In future, it will no longer be enough for the EU to censor and silence undesirable alternative media only in its own area of responsibility. The EU also wants to fight unwelcome opinions and competing media in the rest of the world.
To this end, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has announced that he intends to use alleged “disinformation experts” in EU offices around the world. Their task would be fighting Russian and Chinese spreaders of alleged “fake news”.
Borrell announced the deployment of official censors to this end: “All our delegations will be equipped with experts in countering disinformation in many parts of the world so that our voice is better heard.”
A particular thorn in the side of the EU is the Russian and Chinese media and their multipliers, for example on platforms such as Telegram.
More international solidarity with allies is also required here, said Borrell. “We need to address this issue politically at the highest level.” The EU and like-minded partners should create their own way of sharing data and analysis of foreign disinformation campaigns, but also work more with authorities around the world to ban competing voices.
Borrell did not give any specific information about what this should look like in the future and how the EU broadcasters should act against “fake news”. So far, the EU has not come up with anything other than censorship when it comes to unwanted competition but that could be difficult in foreign countries.
From the point of view of Borrell and the EU authorities there is no reason whatsoever to doubt the official narrative, and every expressed doubt will now be given a new label: “Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference”, abbreviated FIMI.
The unelected preach ‘democracy’
The EU Commission is not a democratic structure, its members are appointed, not elected, and most of them lack any understanding of democracy. EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell could virtually serve as Exhibit A.
Not long ago, Ursula von der Leyen deleted her mobile phone communication with Pfizer about the purchase of millions of doses of a pharmaceutical preparation and while it raises the suspicion of corruption, this could be presented as FIMI simply because it was also reported by a Russian broadcaster.
Borrell’s grasp of the English language is at least as bad as that of Ursula von der Leyen’s. Yet both insist on proposing these far-reaching measures in English, no longer an EU language. Do they understand the subtleties of their proposal?
Ignoring facts
The Chinese state media, according to the EU report, “have reinforced selected pro-Kremlin conspiracy narratives, for example about alleged US military biorepositories in Ukraine”.
This is a clear example of how to dispose of truth or factual information as a criterion. These labs are not only found as budget items listed in the US defence budget (a document over which the Kremlin presumably exercises no control), but individual collaborations, such as the research projects of the Bernhard Nocht Institute or the Friedrich Löffler Institute with these Ukrainian labs, can also be found on their websites, as well as the financier of these projects, the German Ministry of Defence.
It must therefore be stated that these laboratories existed, that they were financed from the military budget and that the research was carried out on behalf of the military, and not only on behalf of the US. Nevertheless, the EU has declared the very existence of the labs to be a “conspiracy narrative”.
In connection with protests under the title #StopKillingDonbass, the EU report stated that it was “falsely claimed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine and ‘paramilitary units of neo-Nazis’ were committing atrocities against civilians, including children” while the Soros NGO Human Rights Watch recently actually admitted that Ukraine had distributed butterfly mines in Donetsk, an outlawed munition in residential areas.
According to their rationale, any “disinformation” accusation by FIMI does not have to take into account whether the statement is true, but only that it contradicts the EU narrative.
Therefore, the report noted: “The information disseminated by these networks does not have to be provably false or misleading to constitute a FIMI incident, which FIMI applies more broadly than the classic definition of disinformation.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was treated like a hero when visiting Brussels on February 9. Although he received endless adulation, his lobbying to EU leaders for further military support mostly fell on deaf ears despite making an impassioned, but disingenuous plea that Ukraine is defending Europe’s eastern borders.
Zelensky visited London and Paris on his second foreign trip since the war began almost a year ago and hoped to secure modern fighter jets and long-range missiles. He then brought his circus show to Brussels to address EU leaders and MEPs directly. Unsurprisingly, Zelensky received cheers and a standing ovation in the European Parliament, yet, made no progress in convincing Brussels to allow Ukraine an express membership into the EU.
“We are defending against the most anti-European force of the modern world — we are defending ourselves, we Ukrainians on the battlefield, along with you,” Zelensky told MEPs.
However, despite the contradictory rhetoric emanating from European leaders, they are also fully aware that Russia will never attack without provocation. It is for this reason that they can make a show for Zelensky in Brussels, but will never commit to the extent that Kiev demands.
