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Reporters Without Borders calls for EU to close loopholes allowing Europeans access to censored Russian media

RT | September 4, 2026

The EU- and US-funded press watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), has called for tighter controls on AI-based search technology, after discovering that chatbots bypass European censorship laws and present Russian media sources banned by in Western Europe to users.

The Paris-based RSF, which lists EU and the US National Endowment for Democracy among its backers, found that popular AI services can provide RT articles, links, excerpts, and news summaries to web users. “Public chatbots can access these websites and redistribute their content,” a statement by the organisation claimed on Wednesday.

The EU and UK have banned numerous Russian news outlets since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, including RT and Sputnik. Moscow has denounced the EU-wide ban as an attempt to silence coverage of the conflict that contradicts Brussels maximalist political stance.

The censoorship has since spread across virtually every publishing channel, including websites, apps, chats and social media. RT has been blocked and removed from practically all Western tech platforms, while RT France was forced to close in 2023 after its accounts were frozen and RT America suffered a similar fate in 2024.

Though VPN technology is used by a significant portion of netizens, making RT’s counter-mainstream reporting accessible to its loyal audience, in July, the EU’s top court ruled that even individuals running free, non-commercial websites can be found guilty of redistributing RT content.

RSF asked popular AI services to retrieve international news exclusively from sanctioned outlets, including RT, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti.

ChatGPT and Grok emerged as the “leading bots for circumventing EU sanctions,” retrieving headlines and providing links, excerpts and detailed summaries. ChatGPT complied “without reservation,” according to RSF, while Claude responded with “unfailing consistency.”

French AI-bot Vibe located the requested material on VKontakte (known as ‘Russia’s Facebook’) and through an app carrying Telegram posts. RSF praised its “remarkable ingenuity” and described the bot as a “resourceful sleuth.”

Gemini cited sanctions to refuse requests while Meta AI, whose parent company unilaterally banned RT from Facebook and Instagram in September 2024, was the only chatbot tested that “consistently refused” to provide the requested material.

RSF called on the European Commission to investigate ChatGPT under the EU’s Digital Services Act – a raft of legislation that allows the EU to manufacture consensus and alienate dissent from narratives it wishes to impose on its population. The RSF, which is funded by the bloc and the controversial US NED called for cases to be taken over other AI services capable of providing access to sanctioned Russian media.

Video Report

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on Reporters Without Borders calls for EU to close loopholes allowing Europeans access to censored Russian media

Sanctioning a Ghost: Europe’s Empty Gesture Against Iran

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | September 3, 2026 

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced today that the European Union has “officially joined” the American sanctions campaign against Iran — Operation Economic Outcast — and framed Tehran’s choice in the usual absolutes: complete global isolation and a subsistence economy, or a path back to normalcy. It made a commanding headline. It is a hollow one. You cannot embargo a trading partner you have already stopped trading with, and in economic substance that is precisely what Europe did years ago. Today it merely issued a press release about it.

The trade Europe is threatening to withdraw barely exists

One number frames the entire affair. In 2025 the whole of the European Union traded about €3.7 billion in goods with Iran — roughly $4 billion — against Iran’s total foreign trade of some $182.6 billion. Europe therefore accounts for about 2 percent of Iran’s commerce. That is the sum of the leverage now being brandished: a rounding error dressed up as a thunderbolt.

And it is a hollow 2 percent, because the flow runs almost entirely one way. Europe still sells Iran a little machinery, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals — about €3 billion, or 4 to 5 percent of Iran’s import bill. It buys almost nothing back: EU imports from Iran were €0.76 billion, under 1 percent of Iran’s exports, since Europe no longer takes meaningful Iranian oil. Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands make up nearly two-thirds of even this remnant. Withdraw it in full and you bruise a few exporters in Stuttgart and Milan far more than you trouble the treasury in Tehran.

