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European Commission’s plan to ban Russian oil imports receives backlash

By Paul Antonopoulos | May 6, 2022

The European Union announced on May 4 their intention to ban Russian oil imports within six months and refined products by the end of the year as part of their latest round of economic sanctions against Moscow. According to Oil Price, a barrel surged to over $110 for Brent and $108 for West Texas Intermediate following the European Commission’s announcement. Therefore, banning Russian oil imports is not only a rather arduous task, but the cost of this decision will be high.

“In the short term it might leave Russian revenues high while implying negative consequences for the EU and the global economy in terms of higher prices – not to mention retaliation risks [by Russia] on natural gas supplies,” Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel warned following the European Commission’s announcement. However, an EU diplomat told EURACTIV on condition of anonymity that “Politically, Europe cannot afford not adopting the sixth package [of economic sanctions].”

The EU will be once again be divided as its rare instance of geopolitical posturing is being challenged by the economic interests of individual member states. Hungary and Slovakia oppose the European Commission’s proposal despite being given until the end of 2023 to phase out Russian oil. At the same time, Bulgaria and Czechia have also asked to be given such an extension.

Sources have said Greece raised objections to another proposal to ban all shipping companies that are EU-owned or have European interests from transferring Russian oil into Europe or elsewhere, something of major importance since the Mediterranean country has the largest mercantile fleet in the world. Although Athens deeply supports all of the EU’s hostile actions against Russia, such as the expulsion of diplomats, imposition of sanctions and even the sending of weapons to Ukraine that could have ended up in the hands of the Azov Battalion that has persecuted the Greek minority, threatening the profits of Greek oligarchs provokes one of the rare instances of opposition from Greece’s ruling New Democracy party.

New Democracy is traditionally the pro-US/neo-liberal party of Greece that has served the interests of the country’s oligarchs, or softly known as magnates or tycoons, particularly the shipowners. Consider that 71% of Greeks in a poll said Greece’s position in the Ukraine War should be neutral, something that was categorically ignored by the Greek government as it strongly backed Ukraine instead. However, the moment that the profits of shipowners are threatened, and not over the past few months as citizens have dealt with rising energy and food costs, Athens voiced its first concern against the EU’s anti-Russia sanctions.

Theoretically, although Russian oil can be phased out of most of the EU within six months, it will none-the-less be a very difficult task, especially when taking into account the fact that there is currently an energy shortage. In addition, the imposition of such a policy could lead to a build-up of shocks in the EU economy.

The Russian economy will naturally be affected as it will be deprived of a major market. But of higher concern, for European citizens at least, is the realization of the effects that anti-Russia sanctions has even on their own daily lives. And whilst Europeans suffer from rising energy and food costs, Asia could very much become Gazprom’s main export market in five to seven years.

Although this does not offset the loss of the EU as an oil market, shifting most exports to much friendlier Asian markets will lessen the effects of Western sanctions, even if this shift could take several years. Although the problem is the supply price and the development of the corresponding gas transport infrastructure, including in countries like China, it is recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin made a directive to the government to submit a plan by June 1 on how to build related infrastructure. The directive requested a proposal for a large-scale development of a gas pipeline system in Eastern Siberia, aimed at directing the flow of gas exports to the Chinese market.

China currently consumes about 350 billion cubic meters of gas per year, while the majority of the energy balance (about 70%) remains coal. Demand for gas in China is expected to grow to 450-480 billion cubic meters by 2025 and in the next 10 years, as coal is phased out, perhaps even nearly one trillion cubic meters of gas per year.

Currently, Russian gas supplies to China arrive through the “Power of Siberia” pipeline. Deliveries along this route began at the end of 2019 and in 2020 reached 4.1 billion cubic meters. It is expected that the annual supply volume will gradually increase until it reaches its capacity of 38 billion cubic meters in 2025. Taking into account the new agreement signed in February, the total gas capacity supplied to China via the Far Eastern pipeline could reach 48 billion cubic meters per year.

In this way, although Russia will be hurt in the short term by losing the European market for its oil, this action will only propel the flow of Russian energy eastward to an Asia that is continuously increasing its demand. Equally of interest is that Europe persistently promises that sanctions against Russia cannot hurt European citizens in equal measure, but weaning off Russian oil within a six-month period will only increase the likelihood of such an outcome.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

May 6, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Is the West at war with disinformation or dissent?

By Rachel Marsden | Samizdat | May 5, 2022

When US President Joe Biden announced on April 27 that a new Disinformation Governance Board would serve the Department of Homeland Security, it was just the latest turn of the screw on freedom. This time, it’s an affront to citizens’ right to a diversity of information.

It’s one thing to correct inaccurate information, but this new entity seems more oriented towards narrative-policing that cracks down on the interpretation of information rather than the accuracy of it. Headed by a former communications advisor to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Nina Jankowicz, one of the board’s first responsibilities will be to address “disinformation coming from Russia as well as misleading messages about the US-Mexico border,” according to CBS News. Interesting that these two issues – immigration and foreign conflicts – are currently viewed as two of Washington’s most significant failures, which have given rise to populist dissent. Make no mistake, it’s the dissent that’s the ultimate target.

The fact that a former Ukraine government spin doctor was viewed as the best person to head up the new initiative tells you everything you need to know about its true purpose. Jankowicz published a book in 2020 whose title suggests that she believes the West to be in an online war with Russia. ‘How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict,’ portrays Western narratives as truthful and Russian narratives as “fake news.” Doing so obscures the fact that the mainstream Western media has not been immune to propagating narratives peddled by the state that could retroactively be considered fake news or war propaganda. Meanwhile, Russian media has often provided a platform for those seeking to express – or access – dissenting analysis or information that falls outside of the Western media bubble. Clearly, there are some ‘democracies’ that are bothered by this.

The appetite of Western nations to ensure that their citizens are only fed information that they control through their own highly concentrated government or corporate subsidized media isn’t new. It’s just getting more voracious. Perhaps it’s because the more authoritarian their agenda becomes, the more populist sentiment increases and gives rise to events such as Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, as well as trends such as opposition to US-backed conflicts, the rise in popularity of various populist political parties in Europe, and demonstrations against pandemic mandates, which just happen to be associated with government-issued QR codes.

