US to Impose Sanctions on Russia ‘Every Month or Two’ – Volker
Sputnik – 18.10.2018
Russia has faced several rounds of sanctions from the United States and the European Union over its alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections, and alleged involvement in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK city of Salisbury in early March.
US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker has stated that the Trump administration will impose sanctions on Russia “every month or two.”
“The second thing we’ve done is we’ve tried to increase the pressure we are putting on Russia in order to get them to negotiate toward a solution. That includes keeping sanctions in place in the United States and increasing those sanctions periodically over time, and that’s the track that we have been on during the course of the Trump administration, and we’ll continue to be on,” Volker said. “You’ll see additional sanctions come into play every month or two months or so as we’ve seen.”
Volker noted that the United States is “working very closely with European allies” on the issue of anti-Russian sanctions.
In August, a group of US senators introduced a bill envisaging the imposition of new sanctions against Moscow, including those targeting the country’s oil industry and transactions with Russian sovereign debt.
In recent years, Russia has repeatedly been accused of carrying out cyberattacks against other countries, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, and attempting, in particular, to influence the results of elections.
Moscow has repeatedly denied all the accusations also emphasizing its desire to see convincing evidence of Russian nationals’ involvement in the incidents.
Ukraine Military Sales
US officials will meet with their Ukrainian counterparts to discuss potential foreign military sales since Washington has already approved a new package of security assistance for Ukraine, US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker announced.
“We have, working through the Congress, a new package of foreign military financing, and we’ll be sitting down with Ukrainians to talk possibly about foreign military sales and what would make sense for them,” Volker said.
In September, President Donald Trump and the Congress boosted US military aid to Ukraine, allocating $250 million in security assistance to the country under the 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act.
Pro-Russia party wins Latvia elections
Press TV – October 7, 2018
Latvia’s pro-Russia Harmony Party has won the country’s general elections, and will have to negotiate with other parties to form a coalition government.
Harmony won the Saturday parliamentary elections with 19.91 percent of the votes, followed by KPV LV and New Conservative Party, with 14.06 percent with 13.6 percent, respectively.
Turnout in the elections was 54.59 percent, according to the election website.
The pro-European Union (EU), pro-NATO liberal For Development/For! Party came fourth with 12.04 percent.
The rightwing National Alliance gained 11.03 percent. The Greens and Farmers Union — which currently holds the posts of both president and prime minister — won 9.96 percent.
The New Unity took 6.67 percent as the last party crossing the five-percent threshold needed to enter parliament.
The current parliament will keep working until November while parties discuss a new coalition.
No Harmony — until now
Latvia’s political parties had until now always tried to form coalition governments without Harmony in the blend.
The party will now hold 24 seats in the 100-seat parliament. KPV LV and the New Conservatives will jointly hold 31 seats.
The top three parties can muster the 55 seats needed to form a coalition government.
“No coalition combination is possible without Harmony,” the party’s chairman Nils Ushakovs told local media.
US could use Navy for ‘blockade’ to hamper Russian energy exports – Interior Secretary
RT | September 30, 2018
The US could use its Navy to prevent Russia’s potential energy supplies to the Middle East, Internal Secretary Ryan Zinke said, Washington Examiner reports.
The blockade would actually mean an “act of war,” a Russian Senator fired back.
Zinke alleged that Russia’s engagement in Syria – notably, where it is operating at the invitation of the legitimate government – is a pretext to explore new energy markets.
“I believe the reason they are in the Middle East is they want to broker energy just like they do in eastern Europe, the southern belly of Europe,” he has reportedly said.
And, according to to the official, there are ways and means to tackle it. “The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open, and, if necessary, to blockade … to make sure that their energy does not go to market,” he said.
Zinke was addressing the attendees of the event hosted by the Consumer Energy Alliance, a non-profit group which styles itself as the “voice of the energy consumer” in the US.
He went on to compare Washington’s approaches to dealing with Russia and Iran, noting that they are effectively the same.
“The economic option on Iran and Russia is, more or less, leveraging and replacing fuels,” he said, while referring to Russia as a “one trick pony” with an economy dependent on fossil fuels.
Zinke’s statements provoked an angry response from Moscow, which equated a potential maritime blockade to an “act of war,” while calling the interior secretary’s assumptions “nonsense.”
“A US blockade of Russia would be equal to a declaration of war under international law,” Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov said, commenting on Zinke’s words. Russia does not currently export any energy to the Middle East, which itself is a major oil exporting region. The whole idea is an “absolute nonsense,” the Senator argued.
