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Feb. 27, 2022 - Viva & Barnes

02:11:33

Ep. 102: Russia Invasion of Ukraine; Canada Madness; Olympics & MORE! Viva & Barnes LIVE!

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	I tried to get a video up as the buffer.
	I was going to play a video, which I might play anyhow.
	You may notice I'm not in my basement studio.
	I'm not saying that I'm in the bathroom again for another vlog live stream.
	I'm just saying if I have to go to the bathroom, it might be a very short walk.
	We are not in our studio because it's spring break with the kids and we are in the middle of the woods.
	In Quebec.
	And it's beautiful.
	I'm just hoping the internet holds up.
	But audio quality, video quality, I'm off my computer, mic and camera.
	And it sucks.
	But it is content over form.
	And that's what's most important.
	It is the information, not the means of communication of the information.
	Bad internet is better than no internet.
	And what a week.
	What a week it's been.
	We're going to see...
	It's going to be a spicy chat because we've gone from the, you know, what would be called the absolute absurdity of Canada over the last month, which you could only have had a diverging opinion on the outrageousness of that behavior of what happened in Canada over the last month if you only watch Canadian legacy media.
	Anybody with half an open mind, anybody with half an ounce of knowledge of what actually happened in Canada over the last month, from those protests to them being broken up after an abusive declaration of the Emergencies Act, police coming in, literally beating up protesters, pepper-spraying protesters, assaulting reporters, the only people who could not be thoroughly convinced as to how wrong that was, watch CBC, CTV, Global News.
	So there was sort of unanimity among observers who were reasonably informed about what was going on as to how bad it was.
	Now we've entered another crisis, which is the Ukraine-Russia conflict that is very polarizing.
	It's very polarizing and it's very interesting because I consider myself to be reasonably informed.
	My family comes from Ukraine.
	We have a picture of my family in, I think it was near Kiev, a hundred years ago.
	My grandmother is from Ukraine, but I still knew very little, in my own humble opinion, about this conflict to even have such a strong opinion on this conflict, whereas I'm looking to social media and it seems that the strength and vitriol of people's opinion correlates in reverse fashion.
	To their knowledge of the actual nature of this conflict, the history of this conflict, and the nuances of this conflict.
	And it's not to say that there's not a right and a wrong.
	It's just to say that it might not be quite as black and white, cut and dry, as the media is depicting it.
	So, before we get into the intro, rant, discourse.
	Standard disclaimers.
	I've missed a few super chats already.
	First of all...
	No, I'll bring up a couple of Super Chats, and then I'll ask the question, how is the audio?
	How is the video?
	Bearing in mind, I can't do anything about it.
	Nova Scotia vaccine deadline is 12 a.m.
	Anyone working a high-risk profession will be put on unpaid leave.
	My 10-year career as a paramedic is now over.
	The thanks we get.
	No, no good deed goes unpunished.
	No good deed goes unpunished.
	And from hero to zero, because...
	The very supreme scientific intelligent overlords have determined that having an unvaccinated paramedic is more dangerous than potentially not having enough paramedics.
	That's the level of our science and politics, or as some might say, our political science in Canada.
	Trudeau stopped the war by freezing all of Russia's bank accounts.
	True story.
	It would be funny if it weren't so funny.
	I missed one super chat from Sager.
	It says, clarification, the Ottawa citizens' lawsuit against...
	Oh, and it literally just went away as I was reading it?
	Oh, come on.
	If someone can read...
	It was a $20 orange super chat about the Ottawa protest lawsuit, and it literally disappeared as I was reading it.
	Can you verify that you're not currently sitting on a toilet?
	I can.
	Hold on.
	I brought a nice leather.
	I believe it's pleather.
	I brought a pleather chair into the bathroom.
	For anyone who's new to the channel, occasionally when I'm on the road, and it's usually, I'm only on the road when it's with family or, you know, documenting protests.
	When it's with the family, I've got to find the quietest room in the entire area.
	I don't even know if you can still hear the...
	Okay.
	Kids are screaming.
	I've got to find the quietest room in the house, which is typically the bathroom, but it's got to be close enough to the internet box so that, you know, my connectivity is good.
	And I can't tether my phone here because I have zero bars.
	That's how in the middle of nowhere we are.
	V, the very first video of yours that I saw, you were ziplining and explaining the quirks of law.
	How did we end up here?
	P.S. Shout out to Cleopatra.
	Haven't heard from her in a while.
	Cleopatra is well.
	And thank you for the concern of Cleopatra's well.
	Last we heard from her, but it was recently.
	That video where I was talking about the waivers, the waivers of liability for extreme activity was a great original vlog.
	Spot on, Viva.
	Kanukistan is the best example of why I don't believe Jack out of MSM and I saw your vids versus MSM.
	You are a hero to us in the US.
	Thank you very much, Brent Mack.
	And Cassidy the Carpenter.
	Sir, how's it going?
	Very much in support of helping Ukraine, though I can never support Freeland.
	When I found out she would be leading the speech at Toronto's rally, I was out.
	No comments, but the world is complicated.
	Go with your instincts.
	This is BS.
	I'm not taking a hard position, but we're going to talk about it with Barnes.
	You know what?
	Let's bring up the chat here.
	Most practices demand the government exert more power.
	Most protests demanded the government exert more power that truckers demanded the government exert less.
	That's why it was a threat.
	And it had the support of lots and lots of Canadians.
	Okay, standard disclaimers.
	First of all, let me just see something here.
	Thank you for the super chat.
	How is the audio?
	How is the video?
	Is it good enough?
	Is it good enough?
	Is the first question.
	Second thing.
	Thank you very much.
	Standard disclaimers.
	Superchats.
	YouTube takes 30% of Superchats.
	If that myths people and they don't like that, I can appreciate that.
	We are simultaneously streaming on Rumble.
	I may have difficulty getting to Rumble.
	I got my phone tucked behind my computer, so I'll do my best seeing if we have any Rumble rants, because on Rumble...
	Let me see if we're live.
	Let's see if we're live.
	Okay, and I can't max out...
	I can't max out the internet by streaming at the same time, so...
	I'm going to see what we've got on Rumble.
	If we have any, I'll keep going back.
	Rumble takes 20%, which you can feel better about supporting the contributor, supporting the creator, supporting the platform, yada, yada.
	If I do not bring up your Super Chat, I'm going to feel miffed.
	I did not give it the required attention.
	Please do not give the Super Chat.
	I do my best, but I will not get to all the Super Chats.
	And it's a beautiful problem to have.
	I thank you all for the support.
	Do not break your bank supporting me.
	Period.
	If it's going to hurt, don't do it.
	Period.
	And if you're going to be upset if I don't bring it up, don't do it either.
	I don't like people feeling upset.
	The best thing you can do to support the channel?
	Share the links.
	Share the clips.
	Spread the word.
	Because really, this was born out of a pursuit of the truth.
	And that's all it's going to say.
	Recently saw that the Ottawa Citizens lawsuit now includes donors from February 4th onwards.
	That's what I read.
	What I read was...
	People who donated after February 4th.
	So, we'll see.
	But I've shared my clips on why that is a patently frivolous lawsuit, which should get tossed on its face.
	And it's in Ontario, and I'm not convinced that, as far as I understand, in Ontario, an abusive plaintiff can be sanctioned for fees in a more meaningful way than in Quebec.
	In Quebec, it's excessively difficult to get an abusive party.
	To pay legal fees.
	I'm seeing the Wi-Fi.
	I'm seeing the bars, which I don't ordinarily see, so I'm getting nervous that we're going to lose.
	Whatever.
	Let me know if it's good enough.
	Hey, Viva, any chance we have covered the new bill's S233?
	Universal basic income?
	No, I haven't.
	It'll be on the books.
	I see Barnes in the house, and I'm not sure that I should do my intro rant because it's going to be...
	I might pull up some of the tweets as we go.
	Suffice only to say...
	You know...
	COVID was Justin Trudeau's distraction from his corruption, the We Charity scandal, his ethics violations.
	COVID was the perfect distraction.
	And Justin Trudeau will never let go of COVID because it was a crisis that distracted from his corruption.
	Then we had the protests and Trudeau came in, physically abused protesters, abusively and unconstitutionally invoked the Emergencies Act.
	Was lambasted across the globe, froze bank accounts, committed unconstitutional acts while assuring us he would respect the Charter of Rights, lambasted internationally, and then this crisis in Ukraine happens.
	And I'm not saying it's a fabricated crisis, period.
	What's going on there is going on.
	The extent of it, the extent of what's going on is unclear because, you know...
	We can't trust our media.
	But my goodness, did Justin Trudeau just find his distraction from his most recent crisis scandal, what he did to Canadians over the last month?
	He's found his new distraction, and he's going to milk the crisis in Ukraine as long and as hard as possible so that we don't go back to discussing what Trudeau just did to Canada.
	Freezing bank accounts, arguably possibly causing a run on the banks, possibly from rumors getting calls from Big players to undo what he did because it's putting undue pressure on the banks who are seeing people come in to withdraw their money because nobody has faith in Canadian financial institutions anymore.
	He's found his crisis to divert the attention to, as did his subsidized media.
	Don't expect him to let go of it.
	Okay, with that said, I'm going to bring in Barnes because we've got to talk about the Russian crisis and it's going to cover a lot of issues.
	Robert, how goes the battle, sir?
	Good, good.
	Chat, let me know if the audio divergence between the two of us is good.
	Sorry, I'm going to miss a bunch of chats here.
	I just need to make sure that the audio is good, and I'll try to get back to them.
	My goodness, I put the chat on 20-second slow-mo.
	I still can't keep up to it.
	Okay, let me know.
	People, I'm looking at the chat now.
	Is our audio good?
	Robert, before we get going, what do you have in your mouth?
	What do you have behind your back, over your shoulder?
	Yeah, The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson.
	Sort of what happened when America forsake...
	Or forsook its origins, the great speeches by people like George Washington, John Quincy Adams, and others about do not go seeking abroad monsters to destroy.
	Because what happens is you'll get entangled, intertwined, and when you fly your own military under someone else's banners, if you will, that problems await.
	Anyone knowledgeable about European history especially, or Mideastern history, or Afghani history, or Vietnamese history.
	Might have been able to predict that and forecast that as the war drums beat once again around the world.
	From all sources of media, left, right, also both political parties, they're all happy to join in.
	The defense contractor, Griff, is ready to get up and rolling and churning.
	So we'll see how it goes.
	It looks like you're hiding out in a basement from the Trudeau regime.
	No, you don't.
	I wish I'm hiding out from the Freiheit family regime.
	But, Robert, let's start.
	I'm going to bring up...
	Hold on, that's fine.
	How did that happen?
	Stop that.
	Stop that.
	Boomer moment.
	I want to bring up just one.
	I just want to bring up one thing here because I think it's apropos.
	That was the video I was going to start with.
	Never got to it.
	Robert, it's a tweet that I put up yesterday.
	No, this morning.
	The last time I saw such categorical, unequivocal, and morally righteous unanimity among politicians, blue checkmark Twitter, experts...
	And celebrities on such a complex issue was back in 2020 with two weeks to flatten the curve.
	Yeah, I mean, people should, you know, I mean, the propaganda is going to get crazy right about now, but everyone should, you know, that has certainty of their position, whichever their position may be, should second guess it if they have doubts about being aligned with, you know, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Mitt Romney agree.
	When the three of them agree, it's time to hide.
	It's the holy trinity of evil.
	And it's not to say that in this particular event now that there's not an aggressor.
	Forget taking a position.
	People should just put away their fingers and put away the virtue signaling and just try to understand.
	Because this is complex.
	It goes back, if not a hundred years, at the very least.
	30 years?
	And people have no idea the players.
	They have no idea what's at stake.
	They have no idea the amount of money that is at play here.
	And yeah, you got Soros, Clinton, Romney.
	You got Fox News.
	Yeah, the Foreign Affairs folks.
	All the people that love the prior Iraqi wars.
	Kind of Lisa Rice this morning was explaining that invading a foreign nation is a war crime.
	Which I thought...
	Is she confessing on the public stage, given that she led the second Iraqi war effort?
	So what we'll try to do here is separate out the law from policy, from politics.
	Maybe what Ukraine is doing is good or bad, what they have been doing.
	Maybe what Russia is doing is good or bad.
	That's different.
	On a policy, political analysis, than what the legal analysis would be.
	And I think, so if we look at it from an international legal perspective, there's sort of three generally governing principles.
	International law is mostly set by custom and practice.
	There is also treaties and conventions that people have signed, agreements people have signed, the UN Charter, the Budapest Memorandum that's been cited in this particular context, the Minsk Accords that has been cited in this particular context, all of which has some bearing.
	But the general principles and precepts that govern international law are self-determination, self-defense, and sovereignty, and particularly sovereignty of borders, but that can go beyond just borders.
	I will acknowledge that there is much debate over those three principles, what they mean, what they entail, how they interact with one another.
	I'm going to take the general American historical perspective on this, which I find particularly ironic given some of these people out there quoting that it's always a crime to do something.
	Well, the U.S. government has done more than anyone else in the history of the world in the last two centuries.
	And I take a different position than the left, the anti-war left does.
	I don't think what we've been doing most of the time has been illegal.
	I think some of the policies have been questionable policies.
	So as a kid, I was a skeptic of Iraq War, number one.
	I was a skeptic of Iraq War, number two.
	I was a skeptic of going into Afghanistan.
	I was a skeptic of bombing in the Balkans in the 90s.
