Thanks. In the past several months I've been censored, blocked or banned without warning by several non-conformist, fringe, anti-empire / anti-clotshot personalities online, without me having posted any ad hominem, or even being sarcastic.
We're apparently living during a new Fall of Rome... but 'the freedom movement' looks less like the early Christian communities, and more like the People's Front of Judea vs. Judean People's Front.
Thanks, Edward - I'll follow you on Telegram and not under my pen name but under my real name. I'm sure you'll easily recognize who that is from the style of my comments. As my wife once told me reading comments under one article "look, this guy writes just like you, but, wait a minute, it is you!" )))
Word of warning, I'm sure you are aware, but Telegram is a troll ridden place, and not just trolls but nasty and stupid people. I'm not sure if you have a person to monitor your comment section to purge the nastiest of trolls, but this needs to be communicated to Substack subscribers not familiar with Telegram, from respectful and overall friendly ambience they could get exposed to a very acidic environment.
I completely agree with the new commenting guidelines. If I disagree with a comment (and I do sometimes), then I will do so respectfully. Please correct me if I am wrong as I believe one needs a cell phone number to join telegram, so that counts me out as I do NOT have a cell phone. I only have a landline home phone in Belarus. I hope in the future, Riley will start a bitchute interview channel and video interview his followers in different countries to get an "on the ground" perspective in that country. I am happy to see Riley's audience get bigger with more platforms.
If anyone else is interested in creating an interview/talk of weekly events with me, please let me know as I am seriously considering starting a bitchute channel with someone or partnering with someone who creates the bitchute channel. I am NOT after control of the channel or content. And I am NOT after money or donations since this bitchute project would be fun for me to video talk with someone unedited on a weekly basis about current events and posting the conversations/interviews with other viewers on a joint bitchute channel.
To register on Telegram one doesn't need a cellphone, but a phone number capable of receiving SMS. There are services in Russia and Belarus that allow to have a temporary or permanent phone number assigned to you capable of receiving SMS even for free. Don't limit yourself, Telegram is a perfect place nowadays to get your news stream, way ahead of TV or YouTube.
There are many reasons to frequent a site's comment section. (Can we call it 'peanut gallery'? Pleeeeeease?????) One thing I do with them these days is study how people, many of them well-educated and well-behaved in their 9-5, nonetheless will resort to various forms of aggression (especially Passive Aggression, PA) in what is, after all, merely an idea-sphere of textual ghosts: comments.
When times turn truly hard in the USA, as they soon will, I will remember that these well-educated/well-behaved people are, most of them, prepared to turn overnight into savage jerks at the flick of an ego-switch. Consider the concept of passive-savagery rather than mere PA.
When kindness and courtesy depend on comfortable circumstances, kindness and courtesy (k&c) become merely affordable luxuries, social coffee tables, and are vulnerable to turn away from k&c to crude savagery in a twinkle.
I adore being kind and compassionate, it's about the only true meaning I get from being alive, but have no problem smacking aggressive boors around for my and their mutual well-being. But the trolls that came at me are piffles. What hurts me is how everyone else stands around and watches from the sidelines... such behavior is how creeps like Stalin and FDR acquire and hold power: no one's willing to fight until sides are drawn up and someone's willing to pay them... usually creeps like Stalin and FDR.
Unadulterated personal initiative is, in my experience, so rare among my fellow modern-mediated specie members that they view it (like Zappa said of intelligence) as "a freakish mutation". You might find this old interview with him useful?
" One thing I do with them these days is study how people, many of them well-educated and well-behaved in their 9-5, nonetheless will resort to various forms of aggression (especially Passive Aggression, PA) in what is, after all, merely an idea-sphere of textual ghosts: comments."
I have wondered and asked about that very point. I suspect anonymous forums allow people to vent the "other" side of their personalities. We see this with sportspeople who are tough and aggressive on the fields, yet they are pleasant off. Likewise with many public figures whose private personas are quite different; Trump being an exception as people have found to their surprise.
