RT DE accounts frozen
RT | March 3, 2023
RT’s German production company has had its bank accounts frozen amid an EU-wide crackdown on Russian media. The company was already prohibited by the bloc’s sanctions from carrying out its work in Germany, but said it will continue publishing and broadcasting news online.
“The bank accounts of RT DE Productions have been frozen,” RT’s press service said in a statement on Friday. “Despite this move and the ongoing liquidation of RT DE Productions GmbH, RT DE’s online, broadcast and social media platforms will continue to provide German-speaking readers and viewers across the world with quality content.”
RT Productions GmbH is a German-based company that produces content for the RT DE TV channel and website in Moscow. The firm announced at the beginning of February that it would halt journalistic activities in Germany, due to the “repressive state of media freedoms within the EU.”
An EU sanctions package introduced in December blacklisted RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as revoking the EU broadcasting licenses of Russian media outlets including NTV, NTV Mir, Rossiya 1, REN TV and Perviy Channel. These measures left RT DE Productions cut off from funding and unable to work in Germany.
RT’s French subsidiary faced a similar situation in January. With its accounts frozen by authorities in Paris, the network shut its doors but continued to broadcast on various online platforms and to publish news in French on its website. While the French government had previously been content to allow RT France to operate, a number of prominent French media outlets campaigned for its closure at the beginning of the year.
Even before the conflict in Ukraine, RT DE faced a difficult legal battle to broadcast in Germany. German banks refused to work with the broadcaster, and regulators in Berlin threatened legal action when the network finally began broadcasting into Germany from Serbia in December 2021.
The regulators eventually blocked RT DE last February, a month before the European Commission ordered a bloc-wide ban on all RT channels and websites. Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded by withdrawing the press accreditation of German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and listing the network as a foreign agent.
Twitter received ‘state-sponsored blacklists’ from US State Department
RT | March 2, 2023
The US State Department, both directly and through third-party organizations, pressed Twitter to censor American users for their non-existent connections to Russia, China, and Hindu nationalism, according to internal documents.
Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Thursday, the latest ‘Twitter Files’ reveal that the company’s former trust and safety chief, Yoel Roth, was approached in 2021 and given a list of 40,000 accounts suspected of engaging in “inauthentic behavior” in support of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
The list was provided by the ‘Digital Forensics Research Lab’ at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US State Department’s ‘Global Engagement Center’ (GEC), as well as a host of NATO governments and weapons manufacturers.
According to the files, Roth investigated the list and found that “virtually all appear to be real people” rather than Indian bots, while Taibbi contacted several and learned that they were “ordinary Americans” with no connection whatsoever to Indian politics.
Created in the final year of the Obama administration, the GEC is a State Department entity that works with multiple US intelligence agencies to “counter foreign disinformation.” It is forbidden from operating within the United States, and recently had to cut its ties with a George Soros-backed NGO that was using its funding to target American conservative news sites.
While the list of supposed Hindu nationalists was given to Twitter via the Atlantic Council, the GEC directly passed other lists to the social media platform, including 500 accounts that were allegedly spreading Iranian “disinformation,” and 5,500 “Chinese accounts” engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation,” despite the fact that this latter list included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees.
Roth described the Chinese list as “a total crock,” while fellow employee Aaron Rodericks said it provided “more entertainment value than anything.”
The GEC and its organizations tangentially connected to the State Department – such as the infamous ‘Alliance for Securing Democracy’ that published the ‘Hamilton68’ dashboard of “Russian bots” – had long pressed Twitter to crack down on allegedly Kremlin-connected accounts, but Roth told staff that it was impossible to detect “Russian fingerprints” on any of the accounts.
Instead, accounts that retweeted “news sources linked to Russia” were considered Kremlin-sponsored. One list handed to Twitter by the GEC considered membership in France’s anti-government ‘Yellow Vests’ movement as “being Russia-aligned.”
While Twitter’s executives may have been skeptical of the GEC’s ‘blacklists’, the US media was not. Emails show that multiple news outlets and agencies – including the Associated Press – would receive reports from the organization, and then press Twitter to take action and ban the listed accounts.
“Reauthorization for GEC’s funding is up for a vote this year,” Taibbi wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “Can we at least stop paying to blacklist ourselves?”
