depths of mendacity and hysterical depravity in its absurd propaganda coverage of the Russo-Ukraine dispute.
There are no longer any informed adults in the room!
Goebbels would be proud!
The BBC is finished as a journalistic entity – it is regarded with scorn and derision by anyone with a functioning critical brain. It’s a tragedy a bit like the collapse of the Soviet Union. It will get bought out by foreign interests and the UK will have lost its sole global reach broadcaster wholly owned by UK citizens.
The last bit is hardly worrying- I for one don’t want to pay for or ‘own’ the BBC. I don’t watch it or listen to it – nor does anyone else have to- and it grates on me that I have to pay for it with the ultimate threat of imprisonment if I refuse.
No you don’t. We junked our box 15 years ago, never regretted it, anything you want is on the internet, and I gather – so I am told – that some VPNs such as Private Internet Access can access the iPlayer. So I am told. I wouldn’t DREAM of doing such a thing, of course…
It’s actually hard to blame Putin for doing what he is doing, if you actually report honestly on how the Russians are scrupulously allowing corridors for civilians to escape. They are doing everything they can to avoid loss of life, in total contrast to Operation Shock N Awe.
I want everyone in the UK to imagine Joe Biden arming Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP with $5bn, effecting an overthrow of Boris Johnson’s Government and then supporting seven years of telling the English that they are going back into the EU and the SE of England will increasingly only allow Gaelic to be spoken. Obviously, the electoral dynamics in the UK are a bit different, but based on geographical land area, not so terribly different.
Go on, tell me that you would take the Wicked Witch of Narnia’s coup d’etat like a submissive little wimp.
“They are doing everything they can to avoid loss of life, in total contrast to Operation Shock N Awe.”
Which version of RT are you watching? Deliberate targeting of non military buildings and areas is “doing everything they can to avoid loss of life”? What planet do you come from?
DS is now a home for unreconstructed US/NATO hate apparatchiks, mouthpieces for Russian sysops propaganda; every time people like you spout this world class garbage you endorse Putin’s activities past and present – including illegal wars, state sponsored assassinations, support and use of chemical/bio weapons, acts of terrorism on foreign soil against civilians, State sponsored doping on an industrial scale some of which from recent events in the Winter Olympics is blatant child abuse.
No, the West is not an idyll, far from it. Corrupt governments exist the world over; very few are engaged in aggressive wars to expand their hegemony – funny that the two most fervent “anti imperialist” regimes are subjecting sovereign states to sustained and illegal acts whilst still sitting in the UN are China and Russia. And no, I am not a fan of many many aspects of US life and politics.
I’m not at all sure about this. It seems odd that the BBC are quoting very specific Russian military casualties, 5,000 or so, where do these came from? Also, Ukrainian civilian casualties, low 100s, so maybe 10 Russian soldiers killed per civilian killed, that’s odd if the Russians are really interested in genocide.
Why no Ukrainian military casualty figures.
I remain very sceptical that at a time when USA and EU covid reported fatalities are at over 50% of their record high the narrative has totally changed & covid has disappeared from the news bulletins replaced by a war in a country which I bet 95% of the population couldn’t locate on a map & which is of precious little strategic significance to us.
I’ve also noted (it’s impossible to miss) the increased skepticism about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines. I think the editors and contributors are actually following the science and are not afraid to state what the evidence now looks like. If only other sites would follow this example.
He doth protest too loudly… For 8 years the ‘defensive’ NATO (ie US) has been poking poking poking Russia on one side of Ukraine… 1. funding the likes of white supremacist Azov Battalion to illegally (ie breaking the Minsk Accord)bomb and cleanse the east (Donblass) of ethnic Russians 2. Arming and funding Kiev with a ‘view’ to their joining Nato, 3. Last straw – nuclear arms and Kiev. Just because Truss is dumb abd dumber doesn’t mean the rest of us think history began a week ago. Look at a map of the Ukraine. A generous third are ethnic Russians. The US and the UK created this situation through installing a puppet govt in 2014 and then arming them to break the peace accord and promising them nato membership. The west are treating rhe Ukrainians with contempt and couldn’t care less if they all die. BTW rhe Bidens are up to their necks in dirty deals a la gas and Ukraine. Watch that space.
In a nutshell. Well said.
Quite agree!
Yes.
Faecebook currently allowing fascist Azov Brigade posts and support as long as they’re not TOO Nazi in nature.
Meanwhile, if you doubt the efficacy of a face mask or PCR test or HCQ Faecebook will remove you toot sweet.
The Ukrainian Nationalist Azov Brigade uses the Runic symbol of 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” ( responsible for the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane ) as its logo on flags and uniforms – you can’t get more “Nazi” than that!
Well, I’m glad to say I shut down my Facebook account six or so years ago and I’ve never regretted it for one second. Oh that 500 million more people would do that. Trump has now launched a new social media platform for ‘deplorables’ and others that Facebook would ban.