Although French President Emmanuel Macron awarded Zelensky with the National Order of the Legion of Honour, he also made it clear that he would not supply fighter jets to Kiev in the near future. Even though Zelensky has forced the supply of fighter jets into discourse, European leaders, including Macron, are less than enthusiastic as they are fully aware it would take several years to train Ukrainian pilots to be competent enough with an unfamiliar fighter jet to have any chance against the Russian Air Force. In addition, they understand that Russia will respond appropriately too.
Ignoring this reality, European Parliamentary speaker Roberta Metsola, declared: “Ukraine is Europe and your nation’s future is in the European Union. States must consider, quickly, as a next step, providing long-range systems and the jets you need to protect the liberty too many have taken for granted.”
Unfortunately for the European Parliament, they wield very little influence on state policies and enforcing support for Ukraine. Rather, with Zelensky seen in Western European capitals begging for more weapons, the whole exercise is a tasteless theatre to discuss supposed value systems – values that tolerate rampant neo-Nazism in Ukraine.
In this way, Zelensky is nothing more than an actor in a show to present supposed European unity on Ukraine. The uncomfortable truth is that unity in the Western world is forced and mostly just exists at a political level. With support for Ukraine being mostly maintained by the political class, public dissatisfaction caused by economic difficulties from the sanctions against Russia is growing.
With dissatisfaction growing, Macron is desperately wanting the war to end and for a peace conference to be held – but on terms that do not correspond to the realities on the battlefield and with aims of making Russia the ultimate loser.
At the trilateral meeting held on February 8 in the Elysée Palace with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Zelensky, Macron presented a proposal for organising a peace conference but, as said, on terms where Russia is the ultimate loser. Macron sees Kiev’s ten-point plan as a “solid foundation on the way to a peace conference” despite confirmation that Kiev is categorically refusing to negotiate on Russia’s unification with Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson.
In addition, a peace conference can only occur if Washington and London agree to one since they are the real masters behind the war. Although Macron has grandiose illusions of becoming a second Charles de Gaulle to lead an “autonomous Europe,” his endless failed attempts to form a European Army and the cancellation of military contracts with Australia shows that he is far from the global and historic figure that he wants to be remembered as. It also demonstrates that Western power is still firmly in Anglo hands.
Rather, Macron’s initiative is media propaganda because the two most powerful states in the EU, France and Germany, want to legitimise themselves in the media as contributors to the peace process. It cannot be forgotten that France and Germany already mediated the signing of the Minsk Accords and that former German chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the aforementioned agreements allowed the Ukrainian military to become stronger as it bought time.
Therefore, French and German mediation in the current crisis cannot be trusted, and for this reason it is unlikely that Moscow will ever entertain a peace conference under such ludicrous terms. It was French and German inaction in enforcing the Minsk Accords that led to the current conflict, and now that Russia has acted on the only option that was left available, Macron has the audacity to request a peace conference on the terms that Russia backs away from all the progress it made.
As this is unrealistic, the song and dance must continue, and Zelensky will continue playing the part. But in the end, the level of support that Zelensky wants is evidently not coming to fruition, and will likely remain this way, rendering his tour of Europe to be mostly useless.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Speaking to radio Kossuth, Peter Szijjarto commented on recent remarks by the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, who pushed for fighter jets and long-range weapons to be sent to Kiev. According to the minister, EU lawmakers’ decisions on Ukraine “have generally caused damage to Europe,” and further weapons deliveries will only worsen the hostilities.
He went on to blast the EU legislature, claiming that its “credibility is practically zero.” Szijjarto pointed to a recent graft scandal as proof that the EU parliament is “one of the most corrupt organizations in the world.”
He was referring to the recent arrest of the parliament’s former vice president, Eva Kaili, who has been charged with taking bribes from Qatar in exchange for illegally lobbying the interests of the Gulf state.
Szijjarto noted that in Western countries, war rhetoric sounds “incomparably louder than the rhetoric of peace,” while nations outside “the transatlantic bubble” tend to prefer peace to a deadly conflict.