Dissent is the enemy of authoritarian ambition. Supposedly free countries have manipulated their citizens into believing that censorship of certain views is for people’s own safety and security – hence why the military in Canada, the UK, and France, and now Homeland Security in the US, are involved in narrative policing. In reality, their efforts seem to be more about ensuring citizens’ compliance with their own agenda.

The fusion of domestic security and disinformation came to light as early as 2016, when the European Parliament grotesquely conflated Islamic terrorist propaganda with Russian media, in what seemed to be itself a propaganda effort to undermine the Russian media by equating these two totally unrelated things. But one by one, Western governments have placed free speech under national security control.

France, for example, handed off responsibility for online information arbitration to its domestic intelligence agency (the DGSI) and has reportedly considered involving defense-funded startups in the effort.

Canada has also turned to its security apparatus to shape Canadians’ information landscape – at least twice. The Communications Security Establishment, the country’s electronic spying agency, has been tweeting its own interpretations of disputed events occurring in the fog of the conflict in Ukraine as indisputable fact, while routinely denouncing Russia’s interpretation as invalid.

But Canada’s security establishment isn’t at its first rodeo in attempting to prevent citizens’ thinking from deviating from the state’s messaging. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the country’s armed forces deployed a months-long, military-grade propaganda campaign, which employed tactics honed during the war in Afghanistan, to mind-bend unsuspecting Canadians towards Trudeau’s Covid narrative, CBC News reported last year.

Not to be outdone, the psychological warfare specialists of the 77th brigade of Britain’s armed forces have also worked to shape messaging both in favor of the government’s Covid policies and against anything contrary out of Russia. “One current priority is combating the spread of harmful, false and misleading narratives through disinformation. To bolster this effort, the British Army will be deploying two experts in countering disinformation. They will advise and support NATO in ensuring its citizens have the right information to protect themselves and its democracies are protected from malicious disinformation operations used by adversaries,” Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said last year.

The fact that public safety and disinformation have suddenly become routinely conflated should be worrisome to defenders of whatever remnants of democracy that we still have left. Terrorism, health and now disinformation have all served as pretexts for the rapid erosion of our freedoms – all under the guise of protecting us from bad actors. But are we really safer? Or are we just increasingly less free?

May 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Slovakia rejects Russian oil ban proposal

Samizdat | May 5, 2022

Slovakia warned on Wednesday that it will not be able to agree to the European Commission’s proposal for a ban on Russian oil, and has called for more time to find alternative fuel suppliers.

The proposed embargo is part of the latest Ukraine-related sanctions against Moscow that would see crude imports from Russia phased out within six months and refined products by the end of the year. An exemption was drafted for Slovakia and Hungary, which are heavily dependent on Russia, giving them until the end of 2023 to comply.

The proposed time frame “is unfortunately not enough,” Slovakia’s deputy economy minister in charge of energy policy told internet publication Politico on Wednesday. “We are expecting at least three years,” Karol Galek added, explaining that a key refinery in the country requires heavy Russian oil and that it’s impossible to secure alternative supplies within the proposed time frame. Last year Slovakia got 96% of its oil from Russia.

Galek stressed that the current proposal “will destroy our European economy,” as it will not only hurt energy supplies in his country, but also in Austria, the Czech Republic and Ukraine.

The current blueprint for a ban on Russian oil has to be unanimously approved by the bloc’s 27 member states to come into force. Hungary has expressed reservations, saying the European Union has so far failed to give Budapest guarantees regarding its energy security.

May 5, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Nigerian Minister Says Russian Investors Interested in Financing African Gas Mega-Pipeline

Samizdat | May 4, 2022

The EU has been wooing Nigeria in recent weeks as one of the nations whose natural gas could help replace Russian supplies amid the bloc’s spat with Moscow over Ukraine. The charm offensive comes after years of efforts by the West to starve Sub-Saharan Africa of financing for gas projects.

Russian investors have expressed an interest in financing a massive gas pipeline from Nigeria to Morocco, Nigerian Minister of Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva has announced.

“The Russians were with me in the office last week. They are very desirous to invest in this project and there are lots of other people who are also desirous to invest in the project,” Sylva said, speaking to reporters in Abuja, Nigeria on Monday.

The prospective 5,600 km+ long pipeline project, agreed to by Nigeria and Morocco in 2016, would run along the west coast of Africa, connecting to the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bassau, Gambia, Senegal, and Mauritania along the way and serve as a major potential catalyst for regional economic development. It could also be used to pipe Nigerian gas to Europe via Spain. Six years after being agreed, the project still lacks the necessary financing for implementation.

The infrastructure would extend an existing pipeline pumping gas from southern Nigeria to neighbouring Benin, Togo and Ghana. “We want to continue that same pipeline all the way to Morocco down the coast. Right now, we are still at the level of studies and of course, we are at the level of securing funding for this project and a lot of people are indicating interest,” the oil minister said.

Sylva did not provide any further details on the eager Russian investors, or the project’s total expected cost, but said Abuja has yet to identify the “investors that we want to go with” for the ambitious infrastructure scheme.

Russia’s reported interest in the gas mega-pipeline is unclear, given that it could theoretically provide the same European countries threatening to halt the purchase of Russian natural gas and oil with a cost-effective Sub-Saharan African alternate.

European officials have flocked to Nigeria – the world’s 12th largest producer of natural gas, and 15th largest producer of oil, in recent weeks to try to secure additional energy from the African nation amid unprecedented tensions with Moscow over Ukraine. Last month, ambassadors from the European Union, Portugal, Spain, Italy and France met with Nigerian National Petroleum Company officials to discuss a “strengthened partnership” in the energy sector. No agreements were announced at the conclusion of the meeting.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported on an EU energy plan document which mentioned Nigeria, Senegal and Angola as nations with ‘largely untapped potential for liquefied natural gas’.

Nigeria has over 206 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves valued at hundreds of trillions of dollars, but has long been starved of capital for developing these resources amid a raft of problems ranging from corruption and inter-ethnic strife to pipeline vandalism.

On top of that, before the Ukraine crisis began, Europe largely ignored Nigeria’s gas potential. Last year, Nigerian environment minister Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar blasted developed countries for what he said was their deliberate policy of defunding African national gas projects.

