That we can go from international uproar over an instance of nuanced police brutality on a convicted felon in 2020, to international indifference over blatant police brutality against innocent citizens standing up for their rights just 2 years later, tells us a lot about society.
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Samizdata quote of the dayFebruary 19th, 2022 |
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Is there international indifference or is this assertion referring to the failure of world leaders to decry the assault on peaceful protestors? The image of the horse stomping a protestor, has gone viral. There have been a lot of claims and counter claims. Has there been an international response?
The international uproar over an instance of a police officer following police procedure in dealing with a felon that was ODing was driving by the media in collusion with leftist organizations.
The international indifference to police brutality is because the media is fucking lying.
The cases are similar in one respect – they are based on LIES.
I do not know how close the relationship was between Mr George Floyd and the police officer – I know they had worked together (on security jobs) and knew each other, but no one seemed interested in the facts of the case. All the talk was which about “racism”, which was bovine excrement – as that policeman (now in prison – because a jury were terrified for their lives) was many things (many of them NOT good) – but “racist” he was NOT.
As for Mr Floyd – he died of the drugs he took. Everyone knows that, but most people are afraid to say it. I just did – so kill me (I do not care if you kill me or not).
As for the protests in Canada – Mr Trudeau has been very clear.
Mr Trudeau supported the Marxist BLM burning and murdering. And he found “understandable” the endless Church burning in Canada – because of FAKE stories of “unmarked mass graves” of children.
But protests against his, MEDICALLY POINTLESS, injection mandates and the (deeply sinister) electronic tagging system he is pushing (and that idea goes back long BEFORE Covid – it is Davos WEF) – no that can be allowed, certainly not.
Because the truckers and other ordinary people are racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobes, and so do not deserve to live. Mr Trudeau is LYING – everyone knows that the National Socialist (Nazi) flag and so on were from HIS OWN SUPPORTERS (a literal “false flag operation”), he lies and lies and lies. And the lickspittle Canadian media back every lie.
By the way – Max Keiser (on Mr Putin’s RT) has been saying how the confiscation of bank accounts and so on in Canada (that financial agenda is also very Davos, very World Economic Forum, the agenda goes back long BEFORE Covid) proves the case for Bitcoin.
There is a problem with that argument – the financial sanctions (from the servants of the international community who call themselves the Canadian government) apply to Bitcoin.
Of course, before anyone points it out, I know that Davos and the U.N. (Dr Klaus Schwab and his pals) are NOT really the puppet masters they fondly believe themselves to be – in reality Chairman Xi is the puppet master, the Davos crowd (whether they know it or not) are really the puppets.
By the way – there is a real book on the case of Mr George Floyd.
“I Can’t Breathe: How A Racial Hoax Is Killing America” by David Horowitz.
There is also a book on Early Treatment of Covid 19.
“Overcoming the Covid Darkness” by Dr Brian Tyson and Dr George Fareed – how they successfully treated over seven thousand patients.
Talking about either of these works is likely to lead you to into severe trouble in Mr Trudeau’s Corporate State (yes Corporate State – his endless calling of other people “Fascists” is PROJECTION – the real Fascist is himself).
Just talking about either of these books is enough (far more than enough) to attract the rather nasty attention of the “Canadian Government”, as they call themselves, and their Corporate allies.
Ever the Economist magazine is concerned about the war to exterminate Freedom of Speech in Canada – although it spoilt the article by SUPPORTING the injection mandates and FALSELY claiming that the injections stop the spread of Covid 19 (the injections do no such thing). It did not even mention the electronic tagging policy – one of the central complaints of the truckers (who do not wish to have their lives controlled by Dr Schwab and his Corporate pals).
The best live coverage is on Ruptly—Russian TV! No editing, no distortion. I was there today and can personally vouch for it.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/26/man-cleared-manslaughter-citizens-arrest-bristol
A story from the UK which did not result in an international outcry along with mass civil disobedience, rioting and unimpeded criminality. Maybe because it didn’t involve law enforcement?
https://news.sky.com/story/jack-barnes-man-who-said-he-could-not-breathe-after-being-restrained-was-unlawfully-killed-coroner-rules-12230292
Another one then, this time involving quasi law enforcement personnel.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/family-jack-barnes-hugely-dissapointed-20048253
And here’s what happened to those responsible.
Some lives really do matter less than others.
Just to keep some perspective: most of Canada is cheering on the Cossacks on horseback today.
Canada rivals Australia for both proportion of progressive wokeness, and vaccine love. I’d not wait for any uprising in horror over the clearing of Ottawa.
Fourteen years ago, Natalie wrote a post titled Canada is no longer a free country.
Well, it’s even less so now. When Fascism Comes To America, It Will Look Like Justin Trudeau’s Canada – which looks like it envies Xi’s China.
The truth matters nothing to Trudeau, but just in case anyone here wants background for the OP’s comparison, my demonstration of Chauvin’s innocence is here.
While I’m all for our not living in a fool’s paradise, I’m also all for us not letting the MSM fool us – especially the CBC. I’d be interested in knowing whence you derive this.
+1
The way i see it: just as Trump flushed the NeverTrump rats out of the system, so the Canadian truckers exposed the violence inherent in the system.
1. I live near Canada – have for fifty+ years – and go there fairly often.
2. I have grown up around and in spite of Canadians. They’re all over where I live.
3. I have friends and rels and acquaintances there, a couple with large trucks.
4. I have been in bar fights in Canada. (Familiarity breeds . . . )
5. I’m 1700 miles from home right now, and I’m still surrounded by Canadians. (They like to spend the cold months in the same places as do I.) So, I’ve sat around a fire and ate and drank and discussed current events with mostly Canadians four of the last seven evenings. (“It’s aboot time he cleaned up that mess, eh?”)
Canadians here in the US continue to be astounded and offended that we don’t all mask all the time. They are vaccinated to a higher percentage of population than most anywhere. They (“they” meaning, in the majority) agree that mandates are needed.
Certainly they have some libertarians and real conservatives – but over 50% of the entire Canadian population lives clustered along the SE corner right above DC/NYC/etc., more southerly than my home in Minnesota. They are more a part of the Washington DC corridor culture than are most Americans. Look at the attached map. There is a red line in the lower right corner. 50% of Canadians live below this line. They are NE USA urbanites, not trappers and mushers.
https://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/half-canada-red-line.png
Ugh. Sometimes it’s hard not to hope these people get the government they claim they want.
Speaking from a vantage point south of the red line and within 50 miles of Canada – I’m afraid bobby b. is right. The Canadian protestors are overwhelmingly from North of that line, and they are in the minority. Plus, consider that while Trudeau may well be a tyrannical and narcissistic little prick, he’s not stupid – he would not have done what he’s done unless he was sure that he had both a parliamentary majority and broad popular support for his actions. Canada has completely lost it’s mind over Covid, much worse than the US, and it may be a long time before it comes to its senses – if ever. It’s a shame.
llater,
llamas
Funniest part of the horse-trampling scene?
The new Emergency Act makes certain behavior illegal. The second section lists who is specifically exempt from the law. The first item is “a person registered as an Indian.”
The woman with the walker who was trampled is registered as an Indian. She had a perfect right to be there, even under the new law.
My guess is, he had a quiet agreement in place with Parliament whereby he would trigger the Act and clean out the streets, Parliament would perform their within-a-week review of his triggering of the Act, and they would decline to extend or ratify it.