Now about AOC: surely she could not be like that in private? I think she has a stud. How could she turn him on with a public persona like that?
In text-only formats, sans body language and vocal language, and emotional ego security replacing fear of physical retaliation, people act differently, it seems. I like this of itself because it frees people to express themselves more openly. I don't know that it's polar as in people's "other" side but it does make them feel freer to say "darker" things than they would at a physical gathering.
There's this assumption that people can talk about difficult, confusing, painful, and frightening things "pleasantly", "civilly", evben "lightheartedly", as Edvard said. I think they can do this too, but only if they want to, not because they're told to.
Telling people to be nice is like telling an agitated person to "get over it": it just agitates them more.
"Don't feed the troll" is a universally accepted mantra that I have rarely see translate into effective troll-taming or exile. It also instantly turns into a smear tool: don't like someone's approach, call 'em a troll. (I'll note the idea that for many trolls, being ignored perhaps just means, to them, that they got the last word in. It could be encouraging in some ways.)
I've also heard the word "vulgar" used a lot as a pejorative.
"Lacking sophistication or good taste; unrefined; making explicit and offensive reference to sex or bodily functions; coarse and rude."
I see these brandings of someone as vulgar as a subjective elitism: vulgarity for one man is high-falutin' sophistication for another. (I was raised by a prudish Southern Mormon mother. I like to think that I know this drill pretty well.)
Also, it ultimately boils down to 'why can't you be more like me/us'?
I generally agree with all you said. In communication, there are two basic rules: credible and civil. As to you quoting Mick Jagger....oh the irony! You won't get any satisfaction from him now.
On the concept of civility, I will shuttlecock between two quotes by Suzanne Massie, the author who played a large part in getting Reagan and Gorbachev to make nice-nice with each other:
Life is violence beginning with every meal we eat, an act that required some living thing be killed. The insistence on being nice that modern society places on us morphs over time into Eat Shit and Like It. I will quote Miles Davis talking to his dear old friend, Clark Terry, near the end of Miles' life:
"Clark, did you tell anyone to kiss your ass today?"
"Miles, no! Why would I want to do that?"
"Because you can't be happy putting up with all that bullshit." (very indulgently paraphrased from old memory)
Civility is NOT niceness. Civility is actually listening to what another says, interpreting it with the benefit of doubt, and responding in good faith with fidelity to the facts as one understands them.
Niceness is a form of self-restraint based on social coercion. It is a pale imitation of the real thing: genuine kindness. fwiw, I personally despise "niceness": it concels so much meanness.
As for Miles Davis and how Clark Terry fits into all this geopolitical stuff:
The amount of hand-wringing despair the alternet consumes is staggering. TPTB, supposedly, is somewhere between Emperor Palpatine and Yahweh in its virtual omnipotence. If one disagrees with this, a thousand people will tell you (generally with sneering, condescending "incivility") how naive and foolish and misguided and stupid and, hey, maybe even chickenshit, one must be for not bowing to the almighty power of TPTB and surrendering to the inevitable. "Resistance is futile" is the effective if unintended message (which is imo is a major part of why we spend so much time carping online and pouncing on anyone who isn't properly "nice").
The result is rather like Miss Manners refereeing a debate between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea.
Yeah, there are hard times coming, arguably the worst humanity has seen, and we're up against it. But, to quote Han Solo, "Never tell me the odds, kid."
Edward, what do you think of these two characters, Matt Ehret and Joaquin Flores? Paid propaganda shills? Matt is certainly more intellectual, and makes interesting points once in a while, but that Flores guy is a total disaster. Looks like he is a side operation of your former employer, RT, since they have been (unjustly) banned from everywhere, including Telegram. If you have an opinion on them, please share.
