After weeks of unsuccessfully attempting to either bully Russia’s Vladimir Putin into submission or bait him into war, US president Joe Biden may finally be looking for a face-saving exit from of the Ukraine “crisis” of his own making.

Reuters reports that Biden, at the urging of French president Emmanuel Macron, is willing “in principle” to hold a summit with Putin. “We are always ready for diplomacy,” says White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

Unfortunately, it’s US “diplomacy” which brought the US, Russia, Ukraine, and NATO to the current standoff.

As the Warsaw Pact disintegrated and the Soviet Union collapsed, US encouragement for those events included pledges that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization wouldn’t take advantage of the situation to expand eastward. Since then, NATO has inexorably pushed in that direction, nearly doubling the number of member states. Thanks, US “diplomacy.”

Things began coming to a head with the US-sponsored coup in Ukraine that replaced its “Russia-friendly” regime with a “US/Europe-friendly” regime in 2014, courtesy of Barack Obama. Thanks, US “diplomacy.”

Then in 2019, the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which forbade the US to place missiles within surprise strike distance of Russia, and Russia to place similar missiles within surprise strike distance of NATO. The US followed up by placing exactly such missiles in Poland, courtesy of Donald Trump. Some “diplomacy.”

Then the US went into overdrive (courtesy of Trump and Biden) against the opening of a pipeline (Nord Stream 2) which would have supplied Russian natural gas to Germany.  The pipeline would have been a force for peace insofar as Russia likes to sell natural gas (at a fraction of prices the US can offer), and Germans like to not freeze to death. To flip and paraphrase an old maxim, when goods are crossing borders, armies usually aren’t.

Putin finally drew a red line at NATO membership for Ukraine specifically, and against the US definition of “diplomacy” — “do exactly as we demand, without question or objection, and we may consider deigning to allow you to kiss our feet for a little while before kicking you in the face again” — generally.

Bullies really, really, really hate to be told “no,” and tend to go into full bluster and posture mode at the first hint of that happening, which explains the Ukraine “crisis.”

Unfortunately for THIS bully, Putin remains seemingly un-frightened. Even as the US and its poodles met in Munich, of all places, to issue more threats, he declined to play the role of Neville Chamberlain.

So now Joe says he may be ready to talk. Whether the willingness is real, or just another exercise in fake “diplomacy,” remains to be seen. As does whether Putin will give Biden a graceful/deniable way out of this mess, or insist on rubbing his nose in the thick layer of filth US “diplomacy” has previously deposited on the ground.

With two nuclear powers at loggerheads, the stakes are far too high for further attempts to disguise US hubris and megalomania as “diplomacy.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother in the head four times as she slept before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he murdered 27 students and faculty members before killing himself.

Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate attributed Lanza’s actions to “severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems” combined with “access to deadly weapons.”

On February 15, an insurance company representing Remington Arms, the maker of one of the guns Lanza used (a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle), settled a lawsuit with a wounded teacher who survived the Sandy Hook massacre, as well as the families of nine of the dead. The plaintiffs will receive $73 million.

The lawsuit was illegal  under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and therefore correctly dismissed in 2016 by the Connecticut State Superior Court.

Ignoring that law, the Connecticut Supreme Court revived it as a completely meritless claim under the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Law. Remington, the plaintiffs pretended, was responsible for Lanza’s actions because of its marketing practices.

Remington didn’t sell the gun to Lanza. Nor did Remington sell the gun to a third party who sold it to Lanza.  Lanza didn’t buy the gun. He stole the gun, from the mother he murdered with another gun, also hers, and not made by Remington.

He also stole her Honda Civic to get himself to the school where he committed his final crimes.  But, oddly, the Office of the Child Advocate’s report doesn’t mention “access to cars” as a factor in the massacre, nor have the plaintiffs filed suit against Honda.

How did a zombie loser of a lawsuit like this make it so far? Because politics, that’s why.

Whatever actual damages and pain the plaintiffs suffered, those damages and pain were not caused by Remington or Honda selling perfectly legal items — and not even to the perpetrator, but to another victim.

Nor were those damages the real point of the lawsuit. It was a “lawfare” project — abuse of the legal system to conduct political and financial warfare — from beginning to end. It was pursued on behalf of, and with the support of, groups dedicated to disarming prospective future victims of mass shootings.

Those groups refer to their preferred policies as “gun control” because “victim disarmament,” while far more accurate and honest, isn’t good marketing.

The point of this vexatious litigation was to discourage insurers from covering gun manufacturers. Not because those manufacturers are actual liable in any sense for other people’s use of their products, but because the plaintiffs and their supporters want to make it harder for you to get those products.

It’s a Pyrrhic victory. With more than 400 million guns already in the hands of Americans, and an an ever-increasing ability to manufacture guns at home without government “oversight,” they’ve already lost the war.

The unfortunate fallout of this “landmark” case won’t much affect the availability of guns. But, Remington’s insurers having paid the Danegeld, we’ll almost certainly see the Dane relying on the same bad arguments to loot manufacturers of other products.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

The global establishment press has spilled metric tons of ink trying to paint Canada’s “freedom convoy” as a gaggle of racist pinheads holding up progress for the heck of it.

In reality, it looks like most of that protest’s participants and supporters are ordinary Canadians who have finally reached their breaking point with vaccine mandates and other attempts to condition their livelihoods on asking “how high?” every time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says “jump.”

The phenomenon seems to be catching.

As I write this, state governments across the US are racing to roll back the authoritarian restrictions they’ve spent the last two years imposing in the name of COVID-19.

Why? Because they want to do the right thing without being forced to admit they did the wrong things.

They’re scared witless at the prospect of having to back down when a bunch of truckers and supporters clog the same highways and streets the political class emptied by edict in 2020 and have since assumed “emergency” powers over.

Last week the US Department of Homeland Security warned that an American “copycat” protest might develop in time to inconvenience Super Bowl crowds in Los Angeles before motoring across the country to steal the spotlight (such as it will likely be) from President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union Address. Cue panic and retreat.

Abroad, the French and Belgian regimes are breaking out batons and tear gas in the forlorn hope of brazening it out versus  “copycat” serf rebellions, as Queen Jacinta of New Zealand whines about “foreign” influence on a similar uprising against her iron rule.

Trudeau continues to channel Romania’s late Nicolae Ceausescu, invoking wartime “emergency powers” to preserve his de facto dictatorship — hopefully with less lethal results for both him and his  fed up victims.

COVID-19 police statism looks like it’s on the defense in some places, in full retreat in others, and on the verge of total collapse everywhere.

Why? Because some truckers in Canada finally said “no more” and resolved to make it stick.

No single Boris Yeltsin or anonymous Chinese protester provides an iconic figure atop, or in front of, a tank. That’s probably for the best. It’s too easy these days to discredit a good cause by trawling through some supposedly “representative” individual’s old tweets.

In retrospect, the “freedom convoy” participants will be collectively due the thanks of several grateful nations. Honk if you love freedom.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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