At that point, Trudeau will have already cleaned out Ottawa and would have no further need for it, Parliament would get to act manly and assertive, Trudeau can congratulate himself and Parliament because Parliament properly exercised its oversight powers “to protect democracy”, and everyone will be happy.
You’re right, he’s not stupid. He’s been juggling his 32% of the vote into PM-ship for some time.
On the one hand, the protests may be about the vaccine mandates and passports, but on the other, the truckers seem to have hit a deep populist nerve, at least with working people. Could be I’m projecting, but there seems to be plenty to be angry about: the economic angst, the worry over the harm done to children, the anger at the economic unfairness of the covid policies, covid fatigue, and the, in your face, complacent indifference of the government grifters and shills to solve real problems, like stagflation.
The stolid, histrionic opponents of freedom offer nothing but a dull, predictable future, dominated by vapid, preachy Karens for whom Trudeau is the poster child.
Contrast that with the drawing power, the excitement of Solidarity and Esprit de Corps……which is uplifting, optimistic, contagious and addicting.
Here’s a quote from Tracey Wilson:
“As an Ottawa resident, it is so bizarre watching this thing unfold. Local news, city council are all “end of days, chaos, and call in the army”, but my Mom’s groups on Facebook are baking muffins, making sandwiches, sharing videos of singing protestors, and doing trucker crafts.”
I’m inclined to believe bobby b and llamas, that Canadians embrace compliance, and don’t find serfdom that repellant. My Canadian kin are, or at least were NDP. Yet, wait for it, they are retired in the free state of Florida.
I’m surprised that the convoy caught Trudeau so flat footed. It’s not like they didn’t have time to game this and prepare. I found his response to be lame, cheesy, tacky…maybe that is the norm for him. The trucker leadership seemed more adroit at seizing the high ground.
I’ll give you that he’s sneaky but without the finesse. Anyway, per his thuggish police chief, he intends to retaliate against the protestors.
It’s always worked so well to simply start calling people racists and sexists and nationalists and Nazis and whatever, and I think he figured he’d solved the problem once he did it again. He never expected people to keep going in the face of that. We watch cancel culture in the US in horror, but it’s far worse in Canada.
In the face of Canada’s overwhelming woke prog weenie-ism, the truckers were very brave. But they really should have declared success last week and gone home. Trudeau et al. could never accept the loss of face that came with the truckers not doing that. This was all inevitable.
It’s going to get very bad for the truckers, behind the scenes (since the press will now ignore it all, just like we ignore our Jan 6 detainees.) You can only poke a bear until it’s annoyed, not enraged. Canada government has lost global face, and won’t forgive this.
Having contributed to the truckers in several ways, I got doxxed. You ought to read some of the hundred and fifty or so e-mails I got in my public-facing account. Didn’t now polite Canadians even knew such words.
[…] to Samizdata for the […]
“Canadians here in the US continue to be astounded and offended that we don’t all mask all the time.”
Here in the UK mask counting has become a bit of an obsession for me. I see it as a sort of opinion poll on how much danger people perceive themselves to be in. When I go swimming on Saturday mornings the kids swimming lessons mean that there are always thirty or forty parents sitting around watching. Last week I counted about six masks, yesterday there weren’t any. I was thinking that things were looking up but afterwards while I was in the cafe which overlooks the pool area, I spotted just one. There are plenty of masks in the shops but they are now in the minority.
The closing of bank accounts of folk who gave to the truckers, done by emergency powers for which there wasn’t a parliamentary vote, is particularly alarming. But then I recall that talk show participants in the U.K. called for the bank accounts of Extinction Rebellion members who were arrested to be frozen. So both sides of the political spectrum appear to be keen on authoritarian tools when it suits.
For me, the problem has been the collapse of respect of due process, and that’s largely the fault of people who for many years have, for different reasons, justified it. Consider how the right to financial privacy has been systematically trashed over the past few decades by politicians and media cheerleaders in their attacks on offshore centres, or in a desire to levy more tax, etc.
The rot has been settling in for a long time.
bobby b (February 20, 2022 at 1:31 am, and
February 20, 2022 at 2:24 am), thanks for info.
My sympathies. By all means keep us informed – especially if things rise above the level of rude emails. As regards Canadians, those who were kind to the Truckers now need help themselves, but one would hope that Trudeau’s power has limits south of the border.
Alas, the mask is as off the ‘Due South’ image of Canada as it is off ‘Minnesota nice’ – at least as regards Minnesota being a synonym of Minneapolis.
Sometimes it’s hard not to think that they already are.
FWIW, I am tempted to see the resignation of the prior police chief and the replacement of Canada’s opposition leader by a woman accused of having once been seen in a MAGA hat as indicating some countervailing trends (and welcome comment on such thoughts).
Pretty much a typical day for me 😀
Afraid you might be right. Yet the Winter Mardi Gras was wonderful and uplifting, great for “Esprit de Corps”. The covid zombies are backing a policy with a fast approaching expiration date.
Why not finesse this and be the hero?
Globalist WEF pulling Canadian strings?
Here’s something that might surprise (even here). A Canadian MP was brave/foolish enough to ask the question in parliament:
The speaker quickly shuts him down, dubiously claiming the audio and video were bad. But the question was clear enough. The video then switches from the Canadian parliament to an actual recording of Klaus Schwab boasting exactly that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LENRhxcwe8Y
And some notable Canadians (like Jordan Peterson) wonder WTF is happening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSyLI15ZCw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfDGAvQhd6o
For me, the problem has been the collapse of respect of due process, and that’s largely the fault of people who for many years have, for different reasons, justified it.
There’s a reason why I’ve embedded this clip on my movie blog on several occasions since last Jan. 6.
Only to the degree that media represents actual public opinion, so I would have to say a rather loud ‘No’.
I can strongly recommend this item by David Solway, whom I have quoted before, about the creature that is currently prime minister of Canada.
It’s the friend-enemy distinction. Liberals/leftist appeals to univeralism,’rights’ etc are smokescreens for power. Trudeau and the ghoulish urban bourgeois that support him feel threatened and offended by the truckers and are showing they will jettison all their supposed principles to keep their power and wealth intact.
On the Canadian Parliamentary point.
Mr Trudeau is being supported by the openly socialist NDP (at least they do not pretend to be “liberal” – the NDP stands for tyranny and is open about supporting tyranny).
However, the Canadian Conservative Party, under its new leadership, is NOT backing Mr Trudeau.
And I refuse to believe that most Canadians back this evil – not if there was a secret ballot vote on it (with no punishment from employers or the mob sent by the media, and the education system, – for having “reactionary opinions”).
Remember the word freedom is now officially “right wing” – the Canadian government have said so, and the media (on both sides of the Canadian border) agree.
At least the left are not pretending to be pro freedom any more – things are out in the open now.
The quote is from the Washington Post (referenced here for those who prefer to avoid the WaPo). It goes on to say,
The text also refers to
but would that not be a valid description of any ethnically-representative sample of Canada’s population? (Also, if Canada is anything like Britain, a representative sample of the vaccine-hesitant would be less primarily white than one of the population at large.)
I’m always amazed that y’all can do this blog with your real names. I’ve chalked it up to thick skins, and financial and social independence – which are usually hard-earned, but earned.
So, bravo to y’all!
Thank you Niall doe the quote.
I wonder how Quentin Skinner, former Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, would react to this. In a lecture on YouTube, i heard him claim that socialism is the proper way to the ancient-Roman concept of freedom.
(OK, maybe i am over-simplifying the Regius Professor’s position.)