The minister went on to question the West’s anti-Russia sanctions. He argued that they have failed to force Moscow to end the conflict, while Europe’s economy has “faced incredible difficulties,” and that “the tenth sanctions package will only be suitable for causing further damage to us Europeans, similar to the previous nine ones.”
Since the start of large-scale hostilities in Ukraine almost a year ago, Hungary, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy, has been critical of Western sanctions against Moscow. It has also refused to support Kiev with weapons, or allow arms transfers across its border with Ukraine.
US officials are basically admitting that they were behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which was perpetrated to prevent rapprochement between Moscow and Berlin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
“The US decided that we [Russia] have been cooperating too well with Germany over the past 20 or 30 years; or rather, the Germans cooperated with us too well,” he said in an interview published on the Foreign Ministry’s website on Sunday.
The “powerful alliance” based on Russian energy resources and German technology “began to threaten the monopoly position of many American corporations,” Lavrov explained.
So, Washington decided to destroy this alliance between Moscow and Berlin, and did it “literally” by attacking the pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian gas to Europe through Germany, he added.
“American officials are basically admitting that the explosions that occurred at Nord Stream 1 and 2 were their doing. They even speak about it with joy,” the foreign minister stated.
Lavrov was likely referring to a confession made by US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland during a Senate hearing in late January. “I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now… a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea,” she said at that time.
“The vileness of Western politicians is well known,” Lavrov continued, suggesting that “the plan, which is now being implemented through ‘inciting’ Ukraine against Russia and waging a war by the entire West against Russia by means of Ukraine, is to a large extent aimed at preventing a new rapprochement between Germany and Russia.”
The comments by Russia’s top diplomat come just days after iconic American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh released a bombshell report, blaming Washington for sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines last year.
According to an informed source who talked to Hersh, explosives were planted at the pipelines in the Baltic Sea back in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of a NATO exercise. They were detonated in late September, rendering the key European energy infrastructure inoperable.
US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson denied the report by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, calling it “utterly false and complete fiction.” No one among high-ranking American officials has even commented on the accusations made by Hersh.
For months, the Russian authorities have been pointing to the fact that the only side to benefit from the destruction of Nord Stream was the US, which has seen supplies of its more expensive liquefied natural gas to Europe increase massively since the explosions.
The CDC’s information page on Covid-19 vaccines contains the following bullet points on “How mRNA COVID-19 vaccines work:”
First, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are given in the upper arm muscle or upper thigh, depending on the age of who is getting vaccinated.
After vaccination, the mRNA will enter the muscle cells. Once inside, they use the cells’ machinery to produce a harmless piece of what is called the spike protein…. After the protein piece is made, our cells break down the mRNA and remove it, leaving the body as waste.
Or, in other words, as we have long been told, “it” – the mRNA – “stays in the arm.” And then, after having instructed the muscle cells to produce the spike, is disposed of.
But look at the below picture from a recent presentation on mRNA vaccination at the European Parliament. The picture was posted on Twitter by Virginie Joron, a French member of the parliament. The speaker is no less an authority than Özlem Türeci, the Chief Medical Officer of BioNTech: the German biotech company that developed what has come to be known to most of the world as the “Pfizer” Covid-19 vaccine.
Have a closer look at Türeci’s slide, which tells a very different story than that which the CDC has been telling Americans for the last two years.
Far from “staying in the arm” and entering the muscle cells at the injection site, the injection site is only the point of departure for a journey that is supposed to take the mRNA rather to the lymph nodes. The subtitle of the slide is “Bringing mRNA to the right cells at the right places.” The deltoid is not the right place; the lymph nodes are.
Once in the lymph nodes, a specific sort of cell, the dendritic cells, is supposed to manufacture the spike protein: here colorfully described as the “wanted poster” that will help the immune system to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus in case of subsequent exposure.
