Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Kiev sends media ‘correct terminology’ instructions

RT | April 28, 2023

A list of “correct” phrases, narratives and names emailed to media outlets in Serbia is genuine and came at the instruction of the foreign ministry in Kiev, Ukraine’s embassy in Belgrade confirmed on Friday.

“It’s a recommendation we sent out to the media so that they would use correct terminology in their reporting regarding the war in Ukraine,” the embassy told the daily Novosti. According to RT Balkans, the email was sent to all print and electronic media in Serbia on Thursday.

According to the instructions, reporters should use “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine” instead of calling it a crisis, conflict, war, or even “Russian war in Ukraine.” Another guideline insists that “unprovoked full-scale military invasion” should be used instead of “special military operation.”

The Pentagon and multiple US and UK outlets already use this terminology, but it is unclear whether they adopted it on “recommendations” from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, or if it was the other way around.

The email comes after the US and the EU demanded Belgrade censor and ban Russian outlets such as RT Balkans and Sputnik, and crack down on ‘Russian narratives’ about Ukraine. While some Western-owned media in Serbia already use Kiev’s preferred phrasing, some outlets were offended by the embassy’s efforts to censor their reporting.

“Who are they to recommend to anyone how to work, or write?” Filip Rodic, the deputy head editor at Pecat magazine, told Novosti. “If they think they can censor the entire world, that’s total insanity.”

There was no explanation why the document sent to Serbian media was entirely in English, either. Some of the politically proscribed phrases in it – “the Ukraine,” for example – are already meaningless in Serbian, whose grammar has no articles. It is also a phonetic language that doesn’t spell, which makes the insistence on using Ukrainian spellings for place names – Horlivka and not Gorlovka, Kharkiv and not Kharkov, Mykolaiv and not Nikolaev, etc. – likewise not applicable.

In places, the document appears to confuse official narratives for recommended phrasing, demanding the use of “Ukraine’s legitimate efforts to de-occupy Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory within the internationally recognized borders,” in place of “Ukraine’s attacks on Crimea,” for example.

The government in Kiev has insisted for years on using its preferred phrases and place names, such as imposing “Kyiv” on English speakers. One prominent Ukrainian activist explained last month that language “plays a critical role” in the hybrid war, because it “creates a mental map in our mind which we use to make sense of what’s happening.”

“One of the best ways to support us is using Ukraine-centric terminology,” said Alona Shevchenko of Ukraine DAO.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

Israel lobby piles pressure on Twitter, Facebook to ban Press TV

Press TV – April 27, 2023

Social media groups Facebook and Twitter have come under pressure from pro-Israel lobby groups to remove accounts of Iran’s leading broadcaster Press TV from their platforms.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCHD) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have demanded that Press TV be blocked for publishing content in Britain, The Telegraph reported Thursday.

ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt said it was “inexcusable” to offer Press TV a platform.

“We urge Meta [the owner of Facebook] and Twitter to immediately launch an investigation and to take action to prevent Press TV and the Iranian other media outlets from misusing these social platforms.”

“Facebook and Twitter profit by providing Iranian state propagandists with the reach and amplification they need to evade domestic broadcast bans, and influence millions of new viewers in the West,” Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the CCHD, said.

Their concern is particularly focused around Press TV’s “Palestine Declassified” program, formerly hosted by former UK MP Chris Williamson and former Bristol University professor David Miller.

Williamson was suspended from the Labour Party after dismissing concerns about anti-Semitism in the party as “smears” and “bulls—.” And Miller was dismissed from Bristol University after he revealed Jewish students critical of his views were “directed by Israel.”

The groups cite an episode of the Press TV program devoted to unpacking the “witch hunt” in Labour and the way the party was “captured by key Israel lobby groups.”

Another episode dealt with a network of “Zionist” individuals and organizations which exerted a disproportionate influence over global affairs, including the West’s intervention in the Ukraine war and a “campaign to improve King Charles III’s image in the UK Muslim community.”

The groups are rattled by videos on Press TV’s program that exposes Jewish influence over global affairs and the entertainment industry.