The comment from the US Interior Secretary come as the Trump administration has been on a mission to boost the export of its liquefied natural gas to Europe, replacing Russia, the far cheaper option for European consumers. To that effect, the Trump administration officials, including US President Donald Trump himself, try to persuade Germany to pull out of the “inappropriate” Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which according to Trump, made Berlin Moscow’s “captive.”
Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is set to double the existing pipeline capacity to 110 billion cubic meters, is a purely economic project. The Kremlin argues that Washington’s fervent opposition to the project is simply driven by economic reasons and is an example of unfair competition.
“I believe we share the view that energy cannot be a tool to exercise pressure and that consumers should be able to choose the suppliers,” Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said following a meeting with US Energy Secretary Rick Perry in Moscow in September.
The US stance has drawn a backlash from Germany, which has reaffirmed its commitment to the project.
Germany’s leading organization for industry, the Federation of German Industries (BDI), has called on the US to stay away from EU energy policy and the bilateral agreements between Berlin and Moscow.
“I have a big problem when a third state interferes in our energy supply,” Dieter Kempf, head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) said following a recent meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Volvo stops truck assembly in Iran due to US sanctions
RT | September 24, 2018
Swedish truckmaker Volvo has stopped assembling trucks in Iran because of Washington’s sanctions, spokesman for the company, Fredrik Ivarsson, told Reuters.
According to him, the group could no longer get paid for parts it shipped and had therefore decided not to operate in Iran.
“With all these sanctions and everything that the United States put (in place)… the bank system doesn’t work in Iran. We can’t get paid… So for now we don’t have any business (in Iran),” Ivarsson said.
Volvo was working with Saipa Diesel (part of Iran’s second-largest automaker Saipa) which was assembling the Swedish firm’s heavy-duty trucks from kits shipped to Iran. The company had plans to become Iran’s main export hub for the Gulf region and North Africa markets.
An unnamed commercial department manager at Saipa Diesel told the media that more than 3,500 Volvo trucks had been assembled in the year to May. However, none had been assembled in this financial year, he said. The original deal was for at least 5,000 trucks.
The manager confirmed that sanctions had prompted Volvo Trucks to terminate their partnership agreement.
“They have decided that due to the sanction on Iran, from (May) they couldn’t cooperate with us. We had some renovation planned in Iran for a new plant but they refused to work with us,” he said.
Volvo has joined a list of European companies such as Total, Adidas and Daimler, who have been forced to reconsider their investments in Iran. The firms said they will scale back or abandon all operations in Iran due to Washington’s sanctions.
Swedish truckmaker Scania, which is owned by Volkswagen (VW), said it had canceled all orders that it could not deliver by mid-August due to sanctions. French carmaker PSA Group began to suspend its joint venture activities in Iran in June.
Germany’s Daimler said it was closely monitoring any further developments, while Volkswagen rejected reports that it had decided against doing business in Iran. VW said its position had not changed.
Reactions to attack: How West sees it differently
Press TV – September 22, 2018
At least 25 people were killed and 60 others injured in Ahvaz on Saturday, when terrorists opened fire on people from behind a viewing stand at a military parade held to mark the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s.
The Western and Saudi media have refrained from terming the deadly attack in the Iranian city of Ahvaz a terrorist act despite the large number of civilian casualties in the incident.
The Saudi-backed al-Ahvaziya terror group claimed responsibility for the assault.
However, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) only used the word “attack” for the terrorist act.
Similarly, Reuters and others described the incident as an “attack” instead of a terror one whereas they have been quick to use “terrorist attack” for similar incidents that took place in Europe over the past few years.
Russia offers condolences
Russian President Vladimir Putin offered condolences to his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, after the brutal attack.
He also expressed Moscow’s readiness to boost joint efforts with Tehran in the fight against terrorism.
“This incident once again reminds us about the need to conduct an uncompromising war on terror in all its manifestations. I would like to confirm our readiness to further enhance cooperation with Iranian partners in countering this evil,” the Kremlin quoted Putin as saying.
Iraq deplores attack
Iraqi Interior Minister Qasim al-Araji condemned the incident, saying it once again demonstrated the hostility of terrorists and arrogant elements towards the Muslim nation of Iran.
He further stressed that such actions could not undermine the authority of the Iranian nation.
Egypt, Cyprus sign accord to build gas pipeline
MEMO | September 20, 2018
Egypt yesterday signed an agreement with Cyprus to construct a maritime pipeline between the two countries, which will transfer of natural gas from Cyprus to Egypt for re-export to different markets, especially the European Union (EU) countries.
The agreement was signed in a meeting held in Cyprus between the Egyptian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El-Molla, and the Cypriot minister of Energy, Industry, Tourism and Trades, Georgios Lakkotrypis.