	But that was for policy grounds, not because I thought what we were doing was illegal.
	And so let's get to some of what the legal determinations are.
	Generally speaking, self-defense trumps everything.
	Particularly from the American legal perspective.
	The Bush Doctrine took self-defense to broader lengths and said your self-defense can be anything that you see as a risk to your national security.
	The Bush Doctrine that was followed by Obama, that was mostly borrowed by Trump, and that is still enforced in the Biden administration, is that self-defense is broad enough to incorporate any threat to national security justifies military intervention.
	Again, there's arguments about that.
	My own view is I kind of side in that direction and separating it out from whether or not it's a good policy when you get involved someplace, whether or not it's a good idea, whether you actually can achieve what your so-called objectives are.
	There are serious doubts, I think, fairly about whether Russia can do that here, even if you're on the...
	Russian side of it, quote-unquote.
	But generally, self-defense trumps.
	And what I mean by that is even the Budapest Memorandum, for example, even the UN Charter, for example, even most conventions and treaties as illustrations.
	And for those that don't know, the Budapest Memorandum was when Ukraine joined the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Agreement.
	They agreed to have the Russians, who were then in operational control of the nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, to take those back to Russia.
	And in exchange, the U.S. would recognize them, the West would recognize them, and Russia would recognize them as an independent country.
	And part of that recognized the sovereignty of their borders.
	But even within the Budapest Memorandum said, unless you have to ignore those borders for self-defense purposes.
	Now, the only signatories to the Budapest Memorandum were the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Russia, and the United States, not the world.
	But Russia is bound by it.
	But it does have a self-defense exception, and that's pretty common through most of international history.
	Now, you have the famous Nicaragua case that went to the International Criminal Court, but the U.S. judge who sat on that court dissented for the majority decision, arguing self-defense should be a broad and expansive doctrine, so that generally self-defense trumps the rest.
	Second is self-determination.
	We kind of came up with that idea as much as anybody.
	We pushed it through the League of Nations under Woodrow Wilson, and we said, you have a right to declare your independence.
	I mean, we're the United States of America because we declared our independence back in 1776.
	So we're naturally quite fond of these things.
	And so generally, that means that, say, the regions of the Donbass have an arguable, recognized right to self-determination, to declare the same with the people of Crimea, to declare their independence.
	In the case of Crimea, declare their independence and then join Russia in both cases by popular plebiscite with internationally observed elections and that the Russia has a right to recognize.
	The U.S. and NATO did with Kosovo and the various other republics that broke off from Yugoslavia.
	Robert, I'm going to stop you there because we'll break it down element by element just before we get to Donbass, which if you ask someone who's made a post on Twitter, where is Donbass?
	Forget finding Ukraine on a map.
	Ask someone if they can find Ukraine.
	Then ask them if they even know what the Donbass region is.
	And if they say no, they have no business having an opinion, period.
	Going back to the Budapest memorandum, I had George Samueli on for a quick one Thursday.
	It was brought up.
	I didn't know what it was, so I looked at it afterwards.
	The Budapest Memorandum talks about, it says security assurances, not necessarily coming to the defense of.
	And so the question is, people are building the argument here that the West has an automatic obligation under the Budapest Memorandum to come to the defense of Ukraine the way the Allies ought to have had the same obligation towards Poland versus Hitler in 1939, 1938.
	Can you elaborate on that?
	What does it mean, the security assurances?
	Does it mean anything?
	It really does mean it.
	I mean, it's generic language.
	There was no option at the time that the Ukraine could exist with nuclear weapons on its territory.
	They were not going to be recognized by anybody if that happened.
	They didn't have operational control of those nuclear weapons, and their ability to sustain it is also in question by observers over time.
	So it wasn't like they were giving up something significant.
	That's the retrospective interpretation of what Ukraine gave.
	If you lived through it as I did, that wasn't an alternative.
	That was not a viable option.
	All the countries had to give up their nuclear weapons to be recognized independently by anybody, including Russia and the West.
	Otherwise, it's a pretty basic provision that says you have a right to recognize the borders, number one.
	Number two, you have a right to self-defense, and you don't have to recognize the borders if self-defense is triggered.
	And then third, for certain kinds of military intervention, it recommends going through the UN, but in turn, what it does is the agreement borrows the 1975 agreement.
	It references it explicitly and incorporates it thereby, which is the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
	Which in turn borrows from the United Nations Charter, Section 7, which in turn borrows from the common law tradition and what you could call common law, the recognized international law, legal precedent of self-defense, which by the American interpretation is not limited by the United Nations Charter.
	It just reflects one component of it.
	So there are some that argue that the United Nations Charter limits the right of self-defense.
	That has frankly never been the American legal position.
	Otherwise, we would have had problems with a lot of the interventions we've done over the last hundred years, least of all post-Cold War period.
	And I agree with the American interpretation.
	I think the right of self-defense is pretty broad.
	If you think somebody's up to something bad, I think you have a right of military intervention to change the regime.
	That does not mean it's a good idea.
	That does not mean it's morally right, that it's politically right, that it's smart policy.
	That just means legally you're on solid terrain.
	I believe most U.S. interventions have had a plausible argument.
	It comes down to a secondary question.
	So you start off with the right of self-determination and the right of self-defense, and beneath that, frankly...
	In the tradition of international law, especially as it's been interpreted by U.S. legal advocates, including the State Department especially, by the way, which suddenly has a radically new interpretation of this, the one they're not really willing to commit to writing because they don't want it to be used against them the next time we decide to do something different, is the sovereign borders.
	That's beneath self-determination, beneath self-defense.
	So in this context, assuming that you had the Donbass declare their independence, Russia recognized that independence.
	They signed a mutual support agreement.
	And clearly the regions in Donbass are under threat, have a self-defense right.
	If you go with the self-determination right, they exercised first.
	If you recognize that right, then they had a self-defense right against the Ukraine, which was shelling them.
	I think they shelled them about 2,000 times in two days before this conflict.
	You've got to stop there because some people are never going to have heard the word Donbass.
	D-O-N-B-A-S-S.
	I tweeted out just a Wikipedia link to it earlier today with a couple of screenshots.
	And by the way, the Wikipedia link was not very pro-NATO.
	I mean, it had some information in there, which I suspect people don't know, such as the Ukrainian government.
	Ukraine has been shelling this region in the east of Ukraine.
	And then people say, oh, Wikipedia is biased.
	When it's biased to the left, disregard it's biased.
	When it's biased to the right, it's been infiltrated.
	Bottom line, it's just a source.
	It's a starting point so that people out there can have the slightest idea of what they're talking about.
	And people don't even understand where the Donbass region is, how it became to be sort of, not rogue, but independent or distinct states within Ukraine, Russia.
	So, Robert, I mean, I could do it, but I think...
	People will respect it more if it comes from you.
	Where is Donbass?
	Geographically speaking, when was it that they voted for their own independence from Ukraine after Ukraine voted for its independence from Russia or the Soviet Union?
	How did the Donbass come to be?
	Where is it?
	And what's the dynamic?
	So the Donbass is in the far east on the Russian border of Ukraine, dominated by people of Russian nationality and ancestry that speak Russian.
	They had supported what could be called the Russian side in various presidential elections as the EU became an active issue in Ukrainian politics beginning around 2000, 2001.
	So 2004, 2010, 2014.
	Whenever there's been an election contest where the EU has been an issue, the Donbass region plus Crimea were the most 90% plus on the candidate aligned with the Russian side.
	That can be overstated, but that's the loose basis of it.
	In 2014, there's what's called the Maidan coup.
	The supporters of it call it the Maidan revolution.
	The critics of it call it a coup.
	It was not a legally recognized transfer of power.
	The elected president had to flee.
	There's arguments about whether it was based on false flags and staged events and neo-Nazi-influenced militias.
	That's the people that are critical of what happened at the Maidan coup.
	The people that are supporters are arguing that the corrupt president had betrayed the people by turning down an EU deal and cutting a deal with Russia.
	And that they were attacked by supporters of the president and by snipers.
	And the question is, who were those snipers really aligned with?
	And there's been a long historical debate about it.
	If you want to see the skeptical side of it, you can watch films like Ukraine on Fire and its sequels by Oliver Stone.
	You'll get plenty of propaganda from the West on what happened.
	So there's plenty of sources for that version of events.
	Because of what happened...
	Soon after the new government came into power, the new government started elevating people like Banderas and others that Russians see as, well, in fact, were, historically, colluders with the Nazis.
	There's a neo-Nazi-aligned party, the Assoff Battalion.
	I think I pronounced it.
	Probably pronunciated it wrong, but whatever.
	But basically, there are neo-Nazi influences in far western Ukraine that celebrate and consider Ukrainian heroes, people that others align with the Nazis.
	And they started making them heroes, said you couldn't speak, weren't going to allow Russian as a second language, or it started to attack.
	And then in some of these militias, there were protests, immediately counter-protests to the Maidan coup in Odessa, throughout Crimea.
	Throughout the Donbass, groups aligned with these neo-Nazi militias burned people alive in Odessa that were protesters.
	The people in Crimea were afraid that was coming next for them.
	Same in the Donbass.
	So the Donbass decided to have a vote on whether or not to separate and create independent republics from Ukraine, using the examples set by Europe and NATO with Yugoslavia.
	And in Crimea, they voted to join Russia.
	And in the Donbass, they voted to become independent republics.
	Not long after, there was the Ukrainian military launched an assault on the Donbass region.
	In 2015, they reached what was called the Minsk Accords, where Russia and other countries agreed to secure the Minsk Accords, which said there was going to be a ceasefire, certain weapons wouldn't be used, there'd be no more shelling, and there would be negotiations between Ukraine and the independent republics to incorporate them as more autonomous states like the United States government.
	And if I could stop you there, I was going to ask you one question about...
	Oh, just to add one clarification or one detail, that when...
	When Ukraine split from Soviet Union, 1992.
	And the idea was that...
	Yeah, 1991 is when they held the referendum.
	And then there was kind of two splits because they...
	Voted to split in 1991.
	Everybody agreed on splitting from the Soviet Union, including the people in these regions.
	But they became part of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
	In 1994, they wanted to be independently recognized, leave the Commonwealth of Independent States, agreed.
	The U.S. condition, well, everybody's condition, honestly, was that they join the nuclear nonproliferation and give up the nuclear weapons still.
	And then at that point, because they're part of the Commonwealth of Independent States, under the operational control of Russians.
	And then the EU issue really didn't start to become a hot-button issue in Ukraine until the early 2000s.
	Critics of the EU position, if people want to know what Putin's actual position is, rather than the one the media has sort of caricatured it as, you can watch the two speeches that he has given.
	Or the best version is a, it's either a June or July article he wrote about the historic relations between Russia and Ukrainians.
	And there you can see him lay out.
	His argument is that Ukraine was building an anti-Russia project, being manipulated as a crony, almost colony, of Western interests, of George Soros and other interests like that, to create an anti-Russia project against Russia.
	And then in his latest speeches, he said once that anti-Russia project added to the equation, joining NATO and nuclear arming their country, He considered it an imminent risk to Russia's national security, and his argument is self-defense requires not only he defend the Donbass and Crimea,
	but his self-defense also requires that they remove the existing regime from Ukraine that he sees as an illegitimate regime influenced by what he calls the coup of 2014 and neo-Nazi elements.
	That's the Russia political...
	Excuse.
	Now, you can argue whether you really think that is why they're doing what they're doing.
	Ultimately, under an international legal standard, it boils down to, I have no doubts that the Russian government really believes their self-defense requires this military intervention.
	There's enough of evidence that they can cite, and there's enough...
	I believe they believe it.
	But it's like the U.S. self-defense.
	If we impose an objective component...
	Is their belief that their national security is in danger an objectively reasonable belief under that aspect of self-defense?
	Which, by the way, has not been...
	It's ironic.
	In the international state context, self-defense has often been interpreted much more broadly than individual self-defense has in criminal courts in the United States.
	It actually goes back to Canada.
	Now, one of the old Canadian...
	What happened was there were some folks in America...
	With some Canadians who are plotting to help free Canada from the British yoke back in the 1840s.
	And so some Brits didn't like it, so they invaded the United States and kind of dispatched those poor gentlemen.
	We argued, the United States at that time, that there needed to be imminent risk and there wasn't imminent risk from this group.
	Later, the U.S. has changed its position and its position now is it doesn't require imminent risk.
	It just requires a reasonable belief.
	That unless you have, that military intervention is necessary to protect your national security.
	You can argue whether the U.S. is right or wrong about that, but that is the U.S. position.
	Now, from the Russians' perspective, is the argument that the threat to their national security is from the Ukraine's shelling in the Donbass region or from U.N. expansion into Ukraine?
	It's all three.
	NATO, not U.N., sorry.
	It's all three.
	So there are constant attacks on the Donbass, and they're cutting off of essential services to the Donbass, and they're cutting off of essential services, including to Crimea.
	They shut down the water supply to Crimea.
	They dammed the river so they couldn't get access to water, and they had to find creative ways to deal with that.
	That was justified self-defense as to those regions.
	But in international self-defense, much like our domestic self-defense laws, we have proportionality requirements.
	And so going in to defend Crimea and the Donbass, the Russian government would be on stronger legal grounds, not getting into politics or morality of it.
	But going beyond that for regime change would only be justified if you could argue regime change is necessary for the self-defense of those two regions.
	Russia hasn't even argued that, really.