In July 2013, Press TV was forced off the air in the UK after the media regulator Ofcom revoked its license for allegedly breaching the Communications Act.

In the same year, it was taken off the air in North America after the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).

Press TV was dropped from the Galaxy 19 satellite platform that allowed it to broadcast in the United States and Canada, without saying when it was dropped.

The network has denounced the measures as “media terrorism.”

The broadcaster has a large number of viewers across Western countries and a considerable number of followers on social media.

In December 2022, Firas al-Najim, a Canadian human rights advocate, said Press TV is the voice of the oppressed, a news network working to expose the crimes and double standards of the West against free nations.

Weeks after the European Union imposed sanctions on the leading broadcaster, French satellite operator Eutelsat notified Press TV of its plan to take the network off the air. Najim said then that the move unmasked the conspiracy of the Western governments.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 2 Comments

Canada passes its duplicitous online censorship bill

The bill affects independent voices while suggesting it doesn’t

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 28, 2023

Canada’s controversial Online Streaming Act, Bill C-11, will become law.

Bill C-11 reforms the Broadcasting Act to apply to online content. Streaming services like YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix will be forced to follow the same rules that apply to traditional broadcasters and will be regulated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

Streaming services will be required to invest in and prioritize Canadian content. Critics of the bill have warned that it would negatively impact individual content creators and give the government control of the content Canadians see online.

“Liberal” politicians have said that it’s worth it.

Online platforms also criticized the bill, with YouTube running a campaign to warn content creators that the bill could affect their income.

The Senate proposed several amendments that were rejected by the lower chamber. However, the passed bill included “public assurance” that it “will not apply to user-generated digital content” because it doesn’t regulate the independent content uploaders themselves. However, it does apply to the platforms that these users upload their content to and so the independent creators are affected.

The government insisted that the bill contains adequate safeguards to protect individual content creators and rejected amendments with further protection because they would affect its ability to “publicly consult on, and issue, a policy direction to the CRTC to appropriately scope the regulation of social media services.”

The bill gives the CRTC discretion to determine how to enforce it.

Only moments after the passing of the bill, groups that say they’re representing Canadian culture demanded more action. The lobbyists called for the CRTC to establish social media rules.

The Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE), said it “applauds the passage of Bill C-11,” but wants more.

“The CDCE celebrates a great day, but notes that the real work has just begun,” the lobbyists said, calling for more rules for social media.

“In the coming months, the government will issue a policy direction to the CRTC, and the latter will then have the important responsibility of developing the rules that will apply to each of the new services that are now clearly under its jurisdiction, i.e. audiovisual and audio streaming services and social media,” the group wrote in a press release.

The group then added that: “The CRTC will thus ensure that everyone makes a significant contribution to the creation, production and promotion of Canadian music, programs and films, while taking into account Canada’s unique diversity.”

In a statement, People’s Party of Canada leader, Maxime Bernier, said: “In the case of Bill C-11, it’s unfortunate that the majority of Senators caved in and voted for the bill even after the government had rejected a crucial amendment proposed by senators Julie Miville-Dechêne and Paula Simons to clarify that it would not be used to regulate independent creators on YouTube and other platforms, which would be a clear violation of free expression.”

Bernier added: “In the first place, there is absolutely no need for the government and the CRTC to tell platforms to modify their algorithms to promote Canadian content. Canadians can decide what they want for themselves without the government holding their hands. This is a first step in creating a wall around the Canadian internet like the Chinese government does in China.”

The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) said that it would repeal the bill if it forms a government.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said that, “the power-hungry Trudeau Liberals have rammed through their censorship bill into law. But this isn’t over, not by a long shot.”

Poilievre said that, if elected, his government would, “restore freedom of expression online & repeal Trudeau’s C-11 censorship law.”

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Is It Time for Unemployed Tucker Carlson to Enter the U.S. Political Fray?

By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 27, 2023

This week, Fox News axed without warning or explanation its highest-rated talk show host, Tucker Carlson. Tragic as that may be for his legion of listeners, Carlson now has a chance to not only question America, but to change it.