Europe’s leverage was spent years ago

The collapse Europe is now formalizing already happened, slowly, over more than a decade. EU–Iran trade topped €27 billion in 2011 and reached €20.7 billion in 2017, during the nuclear-deal window — a period when Europe genuinely was a major Iranian partner, on the order of 15 to 20 percent of Tehran’s trade. The 2018 US withdrawal began bleeding it out; the trend never reversed; a fresh EU sanctions package in January 2026 drained it further. By 2025 it stood at €3.7 billion. Europe dismantled its own bridge to Iran plank by plank across seven years, and Iran long since built new ones — to China above all, which takes the bulk of its oil, and to the UAE, Turkey, and Iraq for the rest. The marginal Iranian barrel is priced in Shandong, not Rotterdam. There is nothing left in Europe’s hand to take away.

Sanctioning from a sickbed

Here is what makes the gesture worse than empty: Europe is declaring economic war on Iran at the precise moment its own major economies can least afford one — and while they are being bled by the very war Europe is now underwriting.

The eurozone crawled through the first quarter of 2026 at 0.1 percent growth, its weakest in nearly a year, with the composite PMI stuck in contraction and energy inflation running near 11 percent. That last figure is the tell, because it is a direct transmission of this war: the Iran shock and the throttling of the Strait of Hormuz sent fuel prices surging into economies that, unlike the United States, import their energy. The European Central Bank has warned that a prolonged conflict could tip Germany and Italy into technical recession by year’s end.

The particulars are grim. Germany — Iran’s largest European trading partner, and thus the country with the most of that thin trade to forfeit — is also the continent’s biggest casualty. It has already endured two straight years of recession, its manufacturing base has shrunk some 15 percent from its 2017 peak in what economists now call outright deindustrialization, its automotive crown jewel is shedding tens of thousands of jobs, and unemployment sits at a twelve-year high. A recession in 2026 would be its fourth in four years, an outcome with no post-war precedent. France is paralyzed in parallel — a deficit near 5.1 percent of GDP, its fifth prime minister in two years, growth downgraded toward 0.4 percent. Italy limps along near 0.5 percent, its consumers acutely exposed to exactly the energy swings this war is producing.

So the tableau is this: a bloc whose largest economy is deindustrializing under an energy shock, whose second-largest is fiscally ungovernable, and whose third is one bad quarter from recession, has volunteered to prolong the conflict driving its energy bill — by forgoing a trickle of trade that costs Tehran almost nothing and its own exporters rather more. Germany torches a bridge it could use while standing in a house that also is burning.

The one caveat, and why it fails too

In fairness, Operation Economic Outcast was never really about Europe’s own thin trade with Iran. It is a secondary-sanctions weapon — the threat to bar any firm or nation dealing with Iran from the dollar system — and Europe’s theoretical value lies not in the goods it stops selling but in the financial and shipping chokepoints it controls: euro clearing, European banks, the reinsurance and protection-and-indemnity clubs that underwrite tankers. But that leverage aims at Iran’s trade with third countries, chiefly China — and Bessent has conspicuously declined to say whether Washington will actually sanction Chinese banks, because everyone understands what that would cost. Iran, meanwhile, has spent seven years rebuilding its commerce on Chinese banks, yuan settlement, barter, and a shadow tanker fleet engineered to be untouchable by European paperwork. The US naval blockade ostensibly has done more to choke Iranian exports this year than any designation list will. Europe adding its signature raises the compliance risk for the handful of European firms still tempted by Iran. It does essentially nothing to the Chinese refiners who are the actual market.

A sanction is worth what it denies a target that the target cannot easily replace. By that measure Europe’s hand is all but empty: its direct trade with Iran has withered to roughly 2 percent of Tehran’s commerce, in goods Iran already sources from China, Turkey, and the Gulf, and the one channel where Europe might still matter points at a Beijing that Washington will not confront. What makes the move not merely futile but faintly self-destructive is that Europe is making it from a sickbed — its industrial engine stalling, its energy costs inflated by this very war — in order to prolong the fight that is inflating them. The announcement signals Western unity and puts the EU on the record. As a blow against Iran, it is a spent cartridge fired from a trembling hand.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Sanctioning a Ghost: Europe’s Empty Gesture Against Iran

Europe enters winter with ‘dangerously low’ gas reserves amid Persian Gulf supply shock: Report

The Cradle | September 3, 2026

Europe is heading into winter with dangerously low natural gas reserves, Bloomberg reported on 3 September, amid high prices driven by the US-Israeli war on Iran and rising competition for supply in the global market.