A passage from The Vaccine, the book that Türeci and her husband, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, wrote which journalist Joe Miller, explains why BioNTech’s platform specifically targets the lymph nodes:
What Ugur learnt was that the location to which a vaccine delivers its ‘wanted poster’ really mattered. The reason for this, the couple’s team in Mainz later realised, was that not all dendritic cells … were created equal. The ones that resided in lymph nodes – of which the spleen is the largest – were particularly adept at capturing mRNA and making sure the instructions it carried were acted upon. These kidney-bean shaped organs, found under our armpits, in our groins, and at several other outposts in the body, are the information hubs of the immune system. (p. 98)
Indeed, Sahin and Türeci were so determined to get their mRNA into the lymph nodes that they had an earlier mRNA construct injected directly into the patient’s lymph nodesin the groin (p. 104).
Needless to say, such an approach was not likely to obtain wide acceptance as a vaccine! This is why the couple, as explained in their book, needed to package the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles, in order to ensure that mRNA administered by way of an intramuscular injection would, nonetheless, be widely distributed around the body and thus reach the lymph nodes.
This is to say that the wide biodistribution of the mRNA that came to light after rollout was never a bug. It is a feature of BioNTech’s mRNA technology. Having elicited an immune response by way of injection into the groin, Sahin is even said to have wondered, “How substantial could the immune response be if a vaccine got into all lymphatic tissues around the body, and recruited all the resident DCs [dendritic cells] into action?” (p. 105)
So, why has the CDC been lying about this for the last two years and insisting that the mRNA “stays in the arm?” Well, the obvious answer is that the idea of the mRNA staying at the injection site is reassuring, since otherwise we could fear systemic adverse effects of precisely the sort that have emerged since rollout.
It is worth noting, moreover, that in developing its vaccine, as discussed in my earlier article here, BioNTech simply skipped the so-called safety pharmacology studies whose purpose is precisely to test a candidate vaccine for potential systemic adverse effects – and regulators, including the FDA, let the company do it.
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.
A recent report has exposed that the Australian Senate committee is facing a serious legal setback in its attempt to blacklist Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), as the force cannot be designated as a foreign terrorist organization under the country’s criminal code.
According to the Australian Jewish News website, the Attorney General’s Department (AGD), which responded to the recommendation by the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Committee, told the panel that current legislation does not provide for a pathway to proscribing the IRGC.
“As an organ of a nation-state, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps is not the kind of entity that is covered by the terrorist organization provisions in the Criminal Code,” the AGD said on Tuesday.
The Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) urged the Australian government to amend the criminal code to allow for the blacklisting of the IRGC.
“We … urge the Australian government to amend legislation to allow the IRGC to be proscribed here, as it is in other countries,” ZFA public affairs director Bren Carlill said.
However, other countries have also backed down on their initial proclamations to ban the official Iranian force.
The UK government has already stopped plans to blacklist Islamic Revolution Guards Corps as reports say Foreign Office fears that the move would block communications channels with Iran.
The UK Foreign Office’s about-face on proscribing the IRGC as a so-called “terrorist” entity comes despite its approval by the Home Office, The Times reported on February 2.
Citing sources in the government, the report said there are also concerns about how to blacklist the IRGC because, unlike other proscribed bodies, the Iranian force is an official government agency.
“Foreign Office officials have real concerns about proscription because they want to maintain access. The Home Office, and the government more broadly, supports the move. The IRGC should have been proscribed by now but the whole process is on ice,” a Whitehall source said.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on January 23 that the block could not list the IRGC as a “terrorist” entity without an EU court decision.
Speaking before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Borrell said a court ruling with a “concrete legal condemnation” had to first be handed down before the bloc itself could apply any such designation.
“It is something that cannot be decided without a court, a court decision first. You cannot say I consider you a terrorist because I don’t like you,” Borrell told reporters, stressing that the court of an EU member state had to issue a concrete legal condemnation before the bloc could act.
A week earlier, the European Parliament adopted an amendment, calling on the EU and its member states to include the IRGC on their terror list. It also passed another resolution later, calling for more sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities and putting the IRGC on the EU terrorist list over alleged human rights violations during the recent riots.
The European Union, however, imposed sanctions against a number of Iranian individuals and entities for what it claimed to be a crackdown on the recent foreign-backed riots, which were triggered after the death of a young Iranian woman of Kurdish descent in Tehran in September.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that Zelensky and his entourage in Europe “were told at a summit by several leaders of the European Union that they were ready to supply Kiev with fighter jets to help fight the Russian invasion.”