You left out the fact that the Imperial EU’s fingerprints are all over it. NATO is de facto now the military wing of the EU.
Thanks for a good belly laugh on a drab Wednesday morning.
Yours is the first mention I’ve read of the EU with regard to all this.
Re: The Bidens up to their necks in dirty deals in the Ukraine …
Count this as another scandal that our “watchdog” press will never expose.
Here’s another one: The Epstein/Maxwell “sex trafficking operation” – which went on for decades and included probably hundreds of VIP “clients” – none of whom have been questioned by authorities prosecuting or “investigating” said trafficking operation (which was also a blackmail/extortion operation).
There are a few takeaways from this article and more generally from the last two years. For those with an agenda, the narrative is everything; Narratives require colossal energy to maintain; Narratives require even more energy if they deviate from social norms (encouraging kids to change gender) or observable phenomenon (the world is heating up and becoming unliveable; polar bears are dying out as a species) etc; Despite all the efforts and resources dedicated to this, narratives are often brittle e.g. few parents want their child to change genders; polar bears can be observed in the real world etc; Those pushing narratives are seen as Machiavellian criminal masterminds, all powerful and with an unusually sharp eye for how to invest in people who can further their diabolical plans; but the hysteria directed toward those who deviate from the narrative suggests much less control and much less power even for the very wealthy; far from being confident global manipulators they often seem out of their depth; Any serious focus on agenda pushers (BLM, diversity, trans and gay groups, pro-war etc.) often reveal a combination of hustling for cash and genuine delusion e.g. BLM’s financial scandals are fairly tawdry stuff; their stated… Read more »
The US is inherently racist, it wasn’t that long ago when segregation was the norm etc etc. I can go on and on and on but won’t. Americans don’t see it, everyone else does.
I would say more than racist, they are race obsessed.
They just go on and on and on about it.
They have infected the world with all their obsessions!
The US is now toxic to fair elections, human rights ,basic freedoms, free-speech and democracy!
We are trapped in their web of total corruption, deceit and lies!
WE aren’t trapped in it, we just have politicians who are controlled by them. If we demanded a referendum to leave NATO and end the Special Relationship, that would be the decisive final kick for Brexit.
You should not lift your “retrik” from an episode of Star Trek, The Original Series, it is so 1960’s Student Union bollox.
America is inherently racist in the same sense everyone is. We all gravitate towards our own, however we define that. The measure of decency is how aware we are of these impulses and what attempts we perhaps make to compensate. The goal in America of affirmative action is one such example, however flawed.
Contrast that with more recent attempts by diversity types to focus once again on skin colour and ethnicity, and even attempts to segregate by ethnicity, to witness what happens when the less able give full run to their impulses.
White Europeans here and in north America are growing tired of the endless comments like your own about how we don’t quite measure up to the standards in your head. The people who invoked affirmative action and abolished slavery hardly need lectured by the shallow.
The Black population in the US is the most prosperous and healthy Black population on this planet. They have more opportunities to gain wealth and a comfortable life that any Black population in the developing world.
How does your “racism” explain this?
Bombing Arabs for fun is racist.
But bombing people on British streets isn’t racist. Is that what you’re saying?
‘I can go on and on and on but won’t..’
Please do, I have a bucket of popcorn ready and it’s a dull day.
Really great analysis.
It seems now that as the mud starts to slip, another crisis/issue is pushed forward as the new narrative*. Unfortunately, it seems a significant number of the red pulled from the previous narrative become blue pilled for the new one (lockdown/Vax/covid sceptics sporting Ukrainian flags on social media etc…)
We need to get these people to see behind the narrative control, not just expose the current narrative for its errors and inconsistencies. That’s much harder unless you have well developed critical skills or a fully functional bullsh** detector.
*NB this process is now turning over much quicker, probably because 2030 is approaching. I expect them to overlap soon.
Sound observation!
Agreed, I find telling the truth much easier – the story tends to come out much the same whereas on the few occasions I have been a bit economical it has come unstuck.
‘ They cause damage,,,’
That surely is the point. Forest fires have limitations and eventually burn themselves out – but the destruction is immense.
For some species of trees, forest fires are essential..
https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/your-national-forests-magazine/how-trees-survive-and-thrive-after-a-fire
You will be ‘nudged’ the ‘right’ way and you will be happy
You will be “happy” because you will be brain dead after 100 WHO forced injections!
Much more profitable than lobotomies ( see “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”)
Beware the First of March! The are signing us up to the WHO /Gates “Health” agenda Power Grab!
We’ve had 2 years of false and inaccurate narrative that we have been asked to believe while those sowing that narrative did the opposite.
they’ve rightfully lost our trust, they need to regain it by being honest, open and answer difficult questions.
the US has been wrong so many times before yet try to spin an air of righteousness and being on the right side when history has shown them to have been very wrong as this article articulates.
we need to challenge everything and ask those hard questions.
