Things Most Americans Do Not Know about the Ukraine War and Putin

Most Americans I talk to are clueless. They think that it is sufficient justification to pay dozens of billions of dollars because "Putin bad." They are being led around like sheep. There is a history to this Ukraine War and there was a way to completely avoid this war, as admitted by NATO's Secretary General:

But now Tucker Carlson is about to do what all good corporate media journalists should have done over the past few years: Interview Vladimir Putin. This is truly what real journalists do: They are curious and they go out into the world and they bring back important stories, important interviews.

Tucker has made a statement about why he is doing this interview and it is telling. This statement would not have been necessary had other journalists been doing their jobs.

I have transcribed Tucker's statement below:

We're in Moscow tonight. We're here to interview the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. We'll be doing that soon. There are risks to conducting an interview like this, obviously. So we thought about it carefully over many months. Here's why we're doing it.

First, because it's our job. We're in journalism. Our duty is to inform people, two years into war that's reshaping the entire world. Most Americans are not informed. They have no real idea what's happening in this region. Here in Russia, or 600 miles away in Ukraine. What they should know, they're paying for much of it in ways they might not fully yet perceive. The war in Ukraine is a human disaster. It's left hundreds of 1000s of people dead, an entire generation of young Ukrainians. It has depopulated the largest country in Europe.

But the long term effects are even more profound. This war has utterly reshaped the global military and trade alliances, and the sanctions that followed have as well. And in total, they have upended the world economy. The post-WWII economic order, the system that guaranteed prosperity in the West for more than 80 years, is coming apart very fast. And along with it, the dominance of the US dollar. These are not small changes, they are history-altering developments. They will define the lives of our grandchildren.

Most of the world understands this perfectly well. They can see it. Ask anyone in Asia or the Middle East what the future looks like. And yet, the populations of the English speaking countries seem mostly unaware. They think that is nothing has really changed. And they think that because no one has told them the truth. Their media outlets are corrupt. They lie to the readers and viewers. And they do that mostly by omission. For example, since the day the war in Ukraine began, American media outlets have spoken to scores of people from Ukraine and they have done scores of interviews with Ukrainian president Zelensky. We ourselves have put in a request for an interview with Zelensky. We hope he accepts. But the interviews he's already done in the United States are not traditional interviews. They are fawning pep-sessions specifically designed to amplify Zelensky's demand that the US enter more deeply into war in Eastern Europe and pay for it. That is not journalism. It is government propaganda. Propaganda of the ugliest kind. The kind of kills people.

At the same time our politicians and media outlets have been doing this--promoting a foreign leader like he's a new consumer brand--not a single Western journalist has bothered interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict: Vladimir Putin. Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now. You've never heard his voice. That's wrong. Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they're implicated in and we have the right to tell them about it because we are Americans too. Freedom of speech is our birthright. We were born with the right to say what we believe.

That right cannot be taken away no matter who is in the White House. But they're trying anyway. Almost three years ago, the Biden administration illegally spied on our text messages and then leaked the contents to their servants in the news media. They did this in order to stop a Putin interview that we were planning. Last month we're pretty certainly did exactly the same thing once again. But this time we came to Moscow anyway. We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love the United States. We want it to remain prosperous and free.

We paid for this trip ourselves. We took no money from any government or group. Nor are we charging people to see the interview. It is not behind a paywall. Anyone can watch the entire thing shot live to tape, unedited on our website, tuckercarlson.com. To Elon Musk's his great credit, he has promised not to suppress or block this interview once he posts it on his platform, X. And we're grateful for that. Western governments, by contrast, will certainly do their best to censor this video on other less principal platforms because that's what they do. They are afraid of information they can't control. But you have no reason to be afraid of it. We are not encouraging you to agree with what Putin may say in this interview. But we are urging you to watch it. You should know as much as you can. And then, like a free citizen and not a slave, you can decide for yourself. Thanks

Here's one example of many: The Corporate News Outlet reporters are freaking out because they are sitting on their hands like good well-paid servants, yet someone else is actually doing the work of journalism.

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FIRE’s Statement on AI and Free Speech

Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, gives his opening statement to Congress on AI and Freedom of Speech.

Text of Greg's Speech:

My name is Greg Lukianoff, and I am the CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or “FIRE,” where I’ve worked for 23 years. FIRE is a nonpartisan, nonprofit that uses litigation, scholarship, and public outreach to defend and promote the value of free speech for all Americans. We proudly defend free speech regardless of a speaker’s viewpoint or identity, and we have represented people across the political spectrum.

I’m here to address the risk AI and AI regulation pose to freedom of speech and the creation of knowledge. We have good reason to be concerned. FIRE regularly fights government attempts to stifle speech on the internet.