“The issue of long-range weapons and fighter jets for Ukraine has been resolved,” said Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff. “Details to follow.”
The “taboo” of sending weapons that can reach hundreds of miles into Russia will soon be broken, according to Reuters, the “news agency” that collaborated with the CIA , writes Kurt Nimmo.
“Mr Zelensky received standing ovations before, during and after his speech to European lawmakers,” reports The Hindu. “He held up an EU flag after his speech and the whole legislature stood in gloomy silence as the Ukrainian national anthem and then the European anthem ‘Ode to Joy’ were played.”
More an ode to mass murder.
Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, said the “next step” is to provide “long-range systems” and fighter jets to the ultra-nationalists. Metsola said the “reaction” to Russian efforts to denazify and disarm the Kiev regime “must be proportionate to the threat, and the threat is existential.”
Metsola, who was elevated to President of the European Parliament by a secret vote of MEPs (not European citizens), is taking the war to the next level.
The EU encourages the ultra-nationalist regime in Kiev to continue its ethnic cleansing, torture, rape and other war crimes in the Donbas and wherever Ukrainians dare to speak Russian, attend an Orthodox church, celebrate Russian traditions or speak out against atrocities committed by neo-Nazi thugs.
The PDF document reveals in gruesome detail the war crimes committed by the Ukrainian state following the US government-orchestrated coup in Kiev that brought openly neo-Nazis to power.
From the data collected since the first report of the Foundation for Democracy Studies, it can be concluded that torture and inhumane treatment by the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU), the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the National Guard and other formations within the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine, as well as by illegal armed groups, such as the Right Sector, have not only continued, but are actually increasing in size and becoming systematic.
According to the report,
The prisoners were electrocuted, and brutally beaten with various objects (iron bars, baseball bats, sticks, rifle butts, bayonet knives, rubber bats) for several days at a time.
Techniques widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces and security services include waterboarding, strangling with a “Banderist garrotte” and other types of strangulation.
In some cases, prisoners were sent to minefields for intimidation and run over with military vehicles, leading to their deaths.
Other methods of torture used by the Ukrainian armed and security forces include breaking bones, stabbing and cutting with a knife, branding with red-hot objects, and shooting various body parts with small arms.
The prisoners captured by the Ukrainian armed and security forces are held for days in freezing temperatures, without access to food or medical attention, and are often forced to swallow psychotropic substances that cause pain.
An absolute majority of prisoners are subjected to mock firing squads and threatened with the death and rape of their families.
Many of those martyred are not members of the Self-Defense Forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR).
The Human Rights Convention “prohibits torture in absolute terms regardless of other circumstances,” and the state that commits these violations “is responsible for the actions of all its agencies, such as the police, security forces, other law enforcement officers, and all other organs of state that have an individual under their control, whether acting by order or of their own accord,” the authors write.
In other words, there is more than enough evidence to convict the Man in Green and his ultra-nationalist associates of serious war crimes. In addition, the US government and the EU are guilty of supporting and facilitating the above crimes. Add to that the owners and managers of the war propaganda corporate media.
The EU-US war crimes collaborators are busy preventing Russia from protecting civilians in Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol, Melitopol, Kherson and Crimea. We can say that they are war criminals and apologists for neo-Nazi terror.
The following video is utterly disgusting: a war criminal and his collaborator in mass murder, torture and rape make a kissing face for the camera.
In a saner and less cruel world, both of these sickening creatures would be on a tribunal similar to the one that sentenced to death Martin Bormann, Hermann Goering, Wilhelm Keitel, Julius Streicher, and other inveterate Nazis.
Eating bugs used to be the preserve of small children who knew no better. However, in our fast-changing world, what would have seemed outlandish only a few years ago is now on the menu.
Indeed, only last week, the European Union passed regulation 2023/5. It allows ‘partially defatted’ powder of the house cricket (Acheta domesticus) into the food chain for human consumption.
From this month, cricket powder can be added to the following: ‘multigrain bread and rolls, crackers and breadsticks, cereal bars, dry pre-mixes for baked products, biscuits, dry stuffed and non-stuffed pasta-based products, sauces, processed potato products, legume- and vegetable- based dishes, pizza, pasta-based products, whey powder, meat analogues, soups and soup concentrates or powders, maize flour-based snacks, beer-like beverages, chocolate confectionery, nuts and oilseeds, snacks other than chips, and meat preparations, intended for the general population’.