I hate to say it Bobby B, but “Natalie Solent” is a pseudonym.
How many peaceful protestors asking for their human right to bodily autonomy do Trudeau’s police have to trample with horses until certain people on this blog agree that Putin is less of a “mean tyrant” and less of a “violator of human rights” than Trudeau?
Those “journalists” Putin put in jail can literally eat dirt for all I care. How many of the western libruls who were crying rivers for those journalists Putin jailed are so much as even batting an eyelash for the Blue Collar Workers getting fucked in the ass by Trudeau’s brown shirts?
Canada is closer to China’s tyranny than Russia is – and I don’t think that’s even controversial to say at this point.
These Canadian Nazis have given themselves the legal powers to freeze the bank accounts of those who they *suspect* of supporting the Trucker Convoy. These cunts have no shame and I can’t type what they morally deserve.
Lots and lots of Chechnyans, plus some random 300 people in Russian apartment buildings, might take issue with you.
I can agree that Trudeau is scum, and that Putin is, right now, being miscast as the aggressor over Ukraine, without forgetting that he’s a mass murderer, even of his own people if it helps him to power.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_allegedly_involved_in_Russian_apartment_bombings )
Shlomo – It is interesting that Canada is one of the NATO states most hostile to Russia right now. I did read that there are over one million Ukrainians in Canada, so electoral politics may play a role. But as you say Trudeau is behaving more overtly like a tyrant than Putin.
Western liberals like Trudeau are unbelievably insular in many ways. I don’t think he realises that the media in Russia, China, Hungary, India etc cover what’s going on in Canada quite a lot and if you want proof that liberal rhetoric about human rights, universalism, self-determination are self-serving cant from the mouths of greedy and deranged western elites the likes of Trudeau and Biden deliver it in spades.
I did have a good laugh reading Indian news websites mocking Trudeau for his responses to the Canadian truckers and his bleating that foreigners were interfering in Canadian politics when only a few years ago he overtly supported protestors who were trying to overthrow the elected Modi government. It’s pretty similar to how the democrats complain about Russian interference in US politics while much of the the rest of the non-liberal world are quite aware of American meddling in the politics of lots and lots of countries. Or for that matter the sanctimonious condemnation of Putin for aggressively threatening a country coming from many of the same neoliberal/neoconservative types who masterminded military interventions in Libya, Serbia, Panama, Iraq and Somalia. At the time of these interventions none of them posed anything but a minor threat to America.
And then you have the woke stuff. And then a RT piece like the one below easily writes itself. RT doesn’t need to construct propaganda here. The US government offers them an open goal.
https://www.rt.com/news/549093-sam-brinton-woke-biden/
Martin – there was a lockdown in Russia, and their are vaccine mandates (although they are not very effectively enforced) and so on.
And there is state domination of the media. And the murder of opponents.
I am NOT saying that you do know all this (I need to say that as I have recently been accused of treating people badly – when I had not even beaten them to death), but other people reading the thread might not know.
I despise the “Woke” Corporate States that the West has become – but Mr Putin is no alternative to it (again I am NOT saying that you are saying that he is).
We are, essentially, caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
On a positive note – at least the Conservative Party of Canada (under its new leadership) seems to be rejecting the antics of Mr Trudeau and his allies.
Paul, I appreciate you making those assumptions. I’m aware that Putin’s government is authoritarian, opportunistic and all the rest. I just highlight that many of the types in the west who are hell-bent on making us ‘do something’ to stop Putin (or stop Brexit, or Orban or ‘fascism’ or whatever) are also hell-bent on establishing tyranny in their own countries. When they prattle on about rights, universalism, self-determination, peace etc we can find so many examples of hypocrisy on this front.
Martin (February 21, 2022 at 7:46 am), on the one hand, I have to agree with bobby b: until Trudeau graduates from trampling protestors to secret police murders of them, we will have to see Tudeau’s oppressions as lesser.
On the other hand, you are quite right that Trudeau is the latest in a long line of recent western wokists who are burning the west’s reputation for freedom in India and giving Putin a ton of propaganda assistance in Russia.
I am sure my chums in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics will have a good laugh on that.
Here in Vancouver, a thumping minority of us feel roughly as Shlomo Maistre does, with an added frisson of real fear. What’s hard to get across to foreigners is the bitterness of the disputes here. The virus was bad; the mad brutal useless containment policies were worse; but the disintegration of families, friendships and civil society is near-unbearable. You know, somewhere in 2020 the National Safetyist Party started handing out armbands. Then there were Party newspapers, then Party rallies, then Party police, then a kind of very-unsafe Reichstag fire… I push the analogy, but we’re freaked. Everyone’s switching to cash and considering what has to be done next. I grew up in a big country, a free Brittanic New World nation,the live-and-let-live Dominion of Canada, which I do not like to hear traduced, and which I am not willing to let go.
If the choice is between Trudeau of the WEF and Putin – I will go for “None of the Above”.
And, Martin and Perry, they have something IN COMMON.
The World Economic Forum (Trudeau’s educated masters) serve Chairman Xi of the Chinese Communist Party. The pathetic Dr Klaus Schwab (and his son) believe they control Chairman Xi – but, in reality, he controls them (the WEF and U.N. is not the Puppet Master – it is the PUPPET, Chairman Xi is the Puppet Master).
And Mr Putin is dependent on China – i.e. Chairman Xi of the Chinese Communist Party.
So “heads it is Chairman Xi – and tails it is Chairman Xi”.
All roads lead to Winnie the Pooh.
Shlomo:
Perry:
Thank you, Perry, for your concern for us in the Baltics.
It is obvious that Putin is much more of a “violator of human rights” than Trudeau (so far…).
But to what extent is that because, in Canada, there is still somewhat of a system of checks & balances?
In the absence of checks & balances, Trudeau might well be worse than Putin, because Trudeau is not as cynical as Putin. No tyrant is more dangerous than one who thinks he is embodying the General Will.
In my opinion, there are important fundamental differences (ethical, legal, moral) between harms a country’s leader does to foreign peoples and its own peoples.
What secret police murders are you referring to, exactly?
America and Canada routinely use drone strikes around the world. Including, in some cases, of their own citizens whgo are merely “suspected” of terrorist activities.
American and Canadian security agencies use secret torture prisons around the world. These black sites are where Five Eyes (UK, USA, Canada, ANZAC) security agents carry out extrajudicial torture and state sponsored terrorism against human beings – sometimes bad guys and sometimes merely innocent civilians “suspected of links to terror”. Canada has been part of the process of operating and using these horrific black sites for years. And yes, the state security agencies sometimes kill the civilian in its valiant efforts to extract information. This is not just one-off things happening sometimes. This is state policy of Canada, America and other allied nations. This is an organized, large-scale, systematic violation of Geneva Convention, human rights.
Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are just small potatoes compared to what really goes on all around the world every single day because of Canada and USA and other allies. Putin can’t hold a candle to this ongoing horror.
I see your Chechnyans and I’ll raise you Afghanistan and Iraq and the Balkans and Libya and Syria. Yes, Canada has at various times been engaged in these human rights violating activities, including war, state sponsored terrorism, genocide, depopulation, widespread torture camps, black sites, and other human rights violations in these and many other countries.
Putin has absolutely done some bad stuff.
I really was just focusing on comparing domestic policies. IE: comparing what Putin does to his own people to what Trudeau does to his own people.