	Russia has argued they need regime change for two additional reasons, which is the commitment of Ukraine to seeking out nuclear weapons, which was based on President Zelensky's statement at the Munich Security Conference the weekend before Russia announced this military intervention.
	And secondly, Ukraine's repeated request to become part of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed originally in response to the Warsaw Pact or to deal with the We
	can't wait for them to have NATO.
	We can't wait for them to have nuclear weapons, because if we do, it will be...
	Too late for us to protect our national security.
	This is very comparable to the Bush doctrine arguments about the second Iraqi war and U.S. arguments, honestly, we've been using for over a century, including interventions in Central America and the Caribbean.
	And legally, I think we're, I agree with the U.S. side.
	Now, I've often disagreed with the policy, but legally, I believe that the only question comes down is, is Russia right to see?
	NATO nuclear-armed Ukraine is a threat to their national security under the current government of Ukraine.
	They have a lot of it.
	I believe if they had...
	There used to be the unaligned countries during the Cold War.
	They kind of still loosely exist.
	How unaligned they are, you can argue, because Yugoslavia was part of that.
	Cuba tried to be part of that.
	Not always clearly they were unaligned, but putting that historical question aside.
	I think if you had completely neutral observers that what you would likely on a jury...
	Definitely from a criminal perspective, you would not be able to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the Russians have no objective reason to believe their national security has been put at risk by West's interventions and policies under the current Ukrainian regime.
	I think from a civil perspective, it would be a closer call, but we'll get a live vote on this this week to some extent.
	The United Nations Security Council has already voted on a much watered-down resolution that doesn't even call what Russia did illegal.
	And despite that, not only, of course, Russia vetoed it, and unsurprisingly, China refused to support it, but somewhat surprisingly, the United Arab Emirates and India refused to support it.
	And it looks so far, it would not surprise me if a majority of countries amongst Latin America, Africa, and Asia Do not even support this watered-down resolution this week, which tells you that people that have no real dog in the fight don't see this as black and white as many in the West do.
	I'm just bringing this up.
	It's crazy none of this Ukraine info has been said on any MSM.
	It is crazy.
	And that's when my flags go up.
	It's like, this strikes me as being exactly what we went through in the early stages of COVID when Robert was saying, when everyone's doing this all in tandem...
	That's when your hackles, not your hackles, but your flags should be going up.
	But Robert, and one detail is that the Donbass region, you know, they were not averse to separating from the Soviet Union because they wanted to stop being under the fist of the Soviet Union.
	But their issue was then they just became under the fist of Kiev and Ukraine.
	They said, we didn't trade oppression from the Soviets for oppression from Ukraine.
	And then they, I don't remember the year now, it was relatively recently, 2014.
	2014, independent republics.
	And it was 90% that voted in favor of.
	Russia recognized it.
	Ukraine didn't because they said, hey, we've got our borders from 1991-92 and we're not giving them up despite that.
	And there have been shelling from Ukraine against pro-Russian forces in Donbass.
	Oh, gosh.
	Are we still there?
	Oh, well, yeah.
	Can you hear me?
	As an example, there's some dispute about what was happening.
	The Western media pretended this Ukrainian military shelling wasn't occurring.
	Well, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has multiple European parties but generally leans Western, has been on the ground monitoring it.
	And what they found was over 2,000 violations within two days of the ceasefire by the Ukrainian military in the weekend before Russia launched its attack.
	And so the Red Cross has also reported that the Ukrainian military had cut off essential services.
	In other words, things like water, sewage, gas, heat, you name it.
	So in violation of the Minsk Accords.
	And there's no dispute meaningfully that this Ukrainian government has taken no meaningful effort.
	Despite the promises in Zelensky's election campaign, no meaningful effort to actually cooperate with the Minsk Accords, which required they deal directly with the people in Donetsk.
	And they've just refused.
	And I think it's Lugansk, the Donbass region.
	Those are the two separate republics.
	And so it's that combination that precipitated the Russian assault.
	Question is whether two things, one, from a legal perspective, do they have objectively reasonable evidence that their national security was at risk to such a degree that it requires this kind of military intervention?
	And then secondly, will they actually, through military means, achieve this political objective?
	I personally, on the second one, have been a general skeptic, but I will say that if you study the broad contours of history, most nations have achieved Their political objectives through military or martial means.
	So I'm not as a naive lefty, even though I'm a peacenik at heart, about the practicalities of it.
	But from a pure legality perspective, I think if they're in front of a neutral jury and I was setting odds, the Russians would likely win on their action being consistent with their self-defense interests.
	Again, I think there's plenty of fair criticisms that it's an over...
	That objectively, they're wrong to conclude that about Ukraine being a risk.
	And it also depends on whether you require the risk be imminent or not.
	U.S. used to, going back to, I think it's called the Caroline Doctrine, 1840s, that Canadian-British dispute.
	But again, we went away from that a long time ago.
	By the late 1890s, we abandoned that.
	And we said, whatever's in our national security interest justifies military intervention in another region.
	So I think people who are critical of what Russia has done would be better served focusing on the morality and the politics of it, about war not being an effective means, whether their interpretation is objectively reasonable, at what point do they start experiencing too many collateral consequences to make it worthwhile.
	Now, I would note also in this other context, some international legal scholars interpret economic sanctions as acts of force.
	And require the same thing from anybody imposing sanctions.
	I don't think the United States has a credible claim, or most of Europe has a credible claim of self-defense from Russia's military intervention in Ukraine.
	I do not believe that poses any real risk to the national security of the United States to justify any use of force, economic sanctions or otherwise against them from a legal perspective.
	Okay, and I'm getting to the other point you mentioned we should elaborate on.
	Zelensky.
	Zelensky was elected in 2015.
	2015, right?
	2018, I think.
	2018.
	He was a comic, an actor, elected on the platform of negotiating peace in the East.
	And I forget exactly what...
	And on the Russian and Ukrainians being one people.
	He sounded almost like Putin in his unification platform.
	He's got a lot of Russian support in his election.
	My question is this.
	I think I know the answer that I'm giving to myself.
	What changed between his election in 2018 on that platform and now, and I can only put a dollar figure on it, and I'm thinking billions of dollars, aid coming in from the U.S., support coming in from the U.N., where Zelensky all of a sudden says, I've got billions of dollars coming in to our country based on this threat with Russia.
	The cynic in me says, if I solve this problem, where does that aid go?
	Where does that billions of dollars?
	I don't know how much they've done over the last five years, but a billion over the last year.
	Where does that go?
	And also, in a fight, it's a regional dispute.
	Putin might be a bigger enemy or a stronger enemy than Ukraine.
	Typically, what would happen, though, is you'd negotiate.
	Along those lines, you would negotiate from a position of weakness versus a position of power.
	He ran on the position of reconciliation, then gets elected, and then the U.S. says, here's billions and billions of dollars.
	Where is Zelensky's incentive to actually resolve the dispute as opposed to continue promoting it?
	Because now he's got the U.S. and NATO and the U.N. behind him, and he thinks now he is negotiating from a position of power and can therefore renege on the election promises to negotiate peace.
	Is that wrong?
	Am I wrong in that thought process?
	You know, I mean, I think, I mean, if you look at what happens, this actually played, U.S. politics played a major role in this.
	So after Trump won, there was all Russiagate, and Russiagate was an intention, in my view, of sort of what you could call the deep state, dual state, national security state, label it whatever you want, that they didn't want any sort of peace deal to be reached with Russia.
	They're obsessively anti-Russian.
	You know, Soros, EU, WEF, these Bilderbergers, that whole crowd sees Russia as a major hindrance to their agenda, culturally, socially, economically, and politically.
	Putin has made clear he has no interest in unilateral government, unipolar power, anything like that.
	He's a culturally conservative, went out of his way in his speeches to talk about this attack on the culture of the people of Russia.
	And he means woke politics being pushed by the EU and others and by some of the U.S. hierarchy.
	But how it played in is when Trump says this wouldn't have happened under him, it's because Trump was trying to put afoot basically a version of a peace deal.
	Let's cooperate with Russia and focus on China, who's our main geopolitical adversary economically and politically in the future.
	And Russiagate made it very difficult for Trump to do that.
	And then the second thing is, in this particular context, Trump really tried to kickstart this by after Zelensky got elected, called Zelensky.
	And Zelensky, one of the prongs he'd run on was cleaning up corruption.
	And Trump wasn't really even inclined to send more military aid to Ukraine unless the corruption issue was solved and then wanted to leverage all of it with a deal with Russia.
	He thought he could get a deal.
	Explain when you talk corruption in Ukraine.
	What are we talking about?
	Because people throw the term out.
	I don't even understand.
	I think I understand.
	But what do we mean?
	By most independent measurements, Ukraine is in the top 10 of corrupt governments in the world.
	You have one of the biggest landmasses with all kinds of natural resources in the middle of Europe.
	And yet it is the poorest nation in Europe.
	It is one of the only ex-Soviet countries that has become poorer per capita after leaving the Soviet Union.
	Now, there are some other reasons for that.
	There are a lot of Soviet leaders that had...
	After 1960, that had ties to Ukraine, deep ties to Ukraine, gave a lot of arguable favors to Ukraine.
	Putin has hinted at this.
	After they broke up, Russia decided to pay back Ukraine's debt that it owed as part of the Soviet Union.
	So they should have theoretically been much better off economically, but instead they began to get poorer and poorer and poorer, especially as this EU politics started.
	And some attribute it to the involvement of third-party NGOs, non-governmental organizations.
	George Soros made Ukraine a pet project of his beginning in the early 2000s.
	There's people who are critical.
	Critical of that, or skeptical of what his objectives were, that often you undermine the independence and wealth of a country to make them a more dependent colony.
	That the more independent wealth they have, I mean, Ukraine used to be a main source of shipbuilding, main source of steel, of aerospace, of engineering, of a wide range, and now it's one of the weakest.
	And it's not a coincidence that Putin explicitly mentioned that.
	It's like if these European allies that you're seeking help you, why is it you keep getting poorer and poorer and poorer the more you ally with them?
	That's the Russian perspective which Putin represents.
	And as explicitly, expressly communicated, but you won't see that repeated in the AP version that says, let us explain to you why Putin is doing this.
	Somehow that's missing.
	The 2014 Maidan coup, somehow it's missing.
	Much of the Donbass dispute, somehow that's missing.
	Somehow the Minsk Accord, somehow never get in there.
	And of course, in 1990, the United States and the West promised that if the Soviet Union broke up, we would never move NATO east, given that NATO is historically aligned against Russia.
	We, of course, broke that promise a few years later, and we've been breaking it ever since.
	It was never put in, reduced into a treaty, so you can deal with it accordingly.
	But generally speaking, tying yourself in with lots of treaties is what gave us World War I and a lot of other dumb wars over a historical time period.
	So we'll see how all of that progresses.
	But that's sort of the backdrop of what...
	And then you can go further historically in that Eastern Ukraine has a lot of Russians, native-speaking Russians, that have more often been allied with other nations than the West, whereas Western Ukraine was at one point part of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire.
	You'll see a lot of Poles be very anti-Russian.
	That goes way, way back to the Russian Empire, interrupting the great Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
	Arguably the greatest government in the history of Europe at the time was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, had a lot of Democratic components, little r Republican components, etc.
	And it wasn't just.
	The Germans helped with that.
	And Poland hasn't forgotten the Soviet Union either, which they attribute to Russia.
	So there's a historical antagonism there.
	And often there's been historical antagonism going back centuries over Western Ukraine.
	So it's kind of a reflection of a long-standing dispute.
	But the temporary issues are NATO, nuclear weapons, and the 2014 Ukrainian coup.
	And to your point, when Trump reached out to Zelensky and said, let's clean up corruption, let's clean up some other things that would in turn probably have increased the probability of peace many years ago.
	Instead, that phone call...
	Was used as the basis of deep state operators like Alexander Vindman and others to create the fake impeachment of Trump to prevent peace from happening.
	Without Russiagate and without Ukrainegate, that second bogus impeachment, there's almost no chance that we're here now where Russia is militarily involved on the ground in Ukraine.
	I'm going to read one chat from Rumble Rants from Rumble, which is...
	Bonefinder51 says, please watch Pauly St. George's video regarding the history of Ukraine, amazingpauly.net.
	That is not an endorsement.
	I'm just reading a Rumble rant off of Rumble.
	I was going to say, you want the independent perspective.
	Your conversation with George Samuel is good.
	Does anybody think if George Samueli or the Alexes from the Duran or the people from Conversation Couch or the people that appear on RT, any of those people that have a either more neutral perspective or sympathetic with Russia perspective, many of the people who are accused of being sympathetic with Russia are really more on the neutral side.
	But putting that aside...
	Does anybody think that if they were debating any of these blue checkmark Twitteratis, you know, Twittering out, you know, we're with Ukraine and whatnot, that who do you think would look more informed, more knowledgeable?
	It's an embarrassing joke.
	Melanie Jolie.
	It's no comment.
	She's the minister of foreign affairs under Trudeau's government.
	They don't know.
	A damn thing about what's going on.
	They're governing by virtue signaling.
	And it's atrocious.
	And now, people in the chat, Robert, are saying, okay, well, what about Ukraine's right to defend itself?
	Ukraine has an absolute right of self-defense.
	No question whatsoever.
	And so it's one of those examples where...
	Bar fights are the most common American example, but there can be situations where both sides have a right of self-defense, and that neither side, from a pure legal perspective, is correct.