One narrative is that Putin is nuts, what if he isn’t, what if he is being totally rational, what if he’s been saying stuff but the media hasn’t been telling us, what if it’s Biden that’s nuts?
this is looking like Vietnam in reverse, Russia wants to protect its border by ensuring its neighbour remains aligned to its principles. It doesn’t want a former member of Russia likely with soviet secrets suddenly being a member of NATO and a puppet of the US especially on its doorstep. They’ve been saying as much for years.
to keep some peace UKRAINE needs to not be in NATO.
“this is looking like Vietnam in reverse, Russia wants to protect its border by ensuring its neighbour remains aligned to its principles.”
If Vietnam had been located in California.
California is probably more communist now than Vietnam ever was lol
Just 2 years? There have been the lies about joining the Eurozone, weapons of mass destruction, Westminster expenses,nleaving the EU, President Trump, rape gangs, immigration, Net zero and the climate “emergency” for decades.
So very true and I won’t even mention Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
Using Orwell as the model we just need to know and accept that all their ‘truths’ are lies all their lies are designed to cover the truth .
All the media are now just their creatures .
You poor fool – “Russia wants to protect its border by ensuring its neighbour remains aligned to its principles.”
Ukraine is NOT in NATO – where is the “peace” which you seek? And if Putin occupies Ukraine where does your statement lead to then? Tanks into Poland?
With analysts of your erudition, the Kremlin’s propaganda wing can put its feet up .
the US and others have been making noises that Ukraine could join NATO.
Ukraine being in NATO is too late for Russia to act.
if you can’t comprehend that then that’s your fault.
“to keep some peace UKRAINE needs to not be in NATO.” You are stark staring mad if you truly think this; firstly what right does Russia ( China, UK, EU, US for that matter) have, in the 21st century to dictate to any sovereign state what it should do? That egregious statist behaviour was used to bad effect during the whole of the 19th century with very few good outcomes and somewhere north of 150 million people lost their lives as a direct result. ( It is also currently how China is mopping up Africa in case you had not noticed) If you sincerely believe that, then the natural extension is supporting the enactment by force of the expressed desire to dictate matters to a sovereign neighbour. Yesterday’s not very efficacious UnRealpolitik, comrade. Have you not read a single paragraph at how that dictatorial mindset played out in the last century? The grossest weasel words I have ever read is – “ensuring its neighbour remains aligned to its principles.” – In case you had not noticed – or heard the verbal shotgun going off – “Russia …..doesn’t want a former member of Russia likely with soviet secrets suddenly being a… Read more »
For 19th read 20th..
I’m impressed with Maajid Nawaz’s reporting. I recommend it.
https://maajidnawaz.substack.com/p/russia-ukraine-nato-the-eu-and-a-cfd?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3MTYyMzI3NCwiXyI6InZCeWp1IiwiaWF0IjoxNjQ2MTIwNzAxLCJleHAiOjE2NDYxMjQzMDEsImlzcyI6InB1Yi02NzI0MTEiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.lcLew7cHO9j1jaCcfiaVgbIbb6zXOWiuGCK5Bk1Ypdg&utm_source=url
Can you give a synopsis, as it’s only available for subscribers? Thanks!
He draws attention to the Ukrainian Azov batallion which is apparently Nazi (whatever that means) and has been active in the country at least since 2014 and we’ve been arming them. In other words, to quote Delingpole, it’s complicated.
What impresses me about Nawaz is that he’s quite thorough in providing sources and evidence for what he writes.
As are Ryan Cristián and James Corbett.
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/you-are-being-played-with-ukraine-narrative/
https://www.corbettreport.com/the-ukraine-crisis-what-you-need-to-know/
Azov uses SS 2nd Panzer Division “Das Reich” Nazi insignia – that’s what “Nazi” means!
(” Das Reich” = Oradour-sur-Glane, June 1944)
I don’t normally like Fox News, but Tucker seems to be one of the few adults in the room.
Tucker: This is moral blackmail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx-SqVzg_2Q
I was never a great fan of Fox News even though it was always on my side broadly of the left/right divide, but the past two years have been a real revelation. Time after time, Fox News (and especially Tucker Carlson) have come out with stuff that by the standards of mainstream media is truly astonishingly close to the “forbidden” truths, on Trump, on covid, on masks and vaccines and mandates, on Russia and now on Ukraine.
Credit where it is due. They are not always right, obviously, but that’s not what anyone can expect of any media outlet. What they do have is genuine diversity, away from the suffocating mainstream Official Truth lies that dominate all the other channels..
Tucker may not always be right, but unlike most, he isn’t always wrong.