According to the European Commission’s most recent update, gas storage levels in the EU are at 65 percent.

To meet its lowest storage target of 75 percent, Europe will need to purchase 100 terawatt-hours of gas before the end of the year, Bloomberg calculations show.

Such purchases would cost more than $8 billion at current prices, making stockpiling uneconomical.

Governments and utilities across Europe have delayed natural gas purchases in hopes that additional supply becomes available and prices fall in time to refill before winter.

Gas prices have doubled since February due to the US-Israeli war on Iran as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut, disrupting exports of gas from Qatar, a major international supplier.

European countries have sought to build inventories ahead of each winter following natural gas shortages resulting from the Russia–Ukraine war that began in 2022.

Europe has deliberately sought to limit its own purchases of Russian gas in response to the war. Additionally, the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, which supplied cheap gas from Russia to Germany, was destroyed in September 2022 under mysterious circumstances benefiting the US, Ukraine, and Poland.

US natural gas producers have benefited from both the destruction of Nord Stream and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The US has become the world’s top exporter of natural gas after rushing to fill the gap in lost Qatari and Russian gas supplies by providing more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped by tankers across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to Europe and Asia.

Germany and other EU nations are not expected to suffer gas shortages this winter, as they can pay for the needed gas supplies despite the higher prices.

However, late European purchases at high prices could cause shortages and energy blackouts in poorer countries that lack the funds to compete to purchase the same LNG cargoes.

“The potential for a global ‘fight for fuel’ is there, particularly in a colder winter,” stated Go Katayama, principal insight analyst for LNG at maritime data tracking platform Kpler.

Bangladesh and Pakistan are among those countries most vulnerable to shortages. Both countries suffered blackouts and factory closures after the natural gas crisis in 2022.

However, more expensive gas purchases will drive higher inflation in Europe and expand the risk of a long period of stagnation, sluggish growth, and de-industrialization.

September 3, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Europe enters winter with ‘dangerously low’ gas reserves amid Persian Gulf supply shock: Report

Belgium blocks latest EU push to seize Russian assets

RT | September 2, 2026

Belgium has rejected an attempt by Sweden, Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands to resurrect the EU’s plan to seize frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine.

“This is non-negotiable,” Defense Minister Theo Francken told VRT on the weekend. “That door is closed.”

Kiev’s Western backers froze around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, around $240 billion of which is held at Belgium-based Euroclear. The EU has already redirected profits generated by the funds to Kiev but has stopped short of confiscating the underlying assets.

Ukraine has warned of a €30 billion hole in its defense budget, despite receiving the first tranche of a €90 billion loan from Brussels.

Sweden, Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands urged the European Commission last week to once again explore ways of using the frozen Russian assets for Ukraine, while spreading the legal and financial risks among EU member states.

Belgium, which would bear much of the fallout because Euroclear holds the bulk of the assets, opposes confiscation. Francken said Prime Minister Bart De Wever will not change course and warned other EU members, particularly the Baltic states, against repeatedly putting Belgium “in a corner.”

“Our prime minister will stand firm,” he said.

De Wever has argued that outright confiscation would cross a dangerous legal and political line. “You cannot simply take someone else’s money. We are not at war with Russia. Europe is not at war with Russia,” he said earlier this year, adding that “immobilized money, even during WWII, was never confiscated.”

The Belgian prime minister warned that seizing the funds would amount to a declaration of war against Russia, and urged the EU to pursue negotiations instead.

De Wever was also instrumental in blocking an earlier proposal to use the assets as backing for a ‘reparations loan’ to Ukraine. EU members ultimately agreed on a €90 billion loan financed through joint borrowing.