It looks as though the establishment – the Deep State, the Swamp, the Nursing Home for Octogenarian Ice Cream Lovers, call it what you will – has finally found a way to eliminate Tucker Carlson and his heretical views once and for all.

Just days after Fox News’ nearly billion-dollar settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over election-fraud allegations, Carlson was handed his walking papers. Here we have yet another case of a corporation inexplicably killing the goose that lays golden eggs. A bit like the Bud Light transgender advertisement, mega-corporations don’t willfully torpedo their bottom line without very good reason. For the left, the sacrifice was made on behalf of increasingly entrenched woke principles; on the right, the sacrifice was made to ouster a man who endangered American foreign policy, domestic policy, and everything in between.

Thus, the most likely explanation for Carlson’s termination is that he was making the wrong people, including his boss, Rupert Murdoch, very uncomfortable, and not just over rigged election claims. After all, many other personalities from the right-wing channel, like Sean Hannity and Linda Ingraham, also suggested in no uncertain terms that it was impossible that Joe Biden, an historically unlikable figure who mostly campaigned from his basement amid the Covid epidemic, could have attracted more votes than any other presidential candidate in U.S. history. Yet it was Carlson who got the boot, and that should come as no surprise.

For many years, Tucker Carlson, 53, remained a great enigma inside of the murky underworld of the U.S. mainstream media. While many of his colleagues were forced to wander aimlessly and sheepishly around a heavily patrolled, corporate-owned reservation, Carlson seemed to have been granted special privileges to freely speak his mind about the most taboo topics – from the sweeping Covid crackdowns to the blank-check policy for the Ukrainian “destroyer” Vladimir Zelensky. These outbursts of fierce criticism, far detached from the carefully crafted ideology of the establishment, allowed Carlson’s opponents to portray him somewhere between controlled opposition and a full-blown conspiracy theorist. Yet these attacks on his character did nothing to diminish his popularity in the eyes of the public.

It seems that Carlson’s popularity stems from the fact that audiences can see that this guy is the real deal. Although not perfect – who is? – he comes across as an honest and straight-shooting observer of the U.S. cultural and political scene, and totally fearless in calling out bullshit, even when it happens to be his own bullshit. In a recent interview, Carlson had harsh words not only for his odious trade, but for himself as well.

Looking back on his career, Carlson called the mainstream media a “control apparatus,” a disturbing conclusion that he made “only late in life.”

“They are working for a small group of people who actually run the world. They’re their servants, their Praetorian Guard, and we should treat them with the maximum contempt,” he said, while admitting to his own naïve assumptions early in his career.

“Not only are [the media] part of the problem, but I spent most of my life being part of the problem – defending the Iraq War, I actually did that!’

So in keeping with this article’s main thesis, that Carlson should now consider a political run, it must be noted that here is a man who can admit he was wrong. Very few journalists, not to mention politicians, have such strength, which so many view today as an actual weakness.

The second quality that sets Carlson apart from the pack is his courage, another essential attribute for a political career.

Back in 2020, following the death of George Floyd during an attempted arrest by a white cop, and the consequential street violence that erupted coast-to-coast, the former Fox host said what so many people were thinking, yet lacked the courage to articulate.

Carlson dared to say that the rioting and looting that destroyed thousands of homes and businesses during the BLM protests was “definitely not about black lives.” He went on to say that it was necessary to tell the truth when confronted by “the mob,” otherwise “they will crush you.”

Whenever it is suggested that Tucker Carlson possesses the personal qualifications to be a fine politician, the canned response is that he merely recites words on a teleprompter, not unlike so many other has-been politicians today. Yet just days before he was unceremoniously discharged from Fox News, Carlson gave an address to the Heritage Foundation on the occasion of the conservative organization’s 50th anniversary. Carlson’s oratory could have been a political stump speech, as it touched upon the greatest fears of the political right, and that is the power of wokeism to fundamentally alter, if not destroy, the United States.

Without once resorting to prepared notes or a teleprompter, Carlson spelled out with refreshing articulation – a political quality in short supply these days – the dangers facing the nation.