	Now, again, the morals, the politics of it, I recommend getting multiple range of sources from people.
	I have more often voiced the skeptical voice on this, in part because it is mostly my opinion, but also because you're not going to hear this opinion.
	You're not going to hear this argument in the mainstream media.
	You're not going to hear it on Fox.
	You're not going to hear it on Blaze.
	You're not going to hear it on Turning Point.
	A lot of people that you're used to listening to on the right are going to be gung-ho on the war drums.
	When the war drums start beating, sanity and rationality and facts and truth go out the door.
	Even the quartering discovered this.
	The quartering was like, look at this story, look at this story.
	And then two days later, it's like, there's more fake news about war than anything he's ever seen.
	Than Hollywood, than the woke, than all the rest.
	I started getting suspicious when people who I follow, who I trust, had gotten duped into retweeting tweets, which were outright fabrications, like reposting of images from 10 years ago, videos from Israel saying it's a Ukrainian girl standing up to Russian forces.
	And when people are so gung-ho to jump on this bandwagon and say, yeah, we're with the good side this time.
	Oh, and look, it's so obvious, it's unifying the left and the right.
	Maybe it's your influence, Robert.
	Maybe it's a good influence or a bad influence.
	I'm like, dude, I got more questions now.
	And I just go to look.
	And I'm saying, I guarantee you, nobody knows what Donbass is.
	Nobody knows where Ukraine is on a map.
	Russia bad.
	Ukraine good.
	Except that whole...
	Corruption thing.
	The whole Biden, you know, bribing people with a billion dollars in aid to fire a prosecutor who was, except for all of that, then it was good that Ukraine was corrupt.
	Now Ukraine is, you know, you can't even attack them.
	But Robert, you know what I'm saying?
	Like the ghost of Kiev, tanks running over Ukraine.
	There were like eight high profile, completely fake news reports over the last two days.
	It tells you, you combine social media with war propaganda?
	You're in a whole different environment.
	By the way, we've reached 20,000 people watching live on YouTube.
	If you want to go and hit the thumbs up and give it a disproportionately high thumbs up rate, I wouldn't object.
	But Robert, people are going to say Russia's response, even if it's sort of like a preemptive six-day war type preemptive strike from Israel, they're going to say even if it's preemptive, it's egregious, it's excessive, it's over the top.
	And I'm sitting here...
	Not in the bathroom in the middle of Quebec, but, you know, close to saying, where is any video evidence of what is going on?
	Fox News, they show a bullet-riddled armored vehicle with blood on the street.
	That's like, okay, where's the video?
	Like, people are joking.
	Viva, go live stream in Ukraine.
	It's like, there was 24-7 live streaming in Ottawa.
	Not that you'd be doing that if bombs are falling, but there would be video.
	Where is the video evidence?
	And am I getting jaded in saying I've got some suspicions in that all I see is aftermath with no actual video evidence in the era of modern videography, cell phones, social media.
	I haven't seen actual street combat.
	I saw a few videos of jet planes bombing allegedly civilian apartment buildings, except it turned out to be an exact opposite of switcheroo.
	Where's the video evidence?
	And then what do you say?
	Is Russia's response disproportionate in as much as we can even surmise what Russia's response actually is in reality?
	I mean, I think proportionality from a legal perspective, so far it's been, if you...
	Postulate that this regime poses a risk of national security to them.
	If you accede to that premise that Russia has, that so far it's been strikingly proportional because even harsh critics of Putin and Russia and critics of this war have said they've been surprised at the lack of aggressive military action by Russia in this sense.
	Russia has close to a million active troops.
	They had over $200,000 right around the border.
	They've only sent in apparently around $50,000.
	They appear to be going to great lengths to avoid.
	Normally in a military conflict, to achieve your military objective, you knock out all communications, you knock out essential services, even though you know that's going to have negative collateral consequences, including death on civilians.
	We did it.
	The U.S. has done it repeatedly.
	You knock out the water, you knock out the utilities, you knock out the gas, you knock out the energy, you knock out all communications, no internet, no phones, nothing.
	Russia's done none of that.
	That has been a surprise to many observers, not to me, frankly, because I took Putin at his word.
	It's like whether he's right or wrong, morally or politically, he said he wanted to avoid as many collateral consequences, that he's not waging war against Ukraine, that he wants to remove the current regime, which he doesn't think is a legitimate regime, which seized power initially by undemocratic means, and he was able to...
	Institutionalized power from that undemocratic coup, in their words, to maintain that power, even when an elected president got elected on a totally different platform than the one his own government has been implementing.
	Now, I think part of why he implemented it is what happened when impeachment realized the West was not going to allow him to do what he had promised to do.
	Whether he meant it or not is also an open question.
	Again, the dude's a literal clown.
	I mean, he's a comedian, a clown.
	He's president of a country.
	You know, that's probably not the best guy to...
	And he runs around saying dumb stuff all over the place.
	I don't judge him for being a literal comedian because Trump was a literal television dude.
	I will hold the same standard for both.
	And they rose to power ostensibly on the same ideals.
	Outside the system, ring peace, no more stupid wars, certain kind of smart patriotism that was unifying rather than divisive.
	But yeah, so I think...
	We'll see how this all...
	But in terms of proportionality so far, yes.
	I myself am still skeptical that through military means you can achieve a political outcome here, particularly when half of the country in the western Ukraine simply does want to be part of the EU and doesn't want to be aligned with Russia.
	I think Putin underestimates how sincere that is.
	I think he thinks it's not that sincere.
	He sees it as external manipulation that has done that.
	He recognizes far west Ukraine is what it is, but I don't think he appreciates that large parts of western Ukraine are that oriented.
	And so then the question becomes, can he achieve that?
	Now, purportedly, the Russians and the Ukrainians are meeting on the border of Belarus and Ukraine to negotiate.
	Russia's been really clear.
	Just make an explicit commitment, no NATO.
	Explicit commitment, no nuclear weapons.
	Take some of these Overtly neo-Nazi units out of your military and out of martial law and out of militia power and recognize the independent republic of the Donbass and of Crimea being part of Russia.
	Do those things.
	We're out of here.
	We're done.
	We're finished.
	Probably the most explicit, clear provisions in any kind of contemporary conflict in quite a while, to be honest.
	So we'll see if it achieves that.
	Now, the propaganda has been over the top on both sides.
	You know, the Russians are out there saying all the Ukrainians are folding down, throwing their guns, putting off their uniforms, running away.
	All the Ukrainians are saying we're crushing them.
	We're crushing them.
	Like they put out a release that said 8,000 Russian soldiers dead.
	Only 160.
	It's like, okay, come on.
	I think the ghost of Kiev, you know, this fake pilot who's shooting everybody down, you know.
	Some idiot gets in a tank and throws over stuff and they claim the Russians are trying to kill random civilians with a random tank.
	The fake news is all over the place.
	I would ignore all of that.
	From the military people I follow that are pretty decent, that try to be as objective and get as much accurate information as possible, Russia's probably on a 30- to 60-day course to prevail if there's no peace accord.
	It took the U.S. about 30 days to win in Iraq.
	But we went in, frankly, a lot more brutal than the Russians have gone in so far to Ukraine.
	They're so obsessed with avoiding civilian bad events that they've gone in mostly with their special units and groups like that.
	But from what I've seen, they've achieved actually more success than some military observers anticipated.
	They're already close to Kiev, apparently, for example.
	What would the success look like?
	Oh, for them, they just want a Ukrainian government that agrees to those terms.
	But from a military perspective, it would be something that achieves that.
	So they cut off Kiev, cut off Kharkiv.
	It does look like where they are, they've already secured water supply back to Crimea.
	They've already got control over that territory.
	It looks like they're trying to squeeze the units behind, that the units in the Donbass are about to be completely without any air support, naval support.
	Communication support.
	I think they want to take out that unit if that unit doesn't voluntarily retreat.
	And that would secure the Donbath.
	Do we believe that over 4,300 Russian deaths have increased?
	No.
	It's not to be cynical or conspiratorial.
	Have you seen one video of a corpse?
	Has anyone seen 4,300 deaths and you think you wouldn't be seeing this everywhere?
	I don't know.
	There's so much fake news.
	It'll be almost impossible.
	Like I said, there's about three or four military people who are pretty good.
	Scott Ritter used to be on the UN-Iraq team, does pretty good analysis.
	There's a couple of other people that just follow military information.
	On our locals board, I've been sourcing these people out so people can go and look at them.
	Some are just independent voices.
	Third-party voices that have studied the region for a long time, that have their own interpretation.
	You can agree with it, disagree with it, but I think it's valuable.
	We'll have somebody on in a couple of weeks that really studies.
	He's actually from Montreal, and I think it's Matthew Millerman is the name.
	He has studied this extensively, but in part...
	What he emphasizes is what's called strategic empathy, and it's what we teach in the law.
	If you're going to really be able to win in court, you need to understand your adversary's position and understand where they're likely to go and so on and so forth.
	By their interpretation, Russia's probably right on pace with their military agenda.
	They want to do enough to scare the Kiev regime into folding and giving them what they want, and while securing Donbass in Crimea.
	Notably, You haven't seen a lot of Russian military activity in Western, particularly far Western Ukraine.
	You probably won't because that region has no interest in the Russians.
	Well, and that's, I mean, all that we've seen and as much as we've seen anything is from the East.
	By the way, Rude AI News, I know who you are now and I know that you put periods in between your A and the I for clarity because I think I remember saying, was it Rude Al News the last time?
	First of all, thank you very much for this super chat.
	Rude AI News is compiling a presentation titled, Truth is the first casualty of war.
	No question.
	But this is like, I've got to go back and watch Wag the Dog again because this is Wag the Dog level stuff.
	Oh, it is.
	Except social media allows it to be spread so much more quickly and more effective.
	I mean, think of the boldness of taking a game character, Ghost of Kiev, and making people believe that there's this real airline pilot shooting down all the Russians.
	I mean, in some of this stuff, just use your common sense.
	Would a Russian tank be all by itself running over random cars in the Ukraine?
	Probably not.
	You know, so the, I mean, they said they captured a Russian soldier, turned out to be a Ukrainian in disguise.
	There's going to be gobs of that.
	And Zelinsky said that soldiers on Snake Island had gotten killed when apparently they said to the Russians, when the Russians came, they said, F you Russians and took their stand and then sacrificed.
	Actually, none of that happened, folks.
	If you understand the history of this conflict, you knew that in the eastern part, their polling data before all of this showed that very few people were willing to fight back in the eastern part of Ukraine against a Russian intervention.
	If you understand the context, Zelensky's approval rating is something that makes Joe Biden feel great because it's in the teens.
	In the eastern Ukraine.
	It's in the low 20s nationwide.
	This guy is not...
	I get that some Hollywood types are making him a new hero.
	David Hogg?
	Because he puts on military clothes.
	And most of those videos that put him...
	Are old.
	He's old!
	He ain't out on the front lines, anybody.
	Oh, Robert.
	No, no.
	It's crazy.
	The images of him in gear are old pictures being circulated now.
	You got David Hogg.
	From Parkland.
	You know, what a story it would be if a comedian defeats Russia and ousts Putin from power.
	I mean, there's delusional stuff going on.
	But, Robert, this is...
	What do you mean delusional?
	And, Kimberly, I'm not calling you delusional.
	Period.
	No, she's right.
	I mean, today Putin announced, put on close to high alert their nuclear armament after NATO accelerated their threats against him.
	He's serious.
	So, I mean, he's made it clear nobody intervenes or we're going to show you what intervention looks like.
	I mean, whether you agree or disagree, it's tactically, as Tucker Carlson said, that idea to start escalating now.
	You know, whether you like it or dislike it, tactically, it's not a good decision.
	And it turns out, you know, I mean, Ukraine kept poking the bear, and the West kept poking the bear, the Russian bear, and the Russian bear woke up.
	And this is the reality of it.
	It's like if Genghis Khan knocked on your door.
	One of the great Russian heroes is a guy by the name of Alexander Nevsky.
	And what he did was he saved the Russian people.
	How?
	By taking a knee when Genghis Khan came knocking.
	Because he realized all the rest of them, if you didn't take a knee, everybody literally died.
	They killed everybody, Genghis Khan.
	It's one of my white pills.
	It's one of my white pills in reserve.
	I was like, no matter how bad you think it is right now, imagine if Genghis Khan knocked on your door.
	That'd be a lot worse.
	So there are people who are legit fearful of a nuclear war, and they should be.
	I don't think it will ever get to that.
	People should not underestimate Russian resilience.
	I mean, this was a turning point.
	This military intervention, call it invasion, whatever you want to call it.
	Legally, by the way, under U.S. law, invasion means for the purposes of conquest or plunder.
	It's not clear that's what this intervention is.
	That's why we don't call our own interventions invasions, generally, because we're not there officially for conquest or plunder.
	Turned out a lot of our wars did turn out that way, just not for the American people.
	It was for some defense contractors and some other crowds that are all happy right now.
	But the other thing is what people should think about, as Tucker Carlson emphasized, the blowback to things like sanctions.
	Number one, I don't think a lot of sanctions actually are legal because I don't think the countries issuing them have a self-defense justification for them.
	But I also believe you should have broader economic power.
	Unilateral economic power than those people that see sanctions as use of force interpret.
	So I have a bit of a contrarian take on that.
	But sanctions never work.
	They tend to backfire.
	Putin repeatedly referred to as blackmail.
	And that's how other governments perceive it.
	So it often causes them to dig in their heels rather than actually change their behavior.