To show how much of a mean old tyrant Putin is in some people’s eyes, several people have brought up international human rights violations. Personally, I think that its apples and oranges because there are qualitative differences between when national leaders do bad things to foreign peoples vs when national leaders to bad things to their own peoples.
But obviously if we open things up to foreign affairs then USA, Canada and her allies have a far and away more prodigious and impressive record than Russia in state sponsored terror, genocide, mass murder, depopulation, black sites, CIA torture sites, human rights violations en masse, and war. It’s not even close.
Now, yes, it’s true that Trudeau was not leader of Canada over the last 20 years. So he was not technically responsible for all my examples. With the exception of Trump all these leaders of western countries are puppets and are parts of the same cartel of gangsters. They’re all more or less interchangeable. So my underlying point stands: Putin doesn’t hold a candle to the west when it comes to human rights violations.
But in any case, my original point was not about the international violations of human rights but rather what’s being done to the people of Russia and Canada by their own leaders Putin and Trudeau. That was my original point.
Putin does do bad stuff to his own people, but most ordinary people if they don’t fuck with the government then they are left alone. In Canada, that’s just not so.
Yes and any reasonable analysis of the facts will lead to this conclusion. This does not necessarily mean that at his worst Putin is not as bad as Trudeau at his worst, it just means that overall Putin is behaving far less like a tyrant than Trudeau is, particularly when it comes to their own peoples.
If all Trudeau were doing is trampling protestors with horses then I would retract my statement. It’s much worse than that. Every day new “emergency” measures are being manifested out of thin air by Trudeau and his gestapo.
Let me ask everyone here, what do you call “emergency state powers” when there is no actual emergency? And what do you call it when those emergency state powers are made, you know, permanent? This is what’s happening in Canada right now. It is surreal and when considering what Putin does to his own people, Putin simply can’t hold a candle to this systematic state sponsored campaign of terror and horror being waged against the Blue Collar Workers and working class of Canada.
Yes I know some people in Canada. Even people who voted for Trudeau are fucking terrified of what is happening. It’s much worse than I think most people on this blog realize.
And most of it is being made permanent. Because, you know, COVID.
The Freedom Truckers are beautiful people with a beautiful cause. The powers that be know to never let a crisis go to waste. So the Freedom Truckers presented the people who control Trudeau with an opportunity to do things that not even COVID gave them the excuse to do. Like for example the power to freeze bank accounts of innocent citizens of Canada on the mere suspicion of contributing to peaceful protestors. En masse. Not a few bank accounts here and there. Hundreds of thousands if not millions can be thus frozen. This is class warfare EN MASSE with no legal or moral or ethical basis whatsoever. Again, Putin just cannot hold a candle to this horror and campaign of terror.
I agree that it’s much worse than people here seem to realize, but for the opposite reason: Trudeau’s acts have been incredibly popular throughout the Canadian population. Canada is a nation of covid Karens.
Um, what?
Firstly, the reasons that we are giving for why Trudeau’s actions are so bad are not mutually exclusive; both can be true. But you are deflecting from the matter at hand. The matter at hand is what Trudeau’s gestapo is actually doing. The popularity of his actions is 1. debatable and 2. besides the point.
Tyranny and fascism are bad regardless of how popular such approaches to governance are and there’s no question that the reason why Trudeau is acting far more like a tyrant against his own people than Putin is against his own people comes down to WHAT THE TWO ARE/HAVE BEEN DOING TO THEIR OWN RESPECTIVE PEOPLES. If Trudeau’s tyranny and fascism were unpopular among Canadians, it would not undermine or change my point whatsoever. Because the point is what Putin and Trudeau are doing.
It’s clear that most people on this blog are just ignorant of much of what is happening in Canada right now. Hence the “Putin is worse than Trudeau because Trudeau is simply trampling protestors with horses” lol. Oh, how I wish that were all Trudeau’s gestapo were doing!! Meanwhile, over in reality, Earnest Canuck notes that “Everyone’s switching to cash and considering what has to be done next.” Something I have heard is happening es masse in Canada from a couple Canadians who I know, as well.
Again, Putin can’t hold a candle to this sheer horror and unmitigated en masse violation of even the PRETENSE of private property, due process, or human rights.
They are done pretending. And they WANT you to fear Putin more than Trudeau.
Trudeau is the future of the west, by the way.
You made the point, when you said “even people who voted for Trudeau are fucking terrified of what is happening”, that Canada was not in favor of what Trudeau has done. If I misinterpreted what you said, I apologize. A small minority of Canada is not in favor of what Trudeau has done. The masses love it.
Believe me, I’m not defending Trudeau. I listened to a large drunk group of Canadians last night as they sang their national anthem in celebration of Trudeau “cleaning out the trash.” Hosers.
(And, have we discounted the idea that Putin killed 300+ of his own people in a false flag operation to begin one of his wars?)
No when I said that even people who voted for Trudeau are fucking terrified of what is happening I was making the point that even people who voted for Trudeau are fucking terrified of what is happening.
That does not mean that Canada is in favor or not in favor of what Trudeau has done.
First of all, Trudeau has done many things. Most people support some of what he has done and oppose other things that he has done. It’s not binary. Also Canada is made up of millions of people all with different views, each person a special unique snowflake.
It’s true that most people who voted for Trudeau probably support most of what he has done. My statement, that even people who voted for Trudeau are fucking terrified of what is happening, is also true. There are some such people.
I think you are not aware of how serious things have become in Canada, particularly as you still are clinging to one potential false flag from the 1990s as sufficient evidence that Putin is worse than Trudeau against their own respective peoples.
Trudeau is much worse and it’s not close. What is happening in Canada right now is one of those times where decades, perhaps even centuries, of history is happening in just a few weeks.
Running an errand today, I honked at demonstrators supporting the Truckers in my medium sized New Hampshire city. There were at least ten of them at the intersection.
There is a state of emergency in Canada with no actual emergency. Extrajudicial powers have been seized by a government controlled by international bankers and globalists. Those extrajudicial powers are not being used against a few isolated individuals here and there but are explicitly being used against the general population of people who disagree with the political policies of the government (which were already violations of Geneva convention, Nuremberg Code, and bodily autonomy).
The government’s security services have publicly doxxed those who have contributed money anonymously to the Truckers Convoy through givesendgo and nobody in power is talking about that little thing or pretending to investigate it. There’s not even the pretense of anyone who matters giving a shit about this egregious, systematic en masse, and intentional violation of privacy, laws, contract law, and norms of cyberspace.
It is really not a stretch to say that if you are a Canadian citizen against one or more of the government’s policies then the government has already effectively stripped you of your private property rights, due process rights, civil liberties, and human rights. Maybe they have not exercised their legal power over your bank account or your body yet. Or maybe they have already done so. But your rights are gone. Period. Your body, property, and liberty are at the mercy of the government unless, of course, you agree with the government’s policies both publicly and privately.
Due process, civil liberties, human rights or private property exist in Canada only for those who agree with the government.
In other words, due process, civil liberties, human rights and private property no longer meaningfully exist in Canada.
I’ve been hearing the false flag bombing theories regarding the 1999 attacks in Russia for two decades.They have always smelt an awful lot like 9/11 conspiracy theories to be honest.