“Many [wealthier nations] are now limiting financing to gas projects for domestic use in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region responsible for 0.55% of global carbon emissions that still needs to industrialize and grow. The defunding of gas projects by most financing organizations is a threat to achieving a global energy transition that is equitable, inclusive, just, leaving no one behind,” Abubakar said, speaking at a virtual ministerial event hosted by the United Nations last June.

The European Investment Bank stopped financing fossil fuels projects at the end of 2021. The same year, the Western cash-dominated World Bank indicated that it would shift resources to “combating climate change,” and limit assistance for natural gas projects except for rare exceptions.

Despite its vast wealth in energy resources, about 43 percent of Nigeria itself still lacks access to grid electricity.

May 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Any NATO Vehicle Coming to Ukraine With Weapons Will Be Considered Legitimate Target

Samizdat – 04.05.2022

Russia has repeatedly denounced the continuous flow of weapons into Ukraine from the West, saying that it adds fuel to the fire and derails the negotiation process.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that any NATO vehicle coming to Ukraine with weapons or equipment for Ukrainian forces will be considered a legitimate target for destruction.

“The United States and its NATO allies continue to pump weapons into Ukraine. I can confirm that any transport from the North Atlantic alliance that arrives in the country with weapons or materiel for the Ukrainian armed forces will be considered by us as a legitimate target for destruction,” Shoigu said on Wednesday.

According to him, during the course of the special operation, the Russian servicemen have “shown courage and bravery, honourably fulfilling their military duty, and ensuring the safety of the civil population of Donbass.”

Earlier, Moscow warned that the West’s contribution of weapons to Ukraine threatens to undermine peace talks, not to mention the probability that they could fall into the wrong hands.

Since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February, the US, its NATO allies, and the European Union, have increased weapons supplies to Ukraine.
On 3 May, the UK government announced that it will provide Ukraine with a $375 million military aid package.

Recently, US President Joe Biden asked US Congress for $33 billion in emergency supplemental funding to support Ukraine, including $20 billion for military assistance. The request comes on top of about $4 billion in military aid the Biden administration has already earmarked for Ukraine, $3.4 billion of which came after Russia launched its military operation in late February.

Amid weapons and military equipment deliveries there are discussions about the need to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons, tanks, war planes, etc. Although some countries, such as the UK, call for those kinds of supplies, others oppose the idea.

Earlier, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the German military can no longer supply arms to Ukraine as the country’s weapons stockpiles are practically exhausted.

In turn, Public support of German heavy weapons deliveries to Ukraine has shrunk to 46 percent from 55 percent two weeks ago and 60 percent in early April, with the number of critics rising by 10 percentage points, a poll out Tuesday showed.

On 28 April, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the trend of delivering heavy weapons to Ukraine and other countries is threatening the security of the European continent.

May 4, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Names of Hungarian PM, Croatian President Appear on Notorious Ukrainian Kill List Site

Samizdat | May 2, 2022

Curated by the Security Service of Ukraine and officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Myrotvorets website publishes the personal info of so-called “enemies of Ukraine”. Several individuals whose names have been posted on the site have been murdered, and rights groups and governments have repeatedly called for it to be taken down.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s name has appeared on the notorious Ukrainian website Myrotvorets.center (lit. “Peacekeeper”).

The 58-year-old politician is listed as an “accomplice of Russian war criminals”, an “accomplice in the crimes of Russian authorities against Ukraine and its citizens”, for his “participation in acts of humanitarian aggression against Ukraine”, as an “anti-Ukrainian propagandist”, and for his general all-round “cooperation with the Russian aggressor”.

Orban’s specific “crimes” include his refusal to allow weapons intended for Ukraine to be sent through his country’s territory, and his refusal to reject Russian gas supplies even in the long-term. The prime minister’s willingness to pay for Russian gas in rubles is also mentioned.

The site further recalled Orban’s 4 April statement about the forces Hungary has faced to remain independent, ranging from the local opposition to “the bureaucrats in Brussels, money and institutes of the Soros empire, international media as well as the Ukrainian president”.

Finally, the website points to Orban’s demands that Kiev’s post-2014 authorities respect western Ukraine’s sizeable ethnic Hungarian community, and provide residents of Zakarpattia with greater autonomy.

Along with Orban, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic’s name has also been added to the site. Milanovic is listed as an “accomplice of Russian invaders” for his alleged “humanitarian aggression against Ukraine” for “the spreading of Kremlin propaganda” and so-called “support and justification of Russian aggression against Ukraine”.

The site recalls Milanovic’s 2 February 2022 remarks that Russia must be “a factor” in the “equation” of European-wide stability, and his opposition to Ukraine joining NATO.

Former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, suggested that Orban and Milanovic’s appearance on the notorious website was a sign that Ukraine’s neo-Nazi elements were dissatisfied with the amount of weapons, mercenaries, and money they have received from the West.

“At this rate, soon Ukrainian Nazis will personally carry out reprises against objectionable leaders and ‘separate the sheep from the goats’ directly in European capitals”, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.

Hungary has refused to toe the line on the European Union’s anti-Russian policy in the wake of the escalation of the Ukraine crisis in February. On Sunday, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyas said that Budapest has “made it clear” that it will “never support” extending EU sanctions against Russian energy imports, implying that it may veto Brussels’ plans to ban Russian oil.

Journalists, human rights groups, the G7, and the Russian Foreign Ministry have repeatedly called for Myrotvorets to be shut down, citing its use against the so-called “enemies of Ukraine” to murder, threaten, and intimidate individuals whose names have been listed there. Set up in 2014, the site has since amassed tens of thousands of names, ranging from Ukrainian opposition politicians and public figures to foreign officials, journalists, and businessmen.

In 2015, former Ukrainian lawmaker Oleg Kalashnikov and journalist and writer Oles Buzina were murdered after their personal data (including addresses) were posted on the site. Before he was killed, Kalashnikov repeatedly reported on threats being made against his life after his info was placed on the site. After he and Buzina were killed, Myrotvorets’ official Twitter handle mockingly joked about “the successful completion of a combat mission by agent 404” – a reference to the well-known HTTP 404 “not found” error.

Several other journalists and public figures listed on the site have subsequently been killed. Among the deceased is Andrea Rocchelli, an Italian independent journalist working in Donbass.