The regulation is effective inside the European Union and, unforgivably, Northern Ireland due to the treasonable eponymous protocol.
The first thing to note is that at a European Union level regulation can be passed without being ratified by any of the 27 national parliaments remaining in the benighted organisation.
Regulations are imposed (not debated) by the European Commission. In this case, the powdered bug was imposed into the food chain of around half a billion people without debate.
Of course there would have been some discussions but these would have taken place behind closed doors, between regulators, lobby groups, eco-warriors bent on stripping Man of his meat-eating habit, and bureaucrats ever ready to test the boundaries of their unaccountable power.
There was however no open debate in parliaments about whether full-fat or even partially defatted vermin powder is what the peoples of such a varied continent really want to find in their daily consumables.
That would have required a Directive, thereby granting every parliament the ability to discuss and pass laws applicable within their national territory on the issue of ‘Bugs on the Menu’.
Which elected government would have dared pass such a law? Few with any ambition to re-election.
As the European Union and its backers have found out over time: the less democracy, the less time is wasted. Best by-pass the ballot box and impose via regulation what cannot be passed by consent in parliaments or via referendum.
The new European Union regulation notes that there are risks to eating cricket powder. It might cause ‘cases of primary sensitisation’ and its scientific paper notes a risk of anaphylactic shock, defined by the National Cancer Institute as ‘a severe and sometimes life-threatening immune system reaction to an antigen‘.
Graciously, the European Commission does accept that you, as a consumer, ought to be told that you are eating powdered bugs so it recommends that products need to be ‘appropriately labelled’.
What does ‘appropriately’ mean in this case? European Union citizens will just have to find out in due course.
The European Commission has given a five-year monopoly to Cricket One, a group based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to procure the house cricket powder for the hapless EU consumer. (Investigative journalists, if they still exist, could have a field day looking into what led to such a deal, who invested and when.)
For those looking to the upside of our celebrated Brexit, here is one standout example of what it means to be sovereign.
Unless the law changes, and this will require parliamentary debates, we in the United Kingdom should be free, for a time, of the terrible suspicion that we are being fed powdered (even if defatted) crickets for the amusement of our elites.
That is what ‘taking back control’ means. Let’s have more of it.
Twitter has angered EU officials after it failed to submit complete reports on disinformation efforts as part of its commitment to the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation.
“I am disappointed to see that Twitter’s report lags behind others and I expect a more serious commitment to their obligations,” wrote Vera Jourova, the Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency.
The European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, who has contacted Twitter owner Elon Musk at least twice about the Code of Practice, said “it comes as no surprise that the degree of quality vary greatly according to the resources companies have allocated to this project,” but did not mention Twitter directly.
Twitter signed the code before Musk took over late last year, and committed to sending biannual reports.
“In some areas, Twitter is unable to provide granular data due to resource constraints and data limitations,” the company said in its report. “In other areas, there are issues that are not applicable to Twitter’s service.”
The code is voluntary. However, non-compliance could put Twitter in a bad position with the EU ahead of the September 1 deadline for full compliance with the EU’s new censorship law, the Digital Services Act.
Many foreign brands and businesses are leaving Russia not of their own volition but because they are feeling pressured to do so, and suffer financially as a result, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a meeting of the supervisory board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives.
Moscow, however, will not force anyone to stay, according to the president.
“Many of them, as you know, under pressure from their governments, are leaving our market. Well, all the best to them. However, because of the loss of our market they incur huge losses. It’s their choice, it’s their decision,” Putin said, noting that many of those companies “do it without any pleasure.”
“Who wants to lose a well-established business in which they invested effort, money? It’s not even about the money sometimes – many have invested their hearts – but under pressure from their governments are forced to leave.”
According to Putin, Russia will not allow the varied assets and infrastructure these companies leave behind to go to waste, and domestic industries may even benefit from the situation.