Euroclear also opposes confiscation and warned that it could sue the EU if it attempts to seize the assets. Other EU officials have raised concerns that the move could undermine international law and damage the bloc’s reputation among global investors.

Moscow has denounced any attempt to appropriate its sovereign assets, calling it “theft” and warning that confiscation would trigger retaliation, potentially including measures against Western assets held in Russia.

September 2, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , , | Comments Off on Belgium blocks latest EU push to seize Russian assets

EU surrenders sovereignty to US coercion, becomes accessory to economic terrorism: Iran FM spokesman

Press TV – August 31, 2026

The European Union has surrendered its sovereignty, laws, values and ethics to American coercion and turned itself into an accessory to Washington’s lawless economic war against Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has said.

In a statement posted on his official X account on Monday night, Baghaei pointed to the EU’s own Blocking Statute, which prohibits European operators from complying with extraterritorial laws of third countries and treats such measures as contrary to international law.

“How, then, can the Union now support the most predatory and unlawful unilateral coercive measures against Iran?” he asked.

Baghaei contrasted today’s posture with 1996, when the EU resolved to act independently in defense of its sovereignty against the American sanctions regime and adopted the Blocking Statute.

“Today it has become an accessory to Washington’s lawless conduct,” he said.

The Union’s endorsement of America’s unlawful economic war constitutes a grave violation of international law, the spokesman added. Every EU member state will be held accountable for the consequences of its contribution to this wrongful act.

“The European Union cannot endorse Washington’s economic terrorism against Iran while claiming to seek de-escalation and regional stability. The two positions are mutually exclusive,” Baghaei stated. “This irresponsible stance is evidence of the EU’s moral decay and political incompetence.”

Iranian officials have repeatedly described US secondary sanctions and naval blockade measures as economic terrorism and a violation of the UN Charter’s principles of sovereign equality.

Tehran has long maintained that Europe’s failure to enforce its own Blocking Statute against Washington’s extraterritorial dictates exposes the gap between Brussels’ rhetoric on a rules-based order and its actual conduct.

The statement comes as the Islamic Republic continues to reject any attempt to impose terms of settlement through coercion and insists that the only viable path out of the current crisis is a return by the United States to the commitments it signed in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.

The Islamabad MoU, brokered with Pakistani mediation and signed in June, provided for an immediate halt to military operations, the lifting of the US naval blockade, Iranian arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz, a path toward sanctions relief, and a $300 billion reconstruction framework.

However, the US violated the deal by conducting deadly aerial assaults on Iran and imposing a naval blockade of the country.

Pakistan had previously played a pivotal role in securing the April 8 ceasefire that brought an end to the 40-day criminal US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

September 1, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on EU surrenders sovereignty to US coercion, becomes accessory to economic terrorism: Iran FM spokesman

NATO creating new Arctic front against Russia – Lavrov

RT | August 31, 2026

NATO is seeking to turn the Arctic into a new “hotbed” of tensions with its active military buildup in the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. The bloc’s activities sow an atmosphere of distrust and risk a potentially dangerous armed confrontation not only with Moscow but with other nations as well, he warned in an article published by Arctic.ru on Monday.

The US-led military bloc ramped up its military activities in the Far North earlier this year by launching the Arctic Sentry initiative. The move was touted as a response to US President Donald Trump’s effort to annex the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland on the grounds that it was allegedly under threat from Russia and China.

Both Moscow and Beijing have repeatedly dismissed the accusations, with China arguing that the US was merely using the claims as a pretext for its own military buildup in the Arctic. Russia has also maintained that, although it has no stake in the feud over Greenland, it would defend its interests in the broader Arctic.

In his Monday article, Lavrov stated that Russia is mainly interested in “preserving the Arctic as an area of peace and cooperation” while accusing NATO of “driving the region towards militarization.”

“Intensive military preparations are underway in close proximity to our northern borders. NATO is conducting large-scale military exercises involving non-regional countries and introducing new components of its command-and-control system,” the minister said.