In 2015, the website began to publish the personal data of Russian military personnel involved in the anti-terrorist operation in Syria. Then-adviser to the Ministry of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko publicly encouraged Daesh (ISIS) to “deal with” Russian troops under Sharia law. His comments prompted Russia’s Investigative Committee to open a criminal case against him over public calls for terrorist activities.

In 2016, Myrotvorets got its hands on leaked detailed personal data of some 5,000 Ukrainian, Russian, and Western journalists who had worked in Donbass. Among the records leaked was detailed personal information including phone numbers and addresses, and many of the journalists have reported threats against their lives.

Orban isn’t the first Hungarian to be added to the Myrotvorets list. In 2018, the website listed over 300 ethnic Hungarian residents from Zakarpattia who had “illegally” obtained Hungarian citizenship (Ukraine doesn’t allow dual citizenship, but much of the country’s political and business elite holds two or more citizenships anyway). In October 2018, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto blasted the site and the Ukrainian government, saying authorities in Kiev were using the website as part of a “hate campaign” in a desperate attempt to increase then-President Petro Poroshenko’s sagging approval ratings.

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

By redefining UNRWA, Washington destroys the foundation for a Just peace in Palestine

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 3, 2022

Palestinians are justifiably worried that the mandate granted to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, might be coming to an end. UNRWA’s mission, which has been in effect since 1949, has done more than provide urgent aid and support to millions of refugees. It was also a political platform that protected and preserved the rights of several generations of Palestinians.

Though UNRWA was not established as a political or legal platform per se, the context of its mandate was largely political, since Palestinians became refugees as a result of military and political events – the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by Israel and the latter’s refusal to respect the Right of Return for Palestinians as enshrined in UN resolution 194 (III) of 11 December, 1948.

“UNRWA has a humanitarian and development mandate to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight,” the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December, 1949 read. Alas, neither a ‘lasting solution’ to the plight of the refugees, nor even a political horizon has been achieved. Instead of using this realization as a way to revisit the international community’s failure to bring justice to Palestine and to hold Israel and its US benefactors accountable, it is UNRWA and, by extension, the refugees that are being punished.

In a stern warning on 24 April, the head of the political committee at the Palestinian National Council (PNC), Saleh Nasser said that UNRWA’s mandate might be coming to an end. Nasser referenced a recent statement by the UN body’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, about the future of the organization.

Lazzarini’s statement, published a day earlier, left room for some interpretation, though it was clear that something fundamental regarding the status, mandate and work of UNRWA is about to change. “We can admit that the current situation is untenable and will inevitably result in the erosion of the quality of the UNRWA services or, worse, to their interruption,” Lazzarini said.

Commenting on the statement, Nasser said that this “is a prelude to donors stopping their funding for UNRWA.”

The subject of UNRWA’s future is now a priority within the Palestinian, but also Arab political discourse. Any attempts at canceling or redefining UNRWA’s mission will pose a serious, if not an unprecedented challenge for Palestinians. UNRWA provides educational, health and other support for 5.6 million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. With an annual budget of $1.6 billion, this support, and the massive network that has been created by the organization, cannot be easily replaced.

Equally important is the political nature of the organization. The very existence of UNRWA means that there is a political issue that must be addressed regarding the plight and future of Palestinian refugees. In fact, it is not the mere lack of enthusiasm to finance the organisation that has caused the current crisis. It is something bigger, and far more sinister.

In June 2018, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to former US President Donald Trump, visited Amman, Jordan, where he, according to the US Foreign Policy magazine, tried to persuade Jordan’s King Abdullah to remove the refugee status from 2 million Palestinians currently living in the country.

This and other attempts have failed. In September 2018, Washington, under the Trump administration, decided to cease its financial support of UNRWA. As the organization’s main funder, the American decision was devastating, because about 30 per cent of UNRWA’s money comes from the US alone. Yet, UNRWA hobbled along by increasing its reliance on the private sector and individual donations.

Though the Palestinian leadership celebrated the Biden Administration’s decision to resume UNRWA’s funding on April 7, 2021, a little caveat in Washington’s move was largely kept secret. Washington only agreed to fund UNRWA after the latter agreed to sign a two-year plan, known as Framework for Cooperation. In essence, the plan effectively turned UNRWA into a platform for Israel and American policies in Palestine, whereby the UN body consented to US – thus Israeli – demands to ensure that no aid would reach any Palestinian refugee who has received military training “as a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Army”, other organizations or “has engaged in any act of terrorism”. Moreover, the Framework expects UNRWA to monitor “Palestinian curriculum content”.

By entering into an agreement with the US Department of State, “UNRWA has effectively transformed itself from a humanitarian agency that provides assistance and relief to Palestinian refugees, to a security agency furthering the security and political agenda of the US, and ultimately Israel,” BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights noted.

Palestinian protests, however, did not change the new reality, which effectively altered the entire mandate granted to UNRWA by the international community nearly 73 years ago. Worse, European countries followed suit when, last September, the European parliament advanced an amendment that would condition EU support of UNRWA on the editing and rewriting of Palestinian school text books that, supposedly, ‘incite violence’ against Israel.

Instead of focusing solely on shutting down UNRWA immediately, the US, Israel and their supporters are working to change the nature of the organization’s mission and to entirely rewrite its original mandate. The agency that was established to protect the rights of the refugees, is now expected to protect Israeli, American and western interests in Palestine.

Though UNRWA was never an ideal organization, it has indeed succeeded in helping millions of Palestinians throughout the years, while preserving the political nature of their plight.

Though the Palestinian Authority, various poltical factions, Arab governments and others have protested the Israeli-American designs against UNRWA, such protestations are unlikely to make much difference, considering that UNRWA itself is surrendering to outside pressures. While Palestinians, Arabs and their allies must continue to fight for UNRWA’s original mission, they must urgently develop alternative plans and platforms that would shield Palestinian refugees and their Right of Return from becoming marginal and, eventually, forgotten.

If Palestinian refugees are removed from the list of political priorities concerning the future of a just peace in Palestine, neither justice nor peace can possibly be attained.

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov interview with Xinhua News Agency

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs | April 30, 2022

Question: What do you think is at the root of the Ukrainian crisis? What can the international community do to solve this problem?