The project, which was said to cost around $800 million, will involve building a pipeline to transfer natural gas from Cypriot Aphrodite field to Egypt’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities.
El-Molla said that the agreement contributes “to boosting the economic relations between Egypt and Cyprus and is considered as an important step in maximising the benefit of the discoveries of the Cypriot gas fields.”
“The Egyptian-Cypriot agreement is not only about the implementation of a maritime pipeline, but it will contribute positively to securing gas supplies to the EU,” he added.
The deal, El-Molla reiterated, will encourage further research exploration activities in the region and will contribute to further support joint cooperation in the field of oil and gas between the two countries.
Referring to another memorandum of understanding, which was signed between Egypt and the EU in the field of energy last April, the Egyptian minister stressed that it “will open up important prospects for the role that Egypt can play in the industry.”
On his part, Lakkotrypis said that the deal was “an important milestone, not only for Cyprus but also the entire eastern Mediterranean region,” adding that “it’s [the joint agreement] the first of its kind in Cyprus and Egypt’s shared region.”
Tehran Has Sovereign Right to Develop Missile Program – Moscow
Sputnik – 19.09.2018
MOSCOW – Moscow believes that the development of the Iranian missile program is Tehran’s sovereign right, and all the issues arising in this regard should be resolved without pressure, especially military, at the negotiating table, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Sputnik.
“We have always supported resolving any problems that arise in interstate relations and in the dialogue on acute issues through negotiations and through relevant agreements,” Ryabkov said on Wednesday.
The deputy foreign minister further stressed that the developments in the situation around the Iran nuclear deal and other issues that American counterparts put in the context of this deal, as well as Iran’s behavior, attracted Russia’s close attention.
Speaking to Sputnik reporter, Ryabkov also revealed that the meeting of the five mediators and Iran at the level of foreign ministers will take place on the sidelines of the high-level week of the UN General Assembly at the end of September.
“The meeting of the participants of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — those who stayed in the agreement — will be held at the ministerial level,” the official stated.
He also noted that the definite time is being coordinated, and the European External Action Service is expected to make a relevant announcement in the near future. However, Ryabkov assured that it was certain that the meeting would take place.
The JCPOA stipulates the gradual removal of the West’s sanctions against Iran in exchange for Tehran maintaining a peaceful nature of its nuclear program. However, US President Donald Trump announced in May the withdrawal of the United States from the JCPOA and the reinstating of the first round of sanctions in August.
Stakes Rise in Browder-Gate – EU Threatens Cyprus with Article 7
By Tom Luango | September 15, 2018
It’s been quite a week for Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty. First Hungary and now Cyprus. And all because of some guy named Bill Browder?
Despite numerous warnings and obstacles, Cyprus continues to assist Russia in investigating the finances of Bill Browder. This has resulted in letters of warning to Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades as well as lawsuits by Browder citing the investigation violates his human rights.
Like everything else in this world, just ask Browder.
Last fall Browder and 17 MEP’s launched a two-pronged assault on Cyprus to end their assisting Russia’s investigation into Browder. Browder with the lawsuit. The MEP’s with a letter of warning.
The lawsuit has failed, however. The Nicosia District Court handed down a ruling recently which allowed for Browder to sue for damages to his reputation but not putting an injunction on the investigation.
More than a month ago the Nicosia District Court said that the cooperation with Russia in its politically motivated probe would violate the human rights of Bill Browder and his associate Ivan Cherkasov and the two would have good prospects in claiming damages from the government. Still, the court rejected Browder’s application for an order preventing Cypriot authorities from cooperating with Russia in its proceedings against him on the grounds that any damage would not be irreparable.
And this is where this gets interesting.
Because now in light of this ruling the stakes have been raised. Four of those original 17 MEP’s, many of whom are on the infamous “Soros List” as being in the pay of Open Society Foundation, sent a more serious letter of warning to Anastasaides threatening Cyprus with censure via Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty for not upholding the European Union’s standards on human rights.
Now this is a dangerous escalation in service of an investigation into someone who, agree or not, Russia has a legitimate interest in pursuing. Dismissing all of Russia’s concerns about Browder as ‘politically motivated’ is pure grandstanding. It carries no weight of law and stinks of a far deeper and more serious corruption.
Because if Browder was as pure as the driven snow as he presents himself to the world then he would have no issue whatsoever in Cyprus opening up his books to Russia and put his question of guilt to rest once and for all.
The ruling from the court stated that Cypriot officials are not barred from helping Russia get to the bottom of Browder’s web of offshore accounts, all of which, according to Russian lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya, run through Cyprus.