Chechnya was pretty much lawless in 1999 and armed fighters from there led by the Islamist Shamil Basayev invaded Dagestan and called for a jihad. This was before the apartment bombings and that provided the. Given that Chechen fighters had carried out terrorist attacks within Russia during the first conflict there in the mid 1990s (see the attack on Budyonnovsk hospital by Basayev), in the interwar period (there were several terrorist attacks in Southern Russia in late 1996 and 1997, and a Russian envoy to Chechnya was kidnapped in March 1999 and later found dead) and would do so during the second war(for example the Moscow Theatre in 2002 and the Beslan school attack in 2004, as well as many others), I think it is much more likely Islamic radicals set the bombs off in Russia than the security services. The jihadists had form for it.
The history of the Chechens is quite sad, I think as a people they have suffered much and I have no animus against them. I am very skeptical of the false flag theory though.
I have leaned towards it rather than away from it for some time, but I do have to acknowledge that it’s possible that I do so because it confirms my preexisting opinions regarding Putin.
https://twitter.com/CltrWarResource/status/1495280535207555079
People who still think the great reset is some kind of bullshit “conspiracy theory” are dumb fucking idiots who deserve the chains coming for them.
Sadly, most such people are also too fucking stupid to ever realize their own mistake, even as the cold, iron chains are quite literally being placed on their wrists.
Ignorance really, really is bliss.
Shlomo: I do not see the point of comparing Trudeau to Putin, but if you are going to do it, then you could talk about journalists assassinated instead of “journalists” in jail. And i am barely scratching the surface here.
What really matters is that the ancient republican Romans would have put to death both Putin and Trudeau, legally or illegally, as they did with several would-be tyrants from Tarquinius Superbus to Julius Caesar.
PS: It matters even more that neither in Russia nor in Canada, such killings would do any good. The assassination of Caesar did no good because the Republic had degenerated at least as much as Canada today.
Bobby, you put your head over a far-more-shot-at parapet than my posts in Samizdata (and have my respect for it).
The truckers were perceived as both an actual danger and an opportunity to introduce new methods of control. I suspect that my Samizdata posts are – how shall I put it 🙂 – not currently seen in that light by Scotland’s state and other wokists (and, by many, not current seen at all 🙁 ). Neil Oliver (also in Stirling), J.K.Rowling (currently residing in my birth town of Edinburgh) and others occupy the time of those who patrol the real and virtual spaces of little Scotland seeking those they may devour. (And the vile cybernatz’ crowd the local virtual space with their own priorities, not always perfectly aligned with the woke.)
Mr Putin has killed plenty of Russians – they are “his own people”, and (contrary to what his admirers sometimes thing) – there was a Covid lockdown in Russia, and the government is pushing vaccine mandates there (although rather incompetently – and that incompetence is, in this case, a blessing).
This “Trudeau or Putin” thing is a TRAP – a false “choice”.
NEITHER – NONE OF THE ABOVE.
And, I repeat, both the WEF-UN Agenda 2030 Western governments (such as Mr Trudeau and Mr Biden) AND Mr Putin – have long term connections with the People’s Republic of China Communist Party dictatorship (the real rising power in this world).
One can put statements of Mr Trudeau and Mr Putin side by side in relation to the PRC – and it is hard to tell the difference.
The fake “Liberals” can still be voted out in Canada – they almost were a few months ago, and the Conservative Party of Canada has condemned the Emergency Powers Bill (I have posted speeches from Canadian Conservatives that friends have shown me – and I have been happy to do so).
In Russia it is rather harder to remove Mr Putin.
Well, Niall K, let’s talk about effectiveness. Part of my money was simply returned to me in the original GFM debacle. The part that went to the second effort through the GSG site will probably be used to buy Trudeau a few more beers. The part that went through a Canadian trucker friend bought more fuel, but went for naught when his truck and a few others were towed away.
You guys are keeping the conversation going – internationally – and lending hope and direction. The smart progressive is going to be far more concerned about people like you than people like me.
(And it was a safe parapet for me to look over from my non-Canadian vantage point. My exposure is low, and I’m sort of a hard target. 😉 )
Good luck Niall – and good luck bobby b.
As I tell myself “If I have not got death threats today – I am not doing my duty”.
Although, as I get older and more tired, it does get somewhat irritating that none of the death threats is ever carried out.
Via Instapundit, a poll about Canadian views of Canadian fascism.
My interpretation:
On the one hand, the title of the article is deceptively optimistic:
Yeah, by one percentage point: 39% vs 38%.
Meanwhile, the total percentages of opposition vs support are 44% and 51%.
On the other hand: suppose that you have an account with a Canadian bank, and you receive a telephone call asking if you support Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act. Would you say that you don’t?
So i think that Canadians are not quite as insane as bobby thinks, although much more insane than i’d have thought a week ago.
Just for clarity:
Most of the Canadians I know are outside of that great urban mass of people in the lower right corner of the Canada map. When we speak of the insanity of “Canada”, I’m reducing it down to how the overall vote comes out, all while knowing many good Canadians. That urban mass controls.
But that average point still comes out on the whacko side.
Whether Putin or Trudeau is worse than the other is a bit of a moot point overall. To Ukrainians it’s likely the case that Putin is more an immediate threat (although long-term, by tieing itself to the west, Ukraine will surely be exposed increasingly and incessantly to woke cultural influences that probably wouldn’t happen if it was oriented to the east). In Canada, the US, UK, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand etc Putin is not the threat to our liberties. Putin is no communist (his recent speech on Ukraine blasted the Bolsheviks) or any type of universalist. Whatever territorial ambitions he and his clique have I doubt they extend to central/westerm Europe, let alone North America.
The threat in these countries to liberty is the likes of Brandon, Trudeau, Saint Ardern, Macron and so on. These leaders present themselves as paragons of the western ‘rules based order’ in comparison to bogeymen like Putin, Orban, Le Pen, ‘neofascists’ that we have to stand up to. It’s complete gaslighting. Look at how the CBC tried to claim the Russians might be behind the truckers in Ottawa. For the deranged and scummy set of western elites we have now, if Putin didn’t exist they would have to invent him.
Snorri Godhi,
If you are an ordinary guy trying to make a living as a blue collar worker in Russia and you don’t want to get the magic COVID jab then in Russia you are left alone. Maybe, AT WORST, a little bribe $ to keep things moving along.
If you are an ordinary guy trying to make a living as a blue collar worker in Canada and you don’t want to get the magic COVID jab then in Canada you are NOT LEFT ALONE. And you can’t bribe your way out of it.
Period, end of story.
As far as how journalists are treated in Russia, I confess that Putin is not as nice to the media as Trudeau is.
I also have no doubt that The People of the USA and Canada would be better off if the governments (including the courts) of Canada and USA treated the media rather less nicely.
Surely one reason Trudeau doesn’t have to be so horrible to journalists is because so many of them are completely spineless and behave like regime propagandists anyway. They self-righteously waffle on about speaking truth to power while in reality they bully working class people and slobber over the political, economic and cultural elites they aspire to join. The Washington Post, a mouthpiece for a wannabe Dr Evil billionaire, is perhaps the most deranged in its self-righteousness (‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ – while it just spouts neoliberal/neoconservative boilerplate 24/7).
I don’t know that I’d use “spineless” to characterize the journolists.
They’re throwing out the journalism ideal – the one thing that gives them some professional standing and respect in true democracies – in order to foster their chosen political philosophies.
So, “ideologues”, but effective ones. “Spineless” makes it sound as if they could be good people if we could only convince them to be brave. They’re far worse than that.
The Schools of Journalism that were set up from the end of the 19th century on, were set up with a purpose – this purpose being the pushing of “Progressive” “Social Reform”. “Scientific Governance” – i.e. ever bigger and more interventionist government.