“They leave behind a good legacy, so to speak, they leave behind production infrastructure, well-trained personnel. Perhaps someone thinks that all of this will immediately crumble and fall apart – nothing of the sort is happening. Our companies, our entrepreneurs are picking up these enterprises and businesses and continuing this work. And quite successfully,” the Russian president assured.
After Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine began, many major Western brands announced their withdrawal from the Russian market and the suspension of investment. According to economists from Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen, more than 1,400 companies decided to quit Russia over the past year, including electronics manufacturers, automakers, hotels, banks and restaurant chains.
However, Russia managed to secure supplies of goods through alternate routes – via the so-called ‘parallel imports’ – where products continue to be delivered to Russia through third countries without a brand license from the rights holder.
In addition to this, the Russian government has launched a number of programs and initiatives to support domestic manufacturers, which fall within the framework of ‘import substitution’. According to Putin, the country produces a lot of quality products, which until recently had a hard time making their way to the domestic market due to competition from global players.
However, the departure of Western brands means “our domestic manufacturers received unique opportunities for development and we must take advantage of them,” Putin stated.
The European Union is organizing a conference entitled: “Beyond disinformation – EU responses to the threat of foreign information manipulation.”
Its main thrust is to seek ways of expunging any trace of a Russia-friendly outlook within the Union.
The EU has already censored Russia Today TV channels and the Sputnik agency. It is now extending its reach to EU citizens relaying content from these portals, whether they agree with it or not.
The event will be chaired by Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, assisted by Stefano Sannino, Secretary General of the European External Action Service,.
MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Foreign Interference, will address the meeting along with representatives of the Swedish Psychological Defense Agency, the British Foreign Office and the US State Department, and of course of NATO.
The star of the show will be Nina Jankowicz (pictured), who, after serving as communications adviser to President Volodymr Zelensky, was appointed by President Joe Biden to chair the Disinformation Governance Board, the short-lived US censorship structure.
With the exception of Mr. Glucksman, all the speakers are senior, though unelected, officials.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released the latest zero draft of its international pandemic treaty which will give the unelected global health agency new sweeping surveillance powers if passed.
The treaty requires the WHO’s 194 member states (which represent 98% of all the countries in the world) to strengthen the WHO’s “One Health surveillance systems.”
One Health is a WHO system that aims to “optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems” and “uses the close, interdependent links among these fields to create new surveillance and disease control methods.”
The WHO’s One Health fact sheet points to Covid-19 as one of the main reasons for expanding its One Health approach and states that it “put a spotlight on the need for a global framework for improved surveillance.”
The draft treaty also orders WHO member states to strengthen surveillance functions for “outbreak investigation and control through interoperable early warning and alert systems.”
Additionally, it requires member states to recognize the WHO as the “directing and coordinating authority on international health work, in pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems, and in convening and generating scientific evidence, and, more generally, fostering multilateral cooperation in global health governance.”
We obtained a copy of the zero draft of the WHO’s pandemic treaty for you here.
Although the draft treaty doesn’t mention surveillance tools that were used during Covid, such as contact tracing, testing, and vaccine passports, the WHO has previously confirmed that it’s a big supporter of vaccine passports. In the early stages of the pandemic, the WHO also lauded China’s Covid response, which utilized intense digital surveillance, before changing its position and criticizing China’s zero-Covid policy.
This draft treaty has been in the works since December 2021. A final report on the treaty is expected to be presented to the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), in May 2024.
If passed, this treaty will be adopted under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution — an article that allows the WHO to impose legally binding conventions on the WHO’s 194 member states if two-thirds of the member states’ representatives vote in favor of the conventions.
Unlike the lawmaking process in most democratic nations, where elected officials implement national law, this WHO process allows a small number of global representatives, often unelected diplomats, to impose international laws on all of the WHO’s member states.
While some politicians have pushed back against this international pandemic treaty, it has the support of many powerful nations including the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Council (EC) (which represents 27 European Union (EU) member states).
This treaty is just one of the global surveillance proposals with ties to the WHO that is being pushed by influential global figures. At Business (B20) 2022, a summit of business leaders from Group of 20 (G20) countries, numerous countries agreed on a digital health passport that uses WHO standards. This digital health certificate will track whether people have been vaccinated or tested.
By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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