Minor incursions might not be punished?
At a press conference yesterday marking Biden's one year presidency, he was asked if the threat of new sanctions would hold Putin back.
Biden’s argument: “Well, because he's never seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed if he moves.”
After talking somewhat incoherently about NATO and OSCE meetings he then said: "I think what you're going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades, and it depends on what it does. It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”
Thus, conveying the impression that if Putin’s troops only made minor incursions, he might end up not being held to account, as the US and its allies would be infighting, instead of “fighting” Putin.
Then again arguing that if Putin and his forces did what were capable of doing, it would be a disaster for Russia in terms of the loss of lives, and because of “our allies and partners are ready to impose severe cost and significant harm on Russia and the Russian economy.”
Biden did not mention precisely what the cost and harm would be, except saying … “if they invade, they're going to pay … They're not going -- their banks will not be able to deal in dollars.”
He also argues that Russia might not really be able to threaten the energy supplies to Europe, because doing so would hurt Russia itself, as income from energy export to Europe make up such a significant part of the Russian economy.
 
Biden understanding Putin’s predicament?
Biden seemed to express understanding for Putin’s and Russia’s predicament: “I think that he is dealing with what I believe he thinks is the most tragic thing that's happened to Mother Russia in that the Berlin Wall came down, the empire has been lost, the near abroad is gone.”
 
A promise that Ukraine will not join NATO?
Biden: “My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.”  Why Putin has to move in is not quite clear. Especially, as Biden next seems ready to give Putin what he has craved for. A guarantee that Ukraine will never be part of NATO.
Biden: “…the likelihood that Ukraine is going to join NATO in the near term is not very likely, based on much more work they have to do in terms of democracy and a few other things going on in there.”
Followed by what might be interpreted as resignation: “So, there's room to work if he wants to do that. But I think, as usual, he's going to -- I probably shouldn't go any further, but I think it will hurt him badly.”
 
Biden’s answers causing consternation
CNN quotes a Ukrainian official who had been shocked to learn “that President Biden would give a green light to Vladimir Putin in this way.”
The Kyiv Post wrote that Biden had set off alarm bells in Ukraine as his mumbled answers seemed be “suggesting that a Russian military invasion was perhaps a fait accompli.”
 
Psaki’s alternate reading of President Biden’s statements
Observing that it is not the first time Biden’s surprising statement are being corrected shortly afterwards by Press Secretary Psaki, one might be forgiven for asking: "Who defines US policy – Biden or Psaki"
This time the alternate reading of Biden’s statements followed swiftly:
“President Biden has been clear with the Russian President: If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies. President Biden also knows from long experience that the Russians have an extensive playbook of aggression short of military action, including cyberattacks and paramilitary tactics. And he affirmed today that those acts of Russian aggression will be met with a decisive, reciprocal, and united response.” (Statement by Press Secretary Jen Psaki).
 
Corrections today
While in Berlin today for talks, Secretary of State Blinken, also sought to clarify what President Biden had meant. “We have been very clear throughout if any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border and commit new acts of aggression against Ukraine that will be met with a swift severe united response from the United States and our allies and partners.”
Surprise!  Since his press conference President Biden has also been given the alternate text to read aloud. “I’ve been absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding. If any -- any -- assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion.”
 
Who is actually defining US policy? Perhaps Biden himself once gave a hint, when he said he had been given a text to read.

Statue toppling
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement a manic wave of pulling down symbols of slavery and a colonial past has swapped over from the US to Europe, first and foremost of course to UK, with smaller splashes in other countries. Manic because the wave seems to represent a strong obsession or zealousness for doing something to rectify the past to somehow clean up the present.
A much-publicized example being the pulling down of the Colston statue in Bristol by a mob on June 7 in 2020. The nearly 9 feet high statue was pulled down by a group of people enthusiastically supported by an unruly mob with police standing by. The toppled statue was then rolled down the street and dumped into Bristol Harbour.