Tucker Carlson’s show is largely the reason that Fox News can crow about being the No. 1 News Network in America (maybe the world). However, I actually think the executives at the network are made very uncomfortable by the politically-incorrect segments he runs … and especially his always well-written opening monologues.
I also think Tucker knows that “they” might eventually “get” him off the air. I think this is why he constantly promotes his own website and now his documentary company (whose programming runs on a streaming service). I think he is prepping for the day when he finally is forced out the door …. but he thinks/hopes his audience will follow him to these other platforms.
But, like Joe Rogan and some of the best Substack independent journalists, he has obviously been “targeted” and is considered a serious threat to the agenda of the Establishment.
An American prepping…who’d have thought…#FarCry5
“However, I actually think the executives at the network are made very uncomfortable by the politically-incorrect segments he runs … and especially his always well-written opening monologues.
I also think Tucker knows that “they” might eventually “get” him off the air.”
Yes, I’m sure he gets plenty of pressure to “tone it down”, but I think he’s decided he’ll stay independent and, as you suggest, prepare for the day they get up the courage to knock him off the air.
I suspect Carlson gets as many requests to tone it down as Toby doubtless gets helpful “friends” “advising” him that the comments on his site are embarrassing him/reducing his and the site’s credibility/dangerous/irresponsible/evil, etc, and suggesting it would be “for the best” to tone them down.
Tucker is the one adult in the room and the one media talking head who is not afraid to challenge a narrative … Of course he is going to be attacked. The PTB have been trying to get him off the air for years. This is complicated by the fact that his show has the largest TV audience in America of any news talk show. Still, note that no major company in America advertises on his show. It’s quite the tell to see the companies that do run commercials in his show. Apparently, advertisers and companies do NOT want to be associated with the most popular news show in America.
By and large, those being labelled thusly are the very same people who are so dismissive of anyone with an opposing view on European Union, Masks, Brexit, Vaccines, BLM, or practically anything else.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, as someone once famously said…
So “Do as you would be done by ”
Trumped by “Be done by as you did”
( Charles Kingsley “The Water Babies”)
We await “Nemesis” and the day of reckoning for those who know exactly what they are doing and the manifest evil behind it all.
Binary concepts greatly advance the divide and conquer agenda.
Binary – black-hat V white-hat boo, cheer!
They are simple and therefore easy for the ignorant and simple-minded deliberately uneducated to understand – that is why they now dominate world politics and all the dark Globalist propaganda.
Why do we imagine Blair destroyed education with “Dumbing Down”?
Orwell “got it” of course. When will the Putin “Ten Minutes Hate” start to work up the plebs into foaming slavering ?
“Why do we imagine Blair destroyed education with “Dumbing Down”?
Same reasons that Nipoleon is pursuing in Scotland.
And the irony of Blair’s clarion call;” Education, education, education! ”
Like you say, Orwellian doublespeak.
How convenient lockdowns were to facilitate school closures.
This is an excellent piece by UK Column’s Alex Thomson on the very subject…
https://www.ukcolumn.org/literacy-part-2-who-doesnt-want-us-to-be-able-to-read
And the irony of Blair’s clarion call;” Education, education, education! ”
Like you say, Orwellian doublespeak.
What he was really saying:
Indoctrination, Indoctrination, Indoctrination.
Every morning Tucker Carlson must wake up and wonders what new epithetic will be hurled at him today. White supremacist, Nazi, racist, misogynist, islamophobe, transphobe, conspiracy theorist, traitor. I’m sure I missed some.
Always playing the man, never the ball. A 2 Minute Hate rather than a counter-argument, or at best a disingenuous and factually incorrect one like Mr Tribe’s.
Perhaps Tribe he’s been advising our Foreign Secretary as well, given that she apparently believes that we’ve declared war on Russia and so it’s OK for UK citizens to sign up with Ukraine and split some ushankas. The other explanation is that she’s ignorant of Section 4 of the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870, but it would be churlish to assume such base level incompetence.
Te more he is abused by the ‘Mainstream” the more we know he has got it right!
Well this subject is vast and hideously complex ain’t it!….A seamless continuation of “The American century” from the 20th to the 21st! We could go back as far as the causes of WWI, WW2, Korea, The CIAs Iranian coup d’etat, in 1953, Suez, Vietnam, Central America, Iraq, Afgan, Libya etc etc. The creation of NATO post WW2 Wasn’t about protecting Europe from Soviet aggression, it was about a blank cheque signed by the European NATO members and given to the US military/industrial complex for an endless supply of US hardware costing gazillions over the decades! Head’s up, the war in Ukraine isn’t about Ukraine, it’s about nord stream 2 and Germany’s growing affinity with Putins Russia. The push towards Russia’s boarders since 1990, the CIA facilitated Orange revolution, The Maidan revolution, the 10k lives lost in ethnic Russian eastern Ukraine due to Ukrainian army shelling etc, all facilitated by American/EU/British arms and training. It’s all been in about the US maintaining it’s military/geopolitical power in Europe, keeping an indebted Germany firmly in the US sphere of influence, and that blank cheque for the US military/industrial complex! Listen too James Corbett for his take on the subject, he’s not often wrong… Read more »
I listened to the recent Corbett report too, really enlightening. Anyone genuinely interested in fostering peace in Europe would have taken advantage of the break up of the Soviet Union to woo Russia into much closer ties with the west, such as a seat on the EU etc… But everything that was done was opposed to that objective, and as Corbett suggests, Nord stream 2 had to be stopped, to the detriment of everyone in Europe.