Sergey Lavrov:  When we talk about the Ukrainian crisis, first of all we need to look at the destructive policy of the Western states conducted over many years and led by the United States, which set a course to knock together a unipolar world order after the end of the Cold War. NATO’s reckless expansion to the East was a key component of those actions, despite the political obligations to the Soviet leadership on the non-expansion of the Alliance. As you know, those promises were just empty words. All these years, NATO infrastructure has been moving closer and closer to the Russian borders.

The West was never concerned about the fact that their actions grossly violated their international obligations not to strengthen their own security at the expense of the security of others. In particular, Washington and Brussels arrogantly rejected the initiatives put forward by Russia in December 2021 to ensure our country’s security guarantees in the west: to stop the expansion of NATO, not to deploy armaments that pose a threat to Russia in Ukraine and to return the Alliance’s military infrastructure to the 1997 configuration, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.

It is well-known that the United States and NATO member states have always viewed Ukraine as a tool to contain Russia. Over the years, they have actively fuelled anti-Russia sentiments there, forcing Kiev to make an artificial and false choice: to be either with the West or with Moscow.

It was the collective West that first provoked and then supported the anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014. Nationalists came to power in Ukraine and immediately unleashed a bloody massacre in Donbass, and set the course on the destruction of everything Russian in the rest of the country. Let me remind you that it was precisely because of this threat that the people of Crimea voted in a referendum for the reunification with Russia in 2014.

Over these past years, the United States and its allies have done nothing to stop the intra-Ukrainian conflict. Instead of encouraging Kiev to settle it politically based on the Minsk Complex of Measures, they sent weapons, trained and armed the Ukrainian army and nationalist battalions, and generally carried out the military-political development of Ukraine’s territory. They encouraged the aggressive anti-Russia course pursued by the Kiev authorities. In fact, they pushed the Ukrainian nationalists to undermine the negotiating process and resolve the Donbass issue by force.

We were deeply concerned about the undeclared biological programmes implemented in Ukraine with Pentagon’s support in close proximity to the Russian borders. And, of course, we could not disregard the Kiev leadership’s undisguised intentions to acquire a military nuclear potential, which would create an unacceptable threat to Russia’s national security.

In these conditions, we had no other choice but to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and launch the special military operation. Its aim is to protect people from genocide by the neo-Nazis, as well as to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine. I would like to stress that Russia is acting to fulfil its obligations under bilateral agreements on cooperation and mutual assistance with the DPR and LPR, at the official request of Donetsk and Lugansk under Article 51 of the UN Charter on the right to self-defence.

The special military operation launched on February 24 is progressing strictly in accordance with the plan. All its goals will be achieved in spite of our opponents’ counteractions. At the moment we are witnessing a classic case of double standards and hypocrisy of the Western establishment. By publicly supporting the Kiev regime, NATO member states are doing everything in their power to prevent the completion of the operation by reaching political agreements. Various weapons are flowing endlessly into Ukraine through Poland and other NATO countries. All of this is being done under the pretext of “fighting the invasion”, but in fact the United States and the European Union intend to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” They do not care at all about the fate of Ukraine as an independent subject of international relations.

The West is ready to jeopardise the energy and food security of entire regions of the globe to satisfy its own geopolitical ambitions. What other explanation is there for the unrestrained flywheel of anti-Russian sanctions launched by the West with the start of the operation and which they aren’t thinking of stopping?

If the United States and NATO are truly interested in settling the Ukrainian crisis, then, first, they must come to their senses and stop supplying weapons and ammunition to Kiev. The Ukrainian people do not need Stingers and Javelins; what they need is a solution to urgent humanitarian issues. Russia has been doing this since 2014. During this time, tens of thousands of tonnes of humanitarian cargo have been delivered to Donbass, and about 15,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid have already arrived in the part of Ukraine liberated from the Kiev regime, the DPR and the LPR, since the launch of the special military operation.

Second, it is essential that the Kiev regime stops cynical provocations, including in the information space. Ukrainian armed formations are barbarically shelling cities using civilians as living shields. We saw examples of this in Donetsk and Kramatorsk. Captured Russian servicemen are being abused with animal cruelty, and these atrocities are being posted online. At the same time, they use their Western patrons and global media controlled by the West to accuse the Russian army of war crimes. As they say, laying the blame at somebody else’s door.

It is high time for the West to stop unconditionally whitewashing and covering up for Kiev. Otherwise, Washington, Brussels and other Western capitals should consider their responsibility for complicity in the bloody crimes perpetrated by the Ukrainian nationalists.

Question: What measures has Russia taken to protect the lives and property of civilians? What efforts has it made to establish humanitarian corridors?

Sergey Lavrov: As I mentioned earlier, the special military operation is proceeding according to plan. Under this plan, the Russian military personnel are doing everything in their power to avoid victims among civilians. Blows are carried out with high-precision weapons, first of all at military infrastructure facilities and places where armoured vehicles are concentrated. Unlike the Ukrainian army and nationalist armed groups that use people as living shields, the Russian army provides the locals with all kinds of assistance and support.

Humanitarian corridors open daily from Kharkov and Mariupol to evacuate people from dangerous districts, but the Kiev regime demands that the “national battalions” in control of those areas do not release the civilians. Nevertheless, many are able to leave with the assistance of Russian, DPR and LPR servicemen. During the special military operation, the hotline of the Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine has received requests for assistance in evacuating 2.8 million people to Russia, including 16,000 foreign citizens and employees of UN and OSCE international missions. In total, 1.02 million people have been evacuated from Ukraine, the DPR and LPR, of which over 120,000 are citizens of third countries, including over 300 Chinese nationals. There are over 9,500 temporary accommodation facilities operating in Russian regions. They have space for rest and hot meals, and everything that may be necessary. Newly arrived refugees are provided with qualified medical and psychological assistance.

Russia is taking measures to ensure civilian navigation in the Black and Azov seas. A humanitarian corridor opens daily, a safe lane for ships. However, Ukraine continues to block foreign ships, creating a threat of shelling in its internal waters and territorial sea. Moreover, Ukrainian naval units have mined the shore, the ports and territorial waters. These explosive devices disconnect from their anchor lines and drift into the open sea, so they pose a serious danger to both the fleets and the port infrastructure of the Black Sea countries.

Question: Since the special military operation was launched in Ukraine, Western counties have adopted a large number of unprecedented sanctions against Moscow. How do you think these sanctions will affect Russia? What are the main countermeasures taken by Russia? Some say that a new Cold War has begun. How would you comment on that?