“He [Browder] is afraid of the Russian probe that has conclusive evidence of his financial crimes and proof that his theory of Magnitsky’s death is an absolute fake. That’s why Browder is ready to stage any provocation,” Veselnitskaya said. She went on to say that the investor’s decision to intervene was particularly “influenced by the fact that the entire network of offshore companies that make up his organized criminal group is located on the territory of Cyprus.”
The incident that Veselnitskaya was referring to took place in late October 2017. At that time, 17 members of the European Parliament appealed to Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiades in an open letter, in which they called on him to stop assisting Russia in its investigation against Browder.
Remember, Veselnitskaya was the woman who met with Donald Trump Jr. during the 2016 campaign. She was adamant she had information that was pertinent to them. The Mueller probe and the media tried to spin that meeting as her giving Trump access to Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.
But what she was really trying to give them was the low-down on Browder, the Magnitsky Act and the whole rotten, sordid history of him, Edmund Safra of Republic National Bank and the raping of Russia by them and others in the 1990’s.
And to show Trump that the Magnitsky Act was built on a lie and the sanctions against Russia should be lifted because of this.
Some of this I covered in an earlier article.
The Real Browder Story
And this is the whole point. Browder’s story is fiction.
Magnitsky was his accountant and not his lawyer, who knew all about his dealings and could convict Browder of a raft of crimes far greater than the ones Russia already has in absentia.
Putin had no interest in having Magnitsky executed or beaten to death in prison. If anyone had an incentive to keep Magnitsky alive it was Vladimir Putin. If anyone had incentive to have Magnitsky die in prison it was Browder. And so, the whole story that Browder has woven, the myth around himself is so insane that it bears repeating over and over.
Browder’s story is fiction.
Because when you stop and put all the pieces together you realize a number of things and none of them are good.
First, Browder was deeply enmeshed in the plot to frame Yeltsin for stealing $7 billion in IMF money which created the conditions for bringing Putin to power.
Second, he, Mihail Khordokovsky and others have systematically lobbied Congress and the European Parliament to peddle this false story of the brave freedom fighter Magnitsky against the evil Putin to get revenge, in Khordokovsky’s case, on Putin for deposing him from power in Russia and stealing back the wealth Khordokovsky stole during the Yelstin years, namely Yukos.
And for Browder it was the culmination of years of work to destroy Russia from within and stay one step ahead of the hangman’s noose. His 2015 book Red Notice is a work of near fiction as outlined by Alex Krainer in his book The Grand Deception: The Truth About Bill Browder, The Magnitsky Act and Anti-Russia Sanctions.
And the Magnitsky Act was the way everyone interested who can prove this could be silenced through sanctions.
But, it’s bigger than that.
This was policy.
The Magnitsky Act is a lynchpin of American and European foreign policy to destroy Russia and subjugate the world.
It was enacted alongside other legislation to take back control of the political narrative of the world; rein in free speech on the internet by tying any activity not approved of by The Davos Crowd to be subject to sanctions on the nebulous basis of ‘human rights violations.’
The Magnitsky Act has weaponized virtue-signaling and, in my mind it was intentionally done to open up another path to protect the most vile and venal people in the world to arrogate power to themselves without consequence.
Today we stand on the brink of an open hot war between the U.S. and Russia because of the lies which have been stacked on top of each other in service of this monstrous piece of legislation.
With each day it and its follow-up, last year’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), are used as immense hammers to bring untold misery to millions around the world.
People like Browder are nothing by petty thieves. It is obvious to me he started out as a willing pawn because he was young, hungry and vaguely psychopathic. The deeper he got in it the more erratic his behavior became.
Browder is being protected by powerful people in the U.S. and EU not because he’s so important but because exposing him exposes them.
This is why another country is being threatened with the stripping of what few rights sovereign nations have within the EU, Cyprus, over his books.
Poland stood up for Hungary the other day over ideological reasons. No one seems ready to stand up to the conspiracy surrounding Browder, Khordokovsky and the Magnitsky Act.
But, if someone in power finally does, it could change everything we think we know about geopolitics.
When Social Networks Care About National Security
By Harry Bentham | OffGuardian | September 16, 2018
Controversies surrounding online fake news, having alarmed political activists in Britain and the US, are prompting social media companies to be more active in combating the alleged threat. For many people in opposition to the policies of US President Donald Trump and Britain’s exit from the EU, the internet is to blame for the situation because it illicitly influenced voters. As a result, increased policing of social networks to root out foreign spies and domestic dissidents seems necessary to them. One of the latest examples is Twitter’s permanent suspension of American conspiracy theorist entertainer Alex Jones.