Have you read Corbett on Gates? It is all in there and has been for two years – the world should be very afraid!
You can’t attempt to destroy the very idea of national identity on one hand and then cry “traitor” on the other when a war starts.
They’ve spent the last 30 years telling me I have no right to feel any pride or sense of belonging in my country. Ok? Well then I hope Russia wins, because Putin hasn’t tried to forcibly inject me or asked me to apologise for being the wrong race.
Absolutely. The nation state is certainly a threat to any kind of global control. Hence it’s dismantling.
Spot on.
The UN has declared Globalist War on the Nation State and for all his faux blatherings Johnson, is fully on side with them ( see new WHO/ Gates power grab1st March treaty he will sign).
“You can’t attempt to destroy the very idea of national identity on one hand and then cry “traitor” on the other when a war starts.”
Comment of the day.
Has Toby read this?
In fairness to Toby, I’ve never seen him go as far down the jingoist rabbit hole as the American commenters mentioned here, of actually accusing dissenters on the Russia hysteria of treason.
He definitely needs to read and absorb the stuff about the history and the very valid criticisms of the US policy position on NATO expansion, given how childish his dismissal of those arguments was above the line here the other day.
Agreed, but his arguments were sliced and diced, very finely, below the line.
Which speaks to the importance of an uncensored Comments Section. This would explain why most mainstream sites either did away with Comments Sections or heavily “moderate” them. Often times, the smart commentators completely debunked the narratives advanced in the story proper.
To TY’s credit, I do not believe the comments section is censored here – at least I’ve never seen or heard evidence of it.
We’ve had 2 years of death and division, being told what to think, and called a list of prejoratives for conter-narravtive-think, whist our rights are whittled away, and our means of exchange watered down under the main pretext.
Rince and repeat. Follow the Yellowbrick road.
But there is no man behind the cutain, it’s nothing to do with the globalist central banking cartel at all, honest.
People can be dumb as rocks.
The people have been subjected to a military grade psyop that has destroyed their judgement and fried their brains – they are in a trance and need mentally detoxing before next Gates Vax campaign hits them!!
( So says a Belgian psychologist!)
I have a downvoter, obviously the
“type of person who conveniently forgets how to read when Xi and Putin release documents extolling the creation of the New World Order that call on all states “to protect the United Nations-driven international architecture” and declare that “In order to to accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” states will have to “take practical steps in key areas of cooperation” like “vaccines and epidemics control, financing for development, climate change, sustainable development, including green development, industrialization, digital economy, and infrastructure connectivity”
h/t James Corbett
Part 1/2 Whether it’s COVID-19, the toxic gene therapies, the plandemic or war, the biggest danger to humanity today is the failed cesspit the United States of America has become. COVID-19, the toxic gene therapies, the plandemic and many wars are what the US have bequeathed to the world and humanity. In 2014 the cesspit United States (with connivance from its UK’s Westminster poodles) funded and agitated for the removal of the legally elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. The US paid for and aided the removal of President Yanukovych because he steered Ukraine towards conducting cordial relations with Russia. Cordial relations would be much better than what’s going on there now, with the very real threat that it is going to spread to other parts of Europe. The United States had the thug and Washington muppet, Oleksandr Turchynov, installed in place of President Yanukovych. This, among other things, gave the US carte blanche to set up about 12 biolabs that developed biological weapons on Ukrainian territory. The Yanks like to have biolabs located off-shore because their gangster politicians don’t want their fingerprints on them. What was notable about the thuggish muppet President Oleksandr Turchynov?… Read more »
Part 2/2 A truth and fact of war is that the professional and well-trained Russian army will when taking a city or town return fire on anyone that shoots at them. Likewise, when advancing through the country, Russian soldiers are trained to fire on anyone in the distance carrying weapons and presumed to be enemy combatants. President Zelenskyy – the disgusting and vile little United States’ muppet – is setting his own citizens up to be slaughtered just so he can stay in his palace and please his criminal US masters. What about all the lying and screaming in the Western MSM about Belarus getting involved in the Ukrainian conflict? Or rather, how about the colour revolution that the cesspit United States attempted there in 2020? The United States wanted to install a muppet in Belarus like their soyboy’s in Ukraine. Then they could set up their biolabs and throw their weight around. It didn’t work out for them, Alexander Lukashenko wasn’t having it, and like people in such situations do, he forged a close relationship with Russia and told the US to go pound sand. Can you blame Lukashenko? You can’t, considering what the cesspit United… Read more »
Your anger is fully justified!