The Colston Four “rectifying of history”
In December 2020 four young people, to be known as the Colston Four, were charged with causing criminal damage when toppling of the Colston statue. They later appeared at the Bristol Magistrates court where they pleaded “not guilty.”
In January 2022 a jury sensationally found the Colston Four not guilty in causing criminal damage. After the verdict, members of the Colston Four defended their actions in front of a cheering crowd:
"They were whitewashing history by calling him [Colston] a f***ing virtuous man, sorry to swear, we didn't change history, we rectified history."
"This is a victory for Bristol, this is a victory for racial equality and it's a victory for anybody who wants to be on the right side of history."
"They lied, we illuminated history."
 The Guardian wrote: “That feelings among a section of the public finally boiled over was because of the passionate objections to racial injustice aroused by the Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the murder, less than two weeks earlier, of George Floyd.”
Still, the toppling of Colston, the not guilty verdict and the strange excuse of rectifying and being on right side of history raises some questions:
Who was Colston and why should his statue be dumped in the harbour?
What were the arguments of Colston Four and their lawyers in the Crown Court trial?
What may be the consequences of verdict and the Colston Four’s attempt to “rectify” history.

Colston, slave trader and philanthropist
Edward Colston (1636-1721) had established a successful trading business. In 1680 he became a shareholder in the Royal African Company (RAC), which held a monopoly in trading with Africa, not at least the slave trade. Colston became a leading figure in the company, which is estimated to have brought 84,500 slaves to the Americas with thousands dying during the Atlantic crossing. Colston later became a Tory member of Parliament and became known for philanthropy in Bristol. He endowed schools like the Colston Girl’s School, founded the two Colston almshouses for sailors, and supported christian Anglican causes.
“At his death, a number of societies sprang up to carry on giving in his tradition, including the Colston Society, Grateful Society, Anchor Society and Dolphin Society. Beginning in the 18th century, Colston came to be memorialised across Bristol in statues, stained-glass windows, portraits and ceremonies which honour his contributions to the city’s schools and religious institutions. In Bristol Cathedral, a small stained-glass window depicted Colston figuratively.” (Ibanet.org)
In 1895 a nearly 9 feet high bronze statue was erected on a high plinth to commemorate the philanthropist Colston. A plaque bears the inscription: Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city AD 1895."
In 1977 English Heritage listed the statue as a grade II structure of special interest, “justifying every effort to preserve it.”
But critical voices began to question why the city was honouring a man which had been so deeply involved in the slave trade. Since 2010 activists were questioning the legacy of Colston and there was a growing demand for renaming the institutions and places bearing Colston’s name. Several times the statue was vandalised with graffiti.
Still, according to a 2014 survey by a local newspaper, a narrow majority wanted to keep the Colston statue. In 2018 there were plans for putting up a new plaque to remember Colston as both a philanthropist and a slave trader.
That was the situation when a manic mob on June 7 in 2020 took matters into their own hands. Pulled Colston down with ropes they had brought, rolled him down the street and dumped him in the harbour. Police was present but decided not to intervene. Later arguing that it was a tactical decision taken to prevent further disorder.
The statue was later recovered by the city and placed in lying down position in the Bristol City Museum to await a decision as to what should be done with the statue.

Strange legal arguments in defence of the accused
Four people, later known as the Colston Four, were charged with criminal damage after a review carried out by the Avon and Somerset Police. As it was assumed that the statue was worth more than £50,000, it meant trial by a jury in the Bristol Crown Court.
While the four defendants admitted their part in pulling down the statue, they did not admit to criminal damage, arguing that the statue wasn’t physically harmed and that its value had increased as a result of their action.
There was little doubt about the facts of the case. The four had pulled Colston down, and rolled him down the street to dump him in the harbour, but their defence barristers put forward three legal arguments to give lawful excuse for their actions.

1.The lawyers, somewhat strangely perhaps, argued that the four had prevented a serious crime. In this case a violation of section 5 of Public Order Act. Referring to the offence of displaying “any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening [or abusive].”
Thus, arguing that the display of the Colston statue was causing harassment, alarm or distress, an offence according to the Public Order Act. One of barristers argued that “It was a criminal offence to keep that statue up because it was so offensive.” A defendant argued “That its presence felt, to him, ‘like a hate crime’ and that ‘at that moment, it felt like the right thing to do. To take the statue down’.”
By toppling and removing the statue of Colston the four defendants would thus have prevented further offence.