Do you think that opponents of the creation of a “Civil Service” (at Federal or State level) were treated fairly by the products of the “Schools of Journalism”? Of course they were NOT – they were treated as either corrupt (which some were and some were NOT) or as “reactionaries” whose opinions were obviously wrong.
How about people who warned that the creation of a vast New York City (absorbing other cities) in 1898 would end up pushing up taxes – does anyone think the new “scientific” press (made up of people from the Schools of Journalism) treated them fairly?
Of course they did NOT. Any more than they treated fairly the opponents of government schools (in any country). Or the opponents of Credit Bubble banking and Fiat Money (again in any country).
Of course the bias has got more blatant (more extreme) over time – but the bias was there from the start.
The bias of the “scientifically trained” press (what we now call “the media”) is not “spinelessness” – ever bigger and ever more controlling government is WHAT THEY WANT – it is what they have been “educated” to want. Yes, again, it has got more extreme over time – but it was there (to some extent) from the start.
And it does not start at the Schools of Journalism – these days it starts at the kindergarten level, then on to school and university.
A riot (“protest”) that supports bigger government (for example the Marxist BLM or Marxist Antifa attacks) is, therefore, a Good Thing (TM) to the media – whereas a protest (such as January 6th 2021 or the trucker protests now) is automatically a Bad Thing (TM) – because these protests are trying to hold back the growth of “scientific governance”.
In short – bobby b is correct.
Remember the aim (the objective), a boot coming down on the faces of a population reduced to serfdom (under some form of “Technocracy”) for ever.
Once one keeps the aim (the objective) of the education system and “the media” (and so on – the government bureaucracy and the corporate bureaucracy) in mind – then everything they do and say, makes sense. It is quite logical.
Oh right then, they should just bend over and accept Putin’s thuggish embrace for fear of wokeism.
The political philosopher that Mr Putin is influenced by is Alexander Dugin – a man who (amongst other things) supports Covid lockdowns and mask mandates even AFTER “vaccination”.
Alexander Dugin accepts that the injections do not work as advertised (to put the matter mildly) – but the conclusion he draws from this is that the (utterly useless) mask mandates and the (incredibly HARMFUL) lockdowns be kept. If anyone disputes what he says, he waves a shroud (in fact two shrouds) “I have lost two elderly relatives” – which is very sad, but is in no way a logical argument (as a philosopher Alexander Dugin should know that).
This is not an alternative to the “Woke” Collectivism – it is “Woke” Collectivism (all those Woke people on Twitter with masks on their icons and vaccination status stuff), much the same as Mr Trudeau and his associates.
What is wrong with people? “Likely the case that Putin is more an immediate threat”?
Likely? You think? Cyber attacks are now constant and from where my mom lives, on a clear day you can hear artillery in Donetsk.
But no, the real threat is woke cultural influences. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Insane. Utterly insane.
Petr Borysko/anyone else,
If Ukraine’s government had publicly and unequivocally stated a couple months ago that under no circumstances would Ukraine join NATO or agree to any similar kind of action that would needlessly provoke Russia, do you really think anyone would be hearing artillery in Donetsk or anywhere in Ukraine right now??
Yes or no.
If you are an ordinary guy trying to make a living as a blue collar worker in Russia and you don’t want to get the magic COVID jab then in Russia you are left alone. Maybe, AT WORST, a little bribe $ to keep things moving along.
If you are an ordinary guy trying to make a living as a blue collar worker in Canada and you don’t want to get the magic COVID jab then in Canada you are NOT LEFT ALONE. And you can’t bribe your way out of it.
You think the magic COVID jab is the only such example? LOL.
And you think that the number of such examples that fit the paradigm above is not growing every year and will continue to grow in the foreseeable future?
Whether Trudeau is worse to his own people at this time than Putin is to his own people at this time is one question.
Whether the Woke Mob (Trudeau is merely a member a face of the mob) is more of a threat to his own people over the long run than Putin is to his own people over the long run is a completely separate question.
In theory it could be that one is worse right now to his own people and the other is more of a threat to his own people over the long run.
To understand who is more of a threat over the long run, one needs to contemplate a few questions:
1. How does the process of governing really actually work in Canada? How does the Canadian system (banks, government, universities, media, corporations, capital markets, diplomacy, etc) work? And how does the process of governing really actually work in Russia? How does the Russian system (banks, government, universities, media, corporations, capital markets, diplomacy, etc) work?
2. What is the relationship between the International Blob (global corporations, bankers, media, institutions, NGOs, etc) and Canada’s government? What is the relationship between the International Blob and Russia’s government?
3. Who are the people who need to agree on a course of action for Putin to be able to do it? Who are the people who need to agree on a course of action for Trudeau to be able to do it?
4. What are the motivations behind Trudeau’s actions? And what are the motivations behind Putin’s actions?
Unfortunately, it appears that even at Samizdata people are unable to see past the shelling in Donetsk to the deeper factors at play. Oh well.
https://www.jccf.ca/trudeau-bans-the-unvaccinated-from-leaving-the-country-and-from-earning-a-living/
Has Putin made it impossible for unvaccinated Russian citizens to leave Russia?
Of course, this is only one example of a million that one can see if trying to see.
Or we can just focus on the shelling in Donetsk, false flag conspiracy theories, and assassinations of journalists.
The bottom line is that the government of Canada is far more oppressive towards the vast majority of ordinary, working citizens of Canada than the government of Russia is towards the vast majority of ordinary, working citizens of Russia.
Yesterday (& many times before) Putin publicly stated that Ukraine isn’t a real nation, not a legitimate country, because it’s rightfully a part of Russia, and Ukrainians are really Russians.
So if you think Ukraine seeking defensive ties to protect itself from the leader of a nation who has stated it has no right to exist is what caused those Russian troops to enter Crimea, Donetsk & Luhansk, you’re either a Putinist or so ill-informed I don’t understand why you’re offering opinions of the regional geopolitics.
Are you aware of Putin’s repeated statements that Ukraine shouldn’t even exist? Yes or no.
Petr Borysko,
You did not answer my question.
Yes.
I answered your question, now you should answer mine.
My question for you again:
If Ukraine’s government had publicly and unequivocally stated a couple months ago that under no circumstances would Ukraine join NATO or agree to any similar kind of action that would needlessly provoke Russia, do you really think anyone would be hearing artillery in Donetsk or anywhere in Ukraine right now??
Yes or no.
Petr Borysko – if you can the hyperventilating, you’ll notice that I said woke westernisation was a greater LONG-TERM threat. That’s perfectly possible even if the more immediate threat is Putin’s Russia. Of course, what’s also rarely disclosed in discourse about Ukraine is that it’s biggest single trading party is the People’s Republic of China, which isn’t a particularly healthy development for a supposed democracy.
Putin may be a thug but as I’ve said repeatedly, he doesn’t subscribe to a universalist ideology he aspires to impose on every corner of the globe. This contrasts him with Jacobins, socialists, communists and liberals, who have a totalising desire to impose their globalist quasi-religions on every corner of the world. These people are insidious and spread a societal form of AIDS. In the more immediate term Putin maybe more of a threat to Ukraine. But I’m English and maintain that if you think Putin has done more to trash England than the British elites and their American counterparts have……well that helps explain why our elites have got away with so much shit.
Exactly!!
On the fucking money.
But I’m English and maintain that if you think Putin has done more to trash England than the British elites and their American counterparts have……well that helps explain why our elites have got away with so much shit.