Sergey Lavrov: It is true that the special military operation was used by the collective West as a pretext to unleash numerous restrictions against Russia, as well as its legal entities and individuals. The United States, Great Britain, Canada and EU countries do not conceal that their goal is to strangle our economy by undermining its competitiveness and blocking Russia’s progressive development. At the same time, the Western ruling circles are not embarrassed by the fact that anti-Russian sanctions are already beginning to harm ordinary people in their own countries. I mean the declining economic trends in the United States and many European countries, including growing inflation and unemployment.

It is clear that there can be no excuse for this anti-Russian line and it has no future. As President Vladimir Putin said, Russia has withstood this unprecedented pressure. Now the situation is stabilising, though, of course, not all risks are behind us.

In any case, they will not succeed in weakening us. I am confident that we will restructure the economy and protect ourselves from our opponents’ possible illegitimate and hostile actions in the future. We will continue to give a fitting and adequate response to the imposed restrictions, guided by the goal of maintaining the stability of the Russian economy and its financial system, as well as the interests of domestic businesses and the entire nation. We will focus our efforts on de-dollarisation, de-offshorisation, import substitution, and promotion of technological independence. We will continue to adapt to external challenges and step up development programmes for promising and competitive industries.

During the period of turbulence, our retaliatory special economic measures needed to ensure the normal functioning of the Russian economy will be continued and expanded. As a responsible player on the international market, Russia intends to continue scrupulously fulfilling its obligations under international contracts on export deliveries of agricultural products, fertilisers, energy carriers and other critical products. We are deeply concerned about a possible food crisis provoked by the anti-Russian sanctions, and we are well aware how important the deliveries of essential goods, such as food, are for the socioeconomic development of Asian, African, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.

I will be brief as regards the second part of your question. Today we are not talking about a new “cold war,” but, as I said earlier, about the persistent desire to impose a US-centric model of the world order coming from Washington and its satellites, who imagine themselves to be “arbiters of humankind’s fate.” It has reached the point where the Western minority is trying to replace the UN-centric architecture and international law formed after World War II with their own “rule-based order.” These rules are written by Washington and its allies and then imposed on the international community as binding.

We must realise that the United States has been carrying out this destructive policy for several decades now. It is enough to recall NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, attacks on Iraq and Libya, attempts to destroy Syria, as well as the colour revolutions that Western capitals staged in a number of countries, including Ukraine. All of this came at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and resulted in chaos in various regions of the planet.

The West tries to crudely suppress those who carry out an independent course in their domestic and foreign policy. Not just Russia. We can see how bloc thinking is being imposed in the Asian-Pacific Region. We can recall the Indo-Pacific strategy promoted by the United States, which has a pronounced anti-China tendency. The US seeks to dictate the standards according to which Latin America should live, in the spirit of the outdated Monroe Doctrine. This explains many years of the illegal trade embargo on Cuba, sanctions against Venezuela, as well as attempts to undermine stability in Nicaragua and other countries. The pressure on Belarus continues in the same context. This list can go on.

It is clear that the collective West’s efforts to oppose the natural course of history and solve its problems at the expense of others are doomed. Today the world has several decision-making centres; it is multipolar. We can see how quickly Asian, African, and Latin American countries are developing. Everyone is getting a real freedom of choice, including where it comes to choosing their development models and participation in integration projects. Our special military operation in Ukraine also contributes to the process of freeing the world from the West’s neocolonial oppression heavily mixed with racism and a complex of exceptionalism.

The faster the West accepts the new geopolitical situation, the better it will be for the West itself and for the entire international community.

As President Xi Jinping said at the Boao Forum for Asia, “We need to uphold the principle of indivisible security, build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security.”

Question: Russian-Ukrainian talks have attracted close attention of the international community. What are the main obstacles to the talks today? How do you regard the prospects of a peace treaty between the two parties? What kind of bilateral relations does Russia intend to have with Ukraine in the future?

Sergey Lavrov: At present the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are holding discussions on the possible draft almost daily, via videoconference. This document should contain such elements of the post-conflict situation as permanent neutrality, the non-nuclear, non-bloc and demilitarised status of Ukraine, as well as guarantees of its security. The agenda of the talks also includes denazification, recognition of the new geopolitical reality, the lifting of sanctions and the status of the Russian language, among other things. Settling the situation in Ukraine will make a significant contribution to the de-escalation of the military and political tensions in Europe and the world in general. The establishment of an institution of guarantor states is envisaged as a possible option. First of all, they will be the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia and China. We share information on the progress in the talks with Chinese diplomats. We are grateful to Beijing and other BRICS partners for their balanced position on the Ukrainian issue.

We are in favour of continuing the talks, although the process is difficult.

You are right to ask about the obstacles. For example, they include the militant rhetoric and incendiary actions of Kiev’s Western patrons. They are actually encouraging Kiev to “fight to the last Ukrainian,” pumping the country with weapons and sending mercenaries there. Let me note that the Ukrainian security services staged a crude bloody provocation in Bucha with the help of the West, to complicate the negotiation process among other things.

I am confident that agreements can only be reached when Kiev starts to be guided by the interests of the Ukrainian people, and not the advisors from far away.

Speaking about Russian-Ukrainian relations, Russia is interested in a peaceful, free, neutral, prosperous and friendly Ukraine. Despite the current administration’s anti-Russian course, we remember the many centuries of all-embracing cultural, spiritual, economic and family ties between Russians and Ukrainians. We will definitely restore these ties.

May 2, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s oil revenues expected to soar

Samizdat | May 2, 2022

Russia will see its income from the oil sector rise sharply this year and reach more than $180 billion, despite production cuts related to international sanctions, suggests a report published by independent research house Rystad Energy on Monday.

Thanks to the rising oil prices, Russia’s tax revenues will be 45% higher than last year and a whopping 181% higher than in 2020, Rystad Energy says.

“Europe’s dependence on Russian energy has been a deliberate and decades-long and mutually beneficial relationship. In this early phase of sanctions and embargoes, Russia will benefit as higher prices mean tax revenues are significantly higher than in recent years.” says Daria Melnik, a senior analyst at Rystad Energy.

