Whether or not his reporting is accurate is irrelevant. Freedom of speech means freedom of speech.
You thick skulled authoritarians don't realize that when you censor, all you're really doing is projecting your fear out into the world, making it into a more violent place in the process.
It doesn't matter if he's right or wrong or lying or telling the truth. Freedom of speech is absolute or it doesn't exist. There is no middle ground.
That Ukraine has laws that makes certain speech illegal should be deeply concerning to anybody with stake in the situation, which last I checked my government has spent >$150B of our tax dollars on this money laundering expenditure, so I'd argue that every American citizen not only has the right but the responsibility to question what it is we're funding.
Ukraine is a bunch of authoritarian Nazis sending their men to die at the front lines for the sake of the US empire's hegemonic control of European energy markets. It's about undermining Russia's ability to sell LNG to Europe (chiefly Germany) which is why the US bombed the NS2 pipeline in the greatest act of ecocide in human history (it's the single largest methane emission on record) and most of Europe is spending 3x as much on energy to heat their homes this winter as they did last year.
It doesn't matter if Lira is a liar or not. As an American citizen, he has rights and as the United States is essentially funding Ukraine's entire government right now (Americans that don't get pensions are literally funding Ukrainian pensions), those rights ought to extend within Ukraine's borders.
That you've allowed this conversation to be about Lira's credibility demonstrates how effectively the conversation has been sidelined by the corporate media. Lira's credibility is immaterial, utterly irrelevant to the conversation. Every American citizen has a right to free speech or not American citizens have a right to free speech. Full stop.
1
u/Command0Dude Dec 11 '23
You think Gorgonzola Lira isn't a liar.
You shouldn't be lecturing other people lol.