2. Referring to the Indecent Displays (Control) Act, a defending barrister also argued that the defendants by their action prevented an indecent display, as the Colston statue “was in fact indecent and threatening, particularly to members of the black community in Bristol.” Presumable on account of Colston’s historical actions as a slave trader.
Similar arguments were used in a U.S. petition to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. In March 2016 a young black student, Zyahna Bryant, wrote “When I think of Robert E. Lee I instantly think of someone fighting in favor of slavery. Thoughts of physical harm, cruelty, and disenfranchisement flood my mind. As a teenager in Charlottesville that identifies as black, I am offended every time I pass it.

 3. Finally the defending barristers argued, again perhaps somewhat surprisingly, that a conviction of the defendants would be an infringement of their right to freedom of belief, public expression and protest, as defined by article 9,10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act.

The prosecution argued the trial was "not a public inquiry, nor about politics … "It's not about emotion but cold hard facts and, fundamentally, the rule of law … "However strongly you may feel about something you can't simply pull it down. That way is chaos.”
The judge also told the jury to leave out politics and emotions and concentrate on the facts.
We do not know the jury’s deliberations, whether members of the jury were swayed by the somewhat novel arguments by the defending barristers or even public emotions or political considerations. A jury is free to make their own decisions without giving any reasons for their decision.
After about 3 hours deliberation on January 5, 11 out of the 12 jurors found the defendants not guilty.

Elation and dismay
The four defendants, a crowd outside the Crown Court, and left leaning media were jubilant when the jury found the Colston Four not guilty.
On the jubilant side we find the Guardian: “Statues are symbols, and tackling racism requires more than moving them. But acknowledging historic injustices is part of building a more equal society today. Rather than complaining about the way in which the law has been applied, as some ministers have done, the government as a whole should think again. Britain is better off without Bristol’s monument to Colston.”
Dismay was expressed by the former Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, who saw the verdict as perverse and argued: “This should have been a straightforward matter for the jury, who were certainly devoid of understanding of the definition of criminal damage – If you damage, destroy of deface property without permission, you are guilty by definition.”
Other Conservatives voiced similar dismay and saw the verdict as a carte blanche for woke mobs to topple historical symbols that they may find objectionable.
Legal scholars were divided with some arguing that a jury verdict did not set a precedent, although admitting that similar argument might be used in future court cases.
 As a layman one might find that the arguments used to defend the actions of the Colston Four were rather farfetched.
 Wondering how the statue in itself constituted a hate crime and an indecent display causing offence, as if Colston was a living slave trader, seen flashing in the street. Somehow making the court case a case against Colston, and not the Colston Four.
Would the reference to feelings and giving offence as excuses not mean that feeling offended could excuse almost any kind of vandalism?
Finally, the reference to freedom of expression in the Human Rights Act, would mean that one might be excused in expressing oneself by vandalising things and symbols seen as disturbing one’s beliefs. Wonder if that would open a floodgate of possibilities for religious zealots.

Offical reactions
Suella Braverman the Attorney General said that Colston Four verdict cause confusion and that she is considering whether to seek a review allowing more senior judges to look at this case and its implications.
Elsewhere the Government is trying prevent that this verdict could set a precedent by introducing new amendments to the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill making its way through Parliament at the moment.
The proposals would raise the maximum sentence for damage to memorials regardless of their values to 10 years, and would let courts take into account emotional and wider distress caused by damage to a memorial. Thus, turning the distress and feelings argument against those vandalising memorials. This would even extend to damaging flowers and wreaths place at memorials.