Back in February, NATO nations held drills focused on Greenland and the broader Arctic, involving Swedish and Danish warplanes in particular. In March, the bloc staged a massive military exercise in Norway and Finland – two Nordic nations bordering Russia – involving a total of 32,500 troops from 14 nations. The troops trained on the territory of both countries, as well as “at sea and in the air,” under “harsh, Arctic conditions,” in what the Norwegian Armed Forces described as the nation’s “largest military exercise in 2026.”

Last week, US, UK and Norwegian forces kickstarted another drill on the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen. The operation is aimed at integrating “multinational sensors, command-and-control nodes and precision fires into a joint kill web,” according to a US Marine Corps release.

Jan Mayen – a remote volcanic island located 1,000 kilometers away from mainland Norway – is described by the US Naval Institute think tank as a key location in the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap – a “chokepoint against entry into the Atlantic Ocean by Russian naval forces” and particularly its Northern Fleet.

“NATO members and other Western countries make no secret of their true motives, openly declaring their intention to turn the Arctic into a new front for opposing the development of Russia and its like-minded partners,” Lavrov said, commenting on the development and warning that such an approach “increases the risk of incidents that could trigger an armed confrontation with potentially disastrous consequences.”

The minister also stated that NATO and the EU not only pose a “direct threat” to Russian security but also seek to “undermine Russia’s legitimate rights in international cooperation” by targeting its partners with sanctions that affect Arctic projects in particular. He also named China and India as Moscow’s key partners in the region.

The EU has targeted Russia with numerous rounds of sanctions, including restrictions aimed specifically at the nation’s Arctic oil and gas development. The measures were designed to restrict Moscow’s access to technologies required for deep-water drilling and Arctic resource extraction, as well as to limit financing for such projects. According to an April report by the Institute for China-America Studies, the sanctions have made Arctic cooperation between Moscow and Beijing more complicated, as Chinese companies fear they could be targeted with secondary restrictions if they invest in large-scale joint projects.

However, despite NATO seeking to turn the Arctic into a new front, Lavrov maintained that Moscow is ready to work “with all constructively minded foreign countries displaying reciprocal readiness” to respect Russia’s interests.

August 31, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Comments Off on NATO creating new Arctic front against Russia – Lavrov

Israeli terrorism is getting worse because Western leaders are cowards, hypocrites

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | August 30, 2026

Israeli terrorism against civilians across the occupied West Bank has recently triggered condemnation from Western leadership – this shallow rhetoric is overshadowed by their actions, which are driven by a cowardly refusal to push back against the Zionist lobby.

Condemnations and statements of concern have been recently issued by US, UK, and EU officials alike, in what appears at first glance to be pushback against Israeli settler violence and expansionism in the occupied West Bank. In fact, what we are witnessing is the continuation of a decades-long tradition of hollow statements that act to save face by pretending as if the settlers themselves are somehow rogue elements that can be judged independent of the rest of the Zionist project.

In reality, settlement expansion is a regime project, as the violence of the settlers themselves is too. The Zionist armed forces are hand in glove with the settlers, to the point that military units such as the ‘Desert Frontier’ have been set up to integrate the settler militias into the occupation forces.

Even if the settlement movement was separate from the regime itself – as the EU, UK, and US leaderships like to pretend so that they can continue presenting themselves as capable of criticizing the Israelis – there has been a carte blanche granted to the authorities in “Tel Aviv”, instead of meaningful pushback that would coerce them into curtailing the aggressive project of the settlers.

The moves being made in Western capitals represent the exact opposite of genuine opposition to settler colonial violence and expansionism. US President Donald Trump has refused to impose consequences on the Zionist regime for the killings of 11 American citizens at the hands of settlers.

Instead, its latest move has been to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. That means that both Washington and London have designated the activist group as such. This is not a group that engages in armed action; it does not go after targets that are integral to US or UK security, nor has it killed anyone. Palestine Action has been proscribed for the “crime” of organizing actions against weapons factories that supply the components for weapons used to commit genocide.