You really are the cheerleading imperialist crazed Putin loving bullshitter . Go Sign up for the Wagner brigade if you feel so strongly; since when did a Soviet style dictator need to be driven into the arms of his idol?
How do you “forge a close relationship with Russia” when you live and exist geographically, politically and idealistically in their back pocket already – you really are a one eyed Commie cretin.
Splendid
Bang on the money again Fireweasel!
You really do “get the big picture “don’t you!
Meanwhile we have… Liz Truss… ( hysterical laughter!)
Palmerston and Lord Salisbury spin in their graves!
Liz “Good War” Truss
Good War …Bad Hair!
I don’t know how anyone who makes a gaffe as big as not knowing Rostov is part of Russia can then be deemed to be having a good war but there you go.
I think of Nelson on his plinth in Trafalgar Sq looking down at our band of idiotic cretins and liars in Whitehall and Westminster.
Stalin committed atrocious crimes in Poland in 1945 and someone pointed out to him that the Pope would be upset with him doing this.
Stalin snorted in response, “How many battalions does he have?”
Replace the Pope with today’s Western Europe and their mouthing off about Putin in Ukraine. Putin can snort like Stalin did about the Pope.
All the money the West should have spent on their militaries has gone on transgender rights, randomly working wind turbines and paying affirmative actioned idiots to run businesses and government departments into the ground.
It’s a sad world we live in. And doubly sad when it’s your own race that has gone nuts.
It’s a sad world when any race goes nuts. Period.
Not so my friend, out glorious euro-leaders have BANNED Russia from taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest – why else do you think he has started talks in Belarus? The poor man must be very afraid now.
Bang on the Rouble for sure…
Part 2/2 A truth and fact of war is that the professional and well-trained Russian army will when taking a city or town return fire on anyone that shoots at them. Likewise, when advancing through the country, Russian soldiers are trained to fire on anyone in the distance carrying weapons and presumed to be enemy combatants. President Zelenskyy – the disgusting and vile little United States’ muppet – is setting his own citizens up to be slaughtered just so he can stay in his palace and please his criminal US masters. What about all the lying and screaming in the Western MSM about Belarus getting involved in the Ukrainian conflict? Or rather, how about the colour revolution that the cesspit United States attempted there in 2020? The United States wanted to install a muppet in Belarus like their soyboy’s in Ukraine. Then they could set up their biolabs and throw their weight around. It didn’t work out for them, Alexander Lukashenko wasn’t having it, and like people in such situations do, he forged a close relationship with Russia and told the US to go pound sand. Can you blame Lukashenko? You can’t, considering what the cesspit… Read more »
Yesterday in a comment below Toby’s Russia article I noted that questioning something is not the same a denying something, so I’m glad to see this article today.
We know that over the last two years just asking a sensible and logical question has got you smeared as a tin foil hat wearing anti vaxxer…and sadly that applies, it seems, to everything.
I don’t know enough about the historical or political situation to make a valid comment, but I do know that ALL sensible discussion has got to be full and frank and everyone’s opinions have got to be heard.
Total denial of overt, fully evidenced and reported criminality in High Places is now the prerogative of the Metropolitan Police.
The last sentence sums up the hypocrisy very well. Excellent article.
Very important piece. Those falling for the anti-Russian propaganda line need to understand just how pernicious, how extreme and how all-pervading it is, and has been for decades now.
This is what has shaped their ideas about the world – about Russia, its behaviour and its objectives, and about NATO, about the US’s foreign policy behaviour and objectives.
This is why they have attitudes like Toby’s, ripe for demonisation of Russia in any new context, closed to truths about the historical context, and full of squishy nonsense about NATO “keeping the peace”, spurious “rules based order”, and anachronistic manipulative nonsense about “western values”. The latter in some cases are better preserved in Russia than in the woke-riddled, political correctness obsessed, identitarian, intolerant US sphere
Get off your moral high horses. “We” are no better than Russia. When Blair invaded it was because, he claimed, Iraq posed a threat to our security. When Cameron attacked Libya it was to defend our interest in the Med. When Blair attacked Serbia it was to stop an imaginary genocide in Kosovo. Sound familiar? Russia claims the same. Are Russia’s claims lies? Possibly. Were ours? You bet.
Putin is no better and no worse than any of our own scumbag “leaders”.
Go even further – Russia are now better than us!
The standard of RT reporting is a reminder of what the BBC used to be!
Since when have the American establishment been concerned about the US constitution. According to their current President, Mr Brandon 10%, it’s all negotiable.