Israel’s ‘right to exist’ challenged in expert testimonies
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | March 3, 2023
“Israel’s right to exist” has been challenged in expert testimonies by leading scholars Professor John Dugard and Professor Avi Shlaim. Dugard is an advocate of the High Court of South Africa. He has served intermittently as Judge of the International Court of Justice. His other high-profile appointment was at the United Nations where he served as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2001 to 2008. Shlaim, who is an author of several books on Israel and Palestine, is an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College and an Emeritus Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford.
Dugard and Shlaim issued their testimonies in response to the UK government’s prohibition on schools and universities from engaging with organisations that question Israel’s “right to exist”. The testimonies are part of a legal action against the former Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, by UK human rights group, CAGE. In a 2021 letter to schools and universities, Williamson applied pressure to adopt the discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The letter also told schools that they were prohibited from engaging with organisations that reject Israel’s “right to exist”.
A judicial review of the government’s guideline was lodged by CAGE, it argued that no such right exists in international law that prohibits people and groups from questioning a state’s legitimacy. “For too long, the political phrase ‘Israel’s right to exist’ has been used as a weapon to silence any debate about the legitimacy of its creation, the right of return of Palestinian refugees displaced by its creation and the apartheid nature of the Israeli state,” CAGE said at the time. In July a British High Court ruled against a judicial review.
This week CAGE published the expert testimonies of Dugard and Shlaim. Both challenged the prevailing narrative pushed by the UK government on Israel’s “right to exist”. Their testimony gave a brief history of the creation of the State of Israel and explained why the claim of a “right to exist” in law and morality is debatable.
Shlaim described Williamson as someone who habitually conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He also claimed that the former education secretary had used his ministerial position to restrict freedom of speech on Israel. Commenting on the IHRA and possible financial sanctions that may be imposed if schools refused to adopt it, Shlaim said: “This is a highly controversial and, in my opinion, discredited definition which was promoted by Israel’s friends. The two-sentence definition is vacuous, but it is followed by 11 ‘illustrative examples’ of what might constitute antisemitism. Seven of the 11 examples relate to Israel. The real purpose of the definition is not to protect Jews against antisemitism but to protect Israel against legitimate criticism.”
Shlaim was one of 77 Israeli academics in Britain who united in response to Williamson’s infamous intervention. In January 2021, they sent a letter to vice chancellors and academic senates in England urging universities not to adopt the IHRA document, which they viewed as being “detrimental not only to academic freedom and to the struggle for human rights, but also to the fight against antisemitism.”
Challenging Israel’s right to exist, the expert testimonies argued that such a claim has no basis in international law. The idea that states have rights is rejected outright. The point is often made in the following way: Human beings have a right to exist, and to live flourishing lives. The moral and legal justification for the existence of any nation-state is based on their ability to protect and defend the rights of human beings and through serving the interest and well-being of peoples cultures and communities living within the territory they control. When a state fails in this regard for enough of those people for a long enough time, its control comes under challenge and loses its legitimacy. The shelf-life of any state is to the degree it can guarantee the human rights of people in territory controlled by that state.
Though there are many examples, a classic case often cited to highlight that point is Apartheid South Africa. Arguments were raised that Apartheid South Africa should not be recognised as a state and should be expelled from the UN. Although South Africa was not expelled from membership of the world body, the credentials of the South African government were not accepted, and it was denied the right to participate in the work of the General Assembly. In effect, this meant that many countries believed that South Africa no longer had the right to exist as a state because of its policy of apartheid. South Africa lost its legitimacy because of its refusal to guarantee and protect the rights of black South Africans in the same territory.
The arrangement in Apartheid South Africa has many similarities with Israel, which is why every major human rights group has concluded that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. Within the territory controlled by the occupation state – known also as historic Palestine – seven million of Israel’s Jewish population enjoy full rights and privileges, while seven million of the territories’ non-Jewish population experience some form of discrimination depending on where they live. Twenty per cent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens for example suffer less discrimination than the five million Palestinians in occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. Not forgetting also, the six million Palestinian refugees who are refused their right to return while every Jew in the world is granted their “right to return”.
Returning to the expert testimonies, Dugard and Shlaim rejected Israel’s “right to exist”, explaining that such a right cannot be exercised because there is no basis for it in international law. According to Dugard, the rights of a state that are enshrined in international law are the right to territorial integrity; political independence and not to be forcibly attacked by another state. It’s not obvious therefore why Israel should be allowed to enjoy these rights given that it has no defined borders, and furthermore not only has it forcibly attacked and occupied the State of Palestine, it continues to annex territory beyond the internationally recognised borders of the apartheid state.