Interestingly, the news of Palestine Action being added to a US terror list came alongside a declaration from Washington that it was removing Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List. Keep in mind that President Trump has actively acknowledged that the man – whom he claims to have put in power – was formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda. In fact, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is now the ruling Party in Damascus, is a rebrand of al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing, which was previously known as Jabhat al-Nussra. HTS is no longer considered a terrorist group by the US, as per its recent declaration.

This in itself demonstrates how unserious Western leadership takes the issue of terrorism. Simply put, terrorism is opposing the Zionist settler-colonial project. It can be guaranteed with a degree of certainty that if Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa were to suddenly begin taking measures against the Israelis in southern Syria, or supporting Palestinian Resistance factions, there would be immediate sanctions and proscriptions to follow. But because his administration has signed onto a “joint fusion mechanism” to coordinate with Israeli intelligence, the former face of al-Qaeda in Syria is welcomed across Europe, meets with British officials, and is welcomed with open arms into the White House.

The collective West’s political class is stupefyingly corrupt and has spent nearly three years performing puppet apologetics for a regime committing an active genocide against the people of Gaza. No meaningful action is ever taken. Even Western institutions like FIFA and Eurovision, alongside the International Olympic Committee (IOC), have proven too cowardly to boot out the Israelis, despite FIFA and IOC both taking measures to ban Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Consider the recent threats by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch precision strikes on targets in Gaza because it found kites near the separation barrier, forcing children to no longer enjoy a common hobby for Palestinian children in the besieged territory. Most people have considered this an utter outrage, mocking the mere premise of launching airstrikes over children’s kites being flown.

Yet the Israelis were taken seriously when, back in 2018, they began complaining of “terror balloons” and “terror kites” that young Gazans would attach burning objects to, as retaliation for the mass shootings carried out against unarmed protesters during the Great Return March. It may almost seem comical that the Israelis complained about this and that the words terror and balloon were combined in a serious sentence, yet Western leadership adopted the very same language.

Take, for example, the 2021 designation of the Hamas political wing as a ‘terrorist organization’ in the United Kingdom. In their justification as to why they decided to proscribe the political wing – because the Qassam Brigades had long been on their list – the most in-depth example they cited was the use of these balloons. Yes, balloons were used as the most important example as to why Hamas was designated a “terrorist group” in the United Kingdom.

The double standards are so stark that it beggars belief. At the end of the day, it is the utter cowardice that emboldens the Zionist regime to do whatever it chooses, whenever it likes. These Western governments and institutions have allowed the Israelis to erode the post-WW2 international order, destroyed the concepts of human rights and international law, and normalized genocide, even ignoring domestic law, endangering their own populations and undermining the fight against actual terrorism.

They render the international courts ineffective and take measures to punish them for doing their jobs; they stand by and praise the Zionist entity along with its allies in Washington as an alternative body to the United Nations taking over control of the Gaza Strip. International borders and national sovereignty no longer mean anything; embassies are no longer off limits for airstrikes; and journalists can be mass executed with no pushback.

A world that has been turned completely upside down, all so that a small settler colonial regime whose ethno-supremacist cult following of narcissistic psychopaths can have their way at every single turn. All of this, then they turn around and pretend as if their completely shallow statements about settler violence somehow mean anything. In many ways, it would be better if they just closed their mouths. None of the violence they pretend to condemn, without ever doing anything tangible to stop it, would be possible if they had taken action to stop it.

August 30, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israeli terrorism is getting worse because Western leaders are cowards, hypocrites

German establishment figures call for ban on country’s most popular party

RT | August 29, 2026

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Baden-Wurttemberg Governor Cem Ozdemir have called for the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to be banned. The two establishment politicians claim that the country’s most popular party poses a threat to Germany’s constitutional order and democracy.

The AfD is the largest opposition force in the Bundestag and enjoys the support of 28% of respondents, according to recent surveys.

The right-wing party advocates tougher immigration controls while also calling for an end to Germany’s green policies. It is also highly critical of Berlin’s support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.