The Supreme Court itself trashed the US Constitution when Roberts ordered them to ignore and reject the mountain of massive Election Fraud evidence and even threatened the honest Lawyers who presented it .
Looks like Biden is now ‘fixing’ the Court for good with his latest appointment !
Just to prove the hysteria is not just in America, but infects wider parts of the US sphere, including Airstrip One:
Labour MPs Who Attack Nato Will Be Kicked Out Of The Party, Says Keir Starmer
“Labour MPs who try to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by attacking Nato will be kicked out of the party, Keir Starmer has announced.
The Labour leader said there was “no room” for anyone who seeks to blame the nuclear alliance for Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack his neighbour.
His comments, at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) comes just days after 11 MPs were told they would lose the whip if they didn’t remove their names from a Stop the War coalition letter attacking Nato. All 11, plus three peers, did so.”
Ah yes, Nato, Greta, NHS, BBC – good: all should be sainted yesterday!
Russia, of course, very bad.
😅😂🤣 – Labour’s last leader was a chuffing communist, and the UK Government has been lead/advised by another, a certain Susan Michie…
https://richieallen.co.uk/finally-richard-madeley-calls-out-sage-commie-susan-michie/
Every time this sort of discussion comes up, I am reminded of Cameron’s appalling adventure in Libya (and its appalling consequences). Putin clearly was being threatened by the encroachment of the West on his borders whilst Cameron sent forces against Libya just because he could. And who is being accused of war crimes?
Worth remembering that there was no legality in the Libya war, either. The Russians (foolishly, but reasonably) agreed to a UN resolution authorising intervention for the protection of civilians, and the US sphere forces used it as a pretext to impose regime change.
That is generally regarded as one reason why the Russians were never stupid enough to agree to any UN authorisation for any humanitarian military intervention in Syria. Fool me once, etc
Fortified by their unilateral power, blinded by their belief in their own propaganda, and rendered arrogant by their assumption of superiority, the Yanks and their poodles are truly, as the Russians concluded, “not agreement capable”. They just cannot be trusted to keep to any deal or law, because they do not believe that they in their righteousness should be bound by such details, or that they in their power can be punished for ignoring them
Gaddafi wanted to build an Afro-petro-currency which would have threatened the petro- dollar……… Saddam Hussein was talking about a Euro- petro currency with the French …..Assad opposed Isil and the deconstruction of Syria…….. say no more.
Tucker Carlson is a right-wing blow-hard. I could cite literally thousands of episodes where he has peddled utter nonsense. But he seems to be reaching some sort of apogee with his defense of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Post Soviet Russia signed numerous international agreements, committing to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and other former Soviet SSRs that had become independent. That is the fact. You can talk about NATO, you can talk about pipelines, or fracking, or antisemitism all you want.
But Putin’s Russian Government is the criminal aggressor here. Ukraine has a distinct people, culture, and language from Russia. Russia invading Ukraine today makes about as much historical sense as the British Army invading the Republic of Ireland.
Carlson has been head and shoulders above any other mainstream commentator on almost every issue of importance in the past two years, from attacking the Trump derangement of the leftist mainstream media and their criminal Jan 6th nonsense, through covid panic, mask, and vaccine mandate nonsense, and all the woke identitarian rubbish that is de rigeur in almost any mainstream outlet, to highlighting the Russia hysteria that has driven opinion in the US sphere for so long.
Is he perfect? Of course not, he’s a human being. But I have not seen any mainstream media get a fraction of the big issues correct that Carlson has done in the past two years.
It is undoubtedly easier for me to like him because I am “right wing”, as he is. Tbh, imo if you aren’t right wing by now then you are delusional.
But these terms need careful definition. I am what the US would term “paleoconservative”, to distinguish them from the globalist, interventionist, functionally leftist on social issues, neoconservatives, and that’s generally where Carlson comes from as well. That’s the “right wing” I support.
like the Minsk Agreement, eh Drew?
Muppet.
“Ukraine has a distinct people, culture, and language from Russia.” I fear you are falling into the trap of not doing your research properly. The history and culture of the “country” we now call Ukraine is extremely complex. Rather than being a long standing sovereign state its history is more akin to the former Yugoslavia – with all the attendant problems. This is part of the reason for the present mess, which has been exploited by both sides. The video linked below from David Starkey accurately explains the history of the Ukraine region and gives (IMHO) a realistic and balanced assessment of where we are – whether anyone likes it or not. The fundamental point is that the West good – Russia / Putin bad narrative really does not hold water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he25Rl0fE1c
Leaving Ukraine in thrall to Europe and the west suits the globalists’ evil agenda; Russia, with an actual gold-backed currency and a strong albeit authoritarian leader has to consider controlling Ukraine and denying it to these forces the only policy. Many in the commentariat have claimed he is a WEF disciple; I have researched this and failed to find evidence despite being surprised just who in the West is. Happy to be disproved.