“I’m not calling for religious war,” Carlson began, “I’m merely calling for an acknowledgement of what we’re watching… I’m just noting what’s super obvious, like those of us who are in our mid-fifties are caught in the past in the way that we think about this. [The Left] doesn’t want a debate. Those ideas won’t produce outcomes that any rational person would want under any circumstances. Those are manifestations of some larger force acting upon us.”

Probably the very same “larger force” that was responsible for Carlson’s current unemployment status.

Ironically, Carlson’s very last guest on his eponymous show, aside from a pizza delivery guy who helped police make an arrest, was the vaccine skeptic Bobby Kennedy, who just last week launched his 2024 campaign for the Democratic nomination for president.

Here is what Kennedy had to say about Carlson’s firing:

“Fox fires @TuckerCarlson five days after he crosses the red line by acknowledging that the TV networks pushed a deadly and ineffective vaccine to please their Pharma advertisers. Carlson’s breathtakingly courageous April 19 monologue broke TV’s two biggest rules: Tucker told the truth about how greedy Pharma advertisers controlled TV news content and he lambasted obsequious newscasters for promoting jabs they knew to be lethal and worthless.”

Now if Kennedy were smart, which he certainly is, he’d be talking to Carlson right now about a possible joint run to unseat the Biden regime. Personally, I don’t see how it could possibly fail.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

Did the CIA and the Pentagon Put the Quietus on Tucker Carlson?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 27, 2023

One hypothesis for why Fox News fired popular television commentator Tucker Carlson is because he had been badmouthing company officials. But are top executives for a major U.S. corporation so sensitive to personal criticism that they’re willing to ditch their most popular commentator for saying some bad things about them? That’s hard to believe.

Another hypothesis is that Carlson was also saying bad things about Fox News colleagues. That too doesn’t make much sense to me. Doesn’t that sort of thing go on in most large companies? It’s called human nature. Again, it doesn’t seem serious enough to can the network’s most popular commentator. 

Let me weigh in on another possibility — that the Pentagon and the CIA may have been the ones who put the quietus on Tucker and possibly signaled to Fox executives that he had to go.

Last December, Carlson broadcast a program on the assassination of President Kennedy in which he accused the CIA of having participated in the assassination. In doing so, Carlson violated a taboo that has existed within the mainstream media since November 22, 1963, the day that Kennedy was assassinated. 

It’s considered permissible for the mainstream press to run articles and programs that analyze the assassination in an “objective” way, or that support the official lone-nut narrative, or that analyze why people subscribe to conspiracy theories. But what has been verboten since the assassination is the running of articles and programs that point to the Pentagon and the CIA as the orchestrators of the assassination or that feature evidence pointing to their criminal culpability. 

By violating that sacred taboo, Carlson put himself at risk of being subjected to the omnipotent power and influence of the national-security establishment. As New York Congressman Charles Schumer candidly and succinctly put it, “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

In upcoming episodes of my new video/podcast series “The JFK Assassination: Sixty Years Later,” I point to specific examples of where the mainstream press steadfastly and scrupulously avoided confronting clear and convincing evidence of criminal culpability by the national-security establishment in the Kennedy assassination. 

Let’s examine one of those examples. (I’m covering several others in my new series.)

In 1992, the Assassination Records Review Board was brought into existence to enforce The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that the Pentagon, the CIA, and other federal entities release their long-secret assassination-related records to the public. 

The ARRB discovered the existence of a man named Roger Boyajian, who told the agency a remarkable story. He said that on November 22, 1963, he was a Marine sergeant stationed at the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center. After JFK’s assassination, he was ordered to the facility where the autopsy on President Kennedy’s body was to be conducted by the military. He told the ARRB that a team brought JFK’s body into the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 p.m. on that evening.

Boyajian’s statement presented problems for the military. That’s because the official narrative has always been that JFK’s body was brought into the Bethesda morgue only one time — at 8 p.m. — by an official honor guard consisting of the members of the armed forces. Boyajian’s statement meant that the military had lied — that there were actually two different entries of JFK’s body into the morgue on that evening.