Further arguments rejecting Israel’s “right to exist” are demonstrated by the fact that a state may be recognised as a state by some states but not by others. Consequently, it is a state for those countries that recognise it but not for states that do not recognise it. Palestine, for instance, is recognized as a state by 138 countries, which is more than Kosovo, recognised by 100 states.
Perhaps the most powerful objection against Israel’s demand on others to recognise its “right to exist” are claims it had made about itself during the country’s founding. Israel’s declaration of independence was based on the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate of the League of Nations and the General Assembly’s Partition Resolution. Every one of those claims have been challenged on legal grounds since 1948. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 for example did not recognise the right of the Jewish people to a state in Palestine. It simply stated that the British government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a home for the Jewish people” but that this was to be without prejudice to the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The clear and obvious goal of the declaration was to create a “home” for the Jewish people “In Palestine,” not erase Palestine as Israel has done to supplant a new state on top of it.
Similar contentions exist with the British Mandate for Palestine and UN Partition Plan. Although the Mandate incorporated the provisions of the Balfour Declaration it made no provision for a Jewish State. As for the partition plan, Palestinians rejected Resolution 181 on account of its unfairness: it gave the Jewish community comprising 33 per cent of the population of Palestine 57 per cent of the land and 84 per cent of the agricultural land.
The message in the expert testimonies can be boiled down to the fact that not only is the British government’s suppression of a discussion on Israel’s “right to exists” preposterous, ahistorical and an attack on freedom of thought, there can be no discussion about Israel’s “right to exist” without a similar discussion about Palestine’s right to exist.
Blinken lied about exchange with Lavrov – Moscow
RT | March 3, 2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was lying when he claimed that he and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, discussed a jailed American citizen during a brief recent exchange, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow has said.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Blinken revealed that he and Lavrov “spoke briefly” on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in India. Among other things, the American official said he had “raised the wrongful detention of Paul Whelan,” a former US Marine currently serving a 16-year prison term in Russia for espionage.
“The United States has put forward a serious proposal. Moscow should accept it,” Blinken added.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denied those claims on Friday, saying she had asked Lavrov about the exchange with Blinken. The top Russian diplomat told her that his American counterpart had not brought up Whelan’s case, with Zakharova describing Blinken’s statement as “lies” and an example of “astounding” behavior by the US government.
Whelan is a Canadian-born former US Marine, who in 2020 was sentenced to a 16-year prison term in Russia for spying. He claimed he was framed while on a trip to the country.
The administration of President Joe Biden has called on Russia to release Whelan, branding his sentence unfair. The proposal to which Blinken referred matches those previously made by Washington to Moscow, State Department spokesperson Ned Price claimed on Thursday.
US officials reportedly tried to include Whelan in a prisoner exchange last year involving American WNBA player Brittney Griner and Russian businessman Viktor Bout, although the two sides ultimately freed just one convict each. Griner was serving a term for a drug crime in Russia, while Bout was imprisoned in the US on gun trafficking charges.
Europe needs new NATO without US – Orban
RT | March 2, 2023
Europe needs its own military bloc free of American influence, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told Swiss magazine Weltwoche on Thursday. The politician accused the US of dragging Europe into a conflict that cannot be won and risking a global war.
“The solution would be a European NATO,” Orban said, arguing that America’s desire for further expansion of its influence is what led to the current tensions between the West and Russia.
Moscow is concerned about NATO expanding further east into Ukraine and Georgia, Orban stated, referring to his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin just weeks before the conflict between Moscow and Kiev erupted in late February 2022.
“Putin told me his problem was with the American missile bases in Poland and Romania and possible NATO expansion in Ukraine and Georgia,” Orban told the Swiss media, noting that the Russian leader was concerned about the US potentially deploying its weapons to these nations as well.
According to the Hungarian premier, that was one of the underlying reasons behind the conflict in Ukraine. “I understand what Putin said. I do not accept what he did,” Orban explained.
He insisted that Hungary should stay out of the conflict, but added that Budapest was subjected to “constant pressure” as other Western nations “want to drag us into the war through every possible means.”
Orban believes that this is because the EU is serving the interests of the US at the expense of its own. “Decisions made by Brussels reflect American interests more often than European ones,” he said.
Orban argued that Western nations need to demonstrate a true “desire” and “will” for peace in Ukraine, adding “that will is what is lacking today, at least in the West.”
Hungary has repeatedly called for peace amid the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, and has criticized the Western sanctions imposed against Russia and arms deliveries to Ukraine. Earlier this week, Orban said that the hostilities benefitted no one in the world. Hungary was also the only NATO nation to voice support for China’s peace plan for Ukraine.