	Often it falls on the poorest and weakest and most vulnerable populations.
	And last but not least...
	It's kind of like saying, I'm not going to let you shake my hand because I'm so smart, I'm going to cut off my own hand.
	That's what it often is.
	Ask American wheat farmers.
	We put on huge wheat sanctions on the Soviet Union after they invaded Afghanistan.
	A few years later, the Soviet Union found tons of independent means of getting wheat, but not from American wheat farmers who ended up totally screwed.
	So often this is not like, if we really remove them from the SWIFT system, we'll cause some pain in Russia.
	Bye-bye U.S. dollar dominance around the globe.
	Okay, so hold on.
	Let's get there in one second.
	I just want to bring this up because I want to show this.
	Safety hazard is a spoonerism for safety hazard.
	I got that.
	4,300 dead Russians, 50,000 combat trucks.
	Everyone lines to embolden their narrative.
	Ukraine is poor and not well-connected.
	War footage will come.
	I'm bringing this up to say I call bullshit.
	Sorry, and safety hazard, thank you for the super chat.
	I call bullcrap.
	There's no...
	Ukraine has had no problem, especially Soros' NGOs and all the...
	Again, Russia hasn't cut off any internet access.
	So the Duran interviewed an American who's in Kiev for about like an hour and a half, and he broke down, and he pointed out, he goes, normally I shouldn't be talking here.
	Normally the communication will be shut down, internet shut down, all that.
	None of that has happened.
	The oil is running freely.
	And that's the other backstory of all this.
	Ukraine thought the only way they could stop Nord Stream 2 was playing this kind of anti-Russian politics.
	Because Ukraine, almost 20% of their GDP comes from Russian gas coming under Ukraine to Europe.
	Nord Stream 2 would allow all that gas to shift out of Ukraine.
	And the reason for that, of course, is Ukrainians'history of tapping it and stealing it for themselves and not paying things, particularly some of the global regimes.
	But that is a little bit of the other backstory here.
	Now that Nord Stream 2 has been put on ice, it may be the case that Ukraine feels more power to cut a deal, and it's only how long that they'll wait out and hold out.
	But I think a lot of these claims of massive Ukraine I'll give an example.
	According to the American that's in Kyiv.
	He said when they passed around all those guns in Kiev, what happened wasn't a bunch of people grabbed the guns and went to the front to fight the Russians.
	It was a bunch of criminals got up the guns and started fighting each other because they'd been waiting on it for a while.
	I'm not laughing at anyone's misery.
	I'm laughing at the idiocy of policy.
	Go hand out guns, first of all.
	It's funny enough.
	It's ironic enough.
	That for a country like the U.S., which says no borders, no firearm rights, they're now saying respect borders and here is a Kalashnikov or an AK-47, whatever, and go defend your country and its borders.
	Ironic, unless you have no self-insight.
	Ukraine, you would not be surprised at all that instead of those being used to fight people at the border, it was a bunch of criminals using it against one another to get back at each other for old vendettas or for some looting that's taking place, things like that.
	You know what?
	I shouldn't bring this chat up because you are a dishonest individual who ever said this.
	I'm not happy when people die, by the way, and that's why nobody should be fighting this stupid war.
	What I do...
	Find ironic is the Biden administration, which says no borders, defund the police, no firearm rights, is now saying, hey, Ukraine, Russia's violating your borders, everyone get a gun, and go defend yourselves.
	And if you don't find that ironic, then you lack political insight, and you might be a bot troll with a very interesting avatar.
	So with that said, let's get what is ironic here to the point of comedic humor, if it weren't so tragic, that the Biden administration is now saying, Respect borders.
	Here's a gun.
	And go defend yourself.
	And by the way, in the meantime, here's a billion dollars for more police because that's what they're doing.
	And if there's so many volunteers and their military is doing so well, why did they within two days issue a mass conscription of every man between the ages of 18 and 60?
	That's not the sign of a country that's doing great.
	That's not the sign of a military that's just whooping up on them Russians.
	That's a sign of a military.
	We're probably not going to last long here.
	When you're talking about losing within 30 to 60 days, when you've got a couple of hundred thousand troops in reserve, and only 50,000 Russian troops apparently have come in, that's not a good sign.
	The Russians managed to take over an airport near Kiev within 24 hours.
	Even the Georgians held out for three days.
	You know, I mean, this is not no bueno.
	Robert, tell me why I'm wrong.
	I've come to believe over the last five days, it started a while back where someone said, Viva, would you support sanctions on Canada for what the government is doing to Canadian citizens under COVID?
	And I said, what good is that?
	You're just going to punish us who are already being punished.
	And I've now come to believe that sanctions are a form of economic terrorism because you are literally...
	Trying to punish the civilian population ostensibly for the argument of make them suffer enough so they revolt against their tyrannical governments for political purposes.
	And tell me why I'm wrong.
	It's almost never worked that way.
	Almost never.
	Am I being hyperbolic?
	Is it wrong of me to say sanctions are economic terrorism because you are literally targeting civilians?
	For political purposes.
	Well, here's the two-fold problems.
	Take sanctions against some really bad regimes, Iraq, Cuba, and Venezuela.
	What did it ultimately result in?
	Millions of poor people starving, dying, not getting basic medical care, not getting basic food.
	Because those regimes are exactly the kind of regimes that they will find a way that they do not suffer because of those sanctions.
	Somebody else will.
	And then secondly, did it result in revolutions within those countries?
	Almost never.
	Almost never.
	I've been a skeptic of it from day one.
	I believe in protectionism on trade because that has had a long history of working to achieve what you want.
	Because that's about protecting what people buy within your own borders where you have a lot more influence and control.
	When you're trying to dictate what goes within another country's borders, which you don't control, it almost always backfires.
	Hundreds of studies on sanctions, and almost every single one of them has said, by the way, this doesn't work.
	And it can have horrific consequences on the very populations you're trying to protect.
	Someone said go to...
	Hold on, let me bring it up here.
	Does Robert know if Russia blew up a gas delivery system?
	Viva, if you want real footage, go to...
	Go on to Gorset.
	I don't know.
	Live Week no longer exists.
	Augresh no longer exists.
	I was born in the internet days when the internet was only good for naked people and very bad videos.
	Now you can't even get it.
	The internet is whitewashed.
	So I don't even know where to get the actual raw stuff.
	Twitter used to be good.
	And they're still good.
	But there's a lot of fake stuff on Twitter.
	But Robert, go for it.
	I was going to say, but yes, to the earlier question, I mean, this can accelerate in very dangerous ways.
	Glenn Greenwald had a good piece today about how, if you've studied the history of war, and I mean going all back to as far as you could go.
	A lot of the wars people get into are dumb mistakes made by greedy politicians in an emotional moment of their emotional populace that leads to horrendous consequences.
	So we should absolutely be very, very careful.
	My view is it's not our business.
	Let Russia and Ukraine work it out.
	That's not to be insensitive.
	If Russia and Ukraine work out their regional dispute with their respective powers...
	It resolves itself quickly where maybe Zelensky says okay I'll abide by my election platform promises to do it.
	Exactly.
	Our involvement has been net negative.
	And this was the point John Quincy, I mean, our founders made this point over and over again, because they had new history.
	They got a classical education before the Rockefeller Foundations of the World took over and part our public education system, which is its own story.
	Most Americans had classical education, only through the 1840s, 1850s.
	If you had that historical education, you knew how this almost always backfires.
	That's why he said, one person on our locals thought I was saying that everybody America's fought is against monsters.
	They misunderstood the quote.
	The quote is, we don't go abroad searching for monsters to destroy.
	Is it because they...
	That everybody out there that's justified a war as a monster, it's rather because that's always been the excuse and pretext for war.
	But the point is that even if you were going after a monster, chances are it's going to backfire.
	You're not going to be able to.
	It's the reason why I'm still skeptical of the Russian military action.
	I'm skeptical that they can achieve what they want to achieve through military means.
	I might be wrong, because again, the counterpoint to this is...
	Long, broad view of history is many countries have more often achieved what they wanted politically through military and martial means than not.
	But I remain a skeptic of it.
	And maybe that's partially because I prefer peace to war wherever possible anyway.
	Well, because we both don't make our respective livings off of war, but rather we would love to just not talk about this stuff.
	But Robert, so here's the question.
	As to China-Taiwan, how is Taiwan an imminent national security risk to China?
	Only if the United States made the mistake of certain comments.
	That's why we should not take the Chinese trap of saying, we're going to go in and defend Taiwan, because then they'll say, aha, now Taiwan is a national security risk to us.
	But right now, they can't make that claim.
	That doesn't mean they won't try to do it, but it means legally they can't.
	It hasn't happened yet.
	We'll see.
	The question is this.
	So targeting civilians, sanctions, whether or not you consider it to be economic terrorism.
	The question is this.
	Strategically, does it not backfire in obvious ways?
	Remove Russia from the swift banking system.
	They'll take China, potentially India, potentially the United Arab Emirates with them.
	And then what has America and the West done other than relegated themselves to half of the world's economy?
	Am I wrong?
	Am I dumb?
	Am I not understanding?
	No, I mean, it's because the U.S. powers that be still see the world through a unipolar perspective.
	And they don't understand we now live in a multipolar world.
	I mean, to a certain degree, what Putin and Russia did was cross a Rubicon.
	And say, no more unipolar world.
	We're now in a multipolar world.
	And some of us have been warning about this, saying a multipolar world is going to have China be a big power player.
	And is that really in U.S. interest?
	But that ship has sailed.
	And more sanctions push Russia right into the loving arms of Xi.
	China is the biggest winner from all of this by far.
	Their economic system will now get promoted more.
	They'll get more of Russia's natural resources.
	And if they ever form a military self-defense, mutual defense agreement...
	Well, compare their armed forces to the combined U.S.-NATO armed forces, and we got a bit of a problem.
	And not just that, also, their geographic, I don't think I'm wrong, their relative geographic isolation.
	You got China and Russia, very far away from Europe, which is a highly concentrated nation of countries, and North America.
	I mean, it's great.
	It's actual geographic isolationism.
	Coupled with massive military defense of international ICBM capabilities.
	It's great.
	I mean, it's great.
	China's a resource-poor country in certain respects.
	And while we've helped them align with Russia, where they're going to, I think, build three pipelines now between Russia and China.
	But it's because there are people in the State Department.
	Some for corruption reasons, some for political reasons, undervalue the geopolitical risks that China poses, in my opinion.
	J.D. Vance got a lot of criticism for saying, let's worry about our borders and drug cartels a lot more than we worry about Russia and Ukraine's latest conflict.
	Robert, we might never get to the other law stuff for tonight, but we'll do this while it's going.
	After watching the Super Chats, I wonder if Cuban Missile Crisis is taught in schools.
	It is not taught in schools.
	Robert, give us a two-minute overview.
	Of the Cuban Missile Crisis and how that became the end of times back in the day.
	It came about for two different reasons.
	First, of course, Fidel Castro takes over as Revolution Wins.
	We had people who supported it, people who opposed it.
	We were all over the place.
	Just Google Frank Sturgis.
	Find out all the interesting photos from the hills of Santiago to...
	Watergate.
	Somehow Frank Sturgis shows up.
	And, you know, he shows up hanging out with Yasser Arafat, North Africa, too.
	I mean, a lot of interesting places about how maybe the real power operates behind the scenes.
	But because after Castro took over, we did the Bay of Pigs, which was a failed invasion.
	And Castro wanted nuclear armaments from the Soviet Union on Cuban soil.
	To deter any further invasion.
	And there was talk amongst Cubans of actually using those weapons.
	People like Che were part crazy.
	So that's one aspect of what was happening.
	Second aspect is the U.S. had put nuclear weapons within 90 miles of the Soviet Union's border.
	And the Khrushchev was very unhappy about that.
	So because of that combination, the Soviet Union agreed to the Cuban request and put missiles in Cuba.
	And there was aspects of the Russian military that was ready to actually wage nuclear war.
	You always have people that are that crazy.
	You don't have to watch Dr. Strangelove to figure that out.
	And so we were totally apparently caught by surprise.
	We didn't know they were there until they were there, which is another failure of U.S. intelligence.
	Be one of many during the Cold War.
	And so the concern was you had missiles by a hostile regime 90 miles from the Florida coast.
	That could easily reach anywhere in the United States.
	This was before a time period where it would be easy for other missiles to reach each other.
	And so, consequently, people thought we were right on the cusp of nuclear war.
	And there were people within the military that wanted it.
	The U.S. military and the Russian military.
	Because they thought somehow we could survive it.
	I mean, it was just insanity.
	And you have some people like that, that are that insane within the U.S. State Department to this day.
	And you have people that are that nuts within the Russian military infrastructure.
	Now, contrary to the media narrative that, oh, Putin's gone crazy, he's nuts, he's loony, Putin's been very consistent.
	Like I said, go back and read his article from last summer, which is long and detailed, with history and detail.
	You can see he said that the anti-Russia project in Ukraine, he considered, and the Russians considered, equal to a weapon of mass destruction.
	So by that point, you knew what Putin thought.
	He thought if they ever escalated, and then over the weekend, Before the military action by Russia, two things happened.
	They did mass shelling in the Donbass, and the nitwit Zelensky, president of Ukraine, went to the Munich Security Conference and said, hey, why not nuclear weapons?
	He had already crossed the NATO threshold, now he crossed the nuclear weapons threshold while he's attacking Russians, or native Russians in the Donbass.