Was there any corroboration for Boyajian’s extraordinary claim? Actually there was. Boyajian had kept a copy of his “after-action report” that he had submitted to his superiors the week following the assassination. The report, which he shared with the ARRB, confirmed that the president’s body was brought into the morgue at 6:35 p.m. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that the Pentagon never disclosed that report to the ARRB, which the JFK Records Act required it to do.

Further corroboration came in the form of statements and testimony from several Navy enlisted men who said that they met a large black hearse outside the morgue and carried the president’s body from the vehicle into the morgue. They said that the president’s body was in a shipping casket rather than the heavy, ornate casket into which the president’s body had been placed in Dallas. The enlisted men said that there were men with suits in the hearse whose identities are still unknown to this date.

The ARRB also discovered a memorandum from Gawler’s Funeral Home in Washington, D.C., which performed the embalming of JFK’s body after the autopsy. The memorandum stated that the president’s body had been brought into the morgue in a shipping casket.

In 1969, Col. Pierre Finck, one of the three military pathologists who performed the autopsy on Kennedy’s body, testified in a criminal case in New Orleans that had been brought by a district attorney named Jim Garrison against a man named Clay Shaw. During the trial, Garrison questioned the official lone-nut narrative of the assassination and charged that the assassination was actually a national-security state regime-change operation, one that was no different in principle from such other U.S. national-security regime-change operations as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1964), and Congo (1961).

During the trial, Finck testified that he received a telephone call at 8 p.m. on November 22, 1963, from Navy Commander James Humes, a pathologist in charge of performing the autopsy on Kennedy’s body. Humes invited Finck to come to the Bethesda morgue to assist with the autopsy. During that 8 p.m. conversation, Humes told Finck that they already had x-rays of the president’s head. 

That’s what the law calls an “admission against interest.” It’s not exactly a confession but it’s similar to a confession, which is why the law places tremendous weight on it. With his sworn testimony, Finck was inadvertently confirming that the president’s body was, in fact, sneaked into the morgue almost an hour-and-a-half before the official entry time of 8 p.m. After all, at the risk of emphasizing the obvious, the only way they could already have x-rays of the president’s head at 8 p.m. is if the president’s body had already been in the morgue before 8 p.m. — i.e., at 6:35 p.m. (No x-rays were taken at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where JFK was treated after being shot.)

Now, wouldn’t you think that this set of facts would be a dream-come-true for any investigative reporter within the mainstream press? After all, sneaking the president’s body into the morgue and then lying about it and covering it up would obviously be a fairly big story, especially if the press could discover what the military was up to.

Keep in mind something else: Someone had slipped a provision into the JFK Records Act prohibiting the ARRB from investigating any aspect of the assassination. Thus, the ARRB could not investigate the early introduction of the president’s body into the Bethesda morgue and, equally important, what was done with the body in the one-and-a-half hours before the second introduction of the body into the morgue — the official one that took place at 8 p.m.

But the law certainly did not prohibit the mainstream press from investigating the matter. Moreover, in the 1990s, many of the people involved in the autopsy were still alive. An investigative reporter could have contacted everyone involved and gotten to the bottom of the military was up to. 

By the 1990s, when Boyajian shared his story with the ARRB, it was clear that the Pentagon and the CIA did not want the mainstream press to investigate any of the sinister aspects of the Kennedy autopsy. (See my books The Kennedy Autopsy, The Kennedy Autopsy 2, and An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story.) Thus, the early sneaking of JFK’s body into the morgue was simply “airbrushed” out of the mainstream press. The standard response to the sinister aspects of the Kennedy autopsy became “Conspiracy theory!” which was the term that the CIA early on advised the mainstream press to employ against those who challenged the official lone-nut narrative of the assassination.

Did Tucker Carlson pay a price for violating the JFK taboo? It certainly wouldn’t surprise me. 

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Tucker Carlson’s Clip on His Fox News Exit Gets More Views Than Biden’s 2024 Bid Video

Sputnik – 28.04.2023

Fox News announced Tucker Carlson’s departure on April 24, sparking speculation across the US media landscape about the possible reasons for the network’s decision.