FIRE is in federal court challenging a New York law that forces websites to “address” online speech that someone, somewhere finds humiliating or vilifying.

We’re challenging a new Utah law that requires age verification of all social media users.

We’ve raised concerns about the federal government funding development of AI tools to target speech including microaggressions.

And later this week, FIRE will file a brief with the Supreme Court explaining the danger of “jawboning” — the use of government pressure to force social media platforms to censor protected speech.

But the most chilling threat that the government poses in the context of emerging AI is regulatory overreach that limits its potential as a tool for contributing to human knowledge.

A regulatory panic could result in a small number of Americans deciding for everyone else what speech, ideas, and even questions are permitted in the name of “safety” or “alignment.”

I’ve dedicated my life to defending freedom of speech because it is an essential human right. However, free speech is more than that; it’s nothing less than essential to our ability to understand the world.

A giant step for human progress was the realization that, despite what our senses tell us, knowledge is hard to attain.

It's a never-ending, arduous, necessarily de-centralized process of testing and retesting, of chipping away at falsity to edge a bit closer to truth.

It’s not just about the proverbial “marketplace of ideas”; it’s about allowing information—independent of idea or argument—to flow freely so that we can hope to know the world as it really is. This means seeing value in expression even when it appears to be wrongheaded or useless.

This process has been aided by new technologies that have made communication easier. From the printing press, to the telegraph and radio, to phones and the internet: each one has accelerated the development of new knowledge by making it easier to share information.

But AI offers even greater liberating potential, empowered by First Amendment principles, including freedom to code, academic freedom, and freedom of inquiry.

We are on the threshold of a revolution in the creation and discovery of knowledge.

AI’s potential is humbling; indeed, even frightening.

But as the history of the printing press shows, attempts to put the genie back in the bottle will fail.

Despite the profound disruption the printing press caused in Europe in the short term, the long-term contribution to art, science, and again, knowledge was without equal.

Yes, we may have some fears about the proliferation of AI. But what those of us who care about civil liberties fear more is a government monopoly on advanced AI.

Or, more likely, regulatory capture and a government-empowered oligopoly that privileges a handful of existing players.

The end result of pushing too hard on AI regulation will be the concentration of AI influence in an even smaller number of hands.

Far from reining in the government’s misuse of AI to censor, we will have created the framework not only to censor but also to dominate and distort the production of knowledge itself.

“But why not just let OpenAI or a handful of existing AI engines dominate the space?” you may ask.

Trust in expertise and in higher education—another important developer of knowledge—has plummeted in recent years, due largely to self-inflicted wounds borne of the ideological biases shared by much of the expert class.

That same bias is often found baked into existing AI, and without competing AI models we may create a massive body of purported official facts that we can’t actually trust.

We’ve seen on campus that attempts to regulate hate speech have led to absurd results like punishing people for simply reading about controversial topics like racism; similarly, AI programs flag or refuse to answer questions about prohibited topics.

And, of course, the potential end result of America tying the hands of the greatest programmers in the world would be to lose our advantage to our most determined foreign adversaries.

But with decentralized development and use of AI, we have a better chance of defeating our staunchest rivals or even Skynet or Big Brother.

And it’s what gives us our best chance for understanding the world without being blinded by our current orthodoxies, superstitions, or darkest fears.

Thank you for the invitation to testify and I look forward to your questions.

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Sunshine is the Best Disinfectant – Speech Edition

“Solving hate by banning hate speech is like solving global warming by breaking all the thermometers. All it does is make the hate harder to hear, harder to identify, harder to confront, harder to root out.” Jonathan Rauch

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FIRE takes aim at California’s DEI Regimen

Greg Lukianoff writes:

From a legislative or regulatory standpoint, the single biggest threat I have seen to free speech and academic freedom on campus has been the DEI requirements implemented by the California Community Colleges system. In an effort to combat these requirements, FIRE sued the California Community Colleges Chancellor and the members of its Board of Governors, as well as the State Center Community College District.

In the case, FIRE is representing six tenured professors, each of whom teach at one of three Fresno-area community colleges within the State Center Community College District. Under the new regulations, all of the more-than-54,000 professors who teach in the system must incorporate “anti-racist” viewpoints into classroom teaching and pledge allegiance to contested ideological viewpoints. This includes requiring professors to “acknowledge” that “cultural and social identities are diverse, fluid, and intersectional,” and to develop “knowledge of the intersectionality of social identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face.”

Under these regulations, faculty performance and tenure will also be evaluated based on professors’ commitment to and promotion of these government-mandated viewpoints. As our client, Reedley College professor Bill Blanken, said, “I’m a professor of chemistry. How am I supposed to incorporate DEI into my classroom instruction? What’s the ‘anti-racist’ perspective on the atomic mass of boron?

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