According to the firm, the initial issues Russia had with its oil exports when European customers started shunning its oil were quickly resolved and loadings began to recover in late March, supported by orders from China and India. Russian crude exports remained resilient in April.

The EU, the US and their allies imposed sanctions against Russia with the aim of starving the country of cash and forcing it to abandon its military operation in Ukraine. However, Europe’s high dependence on Russian oil and gas has meant that turning away from it has proven problematic. The EU has pledged to phase out Russian gas by 2030.

If the EU decides to further restrict energy imports from Russia and impose an oil embargo, something that’s reportedly being considered by the bloc, Russia will be forced to cut oil production further as it lacks storage capacity for extra crude volumes and may not be able to quickly redirect the unwanted cargoes, Rystad Energy explains. In the long-term, Russia’s crude output will continue to decline more steeply than was estimated before the Ukraine crisis.

May 2, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Enormous U.S. Military Spending, EU Dragged into Abyss of War against Russia.

By Manlio Dinucci | Global Research | May 1, 2022

President Biden has asked Congress for another 33 billion dollars to arm and train the Ukrainian forces, in addition to the 20 billion dollars already allocated and provided to Kiev: a total of over 50 billion dollars from 2014 for the war against Russia. At the same time, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met in Germany with representatives of more than 40 countries, including Italy, to plan additional arms shipments.

This results in enormous military spending of public money diverted from social spending. For example, the M777 howitzer supplied to Ukrainian forces can fire 7 Excalibur bullets per minute at 40 km. Each bullet costs $112,000. Therefore in one minute the howitzer shoots bullets costing the equivalent of 25 gross annual salaries (according to the Italian average).

The US and NATO are thus conducting a proxy war against Russia in Europe, which began with the 2014 coup d’état and the attack on the Russian populations of Ukraine. Dramatic evidence of this is the massacre in Odessa on May 2, 2014, carried out by the neo-Nazi forces – Pravi Sektor, Azov Battalion and others – that have since assumed power in Kiev.

The regime established in Ukraine, represented publicly by President Zelensky, has imposed a single party and a single television channel, shutting down 11 political parties and all other television channels; it has drawn up a proscription list of thousands of independent journalists and implemented a systematic campaign of torture and assassinations to eliminate all opposition.

Europe, through the European Union itself, is thus dragged into the abyss of the war against Russia, which the US and NATO want to make permanent. The price paid by European citizens is enormous: the boycott of Russian gas imports is causing a disastrous economic crisis. Hence the vital need to bring Italy and Europe out of the war.

This article was originally published in Italian on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The Aggressors Accuse Russia of ‘Blackmail’ for Defending its Currency, Energy Wealth, and Even Its Existential Security

Strategic Culture Foundation | April 29, 2022

The United States and its NATO and European Union allies have imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia that amount to economic warfare. This warfare has been going on, discernibly, since the CIA-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 on the back of allegations of Russian wrongdoing, for example, the alleged annexation of Crimea. It’s the logic of a poacher posing as the gamekeeper.

For eight years, the U.S.-led economic war against Russia has been pursued without relent. The self-professed “exceptional nation” presumes the privileged, exclusive use of economic terrorism against others who do not bend the knee. In hock to its Washington master, the European Union has imposed round after round of restrictions on trade with Russia in full compliance with American orders. The European compliance to self-inflict damage is astounding especially given that the U.S. economy is not as reliant on Russia as the EU’s and therefore has not been impacted as badly, at least not directly. But the presumed American “free lunch” is beginning to change, as our columnist Declan Hayes cogently surveyed this week.

Now that the proxy war against Russia has escalated into “Total War” – the historically sinister phrase used by France’s economy minister Bruno Le Maire – the full nefarious scope of the Western objective has become even more explicit. The U.S. and its NATO partners want to achieve the complete collapse of the Russian economy leading to regime change in Moscow. The eruption of violence in Ukraine following Russia’s military intervention on February 24 is but the opportunity to ramp up the U.S.-led war campaign against Russia.

The explicitly stated objective of cutting off Russia’s vital energy trade and the theft of the country’s foreign monetary reserves can only be interpreted as part of a wider imperial plan to crush the Russian nation, subjugate it and conquer its vast natural wealth.

Eight years of NATO-backed military aggression by the Neo-fascist Kiev regime against Russian-speaking populations has gone hand-in-hand with the installation of U.S. strategic weapons across Europe, including Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles in Germany and biological weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. The military threat to Russia has been in tandem with the relentless economic warfare from sanctions. In addition, there is the intransigence by the U.S. and its NATO partners to engage with Moscow in resolving security concerns through diplomacy. All of this culminated in the present war in Ukraine. The concerted and rapid imposition of further draconian sanctions on the Russian economy from the blockade on virtually its entire banking system as well as the extreme censorship of Russian international media – all of that indicates that the U.S. and its partners were already on a war footing and ready to escalate hostilities.

In this context, ominously, Ukraine is resembling Bosnia-Herzegovina and the pre-World War One assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as a fatal flashpoint.

The reckless flooding of weapons into Ukraine over recent weeks by the United States, NATO, and the European Union is also proof of a premeditated pent-up war agenda. This week, U.S. President Joe Biden is calling for his Congress to release $33 billion in “emergency aid” for Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression”. This represents a tenfold increase in the record military support that the Biden administration has already plowed into the Kiev regime. This is tantamount to stoking a powder-keg.

The ludicrous, bitter laugh about this is that when Russia seeks to defend itself and Russian-speaking people, then Moscow is accused of “aggression”.

The latest twist in this Western duplicity and rank hypocrisy comes with the accusations that Russia is using “blackmail” by warning it will cut off its prodigious gas supplies to Europe. Moscow has simply and reasonably demanded that all European importers must henceforth pay for their gas supplies in the Russian currency, the ruble, as opposed to dollars or euros. The move was prompted in part because the Western countries had seized Russia’s foreign reserves and have banned most Russian banks from the international payment system. In other words, it is they who have politicized their currencies as weapons. So what is Russia supposed to do? Give away its vast natural gas wealth for free? To countries that are waging an economic war and increasingly a military proxy war against it?

This week, Russia’s state-owned energy industry Gazprom announced it was suspending the supply of gas to Poland and Bulgaria. The two EU and NATO member states had bluntly refused to pay for their vital energy needs in Russian currency. In that case, Russia has the right to withhold the selling of its commodity.