Renowned American TV presenter Tucker Carlson, made a stunning exit from Fox News and released an explanation video that has garnered over 62 million views, surpassing Biden’s announcement that he will run in the next presidential election by about 1.5 times.

The former Fox News presenter published the video on Wednesday evening, a day after Biden’s announcement, but still surpassed it in popularity with ease. Carlson described how the US media stifles conversation on critical topics.

Following Carlson’s abrupt departure, Fox News saw a significant drop in its ratings, with Carlson Tonight having averaged 3.7 million viewers, and Carlson’s former colleague Brian Kilmeade’s show hitting only 2.6 million, resulting in a 30% audience decline. As a result, Fox Corp. shares also plummeted by 5.4%, with the media company’s losses over the ordeal estimated to be as high as $507 million.

Media report that investors are buying stocks in the video platform Rumble and Digital World Acquisition, which is merging with Trump Media, after news broke regarding job proposals Carlson had received.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Ex-US Army Psyops Expert: Fox News Fired Carlson to Maintain “Semi Lobotomized Quasi Retarded Population”

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 27, 2023

A former US Army psychological warfare officer says that Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News because of the regime’s agenda to maintain an “uninformed semi lobotomized quasi retarded population.”

The remarks were made by US counter-terror expert Scott Bennett.

Carlson and Fox News “parted ways” on Monday with speculation still raging as to the specific reason why the network canned its highest rated and most popular host.

According to Bennett, Carlson posed too much of a threat to institutional power because he turned Americans into proper “researchers and thinkers”.

Carlson offered an “intellectualism, truthfulness, and an analytical depth that no other news personality has ever done in the history of the United States as far back as I can remember,” said Bennett.

Tucker needed to be “silenced” because he represented too big a threat to the “powers and principalities, institutions and agendas that seek an unenlightened uninformed semi lobotomized quasi retarded population that do not question, do not research, do not analyze but simply digest and follow instructions,” according to Bennett.

“Tucker Carlson also exposed the fraud and money laundering racketeering crimes of FTX and the Democrat Party in Ukraine involving the United States government. He exposed the US biochemical labs in Ukraine and their connection to the Democrat Party, President Barack Obama, Vice President Biden, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Bill Gates, and other US government agencies and pharmaceutical companies,” Bennett told Sputnik.

The ex-host’s anti-regime rhetoric “could no longer be tolerated by the corrupt American media and political establishment,” said Bennett, adding that his exit signals “the death of American media”.

The former US army psyops officer suggested that Senator Chuck Schumer had threatened to utilize the CIA and the FBI to deploy secret government operations against Tucker to get him off air unless he was fired.

Schumer previously called for Carlson to be taken off air after he broadcast footage showing the January 6 ‘riot’ leaders were actually allowed into the Capitol and chaperoned around by authorities.

As we highlighted earlier, one of the reasons behind Tucker’s dismissal is a lawsuit fired by former show producer Abby Grossberg, who claims she was bullied and subjected to sexist and anti-semitic harassment.

However, Grossberg’s own lawyer revealed that she has never even met Carlson.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | 1 Comment

Moscow responds to EU call for Serbia to ban Russian media

RT | April 27, 2023

The European Parliament’s insistence that Serbia censor RT Balkans and Sputnik in order to “harmonize” with the EU is absurd, evil, and a manifestation of imperialism and colonialism, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed.

On Wednesday, the parliament’s foreign affairs committee adopted the report by Slovakian MEP Vladimir Bilcik, criticizing Serbia for not joining the EU sanctions against Russia and demanding Belgrade shut down Russian “disinformation” outlets just as the bloc has done. The US State Department has also called for a ban on RT Balkans.

“It’s an absurd situation,” Zakharova told reporters at the daily briefing in Moscow on Thursday. “These statements speak for themselves. The West isn’t even hiding, but saying the quiet part out loud.”

The US and the EU are now openly saying that Russia, Russian culture and language, or Russian media and journalists, simply shouldn’t exist, Zakharova noted. She compared the European Parliament’s demands to calls by Ukrainian officials to “exterminate” the Russian population in Crimea and Donbass, saying they can only be described as “evil.”