Damnatio memoriae or “sanitizing the present”
“In ancient Rome, the Senate could vote the memory of a personage, usually a former emperor, into oblivion in a practice that has come to be known as damnatio memoriae, or damnation of memory. The name would be chiselled out of inscriptions, histories would be rewritten, the heads of statues would be replaced, bronze effigies would be melted down and recast, and coins defaced” (ibanet.org)
Statues are may highly visible symbols of the past, but if the protesters really want to pull down symbols of the past because they are offended every time they pass them or “consider it a personal violence,” they would have to pull down much more than statues, not only the White House and Capitol in the US and scores of buildings in the UK and elsewhere. They would actually have to reject and pull down the societies build upon this past.
Perhaps this illustrates the idiocy of decrying an imperialistic and colonial past by pulling down statues, while living in a Western society that would never have come about were it not for its imperialistic, colonial and warring past.
Observing how small minorities, allied with self-proclaimed progressives, are forcing their views upon society, and woe betide those who dare to question their views, one may s come to see it as the religious zealousness of a new religion.
This represents mob rule, not progressive democratic action. “We live in a democratic country. If you want to see things changed you can get them changed, you do that through the ballot box, or petitioning your local council, etc. You don’t do it by going out and causing criminal damage.” (Grant Shapps, Transport Secretary).
When a small minority takes it upon themselves to topple statues, they believe are offending they are not taking part in democratic process in which they try to persuade the majority to see their view. In fact, they seem to see themselves as a progressive minority elite forcing their ideology upon a boorish, backward looking, lukewarm and disorganised majority.
The Colston Four and their White compatriots elsewhere also seem take it upon themselves to act for what they believe is the BLM cause. Rectifying history as they argue. But does it not carry a faint whiff what is usually decried as white supremacy. Young Whites acting instead of Black themselves.

Damning a past foundation for the present
The damnable past of the British slave trade and the triangular trade have undoubtedly contributed to the Britain’s rapid rise.
The triangular trade had three legs or components that supplemented each other. Enslaved people bought in West Africa were shipped on slave ships to the Americas. There to be sold as slaves in the cotton, sugar and tobacco plantations. The next leg consists in cotton, sugar and tobacco being brought to Britain. The raw material of cotton bales used in cotton mills to produce textiles. Together with industrial produce of finished goods, textiles were then exported and sold abroad, not the least in Britain’s colonial territories. In West Africa the products might be exchanged for new slaves to be shipped to the Americas and so forth and so on, creating a positive feedback loop feeding growth and development in Britain as it can be gleaned from this diagram from the Financial Times (See also Klas Rönnbäck” On the economic importance of the slave plantation complex to the British Economy during the eighteenth century,” Journal of Global History):

There is something bizarre about attempts to wipe out or excuse this part of Western history. For it is the very same history that has laid the foundations for the Western societies we live in today.
It is also worth remembering that slavery was abolished in England in 1772, which actually meant that should a slave from the colonies enter England he or she would become free.
In 1807 Britain outlawed the slave trade from Africa and even established a Royal Navy preventive squadron to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the West Africa coast. Between 1808 and 1860 they stopped 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans (saylor.org).
With The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 Britain abolished slavery in the colonies, except that is, for India. Slaveowners in the colonies were compensated.
“Under the terms of the Act the British government raised £20 million to pay out in compensation for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves.” The sum representing “approximately 40% of the Government’s total annual expenditure at the time.”  (dokumen.tips)
For although Western history is a story of repression, exploitation, and brutal wars, it is also a story of the development in the "fits and starts" of a modern society, individual freedom, democracy, enlightenment, economic, scientific and technological development, liberalism and free trade and, last, but not least, the values we consider so self-evident today that we only see them when we come across someone who does not seem to possess them.
From a British point of view, it reads as follows:
"Much (perhaps most) of what we consider best practice in government and society today is a product of British ideas, aspirations and systems. Liberalism, freedom of association, freedom of trade, freedom of conscience and religion, private property, restrictions on the powers of the executive, limited corruption, clear laws and pure judges, political and moral
equality between race and gender, democracy."
Could all this have been achieved without the brutal part of history? Was the aggressive development of the British Empire, among other things, a prerequisite for all these institutions and values?
By attempting to cancel or rectify the history of the West, the invisible but vitally important and mutually supportive values and norms that hold up our culture, democracy and society are being eroded.
When BLM activist and their supporters, or protesters of imperialist and colonial past won’t acknowledge that, they may in all their zealousness open up deep divisions in Western societies, weaken their foundations, and may ultimately contribute to self-destruction of Western societies, their democracies and values.
Perhaps this is what is happening at the moment.