The move to mandate payment for gas in ruble was an essential counter-measure that has succeeded in defending the Russian currency and economy from collapse. That collapse was being deliberately orchestrated by Western sanctions aimed at strangling Russia. And yet when Russia acts to defend its vital existential interests it is accused of using “blackmail”. One of the shrill voices was that of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The former German defense minister is a rabid Russophobe. Her logic of accusing Russia of wrongdoing is like a Third Reich minister lambasting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as an insolent insurrection.

Von der Leyen and her elite, unelected Brussels bureaucracy are calling for all EU members to refuse payments to Russia. They are effectively endorsing the theft of Russia’s wealth. Their arrogance is not surprising. But that arrogance is leading to rebellion across Europe from the economic damage and unbearable cost-of-living crisis hitting the majority of the EU’s 500 million population. Bulgarian and Polish workers are demanding their governments resume trade with Russia to prevent a crash to their livelihoods.

A further mockery in this absurd scenario is that anti-Russia hawks in the United States and Europe have been vociferously jeering for all energy and other trade with Russia to be cancelled. Of course, this mania is all about propping up U.S. capitalism, hegemony over Europe, the weapons industry, and the transatlantic feeding trough for effete European lackeys.

Then, when Russia cuts off the energy supplies because of non-payment, there is an uproar about Moscow “weaponizing trade”.

The Western accusations of economic blackmail are analogous to perverse claims of military blackmail. The criminally reckless aggression that the United States and its NATO partners have pursued against Russia has escalated into war in Ukraine. As a British government minister demonstrated this week, the NATO powers are now directing their proxy Kiev regime to launch attacks on Russian territory. Yet when Russia warns of the dangerous risks of world war veering into a nuclear conflagration, the Western powers and their dutiful media turn around and accuse Russia of using “nuclear blackmail”.

America and Europe’s dubious political “leadership” is exposing itself as delusional, duplicitous, and criminally insane. They are insanely willing to push the world into a catastrophic war. And when Russia stands up to their madness, it is accused of being a reprobate.

In a funny sort of way, such farcical Western leadership is good. For it only further exposes how utterly unhinged and corrupt the Western elite rulers are in the eyes of their increasingly restive, angry populations.

It is Western callous, sociopathic leaders who are the ones blackmailing their own citizens and indeed the rest of the world. Their ultimatum is: destroy Russia or we will destroy everything. This is the mindset of totalitarianism.

The Western public’s enemy is not Russia, and it’s not China nor Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, or some other designated foreign foe. All our enemy is the Western system of U.S.-led imperialism, its capitalist elite, and their political flunkies like Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The EU’s Digital Services Act is the next big threat to free speech

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 29, 2022

Authorities across the world continue to use the Ukrainian crisis as the backdrop against which to pass, in some cases unprecedented in the way they restrict or censor free speech, legislation regulating the digital industry.

These trends are nothing new, but the current massive global crisis presents an excellent excuse to introduce draconian measures with little or no scrutiny or opposition. And so, in the EU, the Digital Services Act just got “enriched” by a new law that will allow the bloc to declare a state of emergency – on the internet.

The law, referred to as a “crisis mechanism” is a part of the Act and got ushered into existence last Saturday.

A state of emergency normally gives governments extraordinary powers and suspends normal laws and regulation in order to preserve lives and property – something that has thus far been used in case of war or natural disaster, i.e., those events affecting a country’s physical security, economy, etc.

But now the 27 EU countries will be able to do the same in imposing extraordinary control on all key, public-facing elements of the web: social platforms, search engines, and e-commerce sites.

A good chunk of these three categories means this is not about the usual emergency measures in a time of crisis – they also concern freedom of speech, which is where things get very complicated. What critical voices who manage to find their way into corporate media seem to be admitting is legislation like this can bring harmful outcomes, but they’re also trying to normalize it.

Daphne Keller of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center has been quoted as telling Wired, “It looks like the war in Ukraine created a political opportunity for advocates of tighter restrictions to push their agenda. That’s pretty normal politics, if bad law.”

But many others, whose voices cannot these days be heard in the mainstream, will argue that this is also an example of “bad politics”: in Europe, that part of the world that has given birth to democracy and always strives, though does not always succeed, at implementing its tenets, sneakily passing extreme regulation almost literally “under cover of the night” (reports say that the vote on the new EU law took place “in the early hours of Saturday”) could highly likely backfire, down the road.

For the moment, the EU seems happy to explain its latest attempt at dipping its toe in the authoritarianism pond by saying that forcing tech companies to silence or completely censor information should be considered as not controversial, if a crisis is taking place, whether that concerns public security or – a health threat. Yes, the Covid panic, and its possible future (re)apparitions in European societies and economies, has also been factored in, when deciding to draft and then approve the new law.

With issues sensitive as this, every word counts – but the definition of what constitutes a “threat” big enough to invoke these massive new powers is predictably murky and bureaucratic.

Members of a European Parliament (EP) grouping called the European People’s Party (EPP), said only that when the EU Commission decides, “very large” platforms will have to “limit any urgent threat on their platforms.”

There’s more. “All measures under the crisis mechanism will be limited in time and accompanied by safeguards for fundamental rights,” European Commission spokesperson Johannes Bahrke promised.

These statements mean everything and nothing, and that’s exactly what they’re designed to do.

There’s other news revealing a bid to centralize power in the EU, now a very diffuse, and at times confused organization. Thus European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen will be given the power to enforce the new rules, bypassing a previous system where countries like Ireland, that have the most to lose if Big Tech is pushed out of Europe, had a voice.

It’s of interest to note that Big Tech has been playing along pretty well so far, making this latest legislative push somewhat unclear. Both during the Covid and Ukraine war events, these large corporations have been heeding political messages and catering to political needs, basically to a fault.

Reports suggest that now, the bureaucrats in Brussels may just want to make their jobs simpler. Instead of having to go to the sanctions regime and relying on Big Tech to obey – like they did when they blocked Russian media outlets like RT and Sputnik – they will now have a whole new law that enforces all this in one fell swoop.

This is happening as Big Tech – both the from the West, like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and from the East, like TikTok, are yet to make any comment.

And now it’s up to EU member countries to approve the law and allow the “crisis mechanism” to kick into gear.

April 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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