“The only possible thing to say is that this is an imperialist point of view, a manifestation of neo-colonialism. Some countries, without any moral grounds, illegally arrogate to themselves the right to model the world and its development at their own discretion: who can live, speak, trade, produce, have children, and who cannot,” Zakharova told reporters. “This is a modern version of slavery, in which the colonial powers claim the right to be considered masters, and others – their slaves.”

“Those who like these rules of the game have the right to play by them. We don’t. This is what we rebelled against.”

The US and its allies, Zakharova argued, want Russia to have no opportunity to speak, because the very existence of Russian media threatens the Western plans for narrative manipulation.

“Our media, journalists and outlets report from the epicenters of world events, based on facts, encourage people to critically evaluate reality (as they should),” the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said. “Apparently, this goes against the plans that the American rulers have to ‘zombify’ their own population.”

American television, Zakharova noted, presents a “a one-sided, practically sterilized, filtered and adjusted picture of the world,” having reached an “ideological dead end.” Any airing of alternative viewpoints threatens to expose this media ecosystem as biased and contradictory.

RT Balkans began operations in November 2022. The EU reportedly plans to blacklist the outlet as part of its 11th package of sanctions against Russia. The bloc had banned all broadcasting activities by RT and Sputnik in March 2022, calling them “Russian propaganda” that endangered Ukraine. Major social media platforms have blocked RT accounts in the bloc, while YouTube extended the ban globally.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

EU’s Věra Jourová says she’s “uncomfortable” on Twitter, wants more censorship

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 27, 2023

Vice President of the European Commission, Věra Jourová, said that she is “more and more uncomfortable on Twitter” because of what she said was the rise in Russian propaganda.

She added that Twitter was likely going to violate the upcoming censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), once enforcement begins later this year, because of the “unregulated Russian aggressive propaganda”

The DSA requires platforms to remove “harmful” content or risk heavy fines.

Jourová said that the employees who were fired when Elon Musk took over last October meant staff responsible for content moderation were fired.

“We were already disappointed by the data they delivered in January and of course, we are also watching what they are doing with the capacities left,” Jourová told reporters on Wednesday.

Earlier, she tweeted that she felt “Twitter is falling short of its commitments to the anti-disinformation code,” a currently voluntary rulebook for online platforms that will become a firm benchmark when the DSA comes into force.

“I would compare the situation with driving on the highway.

“You drive on the highway and overstepping that speed, you get a penalty, and one day you might be deprived of your driving license.”

She insisted that platforms should, “intensify their work against Russian propaganda.”

“There is still space for dialog. And I would really do wish to explain to Mr. Musk our philosophy that we are protectors of freedom of speech, protectors of freedom of expression… But freedom of speech in the EU is not unlimited.”

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Alarms Are Sounding as Mideast Nations Begin to Put Distance From US Influence

Sputnik – 28.04.2023

WASHINGTON – US partners in the Middle East are beginning to distance themselves from American influence amid efforts to stabilize the region, which may be a concern to Washington, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman told Sputnik.

Saudi Arabia recently took diplomatic action to thaw relations with Iran, Syria, and Hamas, while Bahrain and Qatar agreed to resume diplomatic ties. In mid-April, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad traveled to Saudi Arabia, marking his first visit to the country since 2011, to discuss efforts to reach a possible political solution to the crisis.

At the UN on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the world must boost efforts to reach political settlements and stabilize conflict zones in the Middle East now more than ever as the region undergoes deep transformation.

Lavrov also said a multilateral approach is required to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, instead of what he called the “destructive” one-sided actions of the US and EU that have harmed the Mideast peace process.

“The countries of West Asia are coming to see themselves as members of what [Russian political scientist] Sergei Karaganov has called ‘the world majority’ and distancing themselves from the United States,” Freeman said. “All this represents a diminution of American influence that is naturally of concern to Washington.”

The Eastern part of the Arab world, Freeman added, has long been subjected by external powers, but it is now in the midst of a self-driven rearrangement of regional relationships.