Ah, I recall now that article of yours. Matt Ehret's name didn't register with me then but I later came into his writings and podcasts and inevitably question came to my mind, is this guy genuine or is he a paid shill? Now I'm more inclined to think the latter. His connection to Joaquin Flores is also easier to explain now and why did they appear on a two hour joint podcast couple of days ago. Are these two individuals paid by RT or another Kremlin tower remains a question, but it doesn't matter as much. If the opposite side, Western MSM, built a very broad and deep network of their own influencers, people like Ehret and Flores have the right to exist and to earn their living too. I forgive them for their trespasses )))
I live by “gut feeling” and something in my gut puts me off Ehret even if I I agree/like what he says. It’s HIM. Sorry, like I said above I’m sensitive.
On a side note, RT definitely was trying to topple President Lukashenko in August 2020. Completely foul coverage on the protests in Belarus by RT in August 2020. It took a almost a month and then RT changed it's tune and covered the protests more objectively when RT finally realized that the Svetlana girl was so much worse. I shudder to think how tyrannical Belarus would be these last 2 years under her control in cahoots with EU. I always wondered why RT hated President Lukashenko so much. RT management probably hates Russia's "special military operation" because their worldwide audience is so much less now because of sanctions for "misinformation".
RT is a "rotten apple" much like the rest of Russian state media that is penetrated deep inside by sometimes latent liberals and measuring themselves against just one and only benchmark: "what will the West say?". In Russian they call these types "okhranitely", "regime guardians" in lose translation, people flipping their position on the fly, saying anything in order to defend any action by authorities. Vladimir Solovyov, Margarita Simonyan, Dmitry Kiselyov are the three top media figures among these people. They define agenda and narrative for the rest to follow. Much like in the West where not individuals, but the institutions like NYT, WaPo, Guardian send signals on defining the right narrative for the moment.
In my OPINION, RT is more fair and balanced than any western MSM. I watch RT every day. Can you recommend another 30 minute world news program that gives a Russian perspective that is better than RT? I doubt it.
RT did a hit job on President Lukashenko and then redeemed themselves. RT is always on target concerning Julian founded Wikileaks and Edward Snowden. RT had the Russia "might" leave the WHO article and RT also had the the big "Fan ID" boycott protest in Moscow at Luzhniki Stadium on May 29. Did you know about the "Fan ID" boycott protest in Moscow on May 29?
RT gave opinion writers the opportunity to publish written articles against tyranny fake virus restrictions even though at the same time RT news video broadcasts fully supported the scamdemic/plandemic. Western MSM would NEVER allow these restriction criticisms be published on their platforms.
I totally agree RT's show programs are mostly total garbage with very few exceptions like "Crosstalk". However most RT's documentaries are awesome.
RT did Anya Parampil wrong. RT fired Anya or Anya resigned. Anya brilliantly attracted viewers to her program "In Question" only to be discarded when that another broadcaster returned after having her baby. However RT still invites Max and Anya from "The Grayzone" to speak on RT. https://thegrayzone.com/
Final note> Vladimir Solovyov and Dmitry Kiselyov are much worse than Margarita. My opinions only.
Thanks. In the past several months I've been censored, blocked or banned without warning by several non-conformist, fringe, anti-empire / anti-clotshot personalities online, without me having posted any ad hominem, or even being sarcastic.
We're apparently living during a new Fall of Rome... but 'the freedom movement' looks less like the early Christian communities, and more like the People's Front of Judea vs. Judean People's Front.
Thanks, Edward - I'll follow you on Telegram and not under my pen name but under my real name. I'm sure you'll easily recognize who that is from the style of my comments. As my wife once told me reading comments under one article "look, this guy writes just like you, but, wait a minute, it is you!" )))
Word of warning, I'm sure you are aware, but Telegram is a troll ridden place, and not just trolls but nasty and stupid people. I'm not sure if you have a person to monitor your comment section to purge the nastiest of trolls, but this needs to be communicated to Substack subscribers not familiar with Telegram, from respectful and overall friendly ambience they could get exposed to a very acidic environment.
haha, excellent :)
Good to know….I’m very sensitive
I thought you had natural immunity by now, Sirka? :)
100% Natural 😁
Can't wait to explore this resource! Thanks 👍!