	So, I mean, it was just...
	One dumb decision after the other.
	But that's how crazy things happen.
	So the only way this de-escalates is if the West stays out of it.
	The West would just stay out of it.
	This would reach its own resolution.
	If the West gets involved, that's how it could get a lot worse real fast.
	When you win, Robert, first of all, Britt Cormier, thank you for the previous chat.
	Thank you for this one.
	Viva, if you do not bring this super chat up, I'll be miffed.
	If you do bring it up, I'll be double miffed.
	It is like I am the U.S. intelligence agencies.
	I will always win.
	Robert, when I asked you if people should be afraid of a nuclear war and you did not immediately say, no, that's absurd and preposterous, now I'm happy to be in my bunker.
	It's cheap wood, though.
	Hold on.
	I can't even bring the door in.
	It's cheap wood.
	The wood will do nothing.
	But, Robert, where do you see it going in what period of time before we move into non-Russia stuff?
	Hopefully.
	They get together, that Ukraine recognizes they can't win, that NATO will never directly intervene, that their military is ill-equipped to defend against Russia, and cut a deal.
	And they played out the card on what they could get from the West anyway.
	Nord Stream 2 has already been put on ice.
	So if that was their primary objective, it's been achieved.
	So, you know, purge the Nazi elements that are unwelcome by most Ukrainians anyway, that are in the military and these militias.
	Get rid of them.
	Agree to no NATO and no nuclear weapons.
	Recognize the independence of the Donbass and Crimea.
	And quit obsessively discriminating.
	Just drop this anti-Russia project and saying people can't speak Russian and elevating Nazi symbols and tearing down Russian heroes.
	Just stop all that nonsense and go back to building.
	And economically, Russia has always made more sense for Ukraine as an economic partner than the EU, just practically speaking.
	That's what the past president got overthrown.
	Recognize the wisdom of.
	Now, he was a corrupt president, so I'm not praising him, but he played the EU against Russia.
	He won the big deal from Russia.
	He got a sweetheart deal from Russia.
	They should go back and take that deal and move on and quit being a proxy and a colony in this post-Cold War Cold War between the EU types and the Soros types and the rest.
	Kick Soros out like most of the rest of the East Europeans have and get back to doing what's in the interest of the Ukrainian people.
	Take George Soros out politically, not physically.
	Just take out all the NGOs.
	Ignore what he's up to, as Hungary has done, taken efforts to do, as Poland has taken efforts to do, etc.
	Some smart Ukrainians will use this as an opportunity to seek refugee status.
	A lot of them have been trying to economically get out of Ukraine for a while, so they'll go to Poland, go to other places.
	God bless them.
	Have more at it.
	But I think that there's an easy, peaceful resolution here that limits the loss of life and that stops this war from spreading into dangerous territory.
	The main hurdle, frankly, is the West.
	Yeah.
	Well, because most people are under the impression that Putin wants all of Ukraine.
	My understanding is that Putin doesn't even want...
	Yeah, then he's going to go into Poland and Latvia and Estonia and...
	Well, why hasn't he sent the whole military in already?
	He's got close to a million soldiers.
	Why didn't he send them all in?
	Why didn't he just knock out all the electricity, knock out all the utilities, knock out the gas?
	Why didn't he just turn it?
	Why didn't he do it?
	He didn't do any of those things.
	This has been the least invasion, invasion of any invasion in recent times.
	Well, this is the issue.
	Comparisons to Germany, whatever, they're good when they're appropriate.
	They're not good when they're not.
	Putin does not have aspirations for global domination.
	Any of those places that Hitler sees, none of those countries were posing national security risks to Germany, nor did he even claim so.
	Putin is not saying we're going in here because there's people that are Russian there.
	He's going in there because he's saying this anti-Russian project poses a national security threat to Russia, as well as I have mutual agreements to protect Crimea and Donbass.
	Secondary, primary, he made clear is he's not going to have a NATO nuclear-armed, Nazified, anti-Russian regime on his border.
	So you can agree or disagree with his premise, but that's his position.
	That's why he's doing what he's doing.
	It's not to dominate.
	It's not to conquest.
	It's not to plunder.
	There's just no evidence of the West theory of Putin actually being true so far.
	And I love it.
	I brought up two tweets, two comments.
	One said...
	Barnes is 100% wrong.
	The other one said Barnes is 100% right.
	And bottom line, Putin and Russia are not invading Ukraine at large, but people who don't know what the Donbass region is are under that misapprehension.
	He's invading Ukraine.
	He's invaded.
	He's attacked.
	I don't want to say invaded.
	He has had tactical strikes on the Donbass region of Ukraine, where there have been disputes for the reasons we've discussed.
	He's not trying to invade the North.
	It's more like what the U.S. did with Panama when we went in to take out Noriega.
	For the most part, we avoided any harm to civilians.
	Not perfect before everybody sends me hate mail.
	Remember, send all hate mail to Viva in Montreal.
	Don't do it.
	Don't do it anymore.
	But we tried, more so than in other conflicts, to avoid civilian consequences because our focus was taking out the Noriega regime.
	So far, this looks the most like that than it does like other conflicts.
	We'll see if it continues that way, but that's been how it's been so far.
	There was...
	Okay, so I think we covered it all for now.
	We will see...
	Oh, no, sorry, Robert.
	Oh, no, this is the segue.
	I have the segue, which was a super chat from earlier, which was from Beavis Wallace.
	So, people...
	Sorry, we spent way too much time.
	We didn't spend way too much time.
	We spent enough time.
	If you didn't know any of this, you are now smarter.
	You can have a discussion.
	And you might actually decide to refrain from retweeting or stating a public opinion.
	I stand with Ukraine.
	I'm going to go walk on the streets of Canada.
	Not out of non-loyalty to innocent Ukrainians.
	War kills innocent people.
	And every party knows that.
	Period.
	And the innocent people are the victims of this crap.
	The only issue is, governmentally, what are the issues?
	What are the real issues?
	What is the lies coming from the media?
	And how do you resolve it?
	And if you don't understand the context, you're in no position to contribute to any of that.
	So with that said...
	And the other, the one addendum I have is, you know, people have asked why I get into this legally and whatnot.
	I don't want the right of self-defense to be undermined anywhere, either for states...
	Or for citizens.
	So when I see people making legal arguments that undermine the right of self-defense, that's where I'm going to speak out.
	That doesn't mean I agree with what Russia's doing as a matter of policy or morality.
	It means legally a country does have a right of self-defense, and I think we should protect that right of self-defense, even if we're critical of particular regimes using it in ways that are not good policy long-term.
	And my only bottom line to this is regional conflicts become global conflicts when other nations decide they're going to back one of the regional partners.
	This is bullying at a school level.
	They'll figure it out.
	But when the parents get involved, it gets bigger.
	Then they get the schools involved and it gets bigger.
	And that's what they do.
	This is not World War.
	This is not...
	Putin trying to invade Ukraine, a country of 40 million people.
	This is an actual regional conflict that is being made global by people who are interfering, who have a lot of financial gain to benefit from getting interfered with.
	So that's my last thought.
	Let me just take this one out.
	Hold on.
	I'm sure Biden has a special ops unit to go and burn those Burisma files, though.
	Unless he gets too far in.
	Put all of this in perspective with the corruption in Biden and his son.
	That's another chapter.
	But we're going to segue out of this because we only have maybe 30 minutes left before I get killed by the wife.
	Robert, Beavis Wallace asks, from McAllen, Texas, all NATO countries should bomb all of Ukraine and Moscow with M&Ms and Skittles.
	Therefore, it's nonviolence.
	But that would stop for a minute.
	Barnes, please update us on the U.S.-Mexico border lawsuits.
	Viva promised updates several episodes ago.
	Love you guys.
	Robert, that'll be the first thing.
	The U.S.-Mexico border lawsuits involving Texas.
	We talked about it.
	What's up?
	Yeah.
	So those suits are still pending in different ways.
	For the most part, they won on the Remain in Mexico policy.
	However, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear whether the Biden administration can reverse the...
	Sending people to Mexico policy, the Remain in Mexico policy.
	And so we'll see.
	Other cases are still pending at the court level.
	So there's been no new adjustments other than that.
	Of course, the problems on the border keep getting reported that they're setting records at the number of people crossing illegally.
	Remain in Mexico policy just addresses the people that try to enter the country legally.
	Doesn't deal with all the illegal entries.
	There are a range of people who have sued on those grounds.
	Those cases are still pending.
	Mostly at the district court level.
	So we'll see what happens with it ultimately.
	But that's basically the update for the time being.
	Once there's a major case update, we'll let you know.
	Okay, now, what do we have on the menu for vaccine mandate update?
	Oh, sure.
	Nothing big on the vaccine mandate context aside from information that YouTube does not favor public discussion of.
	You can find that at vivabarneslaw.locals.com about...
	German data, Israeli data, other data, data that the vaccine insurance, U.S. data, data that has been hidden but apparently some big people on Wall Street know.
	All those updates that get into that information is posted at vivobarneslaw.locals.com.
	And I'll just say generally it deals with both the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and what the information might really reveal.
	And so we'll see how all that translates out.
	All right.
	Go for it.
	Okay, speaking of insurrections and rebellions, the North Carolina Board of Elections is trying to keep the congressman that we met, I think Madison Cawthorn, how do I spell his last name?
	Okay, it's Cawthorn.
	Someone will say it in the chat.
	But the North Carolina Board of Elections is trying to exclude him from the ballot.
	Even though he is a currently elected member of Congress.
	And their grounds is the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that disqualified former Confederates.
	If you are actively involved in an insurrection or rebellion, then you could be disqualified from Congress.
	That was solely and wholly intended to keep.
	And it was only if you were already an elected official at the time of the insurrection or rebellion support.
	That that would be the case.
	So is it solely intended to deal with people who volunteered for the Confederacy while they were members of state or federal office?
	Now, after that, the Congress, in the last section of that provision, says that Congress, by two-thirds vote, can change that if they so seek.
	Well, Congress actually had done so twice and passed amnesties in 1872 and again, I think, in 1898.
	That said, that removed that provision, period.
	And there's a good argument, and it's in fact being made by him.
	He has filed suit in federal court saying this is unconstitutional.
	That the whole process that North Carolina uses is unconstitutional.
	That all you have to have is reasonable suspicion that someone for some reason is not qualified, and then the candidate has to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they are in fact qualified or you're kicked off.
	And so his argument is this violates First Amendment free speech rights because the right to run for office is a fundamental First Amendment right.
	It violates due process because of the burden shifting that takes place, plus violates the First Amendment for that reason.
	That's part one.
	Part two is that the amnesty provision nullifies and negates.
	That clause of the Constitution, which again was meant for a very limited circumstance, not for forever.
	It has been misapplied since then.
	Congressman Berger, who opposed World War I, was wrongfully denied a congressional seat based on it.
	But that was not so much the insurrection part as the other part about aiding treasonous activities, giving aid and comfort to an enemy, which means treason, which means you have to be in a state of war, etc.
	But they said merely opposing a war constituted that.
	Very problematic and dangerous ruling back then.
	But a court never affirmed it.
	Ultimately, his espionage charge was overturned.
	So argument two is that the amnesty provision negates it.
	Argument three is there's a qualifications clause within the Constitution that says only members of Congress determine whether someone is qualified, and those qualifications are limited to what the Constitution establishes as those qualifications for which that provision is inapplicable or inopposite under those current circumstances.
	And so he's brought suit, challenging it on those grounds, that it's preempted by the qualification.
	And then last but not least, of course, there's the Griffin case by Justice Chase, which all the way back to the late 1860s, I believe, was in the context of a habeas petition case, but where the court said that you cannot say someone has been guilty of that provision unless they've been afforded all the rights of trial and due process,
	which of course have not happened, because factually, nothing he did supports the allegation of, And Robert, the idea of, you know, in Canada, when you had Justin Trudeau freezing the bank accounts, criminalizing donations to a registered, federally incorporated not-for-profit, that being the Freedom Convoy, when you have the government trying to criminalize that, you know, you could think short-term, it's like, okay, we just want to end this protest.
	Or you can think long term, we want to criminalize pretty much donors to and participants in the PPC because it's the People's Party of Canada, which is a political party that by and large support the movement.
	So you criminalize conduct, which is ostensibly, you know, you cloak it as supporting not insurrection in Canada, but supporting illegal blockades, and then you weaponize it for political purposes.
	We're one step away from that.
	We'll see where it goes.
	I wish I had the evil foresight.
	Actually see this because I didn't see it until it came to be reality.
	But with another year or two of blackpilling from you, Robert, I'll see it more reflexively than I did at the time.
	Criminalizing donations to federally incorporated not-for-profits.
	And they say, if you donated, we're going to freeze your bank accounts.
	If we freeze your bank accounts, we affect your credit.
	If we affect your credit, you might get some...
	Whatever, some charges.
	And then, lo and behold, you can't run for office for the only political party that would ever challenge us.
	It's the Reichstag fire, mutatus mutandus, without, you know, we'll see where it goes.
	Cawthorn, by the way.
	His name was Cawthorn.
	You got corrected in the chat.
	I know it was something like that.
	Yeah, and we met him at the, we met him at James O 'Keefe's event.
	I mean, I didn't, I didn't mean...
	I didn't want to fawn over anybody.
	I didn't want to gawk and say, hey, can I talk to you?
	He was there.
	He spoke with Marjorie Taylor Greene and with Matt Gaetz.
	Great stuff.
	Okay, interesting.