China Demands US Stop All Military Contact With Taiwan: Defense Ministry
Sputnik – 03.03.2023
BEIJING – China has demanded that the United States stop all military contacts with Taiwan and stop arms sales to the island, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said on Friday.
“China demands that the United States stop selling arms to Taiwan and military contacts with Taipei, stop interfering in the Taiwan issue and aggravate tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” Tan said.
Beijing also made a representation to Washington on the approval of a possible deal to sell Taiwan ammunition for US-made F-16 fighter jets and equipment worth more than $600 million, the official added.
“China strongly opposes the arms sale to Taiwan by the United States. US actions are a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, seriously violate the ‘one China’ principle and the provisions of the three joint US-Chinese communiques, cause serious damage to China’s sovereignty and security interests, and pose a serious threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Tan said, adding that China has already made a representation to the US side on this issue.
The Chinese military is always ready to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, the official concluded.
Earlier in the week, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said the US State Department has granted preliminary approval for a $619 million sale of F-16 munitions and related equipment to Taiwan.
Medvedev names ‘red line’ for direct war with NATO
RT | March 2, 2023
Canadian and German troops teaching Ukrainians how to use Leopard tanks already qualifies as participation in the conflict, but sending fighter jets to Poland would mean “direct entry,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.
Medvedev, who is also deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, warned the US and its allies that they can be treated as parties to the conflict “if, in addition to supplying weapons, they train personnel to operate them,” citing legal precedents from the early 20th century.
Tank training on EU territory already applies, Medvedev noted on Telegram, but if that expands to fighter jets based somewhere in Poland, “that would be direct entry of the Atlanticists into war against Russia, with all the consequences that entails.”
“Everyone who made the decision to deliver those weapons or repair them, along with foreign mercenaries and military trainers, ought to be considered legitimate military targets.”
According to Medvedev, only fear of this has so far restrained the “infantile” West from giving airplanes and long-range weapons to Kiev, though he predicted their desire to destroy Russia would prevail before long.
While the US, NATO and the EU talk about the “freedom-loving people of Ukraine,” Thursday’s attack on Russia’s Bryansk Region shows that they are supporting “Nazi bastards, terrorist scum who attack civilians,” Medvedev said.
“These are your proteges, Mr. Sunak, Macron, Scholz and Biden!” he wrote, addressing the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, and US. “And our attitude towards you is now the same as towards them. Your countries are now participants in the terrorist acts of the Ukrainian regime, and you are direct accomplices of terrorists.”
Though the West considered him a “liberal” during his 2008-2012 presidency, Medvedev has been blunt and outspoken about the military operation in Ukraine since it was launched in February 2022. Just last month, he warned the US that its talk about “strategic defeat” means Russia now sees the conflict as existential.
A group of Ukrainian soldiers crossed the border into Russia on Thursday morning, attacking two villages and shooting up a car with civilians inside. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the “terrorist attack” and vowed to punish the perpetrators.
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Book Review
Got His Gun: Lost His Legs, Arms, and Penis
By David Swanson | War is a Crime | October 27, 2013
Ann Jones’ new book, They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story, is devastating, and almost incomprehensibly so when one considers that virtually all of the death and destruction in U.S. wars is on the other side. Statistically, what happens to U.S. troops is almost nothing. In human terms, it’s overwhelming.
Know a young person considering joining the military? Give them this book.
Know a person not working to end war? Give them this book.
Jones presents the choice before us in the clearest terms in the introduction:
Contrary to common opinion in the United States, war is not inevitable. Nor has it always been with us. War is a human invention — an organized, deliberate action of an anti-social kind — and in the long span of human life on Earth, a fairly recent one. For more than 99 percent of the time that humans have lived on this planet, most of them have never made war. Many languages don’t even have a word for it. Turn off CNN and read anthropology. You’ll see.
What’s more, war is obsolete. Most nations don’t make war anymore, except when coerced by the United States to join some spurious ‘coalition.’ The earth is so small, and our time here so short. No other nation on the planet makes war as often, as long, as forcefully, as expensively, as destructively, as wastefully, as senselessly, or as unsuccessfully as the United States. No other nation makes war its business.
Jones begins her book with that distinguishing feature of war: death. The U.S. military assigns specialists in “Mortuary Affairs” to dispose of the dead. They dispose of their own sanity in the process. … continue
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