YES
I did when I replied: “So if you think Ukraine seeking defensive ties to protect itself from the leader of a nation who has stated it has no right to exist is what caused those Russian troops to enter Crimea, Donetsk & Luhansk, you’re either a Putinist or so ill-informed I don’t understand why you’re offering opinions of the regional geopolitics.”
So Ukraine renouncing ever joining NATO would make jack shit difference, but I’m sure if you’d have been alive in 1938, you’d have made similar remarks about the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia.
Putin will do what he’s doing now regardless of Ukraine wanting to join NATO protect itself because he doesn’t want Ukraine to exist & it’s naïve on the extreme to think otherwise.
His motivations are hardly a secret. You people remind me of the media & political types who keep wondering “why do Muslims keep blowing us up & driving vans into crowds on European streets?” and what follows is always a convoluted explanation that refuses to accept it’s because they acting on what they publicly say they think. You probably think the people who want to destroy Israel only want to do so because of Israel’s political choices rather than they want to destroy Israel because they don’t think it should exist & they don’t think there should be such as thing as Israelis.
Attempts to explain Putin’s actions other than “He is doing what he’s doing based on what he’s always said he believes” are just as inane. He doesn’t think a nation called Ukraine and “Ukrainians” should exists.
Petr Borysko,
Based on that answer, I do not know if you think the answer to my question is yes or if you think the answer to my question is no. Please answer my question. My question was:
If Ukraine’s government had publicly and unequivocally stated a couple months ago that under no circumstances would Ukraine join NATO or agree to any similar kind of action that would needlessly provoke Russia, do you really think anyone would be hearing artillery in Donetsk or anywhere in Ukraine right now??
Yes or no.
If you must know Petr, I favour having no more immigration from the Islamic world into Europe (exceptions for persecuted Christians, Yazidis etc from that area of the world may be considered) .On the other hand, I am happy to leave the Islamic world to its own devices. Every western intervention in that area of the world in recent times has been at best a waste of time, money and men, at worst a complete disaster. And I really couldn’t care how Saudis, Iraqis, Libyans and Afghans choose to live providing they don’t attack us.
As for Israel, well I have no quarrel with them. But maybe you ought to, as they seem to be supporting Putin over Ukraine……..
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-torpedoed-sale-of-iron-dome-to-ukraine-fearing-russian-reaction-report/
Petr Borysko has repeatedly refused to answer my question in a direct, forthright manner because:
1. answering my question with a “yes” proves that he is profoundly ignorant of the situation and does not understand what is really happening
2. answering my question with a “no” proves that his argument is based on false premises
What’s that have to do with being a democracy? Is there a cut-off point where a country is ok to invade if trade with China gets above a certain level?
I’m not English (I’m Ukrainian as you might have guessed, but educated in USA). I haven’t got an opinion about who’s trashed England, seems irrelevant. You can be against woke madness (which doesn’t exist in Ukraine) and still oppose Putin. These are two completely different wars. Only relation between them is Putin sees woke craziness as evidence his enemies are hopelessly decadent, encouraging him to keep pushing with hybrid warfare.
After Ukraine, NATO members Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia are next unless there’s a strong reaction that actually hurts Russia. You think he’s scared of NATO? In theory, Russia is no match for it at all if you look at the economics. But he’ll only believe that means anything if NATO gives him reason to think they’ll do anything other than posture. I mean Joe Biden? Olaf Scholz? Really?
Great, you take Muslims at their word when they say what they think. Now to the same with Putin.
I’m aware what Israel did regarding Ukraine & Iron Dome, but it seems you don’t understand that I was just using Israel as a similar threatened geopolitical example. I’m not very Jewish but I am technically a Ukrainian Jew as my mom is Jewish, btw.
Petr Borysko,
Well, as a Jew who strongly supports Israel, I can say that you are vastly oversimplifying the matter.
Yes, it is true that there are people who think Israel should not exist and that there should be no such thing as Israelis.
On the other hand, it is also true that there are a lot of people who want to destroy Israel because of Israel’s political choices.
You have an exceptionally oversimplified analysis of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, much like your oversimplified analysis of why people are against Israel.
I answered in very forthright manner, stating your premise that Putin’s actions are about Ukraine’s wish to join NATO is palpably false for the reasons stated. He’s openly & repeatedly stated he doesn’t want Ukraine to exist & any other explanation is bullshit.
Petr Borysko,
Words are actions. Actions are undertaken to cause effects. All words spoken by Biden, Trump, Clinton, Putin, Xi, Zelensky, Macron, etc are spoken to cause effects. That’s it.
This does not mean that what each individual says is true. This does not mean that what each individual says is false. Usually, it’s a mixture of the two – and even the true parts of what they say are generally woefully incomplete.
The proposition that any national leader can or should be taken at his word is one of the more juvenile and absurd presumptions I have seen any Samizdata commenter make in a long time.
Again: words are actions. Actions are undertaken to cause effects. All words spoken by Biden, Trump, Clinton, Putin, Xi, Zelensky, Macron, etc are spoken to cause effects. That’s it.
Petr Borysko,
You did not answer in a forthright manner. Talking about a premise does not answer the question.
Lets try again:
If Ukraine’s government had publicly and unequivocally stated a couple months ago that under no circumstances would Ukraine join NATO or agree to any similar kind of action that would needlessly provoke Russia, do you really think anyone would be hearing artillery in Donetsk or anywhere in Ukraine right now??
Yes. Or. No.
You will not answer my question in a forthright and direct manner because:
1. answering my question with a “yes” proves that you are profoundly ignorant of the situation and do not understand what is really happening
2. answering my question with a “no” proves that your argument is based on false premises
You said this in response to me saying that we shouldn’t have further Muslim immigration into Europe.
Let me be perfectly clear. I’m happy for Saudis to be Saudis in Saudia Arabia. I don’t want that in England though, hence my views on immigration. Any Muslims who carry out terrorism, promote jihad, impose sharia law on local areas etc in Britain ought to be punished stringently, but I aren’t interested in righting the wrongs of the Middle East, North Africa and Indian Subcontinent.
Unlike neoconservatives, neoliberals and other globalist tools I don’t subscribe to the idea that the Islamic world wants democracy, free trade, BLM riots, pronoun and alphabet people rights, a diet of Cardi B music videos and Kardashian reality TV shows and so on. I don’t despise these people for not wanting these things.
You have insinuated NATO is a total paper tiger, which mystifies me why you’d want Ukraine to join. Why would you want weak and ineffectual allies who will get you to fight to the last Ukrainian and then go back to buying oil and gas like normal from Russia? Even the Baltic states get like almost all their gas from Russia.
I’m been following this thread and frankly I am pretty much with Petr on this. He did answer you, Shlomo. Clearly his view is the artillery would still be firing regardless of Ukraine doing any or all of the things you indicate.
And his reasoning for that is? He argues very convincingly this is all about Putin wanting to incorporate Ukraine into Russia, not Ukraine wanting to join NATO. And as evidence he points at Putin’s recent and past statements that Ukraine should not exist as a nation.
Hard to see how Petr does not see what is really happening.
And although I would note Ukraine joining NATO is also obviously not something Putin wants because that means trying to incorporate Ukraine means war with NATO, a Ukrainian government doing a Neville Chamberlain & trying to appease Putin by promising to never join NATO, does not change the fact Putin has repeatedly stated Ukraine should not exist.
The 1938 Sudetenland analogy he made is very strong.