	So, yeah.
	I mean, he should win.
	He got assigned to a Trump judge, but they're arguing all of the different abstention doctrines.
	These are all doctrines by which federal courts stay out of things that they find politically inconvenient.
	Younger abstention, and there's three or four others along those lines.
	I'm still skeptical.
	You know, some of those doctrines.
	But I think the judge should hear the case, but no guarantee that he will hear the case because there's all these arguments that should go through the state process instead.
	But the state, you know, the new North Carolina Supreme Court, the Democratic Supreme Court, they're trying to redistrict everything in contravention to what the legislature came up to.
	So that's why he's in federal court.
	He wants a federal court to adjudicate what he believes are federally constitutionally protected.
	Speaking of federal rights, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an interesting decision this week in which the PREP Act is the act that gives immunity in cases of emergency, public health emergency, for any covered countermeasure for any covered person.
	Well, there's some nursing homes that fail to take basic actions.
	And people in their care and custody died, in some cases of COVID, some cases of other things, because the nursing home didn't do what they were supposed to do.
	Nursing home got sued.
	The nursing home said, no, no, we're all immune because we followed federal policy.
	They used the same argument that Tyson used.
	They claim we're a federal agent, federal officer, following federal law, so we should be in federal court.
	And they said the PrEP Act gives us complete immunity anyway.
	The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal said, no, you really weren't a federal actor because it wasn't like you were commissioned.
	Just following federal law doesn't make you a federal actor.
	Applicable, frankly, to the Tyson Foods case.
	We'll get to that down the road once that gets resolved.
	But also that the PREP Act, they said, isn't that broad.
	The PREP Act only covers a covered countermeasure.
	Everything you do is not a covered countermeasure.
	And everything you do doesn't make you a covered person.
	And by the way, this impacts the immunity for drug companies in the vaccine context, potentially.
	This may be why they're nervous about making their biologic licensed drugs actually available.
	They are only letting their emergency use authorized drugs available, maybe because they're worried of this kind of legal interpretation that says, actually, the PrEP Act isn't...
	Quite as broad as everybody's trying to make it out to be.
	So a very good ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, no less, limiting the scope of PrEP Act immunity, not allowing people to claim federal immunity for anything and everything they did in the COVID context.
	This opens the door to potential liability of nursing homes and others that have assumed they are protected by the PrEP Act, and the Ninth Circuit made clear it's not that broad.
	Robert, I had a typo in analogy.
	It's not analogy.
	It's analogy.
	Bad analogy for whoever said following the speed limit makes you a federal actor.
	And by the way, I raised the same concern in Canada.
	Now that Kieran Chatt helped me out, the Ontario minister, the Ontario health director, chief medical officer of Ontario, Kieran, whatever, basically now said, I can't believe we're living through this.
	He was giving a public speech.
	And said, for the employer, as of March 1st, there's no federal vaccine mandate requirement for work.
	And someone called it and said, well, for everyone who got fired before this, are they, you know, are they immune?
	Should they be rehired?
	They didn't say immune.
	They said, should they be rehired?
	And he said, well, it was never our policy.
	It was never a formal policy that you should fire unvaccinated employees.
	It's like, holy crap, you all just got thrown under a bus.
	Because when they said, much like Trudeau, for the banks to freeze the accounts during this protest under the Emergencies Act, we'll give you immunity.
	But we never voted on that provision, so you never actually got your immunity.
	We'll see if you guys get sued for having frozen 206 bank accounts for donating or participating in a...
	Lawful protest.
	Setting that aside, you got Kieran Waters.
	It might be Kieran Waters.
	He basically says, our instructions were never to fire.
	It was just recommendations.
	And if you abided by them and fired employees for not getting vaccinated, well, we're not saying anything to that.
	You should all get fired, employers, and you should see now that the government throws you under a bus at the drop of a hat.
	When the shit hits the fan, because it was never a federal mandate policy.
	It was just a recommendation.
	We got your back.
	That's Justin Trudeau's favorite expression.
	We got your back.
	And then when you fire people because they're not vaccinated, and then we renege on our highly scientific principles, you're on your own.
	It's phenomenal.
	We'll see.
	They all deserve to get sued.
	Sued hard, and they should be made to pay for it.
	Because it will be the private paying for it that will affect change, not the public paying for it, which is paying for from taxpayer dollars.
	Kieran Moore, thank you.
	The bottom line is gonna be who pays for the nonsense.
	I mean, I think ultimately a lot of these employers are going to pay because they're not going to be backed up like they thought they were by Fed and state actors and federal and state courts.
	And a lot of them discriminated against people in the states in particular on religious grounds.
	Like the city of New York fires a bunch of people for a vaccine mandate issue and then turns around and says, actually, we're probably going to pull that vaccine mandate a little loud.
	So you're seeing, you know, a lot of the politicians walk back from the edge.
	They've seen the blowback.
	But some politicians just march on forward with making mistakes.
	Speaking of which, Biden decided to nominate D.C. appellate Judge Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.
	Now, she was the elite favored candidate and the left's favored candidate because she's a double Harvard nominee.
	She went to Harvard undergrad in Harvard Law.
	I think her husband's like a high-profile surgeon in D.C. She was on the district.
	I had her for a case in district court.
	She never got around to ruling on it.
	It was amazing.
	It took forever.
	It was a deep state kind of case, and it just got delayed forever.
	And as Jonathan Turley has mentioned in an article on The Hill that I linked in the Barnes Brief, the daily brief at vivabarneslaw.locals.com, she has a kind of a wink and a nod kind of history.
	So the left assumes she's, you know, because she served a couple of years on the Sentencing Commission and a couple of years as a public defender in the appellate division, that she's really, you know, sympathetic on criminal rights.
	It's far from clear quite where she is on that, however.
	She did, you know, she liked to do long lectures of Trump, you know, about Trump is not, you know, the president is not above the law and so on and so forth.
	So she's known for that.
	For two of her, a couple of her bigger cases, she got overturned on.
	So not necessarily known as an intellectual heavyweight, though she likes to write really long opinions as if she is.
	And I think Turley raises some real concerns.
	The left picked her because they didn't like Judge Child, the favorite of the Democratic congressmen from South Carolina who single-handedly helped make sure Joe Biden got to the presidency.
	And Biden rewarded him by screwing him over.
	And so I think it's a risk.
	Both Manchin and Graham, the potential swing votes or perceived swing votes, were both said they would back Childs, and Graham right away was very critical of the pick to not go with Childs.
	So given that the Democratic senator from New Mexico, I believe, still has health issues and can't travel, they may lose the vote on her.
	It's not clear what will happen.
	Now Mitch McConnell and some others may like her because she's sort of elite-backed.
	You know, the dual Harvard degrees, the elite establishment, etc.
	But it's not clear.
	Childs would have definitely been easily won nomination.
	This Judge Jackson, not so clear, given various statements she's made, ambiguity she's presented.
	She's trying to go the, I don't have really any opinions route.
	She magically managed to avoid.
	I now know, in part, why she avoided for like three years.
	Ruling on my case.
	She didn't want to rule on a deep state tainted case that made her look bad or that upset deep state actors.
	So at least that's my interpretation now.
	I can do that because she's no longer on the case.
	But I don't think she's a good nominee.
	I think she would be a Sotomayor.
	I think politically, it's also a mistake of Biden to slap in the face the guy who single-handedly helped get you to the presidency.
	You know, it turns out the Bidens are only loyal if you're writing checks.
	Well, and not drawing any analogies to the Ukraine, but set that aside.
	And by the way, let me correct myself.
	I don't remember what I said exactly.
	Kieran Moore is the Ontario health minister, not the national one, which is Theresa Tam.
	So whatever I said applies to Ontario, not to the federal jurisdiction, because Trudeau has yet to revoke.
	His federal mandates on flight, train, and employment.
	But Kieran Moore, speaking for Ontario, says, we never told you to do that.
	If you did it, it was your own choice.
	And whether or not you should rehire them?
	And I said, forget rehiring.
	You deserve to get sued.
	All of you who did this.
	And if you thought you had immunity, that's where it was.
	It wasn't immunity from the federal government.
	If you thought that you could cloak your behavior...
	Hide behind.
	It's a provincial mandate.
	Doug Ford.
	Sue Doug Ford.
	Sue Ford Nation.
	Sue the government.
	That's fine.
	Taxpayers pay for that.
	Sue the people who implemented these policies without being legally compelled to and thinking they had the protection of the government.
	Sue them.
	Period.
	Robert, there was one interesting lawsuit you sent me.
	The, um...
	Oh, son of a beast.
	There's the...
	Astoundingly, the...
	Astoundingly, on the women's soccer team, they settled that case on appeal, which shows the power of politics to settle the case because the law was not on the women's soccer team's claim of gender discrimination.
	Let's give Nate Brody, Nate Brody people, Nate the lawyer, the shout-out he deserves.
	That settlement might have been because of Nate.
	Maybe not, but they did not have the case that we thought they had.
	There might be an analogy in terms of media treatment to the women's soccer team and to the war, the conflict in Russia.
	There might be an analogy, but Robert, what ended up happening?
	They settled.
	They apparently got a nice settlement.
	So the politics was enough to get them money in which the case had been dismissed at the district court, should have continued to be dismissed and affirmed by the Court of Appeals.
	But on the eve of the Court of Appeals ruling, I guess the politics of it, the Soccer Federation decided to write a check that the plaintiffs did not, in my view, legally deserve.
	Now, I think the other big case that people were following, I only saw the brief headline, but it looks like the self-defense and the popcorn shooter case that he got acquitted, apparently.
	But I only saw a brief headline, so I'm not fully vetted.
	Nick Ricada covered it in great detail.
	I think he covered the trial from beginning to end, from gavel to gavel.
	Along with the law of self-defense and some others, so they would be the better source for that.
	But it looks like another affirmance of self-defense in an acquittal, if I understand correctly.
	I only read, again, just saw headlines on that aspect.
	So we'll see how all that turns out.
	I didn't realize there's going to be a war as to whether or not Nate was right or wrong at the end of the day.
	By the way, someone slipped Winston into the bathroom door, and he smells delicious.
	He smells like he's been eating meat off of a bone upstairs, and I think he has.
	They did not write that check yet.
	The men's team has to agree to give up that money.
	Oh, I see.
	So, you know what?
	Check out Nate.
	I mean, Nate will cover this undoubtedly in thorough detail, because it's going to be a conditional settlement, and they're going...
	Jeez.
	Okay.
	Stepping back from that.
	Go check out Nate.
	Gentlemen, I'm just catching up and you need to check Twitter on Reddit.
	Combat videos are there.
	That's the problem.
	Check Twitter and Reddit.
	They're not going to be reliable sources for anything.
	They've already put out...
	Major fake news in just the opening days.
	Over and over and over and over and over.
	Almost everything these people have tweeted out said, look at this.
	Turned out false.
	Turned out false.
	Turned out fake.
	Turned out fake.
	Turned out false.
	Even the quartering was like, the amount of fake news in the war context is just crazy.
	Robert, you sent me homework.
	I'm opening it up.
	We had an interesting case of wrongful dismissal.
	In North Carolina, that was adjudicated by arbitrators.
	And then it was sought for homologation.
	And I don't want to step over the logic or the known facts of people.
	It was a wrongful termination brought before arbitrators, which is not before the court.
	The wrongfully terminated got a favorable decision before the arbitrators.
	And then sought to have it recognized by the court.
	We call it homologated in Quebec.
	It might be recognized in the States.
	I don't know.
	It's called confirmation.
	Confirmation.
	Then the employer basically said, no, the arbitrator's got it totally wrong.
	You could not get that award in law in the courts.
	In first instance, the lower court said, yeah, we're not recognizing that arbitral award.
	And then they had to appeal it, and it was obtained on appeal.
	But I don't want to get into too much detail that might bore people.
	What do you think people need to know to understand the relevance of this decision?
	The big takeaway is that even when arbitrators get the law completely wrong, obviously wrong, that the federal courts are doing nothing about it.
	That what's happening with arbitration is that we are losing our jury trial rights.
	Losing our appeal rights, losing our rights to public trials and public proceedings, and the net effect are we have moved into a secret court process of mediocre adjudicators who often get basic facts and the law wrong, and it's all being affirmed because it serves the interest of corporate interest in America.
	And this federal decision was a classic example.
	The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said it's basically impossible to overturn an arbitrator.
	Basically impossible.
	That should not be where the law is, but that is where the law has reached.
	And what it means, there needs to be more pushback on arbitration.
	The excuses for it is it's so much more quicker and so much more effective and so much cheaper.
	No, it's not.
	You have to pay for the arbitrator, unlike having to pay for a judge.
	So it's almost always more expensive.
	It's almost never quicker.
	And what it really is is just more corrupt.
	It's secretive.
	You often don't know about conflicts of interest involving the arbitrator.
	The arbitrator often gets basic facts wrong.
	You have no right to appeal, no right to trial by jury.
	There's a reason why corporations love it.
	It's not because it serves the interest of the ordinary person in America.
	And this case was just emblematic of it.
	The arbitrator's made a basic error of law.
	Court said it doesn't matter.
	That's an arbitrator's right.
	And now this is where I guess it's interesting based on the positioning.
	It was a real estate broker, something along those lines, was terminated, argued that it was termination without cause.
	The employer said, it's at-will employment, we don't need to have cause.