In an opinion piece published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Friday, Pistorius and Ozdemir drew parallels between the modern-day AfD and Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist party.

“Today, we are once again facing a threat to democracy from the extreme right,” the politicians, who represent the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green Party, respectively, claimed.

In making their case for outlawing the right-wing party, Pistorius and Ozdemir argued that a powerful faction within the AfD espouses the idea of ‘remigration’, thus calling into question the “inviolability of human dignity” enshrined in the German constitution.

“We cannot confront ethnic nationalist ideology through political debate. That would be naive,” the authors wrote.

“A legal review of the constitutionality of a political party is warranted when it calls into question and threatens the continued existence of our democracy,” Pistorius and Ozdemir stated.

The two also took issue with the AfD’s supposedly “pro-Russian stance,” describing it as a “security risk.” The opposition party’s calls for Germany to withdraw from the European Union, the Eurozone, and NATO are equally “dangerous,” according to the article.

While acknowledging the AfD’s rising popularity, Pistorius and Ozdemir argued that widespread public support for the party is another reason why it should be banned outright.

Voting for the opposition party out of dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in Germany is no excuse, the authors argued.

“The undeniable radicalization of the AfD makes it impossible to claim ignorance of who one is voting for,” they wrote.

At present, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classifies the AfD as a ‘suspected right-wing extremist’ entity – a designation that gives the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) powers to surveil the party and its members. In several regions, local AfD chapters have been subjected to even wider monitoring.

Meanwhile, an INSA poll published by Bild earlier this month showed that support for Germany’s governing Christian Democratic CDU/CSU bloc had fallen to 20%, with some 78% of respondents dissatisfied with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition government, which also includes the Social Democrats.

August 29, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Comments Off on German establishment figures call for ban on country’s most popular party

Israel blocks 2 Swedish European parliamentarians from entering country

MEMO | August 24, 2026

Two Swedish members of the European Parliament say they were prevented from travelling to Israel on Sunday, despite holding entry permits and supporting documentation, Anadolu reports.

Left-wing MEPs Jonas Sjostedt and Hanna Gedin were stopped as they were preparing to board a flight from Athens to Tel Aviv.

They had planned to travel on to the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, where they were due to meet representatives of the NGO Save the Children, visit refugee camps, and speak to Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.

The two MEPs said they wanted to hear testimonies about what they described as deteriorating conditions and apartheid in the West Bank.

Sjostedt, of Sweden’s Left Party, said they had been barred for political reasons because of their criticism of Israel and their calls for Israeli government ministers to be brought before the International Criminal Court.

“Israel is increasingly preventing people from entering the country, even members of parliament,” he said in a statement.

Gedin said it is unacceptable for Israel to prevent elected European officials from seeing conditions on the ground and meeting people affected by them while Israeli politicians continued to travel freely in Europe.

The Left group in the European Parliament said it had informed the EP President’s Office about the incident.

It described the refusal of entry as an attack on the institutions of the EU.

The incident comes as the Left group says ethnic cleansing in Palestine is continuing and amid concerns over negotiations by the European Commission on the sharing of biometric and personal data with Israeli security services.

Israel continues to block agreed quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies, shelter materials, and prefabricated homes from entering Gaza, where around 2.4 million Palestinians live, including 2.15 million displaced people, under catastrophic conditions.

Ongoing Israeli violations of the ceasefire have killed 1,286 Palestinians and injured 4,257 others as of Sunday, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The ministry also said the overall toll from Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023 had risen to 73,420 killed and 174,369 injured.

August 24, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Comments Off on Israel blocks 2 Swedish European parliamentarians from entering country

Europe’s Looming Winter Preparations Just Got 1.5X Costlier

Sputnik – 18.08.2026

European gas prices during preparations for the heating season in 2026 were 52% higher than the average over the past three years, Sputnik found on Tuesday after analyzing trading data.