Quickly looking at the thread, did he actually say he wants Ukraine to join NATO? He did indicate Scholz and Biden are not very impressive (and they are not), so presumably as the two largest NATO powers are lead by such people, Putin may not be convinced there is any political appetite for standing up to him. But only Petr can elaborate what he meant on that score.
Perry wrote:
Broadly speaking, I am with Petr & Perry.
But i am not sure about the timing.
I suspect that Putin would bide his time, at least a few months, before firing artillery; if the Ukrainians had committed to not joining NATO.
And why should Putin take Ukrainian commitments at face value, anyway?
Did Putin ever show respect for Russian commitments?
Did Obama or Biden for US commitments?
Did Hitler for the Munich agreement, or indeed for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
And to push it a bit further: did Sarkozy and Merkel respect the “Stability” and “Growth” Pact?
If Ukraine’s government had publicly and unequivocally stated a couple months ago that under no circumstances would Ukraine join NATO or agree to any similar kind of action that would needlessly provoke Russia, would anyone be hearing artillery in Donetsk or anywhere in Ukraine right now?
My firm opinion is that the only true answer to this question is no, and everything I have read in this thread has actually made me even more confident in my view.
I would like to remind Shlomo, with all due respect, that i have given him advice some time ago on what to eat (or rather, what NOT to eat) to avoid delusional insanity.
The evidence based on Putin’s own utterances is Ukraine ‘needlessly’ provokes Russia simply by existing. Ukraine faces an existential threat and history suggests appeasing the person who embodies that threat is likely to work as well as it did in 1939.
The biggest mistake Ukraine even made was giving up the nuclear weapons they inherited from the Soviet Union.
. . . wouldn’t Ukraine then already be a vassal state of Russia?
(FWIW, were I Putin, I would take Ukraine joining NATO as a near act of war. Through bumbling and outright lies – “no, we won’t advance that way” – we in the West have transformed Putin into the closest he’s ever been to being the good guy. And that’s a stretch.)
Amen. They believed a bunch of liars.
Who, sadly, happen to be us. We in NATO handed Ukraine over back then, when we made promises that we could or would never keep.
Getting for a moment back on-topic, if i may, i’d like to point out that the comparison in the SQotD between the Floyd protests and the Freedom Convoy is just a bit unfair. Very little Floyd-inspired violence occurred in Canada, if we can trust Wikipedia. (Which we can’t, but where else could i look??)
The only “unrest” that i found mentioned on Wikipedia occurred in Montreal.
Bobby:
Actually, it was not NATO as such.
Just to be pedantic; but i know what you mean.
Apologies. I meant to have said:
My firm opinion is that the only true answer to this question is no, and nothing I have read in this thread has changed my mind much at all.
Perry,
This may be true.
It’s a lot more complex than that, as you well know. You may or may not be right about the answer to the question I posed, but even if you are right and I’m wrong (which I seriously doubt but is possible) you would in such a case be right not, in part, because of Putin’s public utterances supporting such a perspective but, rather, partly in spite of Putin’s public utterances supporting such a perspective.
Everything such people as Putin, Xi, Macron, Biden, Bush, Blair, etc say is true almost only by accident.
True, but the NATOphiles always get mad if we don’t share credit. 😉
Snorri 🙂
It’s as if no one ever read that article put out under Putin’s name back in 2021 about the history of Ukraine and Russia. In it was a rather detailed and scholarly recital that told us exactly what he planned to do. Now we’re surprised?
(ETA: this one: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/by-date/12.07.2021 )
Blacks make up only about 3% of Canada’s population, so arguably they had no real dog in that fight.
Bobby:
My comment was strictly about the ‘moral equivalence’ in the OP.
But i’d like to note that, from what i hear, a lot of the violence in the US was initiated by White people who, undoubtedly, had eaten too much of what i advised Shlomo not to eat 🙂
Yay, Paul, thread-winner for style!!
Shlomo seems simultaneously eager and uneager for an answer to his question about the relationship between the sound of artillery and the Ukraine’s promising never to join NATO – eager to demand it but uneager to notice when it is given. So I guess I will have to write clearly.
1) I think it most likely the sound of artillery would still be heard this year, and probably now as it is being, because Putin is on a timetable. When Carter was in the white house, the Russians invaded Afghanistan. When Obama was there, the Russians invaded Crimea. Now Biden is there, Russia has invaded Ukraine. It is folly to expect the same thing to produce different results – and it is great folly in Shlomo to imagine that Putin does not see the midterms in the same light as some Democrat strategists. It used to be said that ‘England’s weakness is Ireland’s opportunity’. Certainly, western weakness is Russia’s opportunity. This whole incident displays the worthlessness of promises in a time of weakness (the Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons is a case in point). A promise extracted from the Ukraine today is a promise they can revoke if Nato looks strong. Putin is invading the Ukraine now because he can, now.
2) It is possible that the Ukraine’s promising never to join Nato would have the same relation to the sound of artillery on its borders as Czechoslovakia’s yielding its border to Hitler after Munich had to the sound of gunfire along that border. It was not heard on the undefended fortifications of the surrendered mountainous border in November 1938 and it was not heard in the occupied heartland of the Czech state in March 1939. I’m unimpressed that Shlomo asks about the sound of artillery instead of the silence that follows surrender. The latter is the more fundamental point.
Almost the first thing that Mr Putin did on becoming ruler of Russia was to close down opposition television stations.
He was never going to tolerant dissent.
“But that is in Russia” – no Mr Putin has had people murdered elsewhere, including in the United Kingdom.
One can not appease Mr Putin – if Ukraine had promised to never join NATO Mr Putin would simply have come up with another demand
Remember, according to Mr Putin, the President of Ukraine is a Nazi, in spite of being Jewish, and a “drug addict”.
Perhaps Mr Putin would have demanded that the President of Ukraine go to a Russian hospital for treatment for his (fictional) drug addiction.
As for those people who (in spite of warnings that it was folly) viewed Mr Putin as an ally for Israel – Mr Putin already has an ally in the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Niall,
I have left dozens of comments on Samizdata over the last 5 days in many different Samizdata threads. In fact in this thread alone I have already left 29 comments.
I try to respond to every comment that is addressed to me, but I also have a social life and a job.
Can you point out which specific comment in this thread you think I should have responded to that led to your comment at “February 24, 2022 at 11:59 am” including the remark that I was “uneager to notice” a response to my question?
While you are erecting a strawman argument, would you at least do me the courtesy of being clear about what specifically you are insinuating I believe so I can respond directly to your underlying claim?
Alternatively, it might be more constructive for you to simply ask me a question if you have one about what I think.
For example: Shlomo, do you think that Putin sees the US midterm elections as an opportunity or that the US midterm elections affected his decision of when to invade Ukraine? My answer would certainly be yes.
Agreed! I’d go so far as to say that if Trump were POTUS today then Putin probably would not have invaded the Ukraine.
Without war what is there to surrender to? If Ukraine’s ruling class had acted in its own interests instead of acting in a corrupt way to enrich themselves and their western protectors, while cooperating far more closely with Washington DC than with Moscow on security, military, economic, energy, and even water matters over the last many years, then why would Russia have invaded?
If Ukraine’s government had publicly and unequivocally stated a couple months ago that under no circumstances would Ukraine join NATO or agree to any similar kind of action that would needlessly provoke Russia, do you really think anyone would be hearing artillery in Donetsk or anywhere in Ukraine right now??
I believe the answer is no. You disagree. I think we will have to just agree to disagree.