	The R-trader basically said, we won't get into the dynamics of the law, but basically said, There's a dispute as to whether or not it's at-will employment versus factual employment, and the arbitrator said we agree that it was termination without cause, notwithstanding potential at-will employment rules of North Carolina.
	It was a very rare circumstance where an employee benefited from it because normally the employees get screwed in arbitration.
	But the net effect of it was they also seemed to imply, specific to the employment context, that if you have an arbitration agreement, you can now argue that you've been fired for cause.
	So that part of it, for those of us that usually are on the employee side we like, side don't like, is the degree to which arbitration is deferred.
	These secret courts are not good for American law.
	There's a reason why we have public courts.
	There's a reason why we have trial by jury.
	There's a reason why we have rights to appeal.
	All three are completely forfeited in the arbitration context.
	And this decision just reminded that aspect.
	That was the problematic aspect.
	It's an interesting aspect to say, if you decide to arbitrate, you're now can't fire someone except for cause.
	That's definitely, that part will probably never be affirmed by any other arbitrators.
	It just happened to be for these.
	but the Yeah, well, it's interesting.
	I actually, in my practice, did a lot of arbitration.
	And I liked it.
	We liked it because it was, in my practice, was rich person fighting rich person.
	Everyone could afford the arbitrator.
	No one was basically coerced into the process.
	It was...
	Big contracts agreeing to arbitration.
	In this particular case, was the arbitration, do you know, was it not coerced, but was it imposed by the employer?
	Oh yeah, it was imposed by the employer.
	They're not accustomed to ever losing with arbitration.
	The problem is the repeat actor problem, which is unless it's corporation against corporation or rich person against rich person, whenever it's ordinary person against somebody big, the ordinary person is unlikely to ever come back to arbitration.
	Whereas the big actor likely is.
	So if you're an arbitrator, you want to please the big actor so they'll hire you the next time for arbitration.
	Because that's how you make your money.
	I mean, it's just deeply problematic in my perspective.
	Unless the parties are of equal power, then who cares?
	They want to decide their dispute that way?
	No problem.
	But my problem is when there's a power disparity, arbitration, and as a general rule, I don't like too many.
	Even in the case of rich versus rich or corporation versus corporation, we lose our right of a public trial.
	So we don't know what some of these people are up to because it gets to be secret.
	And that was my takeaway.
	I'm thinking when people don't appreciate, you go to arbitration, you get an arbitral award.
	If one party says, I don't want to respect it, well, that's nice.
	You've got an arbitral award, but you've got to go to the courts to have it homologated or recognized for contempt or for imposition purposes.
	So you get a nice confidential award.
	And it looked good and it cost you $50,000, whatever.
	And then they say, well, screw you.
	Go to court.
	Make it public.
	And in order for it to be imposable on one of the parties, that was the practical problem of arbitration is it costs you money.
	You get a private award.
	But if nobody wants to respect it, you've got to make it public by going to the courts to have it imposed by the courts.
	That was what our respective personal experiences impact the way we digest that decision.
	Robert, the other one that I liked was Gibbs, which was the class action complaint about, this is the one about, yeah, ticket arrest tow.
	So you go to explain this.
	We're in what state?
	We're in Jackson Police Department, so it's Mississippi.
	Mississippi.
	Robert, explain what's going on with this, the ticket and tow, and what is meant by ticket and tow.
	So what Jackson has decided to do, which a lot of governments have tried over the years, is to use the roadblock exception to the Fourth Amendment to basically massively violate Fourth Amendment rights.
	Because a roadblock, as long as it's limited in purpose and limited in its intrusion, roadblocks can be constitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
	I've never been a big fan of that.
	I've always found that wrong.
	But it's still a limited exception to the Fourth Amendment.
	It cannot be used for general criminal, it cannot be used as a general protocol.
	So you can put up a, if you have a certain area of the city that has a history of DUI problems, you know, between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., you can oppose a roadblock in that particular area for the sole limited purposes of seeing who's drunk.
	What you can't do is use it to just search cars randomly, search people randomly, etc.
	But that's not what they're doing.
	They're putting them up in disproportionately lower-income neighborhoods, disproportionately African-American neighborhoods, and blue-collar neighborhoods, and they're doing it for the purposes of ticketing people, seeing whether there's a license issue, insurance issue, registration issue, and then using it to search their property, search their cars for broad purposes, and then often towing their cars on the spot.
	So one problem is that the whole ticket-and-toe process that disproportionately falls on blue-collar people.
	And then the second problem is this is a massive Fourth Amendment violation.
	They've even admitted that their purpose is to limit the amount of crime in particular areas.
	But you can't just throw out the Fourth Amendment as the way to do it.
	And that's what the city of Jackson appears to be doing.
	So a class action suit has been brought to stop it.
	This is a problem in many jurisdictions across the country where police forces love, they hear roadblock, exception to Fourth Amendment, and they think they can do it for any purpose when that's never been the case.
	The roadblock itself has to be limited to a limited purpose that's permitted under the Fourth Amendment.
	Broad searches are not.
	Ticket in tow is not.
	Criminal investigations broadly done is not.
	Reducing crime in a particular area is not.
	So these are Fourth Amendment mass violations taking place in Jackson, Mississippi.
	No surprise in Mississippi.
	But if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear.
	How do you respond to that?
	Yes, exactly.
	I always tell people, if you feel that way, let me put some cameras in your bedroom.
	Make sure you're not up to anything you're not supposed to be.
	Classic, classic.
	Okay, what else do we got before we have to wind up?
	Those were the main...
	Highlighted cases of the week.
	Let me see here.
	I'm going to bring one up here.
	Oh, no, no, no, Robert.
	From Ken Paxton.
	From Texas as to whether or not the Texas Attorney General issued an opinion that said medical interventions in children for the purposes of promotion of trans identity purposes or gender identity purposes constitutes child abuse under the existing medical and scientific evidence that exists.
	So many people dispute that.
	That's going to be controversial.
	I won't go into too much detail because of the YouTube issues, but we'll put up the Texas Attorney General opinion so you can read it for yourself.
	And I'll only read, I just, I will only read, I'm not going to bring it up, but I don't know what gets us in trouble anymore these days.
	Executive summary.
	Based on the analysis herein, each of the procedures and treatments enumerated above when performed on children can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions of Chapter 261 of the Texas Family Code.
	So mental and emotional injury to a child that results in observable and material impairment to the child's growth, development, yada, yada.
	The procedures can cause or permit the child to be in a situation in which the child sustains mental or emotional injury.
	Procedure and treatments can cause physical injury that results in substantial harm.
	It's an amazing thing where you're trying to balance interests.
	And I played devil's advocate.
	Way back way with Jordan Peterson talking about what was going on in Canada, where eventually if you misgender someone, you'll be criminalized.
	The idea that a child...
	Go for it.
	Oh, I mean, I was going to transition to the last topic.
	So yeah, people can see it, but that's really kind of the issue, is at what point does this cross the line?
	At what point is it good medicine?
	At what point is it...
	Well, long-term effects.
	And if people want to start getting worried about living in a litigious society, when the kids become adults and they say, Mom and Dad, why did you let me do that?
	I was a 12-year-old kid.
	Expect some lawsuits.
	And that's when I respect a litigious society.
	Use the litigation process to keep people responsible, not to keep people living in irrational fear.
	We'll see, Robert.
	Last case was a candidate for governor of Texas.
	Yes.
	Was suspended on the eve of the primary election by Facebook.
	He's brought suit under the new Texas law that prohibits Facebook from doing that.
	I'm sure Facebook will challenge that law now and already has in other contexts on Section 230 grounds.
	But what was interesting in the allegations were there's also pending Open Records Act request into Governor Abbott.
	And whether Governor Abbott had a relationship with Facebook that has not been fully publicly disclosed.
	And he claims he's being targeted by Facebook for that reason as well.
	So we'll see.
	But it's one of the first challenges under that Texas law to a Facebook action.
	Facebook will likely pull it from Tarrant County, Texas, where the case currently is.
	Probably try to get it into federal court.
	But it's going to be an interesting case to follow.
	Governor Abbott's relationship with Facebook is a little different than what he's publicly disclosed.
	Robert, do you see what I brought up now?
	Okay, here we go.
	This is beautiful, because this is where everyone thinks we play partisan politics.
	Abbott's a Republican, so we must support Abbott.
	No, corruption is corruption is corruption.
	And the more money that's in the coffer, the more corruption you're going to see.
	And this is where, let's just, I want to skip to the...
	Here we go.
	An organization known as Tech Transparency Project.
	They're called transparency, so they've got to be.
	Made an open request to obtain communications.
	Oh, sorry.
	Between Abbott and Facebook, and Abbott has refused to release the documents, and it appears there's some relationship he has not fully disclosed between Facebook and the governor's office.
	Yeah, and it is suspected.
	It's not proven yet.
	Purely, I just want to get to the paragraph.
	Oh, I missed it.
	Whatever.
	Here you have a gubernatorial candidate challenging him in the Republican primary, raising that precise issue, and on the eve of the election, Facebook suspends his account so he can't reach voters.
	Here we go.
	We're going to read it.
	Factual allegations.
	Plaintiff Chad Prather is a candidate for Texas governor running against Governor Greg Abbott.
	Republican Party, yada yada.
	On February 21, just eight days before the election, defendant suspended Prather from its Facebook social media platforms for at least seven days.
	So he'll be back the day after the election.
	Any idea?
	It is likely no coincidence that Facebook chose to censor Prather so close to this halted the contest election against Governor Abbott while publicly speaking out against censorship on social media.
	Governor Abbott allegedly.
	These are allegations.
	We're not making statements of fact.
	Hashtag no defamation.
	Has been privately negotiating a deal with Facebook to bring the company's new data center to Texas.
	An organization known as TDP made an open request to obtain communications, and they refused.
	So, you know, how do I stop this?
	I'm going to close that.
	Are we still in sharing mode?
	We are not.
	So digest it the way you want, people.
	You know.
	Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
	And if you want to stay in power, what better way to do it than to control the social media accounts?
	Robert?
	No doubt.
	So that people don't go into next week a black pill.
	You've got to give it to them.
	You've got to give them a good white pill.
	That's not this disgusting, filthy brown pill dog.
	What do you want?
	You don't want this.
	The dog is terrible.
	I will be...
	Back home next week.
	So it'll be a good backdrop.
	But until then, Robert, give us some optimism for the next week that does not involve nuclear war and absolute corruption.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that we should have a fun sidebar.
	It depends on who it is, but it may be a lefty Democratic lawyer who's become very anti-vaccine mandate and led some of the efforts on that and has been red-pilled in their own way over the last few years.
	So that could be fun.
	Information on that this week.
	In my view, the fact that this conflict in Ukraine has not got out of hand as yet, that the Russians haven't taken out a lot of civilian material, hasn't caused a lot of collateral damage so far, and that the West has not yet fully jumped in and done something irreversible is a good sign.
	I mean, maybe we can figure these to avoid regional wars if the right people have enough sense.
	And I'm hopeful that that, in fact, will happen.
	Well, you know, time will tell.
	But I'm hopeful that that will proceed in that direction.
	But in the interim, you know, it's a good time to buy Bitcoin.
	Some of the people that ran into trouble and ran into...
	I'm not saying buy Bitcoin as a speculative investment.
	My view is Bitcoin is the one reason why we interviewed Mark Moss, it was a lot of fun, got a lot of intel out of last week, is because of these contexts.
	There are people who have had systems cut off because they're tangentially somehow connected to sanctions on Russia, or they're tangentially connected to issues in Ukraine, or they were, of course, connected to the issues in Canada, have all seen the utility and benefit of it, and I think that we're re-experiencing that.
	And, like I always say, a universal white pill is, you know, at least you don't live in a time when Genghis Khan knocked on your door.
	Okay, so you know what?
	People, if nothing else, at least Genghis Khan is not knocking at your door.
	And I'll say one thing.
	This is not an endorsement of Bitcoin.
	I'm still suspicious.
	I still don't understand it.
	And I do not comment on that which I don't understand.
	So, with that said, Robert.
	I love you guys, and Viva, your hair keeps just getting crazier.
	I didn't wash it.
	I was going to wash it before tonight's stream, but I didn't have conditioner or my argan oil, which I don't wash my hair without it.
	And to the Super Ketter asked about Fighting Bob La Follette, yeah, he is a great, there's a bunch of different books that are good on that.
	And more of the Fighting Bob spirit in people like J.D. Vance, who's willing to, he knows it's the middle of a hot war, everybody's going crazy, the propaganda's over the top, and he's saying, look about our borders, not some country.
	Thousands of miles away.
	Let's worry about our own people, not people of thousands of miles away.
	And he's willing to do that in the middle of a Republican primary, knowing that the Fox people are going to go berserk on him.
	Britt Hume is going to go berserk on him.
	All these people are going to go berserk on him.
	But he's willing to say the noble, correct thing at this time, even despite the heat he's going to face.
	So that's a sign of some promising candidates for public office compared to the past.
	Awesome.
	Now, with that said, people, we're going to end it.
	I don't know who's live now, but surely there's something else I want to put the dog down.
	There are other people going live now if you need to get your fix on international news.
	But everyone in the chat, thank you for the chat.
	Thank you for the super chats.
	Wednesday night, we will have a sidebar one way or the other.
	It just depends on whom.
	I'll be posting this week.
	I'm not taking a week off.
	I don't like rest, and I don't like not paying attention to the world.
	So, in the chat, thank you for being here.
	Robert, stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes.
	And everyone else, enjoy the weekend.
	What's left of it.

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