Calculations show that from April 1 to August 14, the average settlement price of gas futures based on the TTF index, Europe’s largest hub located in the Netherlands, amounted to $585.3 per thousand cubic meters. This is 41.2% higher than during the same period last year and 52% higher than the average for 2023-2025.
However, in 2022, amid the gas crisis, prices averaged $1,373.7 per thousand cubic meters.

The conflict in the Middle East led to a significant increase in gas prices in Europe. Average exchange prices in March ultimately rose by almost 60% compared with February, exceeding $600 per thousand cubic meters. Prices have remained volatile throughout these months. In July, settlement prices jumped by almost 20% month-on-month, averaging $637.5 per thousand cubic meters.

To prepare for the heating season, Europe is injecting gas into underground storage facilities (UGS). According to the European Commission, UGS facilities play a key role in ensuring the reliability of gas supplies in Europe, allowing the region to cover up to one-third of its needs during winter. However, storage facilities are currently only slightly above 60% full, their lowest level on record.

Against the backdrop of the crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz and concerns about disruptions to fuel supplies, the EU decided to lower the required level of gas storage in member states by the beginning of the winter season from 90% to 80%, European Commission representative Anna-Kaisa Itkonen told Sputnik in June. However, Russia’s Gazprom had previously forecast that UGS levels would be below 75% by October 1 if injections continued at the current pace.

August 18, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | | Comments Off on Europe’s Looming Winter Preparations Just Got 1.5X Costlier

David GIbbs: How Intelligence Services Captured Academia & Journalism

Glenn Diesen | August 17, 2026

David N. Gibbs is a professor of history at the University of Arizona.

Debate on the CIA and academia: David Gibbs and Robert Jervis

Article in the Los Angeles Times on the CIA-academic nexus: https://irp.fas.org/news/2001/01/lat012801.html

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August 18, 2026 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , | Comments Off on David GIbbs: How Intelligence Services Captured Academia & Journalism

Latvia wants EU billions for its anti-Russia policies

RT | August 17, 2026

Latvia wants Brussels to provide billions in additional funding as lost trade with Russia and soaring military spending put growing pressure on the Baltic state’s finances, Politico reported on Monday.

Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs told the outlet that he has asked Brussels to provide €7 billion ($8.2 billion) under the EU’s next seven-year budget, on top of other funding already earmarked for Latvia.

The sum would cover almost half of Riga’s projected €15.1 billion ($17.3 billion) military spending bill for 2028-2034.

Kulbergs said that Latvia is taking on debt to finance what its government views as security spending benefiting the rest of Europe. “We are getting our budget deficit to the maximum,” he told Politico, saying Latvia is borrowing to pay for “the defense of the whole of Europe.”

Latvia has been one of the EU’s strongest advocates of sanctions on Russia and has steadily dismantled trade, transport and energy links with its eastern neighbor since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

The policies, however, have led to a significant economic decline across the region. Politico reported last year that cross-border trade with Russia had “largely collapsed” across the Baltic states, while tourism and investment had also declined, prompting Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to seek additional financial aid from Brussels.

The costs of Riga’s anti-Russian policies have since become a major campaign issue ahead of Latvia’s October 3 parliamentary election. Opposition politician Ainars Slesers has insisted that Riga should demand compensation in return for backing further EU sanctions.

“We are losing money … we are talking about how to support Ukraine, but we are a victim,” he told Politico, adding that economic ties with Russia should eventually be restored.

Despite seeking billions from Brussels to offset the fallout, Kulbergs has called for even tougher measures against Moscow, including a total EU visa ban for Russian citizens and renewed attempts to use frozen Russian sovereign assets for Ukraine.

Russia has long argued that the Baltic states have devastated their own economies by dismantling previously profitable ties while sharply increasing military spending over what their governments describe as a potential threat from Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly denied having plans to attack the Baltic states or other NATO members, dismissing such claims as “nonsense” and Russophobic fearmongering intended to justify inflated military budgets to taxpayers, while warning that European nations are preparing for a full-scale war against Russia.

August 17, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Comments Off on Latvia wants EU billions for its anti-Russia policies

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