I completely agree with the new commenting guidelines. If I disagree with a comment (and I do sometimes), then I will do so respectfully. Please correct me if I am wrong as I believe one needs a cell phone number to join telegram, so that counts me out as I do NOT have a cell phone. I only have a landline home phone in Belarus. I hope in the future, Riley will start a bitchute interview channel and video interview his followers in different countries to get an "on the ground" perspective in that country. I am happy to see Riley's audience get bigger with more platforms.
If anyone else is interested in creating an interview/talk of weekly events with me, please let me know as I am seriously considering starting a bitchute channel with someone or partnering with someone who creates the bitchute channel. I am NOT after control of the channel or content. And I am NOT after money or donations since this bitchute project would be fun for me to video talk with someone unedited on a weekly basis about current events and posting the conversations/interviews with other viewers on a joint bitchute channel.
To register on Telegram one doesn't need a cellphone, but a phone number capable of receiving SMS. There are services in Russia and Belarus that allow to have a temporary or permanent phone number assigned to you capable of receiving SMS even for free. Don't limit yourself, Telegram is a perfect place nowadays to get your news stream, way ahead of TV or YouTube.
There are many reasons to frequent a site's comment section. (Can we call it 'peanut gallery'? Pleeeeeease?????) One thing I do with them these days is study how people, many of them well-educated and well-behaved in their 9-5, nonetheless will resort to various forms of aggression (especially Passive Aggression, PA) in what is, after all, merely an idea-sphere of textual ghosts: comments.
When times turn truly hard in the USA, as they soon will, I will remember that these well-educated/well-behaved people are, most of them, prepared to turn overnight into savage jerks at the flick of an ego-switch. Consider the concept of passive-savagery rather than mere PA.
When kindness and courtesy depend on comfortable circumstances, kindness and courtesy (k&c) become merely affordable luxuries, social coffee tables, and are vulnerable to turn away from k&c to crude savagery in a twinkle.
I adore being kind and compassionate, it's about the only true meaning I get from being alive, but have no problem smacking aggressive boors around for my and their mutual well-being. But the trolls that came at me are piffles. What hurts me is how everyone else stands around and watches from the sidelines... such behavior is how creeps like Stalin and FDR acquire and hold power: no one's willing to fight until sides are drawn up and someone's willing to pay them... usually creeps like Stalin and FDR.
Unadulterated personal initiative is, in my experience, so rare among my fellow modern-mediated specie members that they view it (like Zappa said of intelligence) as "a freakish mutation". You might find this old interview with him useful?
https://www.afka.net/Articles/1988-10_Bob_Marshall_Interview.htm
" One thing I do with them these days is study how people, many of them well-educated and well-behaved in their 9-5, nonetheless will resort to various forms of aggression (especially Passive Aggression, PA) in what is, after all, merely an idea-sphere of textual ghosts: comments."
I have wondered and asked about that very point. I suspect anonymous forums allow people to vent the "other" side of their personalities. We see this with sportspeople who are tough and aggressive on the fields, yet they are pleasant off. Likewise with many public figures whose private personas are quite different; Trump being an exception as people have found to their surprise.
Now about AOC: surely she could not be like that in private? I think she has a stud. How could she turn him on with a public persona like that?
Oh. I forgot to answer the AOC question. Words fail me, so I'll just leave this here:
https://youtu.be/8t9fxjMvJA0
lol!
In text-only formats, sans body language and vocal language, and emotional ego security replacing fear of physical retaliation, people act differently, it seems. I like this of itself because it frees people to express themselves more openly. I don't know that it's polar as in people's "other" side but it does make them feel freer to say "darker" things than they would at a physical gathering.