“Its major actors have seized control of their own destiny for the first time since Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt and are seeking their own answers to their region’s problems,” Freeman said.

According to Freeman, the Middle East is now led by assertively independent leaders with their own determination about how their national interests will be best served, and they do not respond well to outside efforts to dictate policy in the region.

“These leaders have learned the hard way that the use of force and covert action not only solves few problems but is often costly and counterproductive,” Freeman said. “The result is a search for peace and stability between the countries of the region without regard to the views of the United States and the former colonial powers.”

Mideast nations, Freeman said, are expanding their outreach to rising and resurgent powers like China, India, Brazil, and Russia and by identification with post-Cold War institutions like the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, entailing the adoption of a nonaligned stance on matters between external great powers like the contention between the United States, Russia, and China.

Freeman is an American retired diplomat and writer who served in the US Foreign Service, and in the departments of State and Defense, in many different capacities over 30 years.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Meet the VLOPs! The EU Extends its Censorship Powers

By Robert Kogon | Brownstone Institute | April 28, 2023

On Tuesday this week, the European Commission announced its first list of designated Very Large Online Platforms – or VLOPs – that will be subject to “content moderation” requirements and obligations to combat “disinformation” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). As VLOPs, the designated services will be required “to assess and mitigate their systemic risks and to provide robust content moderation tools.”

Or as a subheading in the Commission announcement pithily puts it: “More diligent content moderation, less disinformation.”

As discussed in my previous articles on the DSA here and here, the legislation creates enforcement mechanisms – most notably, the threat of massive fines – for ensuring that online platforms comply with commitments to remove or otherwise suppress “disinformation” that they have undertaken in the EU’s hitherto ostensibly voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation.

Unsurprisingly, the list of designated VLOPs includes a variety of services offered by all the most high-profile signatories of the Code: Twitter, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok.

But, far more surprisingly, it also includes several platforms that are not signatories of the Code and to which the Commission appears now to be extending the Code/DSA requirements unilaterally. The latter include Amazon, Apple (in the form of the App Store), and even Wikipedia.

The Commission has even designated the favorite messaging service of every filter-crazy preteen, Snapchat! Curiously, however, WhatsApp is not named.

Since many of the newly designated platforms are not publishing platforms per se, it is unclear how exactly the “content moderation” requirements will apply to them.

What will “content moderation” mean for Amazon, for example? That user reviews containing alleged “disinformation” will have to be removed? Or will books or magazines that the European Commission deems to be vessels or purveyors of “disinformation” have to be purged from the catalogue?

The inclusion of the Apple App Store is perhaps even more ominous. Will its subjection to the Code/DSA requirements provide an indirect route for the EU to demand the removal of apps of non-designated platforms that the Commission, however, deems channels of disinformation? Telegram, for example?

And what about Wikipedia? The DSA invests the European Commission with the power to impose fines of up to 6 percent of global turnover on VLOPs. But Wikipedia is a non-profit that is funded by donations. It does not sell anything, so it does not have any turnover. But presumably the Commission plans to treat its fundraising income as such.

Furthermore, Wikipedia is not a publishing platform, but a user-edited collaborative encyclopedia. If it is to be subject to the EU’s “content moderation” requirements, what can this possibly mean other than that Wikipedia will have to remove user edits that the European Commission deems to be “mis-” or “disinformation?” The European Commission will thus become the very arbiter of encyclopedic knowledge and truth.

The European Commission’s list of designated entities, comprising 17 Very Large Online Platforms as well as 2 Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs), is reproduced below.

Very Large Online Platforms:

  • Alibaba AliExpress
  • Amazon Store
  • Apple AppStore
  • Booking.com
  • Facebook
  • Google Play
  • Google Maps
  • Google Shopping
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Snapchat
  • TikTok
  • Twitter
  • Wikipedia
  • YouTube
  • Zalando

Very Large Online Search Engines:

  • Bing
  • Google Search

Robert Kogon is a pen name for a widely-published financial journalist, a translator, and researcher working in Europe.Follow him at Twitter here. He writes at edv1694.substack.com.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries