#justice for tort

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

In Atlanta, Georgia they police want to destroy local forests to build a $90 million training facility.

The training facility is to be called "cop city" and will essentially serve as a fake neighborhood to train in.

But it seems that some of the officers couldn't wait to get their "training" in because they killed a local forest defender and environmental activist Tortuguita (also known as Tort) while they was protesting the destruction of the forest.

Image too humanize them.

Tortuguita is a 26 year old native Venezuelan queer nonbinary person that uses they/it pronouns. And was killed in a SWAT raid to clear the protestor camps.

-fae

[conflictgoblin]

[mariusz026]

En 1946 los gringos crearon "La Escuela de las Américas" una institución de educacion militar que marco la historia de Latinoamérica.

En esa escuela se enseñaban, entre otras cosas; tácticas de tortura y mucho de lo aprendido se ocupó para desestabilizar, dar golpes de estado y someter territorios bajo la hegemonía gringa.

En 2023 en #Atlanta hay planes para volver a hacer algo por el estilo, piensan destruir un bosque y poner ahí #CopCity, una ciudad ficticia con escuelas, cines, hospitales y todo para que la policía, de todo el mundo; pueda entrenar tácticas de control de masas en ambientes urbanos y grabar películas y programas de TV, ya que hasta estudios de cine han invertido en ello.

Por suerte siempre hay gente dispuesta a defender los bosques y se han establecido campamentos desde hace meses para frenar la construcción. Pero la policía no cesa sus intentos y en uno de ellos lamentablemente Tortuguita, uno de los defensores; fue asesinado.

Solidaridad con toda la gente al rededor del mundo que lucha contra cualquiera de las cabezas de la hidra capitalista

[darkarches]

Help protect Weelaunee Forest and stop the construction of cop city!

There was a conference last night for the Stop Cop City week of solidarity coming up February 19th-26th.

The main takeaway is that if people are interested in taking action, the best thing to do would be to target the construction company that the police have contracted, the funders of the project, and the insurance company insuring the project. The cops are the ones who want cop city built, but they can't do it without the groups mentioned above.

The construction company is Brasfield and Gorrie. My understanding is the company itself probably won't turn a huge profit from the project and is mostly doing it to strengthen relations with the police. If we can show them they will lose money from this project they may pull out. One way to show them how unprofitable this venture would be for them is to make it harder for them to complete other projects they're working on. One suggestion from the conference is that those who live near construction projects being done by Brasfield and Gorrie could try to obstruct progress on these projects to show there will be repercussions if they don't pull out of cop city.

The main funders of the project are big banks and corporations. I've included a link at the bottom with more details but some of the groups funding this are Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Target, Home Depot, and Chik-fil-a. The Atlanta Police Foundation is also helping fund and support the project. Below I've linked a map that shows the locations of these funders and offices of members of the Atlanta Police Foundation.

The insurance company signed onto the cop city project is AXA. At the conference last night it was emphasized that AXA is the main target we want to go after during the upcoming week of solidarity. The destruction of the forest cannot continue without an insurance company covering them. I did a quick google search and was able to find several AXA offices near me. Like with Brasfield and Gorrie, if we put the pressure on AXA they will hopefully realize this project is simply not worth it and pull out.

This is a list of targets which includes a map of where these targets are located throughout the US. There is also a list of actions that people can take, but be creative.

Nobody wants cop city except the police and corporations. Let's help save the Weelaunee Forest!

[luminecho]

im just gonna start the next case tonight because im unstoppable and my friends are enablers

[intricatepuckrituals]

soooo glad when my team chooses to lose when i'm not watching the game, so i don't have to endure the epic highs and lowes of professional dumbassery hockey for 3.5 chair gripping hours. instead! i can just check the score, have a dumpling, and light the blunt 🙈

[dm7th]

*The "Good" Side Don't Win All The Time.* Dunno why it took me this long before reading this; kudos to Mr. John Grisham for taking me through the path of reality. The jolting conclusion reminds me of Chinua Achebe. #book #novel #law #trial #plaintiff #defense #mass #tort #class #action #hustle #client #jury #verdict #appeal #supreme #court #justice #politics #real #realism #realist #dm7th #dmajor7th #library #ontheroad (at Mississippi) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClMqM25NOnj/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Geico STD story is the new McDonald's Hot Coffee story

Here’s a media literacy rule of thumb: any time you hear about how the courts have done something outrageous and absurd to some poor, long-suffering, gigantic, wildly profitable corporation…dig deeper. The canonical example is the “McDonald’s Hot Coffee Lawsuit” (aka Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants). You know, that time that an old lady got burned by her McDonald’s coffee and then sued for for $2.7 million?! Most people heard that story — and they heard it for a reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

The Hot Coffee story was propaganda — specifically, it was propaganda for the idea that corporations should be shielded from legal liability when they maim or even kill the public through gross negligence. The real Hot Coffee story is a lot more complicated than the “lady gets millions because her coffee was too hot” tale that circulated widely.

One of the best explorations of the Hot Coffee story is Adam Conover’s excellent “Adam Ruins The Hot Coffee Story” video from 2016. In that episode, Conover explains what really happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9DXSCpcz9E

The coffee that burned Stella Liebeck in New Mexico in 1994 was served at 190°F. It caused third-degree burns that permanently disfigured Liebeck, required multiple skin grafts, and disabled her for two years. The surgery was so drastic that Liebeck lost 20% of her body-weight while she was recovering.

McDonald’s had a history of serving coffee that was dangerously hot. It had received 700 complaints about the matter, and had had to settle numerous claims from people who were horribly burned by its coffee. However, it declined to settle with Liebeck, who initially sought $20k to cover her medical expenses.

Denied a settlement, Liebeck sued. The jury did award $2.7m, but the judge clawed it back to $640k. Liebeck likely didn’t get that amount — she and McDonald’s reached a confidential settlement under threat of McDonald’s appealing.

So, the real story isn’t: “Old lady spills coffee and gets millions.”

It’s “McDonald’s ignores hundreds of dangerous incidents for years, then maims a customer for life and refuses to pay her medical bills or change its practices to avoid future incidents. A judge says she’s due a fraction of the jury award, but she doesn’t get it because McDonald’s uses its massive litigation war-chest to force her into a confidential settlement.”

So why did you hear so much about this story? And why was the moral of the story inevitably about how bloodsucking lawyers are victimizing poor l’il multinational corporations like Mickey Dees?

It was propaganda. The “bloodsucking lawyers preying on innocent corporations” story is a creation of the business lobby, which has, for decades, argued that it should be immune to legal consequences when it harms or kills the public. The cause of “tort reform” is, in actuality, a corporate charter of impunity.

It worked. Over the past four decades, corporations have steadily whittled away the public’s right to civil justice, no matter how egregiously a corporation behaves. The main mechanism for this was the expansion of binding arbitration, a 1920s-era law that initially allowed big companies to agree to have their contractual disputes worked out by a mediator, rather than going to court.

Since the 1980s, a series of Supreme Court decisions have steadily expanded binding arbitration, allowing corporations to add “arbitration waivers” to their terms of service, employment contracts and other non-negotiated boilerplates. Today, the mere act of removing some shrinkwrap or clicking a link can result in the permanent loss of your right to sue, no matter how badly a company treats you.

Instead, your grievances will be heard by a corporate arbitrator, a pretend judge who is paid by the company that wronged you. Your case must be heard in isolation, and not part of a class action. The proceedings are secret, and even if you win, you don’t set a precedent for others who are similarly wronged. It’s “a justice system just for corporations.”

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/we-now-have-a-justice-system-just-for-corporations

American corporations pushed the expansion of binding arbitration waivers as a get-out-of-court-free card, and for many years, it worked. Remember when Wells Fargo forged millions of its customers’ signatures to fraudulently open high-fee accounts in their names? The company argued that because the forged agreements included arbitration waivers, those customers couldn’t sue over the fraud:

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ceo-of-wells-fargo-might-be-in-big-big-trouble/

Everybody got in on the act. If you’re a Pokemon Go player, you’re stuck in binding arbitration:

https://consumerist.com/2016/07/14/pokemon-go-strips-users-of-their-legal-rights-heres-how-to-opt-out/

Same with Airbnb customers:

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2908/terms-of-service

Unsurprisingly, Trump loved binding arbitration. One of his first acts as president was to strip nursing home residents of the right to sue, which was great news for the nursing homes that murdered patients by abandoning them to covid:

https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/trump-administration-will-allow-nursing-homes-to-strip-residents-of-legal-rights/

(Older voters love the GOP, but it sure as hell doesn’t love them back.)

Forced arbitration wasn’t just a matter of civil justice — it was also a matter of economics. As Lina Khan and Deepak Gupta showed in their 2016 American Constitution Society paper “Arbitration As Wealth Transfer,” “Forced arbitration clauses are a form of wealth transfer to the rich”:

https://www.acslaw.org/issue_brief/briefs-landing/arbitration-as-wealth-transfer/

But the business leaders who bankrolled the forced arbitration epidemic were — characteristically — overconfident. It turns out that arbitration has weaknesses. It’s possible to do mass arbitration — to automate filing arbitration claims by thousands of corporate victims, which triggers hundreds of millions of dollars in arbitration fees, which the company is on the hook for, win or lose.

Uber was one of the first companies to discover this, when thousands of drivers brought arbitration claims at once. Not only would Uber have to pay for arbitrators in each case, but because arbitration decisions do not constitute precedents, it would have to argue each case, over and over again, even if it won. The company surrendered and paid drivers $146m:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/uber-sues-aaa-block-100-million-fees-politically-motivated-arbitration-2021-09-20/

This spooked Amazon, which amended its terms of service for Alexa to remove binding arbitration:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/02/arbitrary-arbitration/#petard

Law-tech firms like Fairshake created automation systems to enable mass arbitration filings at scale and on a budget:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#justice-restored

Something wonderful and wild started to happen. The companies that had argued for decades that binding arbitration was, well, binding, began to argue that arbitration waivers were unconstitutional, despite the precedents that they, themselves had bankrolled, at enormous expense.

The poster child of arbitration buyer’s remorse is Intuit, a company that has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-prep fees from the poorest Americans by tricking them into fake “Free File” products using dark patterns on its website.

Intuit is now facing arbitration at scale — more than 100,000 claims — and a court has ordered them to hire arbitrators to hear each and every one of them. After all it was Intuit — not its customers — who put the arbitration clauses in its terms of service, claiming that court cases were a bad way to resolve their disputes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#justice-restored

Which brings me back to McDonald’s, hot coffee, and juicy stories about giant corporations being abused by the courts.

Have you heard about the Geico STD judgment? A woman caught an STD from her then-boyfriend when they had sex in his car. She won a judgment against him for $5.2m. Geico insures his car. A court has ordered Geico to pay that judgment.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/jackson-county-woman-says-she-222907031.html

But it’s more complicated than that!

It’s not a court that ordered Geico to pay the judgment — it’s an arbitrator. Geico is one of the companies that forces its customers into arbitration. Why would an insurance company want arbitrators to hear cases about its refusal to pay claims, rather than judges?

I mean, duh. Insurance companies have a long, dishonorable tradition of taking your premiums every month, then stranding you when you actually experience an “insured event,” arguing that the obscure, obfuscating language in their contract doesn’t cover your losses.

The real Geico STD story is this: Geico demanded that the case be heard by its arbitrator, who ruled against Geico, because Geico’s insurance terms did cover this event. Now, Geico is claiming that the arbitration it insisted upon “violates the company’s due process rights” and that its own arbitration agreement is unenforceable.

The case that’s being reported on isn’t about the $5.2m award for the STD. That happened way back in 2021. The case that’s in the news this week is a court telling Geico that when it forces its customers into arbitration, it has to abide by the arbitrator’s decision, even in those rare instances in which the arbitrator finds against the company who pays their fees.

But you wouldn’t know it from the coverage. All this stuff about arbitration is buried way down in the story. The headline is: $5.2m judgment for a venereal disease!

This is McDonald’s Hot Coffee 2.0. Someone pitched this story, and the pitch emphasized the poor, downtrodden corporation (Geico is owned by Warren Buffet and has $32b in assets) — not the fact that Geico is reaping what it sowed. The real story here is: “Corporation seeks to replace civil justice system with a kangaroo court, and gets kicked by its own kangaroo.”

Incidentally, if you miss Adam Conover’s “Adam Ruins Everything” and you have a Netflix password, check out “The G-Word,” his incredible new show about regulatory competence and the deadly threats it holds at bay:

https://www.netflix.com/title/81037116

[Image ID: The Adam Ruins Everything title card for 'The Hot Coffee Case.' It is a split panel with Adam Conover on the left at a judge's bench, banging a gavel, and a confused Hamburgler on the right, in the witness box. They are separated by the center of the 'M' in the McDonald's 'Golden Arches' logo. Superimposed over this separator is the Geico lizard.]

[thatsleepymermaid]

Sources to help stop cop city!!!

Petitions and Funds

Atlanta Solidarity Fund

Stop Cop City Petition for Atlanta Residents

Donate money or sign the petition for the "Stop the Swap" lawsuit

Fundraiser for Tortuguita's family

Muscogee Tribe fundraiser

Phone numbers and emails

Adre Dickens: (404) 330-6054 541

Brian Kemp: +1-404-656-1776

Construction company in charge: Brasfield & Gorrie 678-581-6400

Atlanta Paving and Concrete Construction: 770-220-0228

Atlanta Police Foundation: 770-354-3392

City of Atlanta 404-330-6100

[gusty-wind]

IMHO...Tara should be seeking $250 MILLION...Not only has she been denied justice; but, she has endured harassment and life threats for speaking the truth...

Tara Reade was sexually assaulted by @JoeBiden in 1993. Today, Tara filed a tort complaint with the US Department of Justice seeking $10 MILLION in damages for invasion of privacy, emotional distress, and a violation of her rights.

Congress covered Biden's ass and suppressed her case. Even today, the records remain sealed.

When Tara spoke out again in 2019, the FBI re-victimized her by launching a secret operation called “Operation Casandra” in order to retaliate, intimidate and, if possible, “eliminate" her as a threat to Biden.

[gatheringbones]

[“The reason it is possible to imagine property as a relationship of domination between a person and a thing is because, in Roman Law, the power of the master rendered the slave a thing (res, meaning an object), not a person with social rights or legal obligations to anyone else. Property law, in turn, was largely about the complicated situations that might arise as a result. It is important to recall, for a moment, who these Roman jurists actually were that laid down the basis for our current legal order – our theories of justice, the language of contract and torts, the distinction of public and private and so forth. While they spent their public lives making sober judgments as magistrates, they lived their private lives in households where they not only had near-total authority over their wives, children and other dependants, but also had all their needs taken care of by dozens, perhaps hundreds of slaves.

Slaves trimmed their hair, carried their towels, fed their pets, repaired their sandals, played music at their dinner parties and instructed their children in history and maths. At the same time, in terms of legal theory these slaves were classified as captive foreigners who, conquered in battle, had forfeited rights of any kind. As a result, the Roman jurist was free to rape, torture, mutilate or kill any of them at any time and in any way he had a mind to, without the matter being considered anything other than a private affair. (Only under the reign of Tiberius were any restrictions imposed on what a master could do to a slave, and what this meant was simply that permission from a local magistrate had to be obtained before a slave could be ripped apart by wild animals; other forms of execution could still be imposed at the owner’s whim.) On the one hand, freedom and liberty were private affairs; on the other, private life was marked by the absolute power of the patriarch over conquered people who were considered his private property.

The fact that most Roman slaves were not prisoners of war, in the literal sense, doesn’t really make much difference here. What’s important is that their legal status was defined in those terms. What is both striking and revealing, for our present purposes, is how in Roman jurisprudence the logic of war – which dictates that enemies are interchangeable, and if they surrendered they could either be killed or rendered ‘socially dead’, sold as commodities – and, therefore, the potential for arbitrary violence was inserted into the most intimate sphere of social relations, including the relations of care that made domestic life possible. Thinking back to examples like the ‘capturing societies’ of Amazonia or the process by which dynastic power took root in ancient Egypt, we can begin to see how important that particular nexus of violence and care has been. Rome took the entanglement to new extremes, and its legacy still shapes our basic concepts of social structure.

Our very word ‘family’ shares a root with the Latin famulus, meaning ‘house slave’, via familia, which originally referred to everyone under the domestic authority of a single paterfamilias or male head of household. Domus, the Latin word for ‘household’, in turn gives us not only ‘domestic’ and ‘domesticated’ but dominium, which was the technical term for the emperor’s sovereignty as well as a citizen’s power over private property. Through that we arrive at (literally, ‘familiar’) notions of what it means to be ‘dominant’, to possess ‘dominion’ and to ‘dominate’.”]

david graeber and david wengrow, the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity, 2021

[whipplefilter]

Hey Whipple! It’s nice to see you back! I really hope you’re doing well!!

Here’s an ask , if you don’t mind.

How do you think the RS townsfolk helped Sally after having dealt what she dealt with in LA?

I actually hadn't gone anywhere until you sent this ask, at which point I was sitting in an airport, haha. I would not expect this blog to be particularly active; my primary focus on Tumblr is actually my sideblog.

I'm not sure what you're imagining in terms of "what she dealt with" in LA, but my headcanon for her is that she was a corporate environmental lawyer. It was her job to make sure companies complied with NEPA and did all their required environmental assessments and, on the other end, handled tort law when it came to getting sued for damages. But with environmental law comes deep knowledge of history--of the highways that built LA, for example, and the communities destroyed by them--as well as frustration about the fact that NEPA doesn't require altered actions in light of the required assessment--just proof that the assessment was done. That kind of thing.

So she drives and drives and eventually she breaks down and the rest, of course, is history.

They say there are no secrets in small towns, but even if there was no anonymity of the sort you might find as one car in a big city, there wasn't a nosyness in Radiator Springs. Maybe this is an effect of having dealt with Doc in prior years. But the residents of RS never really pressed Sally about where she came from or why, just took her as she was. It's not that they weren't interested--they'd listen if she mentioned something, would ask questions. But never the sort that would require Sally to justify anything.

That's what was refreshing to her. Not having to justify every act, or thought, or want. Not feeling as though she were the one on trial, not in the courtroom but at work, everyone around her assessing or trying to measure themselves against her--the expectation that she, too, would be embroiled in the calculus of what clients might help her make partner and when.

She doesn't stop being ambitious in RS, even if that's what it would look like if she had anyone in LA she wanted to get back in touch with. She's still interested in history, and environmental justice, and throws a whole lot of ambition into the Cone, the town. We see this from the start of Cars 1, and we see RS let her do her thing, and take her as she is.

(When Lightning first careens into town, that's the last thing she wants to do, or that she thinks someone like Lightning needs. But it turns out watching him and Mater together--maybe it was, after all. Lightning needed to someone to take him as he was before he could become someone else.)

[kilfeur]

Je me sens un peu seule à aimer Roseille. Je veux dire ouais elle a ses propres torts mais c'est ce qui la rend justement intéressante ! Au début je la trouvais particulièrement rude envers nous donc elle était pas appréciable. Mais à force d'apprendre à la connaître, je me rendais compte qu'elle se soucie des gens et pas seulement de sa propre personne. Par exemple avant de se rendre au festival, elle a quand même chercher partout pour nous trouver un masque en plus. Ce qui montre qu'elle peut avoir un côté doux quand elle découvre le pot aux roses en ce qui concerne la légende du monstre. Elle est furieuse du comportement des Adoramis, ce qui m'avait étonné car j'aurai pensé qu'elle serait dans le déni. Mais au final non, ce qui prouve qu'elle a un certain sens de la justice ! Surtout que le fait qu'elle nous aide concernant Ogerpon montrant une fois de plus qu'elle se soucie des autres.

A la fin de la première partie du dlc, elle se rend compte que ses a priori étaient infondés. Comprenant qu'elle devait pas juger les gens avant de les connaître. Elle a apprit de ses erreurs et évolue de manière positive contrairement à son petit frère qui évolue de manière négative. Dans le disque Indigo, elle a toujours un sacré caractère mais je la trouvais plus adoucie malgré tout ! On voit qu'elle est inquiète concernant son frère mais n'arrive pas à lui parler car ce dernier l'envoie balader. Et elle n'arrive même pas à comprendre son changement radicale ! C'est d'ailleurs pour ça que j'avais bien aimé l'expédition dans la zone zéro car ils commencent de nouveau à se parler. Ce qui fait plaisir à cette dernière ! Lors de la confrontation avec Terapagos. Elle insiste à ce que Kassis nous vienne nous aider jusqu'à ce qu'on lui convaincs de nous aider à son tour. Et puis le fait qu'elle dise les quatre vérités à Bria était très plaisant à voir !

I feel a bit lonely loving Carmine. I mean, yeah, she's got her faults, but that's what makes her so interesting! At first I thought she was particularly rude to us, so I didn't like her. But as I got to know her, I realized that she cares about people and not just herself. For example, before going to the festival, she searched everywhere to find an extra mask for us. Which shows that she can have a soft side when she finds out the truth about the oger legend. She's furious about the loyal three behavior, which surprised me because I thought she'd be in denial. But in the end she wasn't, which proves that she has some sense of justice! And the fact that she helps us with Ogerpon shows once again that she cares about others.

At the end of the first part of the dlc, she realizes that her preconceptions were unfounded. She realizes that she shouldn't judge people before she gets to know them. She has learned from her mistakes and is evolving in a positive way, unlike her little brother, who is evolving in a negative way. In the Indigo disc, she's still got quite a temper, but I thought she'd softened a bit! You can see that she's worried about her brother, but she can't talk to him because he just dismisses her. And she can't even understand his radical change! That's why I liked the Zero Area expedition, because they're starting to talk to each other again, which pleases her. During the confrontation with Terapagos. She insisted that Kassis come and help us, until we convinced him to help us too. And it was a pleasure to see her tell Briar the truth about her actions!

[vividstardustrevolution]

Do I enjoy learning about law? Yes. Do I regret going to law school? Not really. Do I have an intense love-hate relationship with US law? Yes.

Am I burnt out on law school? Also yes. I want to be here, but I'm so, so tired.

If you're considering law school, there are four questions you need to ask yourself. 1) Do I like learning about law? (If you answer "no," do not go to law school; law school is tolerable for me because I enjoy learning about law, even subjects like property and torts.) 2) Am I prepared to read a lot, write a lot, and want to yell at certain judges and justices without being able to do so? 3) Do I have a social support system or mental health support system? 4) Am I prepared for the sheer workload and the bullshit that comes with law?

If you don't answer yes to at least two of those questions, do not go to law school. I'm begging you.

[claudehenrion]

Боже, Царя храни !

Surprise, Surprise ! C'est un tremblement de terre, que dis-je ! Un tsunami, une stupéfaction : Vladimir Vladimirovitch Poutine, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин pour ses amis –on m'assure qu'il en resterait un ou deux encore vivants--, né le 7 octobre 1952 à Léningrad redevenu Saint-Pétersbourg, a été rééééé-lu, à la surprise générale, à la présidence de la fédération de Russie ! On ne peut qu'entonner en chœur l'hymne à la gloire du nouveau Tsar (qui est, comme d'habitude, le même qu'hier).''Hodge Tsara Krani '': Que Dieu protège le Tsar, en VO dans le titre.

Plus sérieusement, et puisqu' il nous va falloir ''suivre'' l'agenda de ce personnage, je vous propose de lui consacrer 2 ou 3 ''éditoriaux'' dans les jours qui viennent, pour le regarder, pour une fois, autrement que selon les ''attendus'' convenus du procès à charge que ressassent les sources officielles et les faux ''experts'' des plateaux-télé des chaînes ''main stream'', qui ne savent que répéter en boucle les mêmes dadas et les mêmes mensonges, nous le vérifions souvent ! En fait, la seule utilité d'un ''blogueur'' (si tant est qu'il en ait une !), serait d'entr'ouvrir la porte à une pensée non-clonée qui est, de nos jours, condamnée et ostracisée avant-même d'être entendue.

Je vous propose donc, un court instant, de regarder Poutine avec un autre regard. Je ne dis pas que ce regard est vrai, mais je dis qu'on a pas le droit de refuser de savoir qu'il existe, car le regard ''officiel'' est biaisé et univoque à en être faux, et il est sage, prudent et ''pas que con'' de s'en méfier. Par mesure de justice et d'équité, nous essaierons de conduire un exercice comparable avec Trump, un peu plus tard, dans une double relecture d'une réalité ''différente'' –plus vraie, je ne sais pas, mais moins ''convenue'', sûrement. Et plus courageuse et plus susceptible de nous sortir de la paralysie ambiante : le seul fait qu'un comportement ne débouche sur rien n'est pas une raison suffisante pour s'entêter et ne pas chercher d'autres portes de sortie !

Mais ce Poutine, tout de même… quel sale type ! Il y a de quoi avoir peur de lui, quand on pense au mal qu'il se donne pour remettre la Russie au niveau et au rang qui devraient être les siens (ramenés à sa surface, à son histoire, à sa puissance, et à l'agression permanente de ceux qui ont décidé qu'il fallait les abattre, elle et lui…) ! Pensez ! Un patriote… dans le monde d'aujourd'hui, où tous nos progressistes et tout ce qui pense de traviole sur terre, n'ont pas de mots pour critiquer Nation, Patrie, Histoire, Drapeau, Honneur, roman national… Se croyant intelligents, ils sont stupides, en refusant de voir que l'URSS est morte et que la Russie ne demande qu'à l'oublier.

Car le communisme est bien mort ! Et, comme son alter ego idéologique, le nazisme d'atroce mémoire (aussi), tout aussi '' de Gauche'' que lui mais qui, ayant perdu la guerre, a été rejeté sans aucune justification dans la camp réputé maudit de ''la Droite'', il n'est pas près de renaître de ses sales cendres. Sur les ruines de la si peu regrettée URSS, la Russie, un autre pays –nouveau autant qu'il est ancien– a voulu rejoindre le concert des nations. Ah ! la pauvre ! Elle avait commis la double erreur (impardonnable aux yeux des progressistes rétrogrades qui ont réussi à s’emparer des leviers de commande) de se souvenir d'une Histoire non politiquement correcte et des racines chrétiennes de notre continent, ce qui est ''à tuer'' : la Gauche hait ce qui est vrai !).

Tentative après tentative, refus après refus, soufflet après soufflet… Poutine, judoka et joueur d'échecs mais finalement dégoûté, a enfin compris que les idéologies perverses, masochistes, inefficaces et mortifères (lui ajoute ''décadentes'', et on peut difficilement lui donner totalement tort !) qui sont en vogue chez ceux qui le rejettent par système, ne peuvent mener à rien de bon. Il a donc choisi un chemin autocratique, avec plein d'excès, bien entendu (mais qui n'en fait pas ?), mais aussi avec des résultats que nos dirigeants auraient eu intérêt à méditer... Et puis... tout s'est bloqué : des campagnes incessantes ont créé, mais en Occident seulement –et ça, c'est extrêmement grave-- un sentiment plus négatif qu'au temps maudit des cocos, comme si Poutine était plus dangereux que Lénine, Staline et Brejnev réunis…  

Je sais que c'est le “must” à la mode d'afficher un anti-poutinisme militant, en évoquant une brutalité bien réelle que l'Histoire explique sans la justifier (mais qui nous permet d'oublier tout ce qui, chez nous, n'est pas vraiment meilleur !). Il n'empêche : au regard de l'histoire-à-venir, son dossier “tiendra la route” bien mieux que celui des Occidentaux, soumis au bon vouloir des différentes Administrations US  qui poursuivent des objectifs qui ne sont pas les nôtres, et qui, en général, commettent des erreurs énormes de lecture de l'Histoire et d'interprétation de réalités dont la complexité leur échappe (cf, récemment, l'Irak, la Syrie, la Libye, l'ex-Yougoslavie hier et Gaza aujourd'hui, etc...). En fait, rien n'est jamais ni tout blanc ni tout noir... et ce n'est pas facile à admettre, souvent !

Poutine, poussé à bout, a commis une faute inexcusable : se mettant dans son tort, il a ouvert les hostilités, pour reprendre ce que tous les russes considèrent leur appartenir ''depuis toujours'' (voir ci-après). Il a cru attaquer un état-croupion qui avait, jusque là, bien du mal à ne pas exister, mais c'était pour le faire “revenir au bercail” –tel que lui voit les choses. L'OTAN, qui n'a rien à faire dans cette galère, a cédé aux erreurs de la CIA, et les dirigeants occidentaux, nuls à en sangloter de désespoir, se sont servilement alignés sur le grand dispensateur de dollars, espérant récupérer à terme dans l'OTAN un Etat dont ce dernier n'a nul besoin (''que des emmerdes à espérer'') et qui s'est engagé à ne jamais en être membre. (NB : où voyez-vous “l'Atlantique-Nord”, entre Kiev et Odessa ?). Les pauvres européens, nuls, se sont laissé entraîner dans une spirale à qui perd, perd voulue par les américains… Et on perd. Il ne nous reste que des menaces aussi présidentielles que creuses, que personne ne croit ni ne respecte, et pour cause !

Et, un mot en entraînant un autre, on en arrive aujourd'hui à la crise de nerfs du Président français qui prononce des phrases ''qu'un Président ne devrait jamais dire''. Il fantasme une menace pour la France (que l'on chercherait en vain dans le ''script'' en cours) devant une armée fatiguée que la seule Ukraine arrive à tenir en échec depuis 2 ans. Le fantasme macronien de grandes expéditions nouvelles n'est, juste, pas envisageable avant... 10 ans. Et malgré ça, à la question : “Faut-il se préparer à mourir bientôt pour Sébastopol, Simféropol, Kiev, le Donbass, ou qui vous voudrez ?“… la réponse ’'NON” ne va plus de soi, depuis les crises nerveuses d'une France qui n'a, en aucun cas, les moyens ''d'assumer'' les discours de son président, privé, en plus, du moindre soutien sérieux. .

H-Cl

PS : les choses étant ce que nous voyons et le monde ce qu'il ne devrait pas être –comme n'a jamais dit De Gaulle-- il serait sans doute utile de compléter ce rapide tableau par un retour sur images : un sujet est inséparable de l'autre. Alors... ''Et l'Ukraine, dans tout ça''? Le texte de cet ''édito'' sera plus long que d'habitude, mais le sujet est vraiment plus grave et ''il le vaut bien''.

Retour sur images : L'Ukraine, un peu plus vaste que la France (600.000 km2) mais moins peuplé (45 millions), s'étend au nord de la mer Noire, de part et d'autre du Dniepr. Ses habitants ont de tout temps été appelés “Petits-Russiens”, ce qui n'est pas neutre, en soi. Et c'est autour de Kiev, l’actuelle capitale de l'Ukraine, que la nation russe est née, aux alentours de l'An Mil, avant de se diviser en ‘’russes russes’’ proprement dit... en ukrainiens... et en biélorusses, dont les langues nationales ont lentement et légèrement dérivé par rapport à l'ancienne langue commune. Les tout premiers “ukrainiens” revendiqués furent quelques paysans qui, au XVIe siècle, se constituèrent en communautés indépendantes, les Cosaques zaporogues (= les hommes libres au delà des rapides), qui sont devenus sujets polonais, pour les punir, sans doute.

Mais en 1654, las d'être maltraités par les Polonais, ils se placent sous la protection du tsar “de toutes les Russies” offrant aux Romanov la rive orientale du Dniepr, puis Kiev et Smolensk, enfin redevenues russes. Dans l'esprit des tsars, l'Ukraine a toujours été terre russe et n'a donc droit à, ni besoin de, aucun statut particulier. Après l'échec en 1709 du chef cosaque “Hetman” Mazeppa, les retrouvailles de l'Ukraine et de Moscou ont été totales : les territoires dits ukrainien et biélorusse sont revenus sous l'autorité du tsar, et il faudra attendre deux siècles (la première Révolution russe de 1905), pour que Nicolas II s'engage à respecter “les nationalités” (pas les nations).

C'est la grande révolution de 1917 qui verra une ''Rada  centrale''  (copie des soviet russes d'alors) se proclamer ''République populaire ukrainienne'', aussitôt dévorée, et russifiée “à mort” (dans le vrai sens du terme) par l'hydre stalinienne : 6 millions d'ukrainiens sont (littéralement) morts de faim entre 1917 et 1933. Et ça, c'est affreux ! Devant cette histoire tellement complexe, j'admire (enfin… un peu ; très peu, même !) ceux qui prétendent qu'il n'y aurait aucune consanguinité entre Russie et Ukraine… et aucun droit possible de l'une sur l'autre...

Ukraine veut dire “frontière”. Entre les mondes orthodoxe et catholique, ce pays ne peut nier être le berceau du monde russe. Il faudra attendre 1989 pour que la libéralisation du régime soviétique permette aux ukrainiens d'exister un peu (à travers les tresses blondes de Ioulia Timochenko qui fit découvrir ce pays –et le rendit sympathique). N’existant que depuis 1991 –c'est hier--, il se cherche entre un Occident attirant mais lointain et une Russie proche mais redoutée.

Cependant, il ne faut jamais oublier qu'une des conditions mises par Gorbatchev à l'ouverture du monde communiste a été “que jamais l'OTAN ne cherchera à attirer les pays du Pacte de Varsovie dans son giron”… promesse et engagement clairement décrits, et compris, alors : toute menace de rapprochement serait un “casus belli”. C'était parfaitement clair, mais la mémoire des politiques est... sélective.

Reste le cas de la Crimée, cet autre caillou dans les chaussures des cuistres qui nous dirigent si mal. Russe depuis le XVIIIè siècle après avoir été possession ottomane pendant 300 ans (les pauvres !), elle est devenue un “oblast” (= territoire) de la République socialiste soviétique de Russie que Staline, dans un geste ''sans conséquence'', a rattaché à l'Ukraine, qui était alors partie intégrante de l'URSS : dans sa tête, il changeait un meuble de place, à l'intérieur de la maison, rien de plus ! Et ce n'est, aussi, qu'en1991 que la Crimée devint une ’'République autonome’’, avec Simféropol pour capitale, et peu de liens statutaires avec l'Ukraine –qui persiste à la revendiquer, y compris Sébastopol, le grand port de la Mer Noire, qui a toujours conservé un statut spécial de “ville fédérale”, comme le sont Moscou et St-Petersbourg.

La situation est gravissime : la tactique ne doit jamais faire oublier la stratégie, et le court terme se substituer à la vision longue... De telles fautes contre l'Histoire, la pensée et l'intelligence, et une priorité donnée à ce qui est visible (même très émouvant) ne peuvent que mener, très vite, à des situations que personne n'a envie de vivre (sauf, en apparence, notre Président ? Je n'arrive pas à croire que c'est autre chose qu'une posture pré-électorale : ce serait trop fou !)... et à une guerre que nous perdrions en 48 heures, sauf à utiliser des armes définitives pour tout le monde. Mais dans ce cas, je ne serai plus là pour vous expliquer pourquoi on a eu tort de se comporter comme ça... ni vous, pour lire mes commentaires... postumes.