There's this assumption that people can talk about difficult, confusing, painful, and frightening things "pleasantly", "civilly", evben "lightheartedly", as Edvard said. I think they can do this too, but only if they want to, not because they're told to.
Telling people to be nice is like telling an agitated person to "get over it": it just agitates them more.
"Don't feed the troll" is a universally accepted mantra that I have rarely see translate into effective troll-taming or exile. It also instantly turns into a smear tool: don't like someone's approach, call 'em a troll. (I'll note the idea that for many trolls, being ignored perhaps just means, to them, that they got the last word in. It could be encouraging in some ways.)
I've also heard the word "vulgar" used a lot as a pejorative.
"Lacking sophistication or good taste; unrefined; making explicit and offensive reference to sex or bodily functions; coarse and rude."
I see these brandings of someone as vulgar as a subjective elitism: vulgarity for one man is high-falutin' sophistication for another. (I was raised by a prudish Southern Mormon mother. I like to think that I know this drill pretty well.)
Also, it ultimately boils down to 'why can't you be more like me/us'?
To which my stance is that of Mick's: https://youtu.be/N7-7HJCXx10?t=52
I generally agree with all you said. In communication, there are two basic rules: credible and civil. As to you quoting Mick Jagger....oh the irony! You won't get any satisfaction from him now.
Congrats Riley, wish you the best.
On the concept of civility, I will shuttlecock between two quotes by Suzanne Massie, the author who played a large part in getting Reagan and Gorbachev to make nice-nice with each other:
http://www.quotehd.com/imagequotes/authors23/tmb/suzanne-massie-quote-evil-is-near-sometimes-late-at-night-the-air-grow.jpg
"Be Nice"
Life is violence beginning with every meal we eat, an act that required some living thing be killed. The insistence on being nice that modern society places on us morphs over time into Eat Shit and Like It. I will quote Miles Davis talking to his dear old friend, Clark Terry, near the end of Miles' life:
"Clark, did you tell anyone to kiss your ass today?"
"Miles, no! Why would I want to do that?"
"Because you can't be happy putting up with all that bullshit." (very indulgently paraphrased from old memory)
Civility is NOT niceness. Civility is actually listening to what another says, interpreting it with the benefit of doubt, and responding in good faith with fidelity to the facts as one understands them.
Niceness is a form of self-restraint based on social coercion. It is a pale imitation of the real thing: genuine kindness. fwiw, I personally despise "niceness": it concels so much meanness.
As for Miles Davis and how Clark Terry fits into all this geopolitical stuff:
https://youtu.be/is-xo1YFFMo?t=25
http://www.quotehd.com/imagequotes/authors23/tmb/suzanne-massie-quote-accept-accept-that-i-have-won-whispers-the-devil.jpg
"We're Doomed!"
The amount of hand-wringing despair the alternet consumes is staggering. TPTB, supposedly, is somewhere between Emperor Palpatine and Yahweh in its virtual omnipotence. If one disagrees with this, a thousand people will tell you (generally with sneering, condescending "incivility") how naive and foolish and misguided and stupid and, hey, maybe even chickenshit, one must be for not bowing to the almighty power of TPTB and surrendering to the inevitable. "Resistance is futile" is the effective if unintended message (which is imo is a major part of why we spend so much time carping online and pouncing on anyone who isn't properly "nice").
The result is rather like Miss Manners refereeing a debate between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea.
Yeah, there are hard times coming, arguably the worst humanity has seen, and we're up against it. But, to quote Han Solo, "Never tell me the odds, kid."
Your secret messenger channel has gotten totally weird and dominated by a few users. I dislike it. Let’s hope the new one is an improvement.
As with anything, people only follow or choose a few to "consume"; so there is no need to be concerned about having a channel.
What you have on Telegram is fine - reactions. People can unleash their comments here on Sub.
Edward, what do you think of these two characters, Matt Ehret and Joaquin Flores? Paid propaganda shills? Matt is certainly more intellectual, and makes interesting points once in a while, but that Flores guy is a total disaster. Looks like he is a side operation of your former employer, RT, since they have been (unjustly) banned from everywhere, including Telegram. If you have an opinion on them, please share.
https://rumble.com/v14zyi1-geopolitical-update-with-matt-ehret-and-joaquin-flores.html
Ehret once accused me of secretly working with Margarita Simonyan to topple Putin as part of a "counter-gang psyop" (???): https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/rts-sneaky-plot-to-topple-putin?s=w
Ah, I recall now that article of yours. Matt Ehret's name didn't register with me then but I later came into his writings and podcasts and inevitably question came to my mind, is this guy genuine or is he a paid shill? Now I'm more inclined to think the latter. His connection to Joaquin Flores is also easier to explain now and why did they appear on a two hour joint podcast couple of days ago. Are these two individuals paid by RT or another Kremlin tower remains a question, but it doesn't matter as much. If the opposite side, Western MSM, built a very broad and deep network of their own influencers, people like Ehret and Flores have the right to exist and to earn their living too. I forgive them for their trespasses )))
You scoundrel you!
I live by “gut feeling” and something in my gut puts me off Ehret even if I I agree/like what he says. It’s HIM. Sorry, like I said above I’m sensitive.
I repeatedly offered to speak with him so we could clear everything up after he made those clownish accusations. He ignored the offers. "So it goes."
Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the type to admit they made a mistake. I very much dislike that in people.
Don't fret over Ehret, Sirka!
Ehret who?
On a side note, RT definitely was trying to topple President Lukashenko in August 2020. Completely foul coverage on the protests in Belarus by RT in August 2020. It took a almost a month and then RT changed it's tune and covered the protests more objectively when RT finally realized that the Svetlana girl was so much worse. I shudder to think how tyrannical Belarus would be these last 2 years under her control in cahoots with EU. I always wondered why RT hated President Lukashenko so much. RT management probably hates Russia's "special military operation" because their worldwide audience is so much less now because of sanctions for "misinformation".
RT is a "rotten apple" much like the rest of Russian state media that is penetrated deep inside by sometimes latent liberals and measuring themselves against just one and only benchmark: "what will the West say?". In Russian they call these types "okhranitely", "regime guardians" in lose translation, people flipping their position on the fly, saying anything in order to defend any action by authorities. Vladimir Solovyov, Margarita Simonyan, Dmitry Kiselyov are the three top media figures among these people. They define agenda and narrative for the rest to follow. Much like in the West where not individuals, but the institutions like NYT, WaPo, Guardian send signals on defining the right narrative for the moment.
In my OPINION, RT is more fair and balanced than any western MSM. I watch RT every day. Can you recommend another 30 minute world news program that gives a Russian perspective that is better than RT? I doubt it.
RT did a hit job on President Lukashenko and then redeemed themselves. RT is always on target concerning Julian founded Wikileaks and Edward Snowden. RT had the Russia "might" leave the WHO article and RT also had the the big "Fan ID" boycott protest in Moscow at Luzhniki Stadium on May 29. Did you know about the "Fan ID" boycott protest in Moscow on May 29?
RT gave opinion writers the opportunity to publish written articles against tyranny fake virus restrictions even though at the same time RT news video broadcasts fully supported the scamdemic/plandemic. Western MSM would NEVER allow these restriction criticisms be published on their platforms.
I totally agree RT's show programs are mostly total garbage with very few exceptions like "Crosstalk". However most RT's documentaries are awesome.
RT did Anya Parampil wrong. RT fired Anya or Anya resigned. Anya brilliantly attracted viewers to her program "In Question" only to be discarded when that another broadcaster returned after having her baby. However RT still invites Max and Anya from "The Grayzone" to speak on RT. https://thegrayzone.com/
Final note> Vladimir Solovyov and Dmitry Kiselyov are much worse than Margarita. My opinions only.