You are right!
Ex- KGB man Putin is no-one’s fool – not even the “Gross Deutscher” Schawab’s.
Herr Schwab tried to get Frau Merckel and Putin in at the early emergent days of the WEF Young Leaders but neither were having any of it. Scwab and the WEF puppets like to talk them up as one and the same as the Turds, Microns, Ed the Horse types, but they’re not.
It’s striking how dumbed down discourse has become in the 21st century. In the Cold War, even in American media there was a certain respect for the enemy, and an attempt to at least put across their perspective. Now, the only thing that’s acceptable is hysterical shrieking about how evil Russia is. We saw this with Covid too. Any attempt to equivocate or strike a balanced argument, was met with “you want everyone to die!” Maybe it’s the War on Terror, ‘with us or against us’ that set the tone for this. We’re now expected to think and talk like children.
Agree, even the cheesy movies Firefox and the Hunt for red October had a respect for them as worthy adversaries.
An adversary has to be “worthy” or “demonic” in order for the Conquering Hero to be ‘heroic” and “virtuous”!
It always fits the endless narrative.
Maybe it’s the War on Terror, ‘with us or against us’ that set the tone for this. We’re now expected to think and talk like children.
I think you might be right.
The problem with articles like this is that they seek to offer a rational solution to a problem driven by ideology and emotion. The Ukraine problem is very similar to northern Ireland: a protestant majority and catholic minority adjoining a larger land mass with the opposite demographic. During the ‘troubles’ was the UK justified in trying to intervene when violence broke out? Debatable. Would they have been justified in invading the entire island of Ireland like Putin? Absolutely not! The Good Friday agreement stopped the violence but didn’t solve the problem which is: in a democracy how do you mitigate the tyranny of the majority? The answer is simple: ditch democracy and become authoritarian!
The US and the Globalist UVDL run EU do not want a rational solution – they wan to take down Russia over the dead bodies of Ukrainians who they are currently arming for this very purpose.
Senator McCarthy found witches on his witch hunt.
History proved him correct! Which is another thing buried by the MSM.
I guess this is where we part company.
I held my nose over the ludicrous anti-vax nonsense. I mean, a reasonable case could be made about being hesitant over barely-tested vaccines. Certainly vaccine effectiveness was over-sold. And the morality of forcing vaccination on children struck me as abhorrent.
I kept quiet over the conspiracy theory nonsense. Because, well, there are always gonna be people who see the nefarious hand of (Bill Gates; Warren Buffet; George Soros; fill in the blank) in whatever is going on.
But if Lockdown Sceptics is hoping to hold together a coalition in support of a) Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and b) Tucker Carlson and the loonier fringes of Fox News?
Well, it’s been nice knowing you. But the covid panic is over in the UK. It’s ending in Europe and the US.
Rack up the downvotes. But this is fast becoming not just irrelevant, but downright dangerous and unpleasant. And for now, a waste of time.
Seems like you’ll be a lot happier on the Times or Guardian comment pages, depending which kind of Blairite you are.
The covid panic may have receded somewhat but there’s no guarantee there will not be a resurgence and plenty of places are still in full swing. And there’s the small matter of trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You use the cheap, meaningless smear term “anti-vax nonsense” and then enumerate a number of key points against the covid “vaccines” so not sure what you’re getting at – and the editorial line here has been fairly neutral on vaxxes – below the line not so much, and you’re welcome to make your arguments as to where we are speaking “anti-vax nonsense” – if it’s not too much trouble for you of course, and you can stop “holding your nose” for a minute. As to Ukraine, the DS editorial line is very much condemning the invasion, and most of the BTL comments are not so much supportive of the invasion as rightly IMO sceptical about the official narrative – unless you think the govt lied through their teeth on covid but are being 100% sincere and honest about Ukraine? Whatever you think of Carlson, who has been one of the few in the MSM who has spoken against the covid… Read more »
That’s your right.
Personally I find it possible to think that Putin making war is wrong whilst at the same time recognizing that the west has played a major role in provoking this. Knowingly so.
Professor Mearsheimer is worth reading and listening to on the geo context. He happens to be an ex US Air Force officer so hardly a pro Putin stooge.
The corporate media narrative on this whole thing is garbage. I happen to have studied Nazi Germany in some detail and the subliminal comparisons of Putin to Hitler and the constant references to Munich 1938 are nonsense for anyone who has any understanding of the WW2 era.
A more apt analogy is possibly 1914 when the immediate cause of war breaking out was Germany giving her weak partner Austria a blank cheque and egging her on against Serbia and Russia. Of course, unlike Munich 1938 there has not been a recent Netflix film about that.
Correct – it seems that to their warped minds the crimes of the US dwarf those of Russia and China but what do you expect of ex Polytechnic students of politics?