The responsibility to police the social networks seems to have largely been placed, by pushy and concerned politicians, on the management of tech companies themselves. British MPs and US senators did this by summoning them to hearings and campaigning openly against the internet’s permissiveness on political content, making demands they should shut down dissident and foreign outlets because they have gone too far.
Although the most vocal of them are not actually in the incumbent government and therefore not responsible for national security responses, they are still lawmakers representing constituents and can threaten legislation to compel social media companies to change. Preferring instead to make the policing of social media posts look voluntary, they seem to have capably persuaded the management of the tech companies to enforce their views on national security.
Therefore, now, we are at an awkward point where transnational social networks must care about so-called national security – specifically the US’s national security, based on that country’s strange and self-obsessed drivel about being exceptional and better than others. What next?
Recently, we have seen police-like enforcement action against dissident users and outlets present on a variety of social media platforms and applications used by a probable majority of people in the UK and the US. This removal of controversial figures from online platforms is presented as not being censorship, but rather the enforcement of decent community guidelines by companies that have every right to withhold services. However, this argument is not very convincing. The political pressure has been immense. The results have not been targeted at bad social media behavior like spam and harassment, but against alternate political views on both the left and the right. If we look at the actions of the tech companies, they are not only encouraged by elements of the state but have made themselves into state-like actors by describing themselves as stopping foreign threats and extremism.
Brexit was the mistake of a misled public, perhaps. We are told so by influential media personalities – almost all of them – and the same narrative is presented when it comes to the election of Trump. We are encouraged to lean towards the same common solution to both of these mishaps, and it consists of mostly a crackdown online – especially on Twitter. We will be shutting down online accounts and channels belonging to the supporters of such causes as Trump and Brexit, after quickly and conveniently finding them guilty of being bots or possibly foreign. No attention is given to bad behavior as a whole.
For example, no enforcement action is used against pro-EU accounts or anti-Trump accounts, many of which self-identify as foreign or completely automated. Some even blatantly violate Twitter’s rules on inflated hashtag campaigns, doing things like using the hashtag #FBPE to get followers and retweets from pro-EU bots. Their own determination to trick users and violate the community guidelines is openly celebrated by them, so oblivious are these kinds of activists to their own hypocrisy.
So, in fact, what seems at first a principled argument against bad behavior is really a cliché so we can pretend there was some civilized reason for thuggishly silencing other points of view.
Much of the commentary by the Democratic Party, as with opponents of Brexit in the UK, focuses on national security and the need to silence or eliminate bad people and Russians. It is presented as war, using the language of military propaganda. Being in opposition, these democracy-loving people in the Democratic Party and other groups now presume it is the job of civil society – news networks like CNN and tech companies like Apple mainly – to not only take charge of national security themselves but also engage directly in censorship.
But censorship, the shutting down of opposing views and channels on grounds that they are treasonous, is not an exertion of soft power but hard power. It is a state-like activity, and the sole responsibility of states in all previous cases. By taking part in censorship without being part of the elected leadership of the state and the command structure it possesses to deal with national security threats, unelected elements in civil society are allowed to commit what would be a crime if they had been elected to do it. They engage in a coup-like activity, since, not being part of an elected government, they are nonetheless engaged in state-like activity and are trying to invasively police matters that only a heavily expanded state or dictatorship is ever expected to police.
What is presented above makes it justifiable to consider whether traditional models of state censorship would be more consistent with the rule of law and the importance of a democratic mandate than the current capricious enforcement by private companies. A party whose candidate failed to win power over the whole state, such as the Democrats, is not able to implement a program of state censorship at the moment they most want to. The reason this is the case is because of their very loss in the 2016 US election, which makes them not responsible for matters of national security and not tasked with securing the information space against threats, and yet they try. For them to seek routes around this failure, going to non-elected entities such as the tech companies in an attempt to dictate terms of censorship and actual national security policies via them, can be compared with a coup or a form of separatism. This is the creation of a second state, the seizure of infrastructure to interdict citizens. It is completely outside the bounds of normal political processes, which focus solely on democratic and valid elections as the only means of changing power.
Each point made in relation to the US Democrats here is equally true of influencers and leaders who seek to invalidate the results of the UK’s Brexit referendum, in large part because these are the same kind of civil society actors. In their attempts to portray the activity of the national government itself as treasonous and wrest control of the management of national security from the British government, entities with no democratic mandate are hopelessly creating a second state – one without elections – to take control over national security.
It is not political opposition but a second state because, for the first time ever, it wants not just persuasive soft power but hard power in the capability to suppress targets or eliminate their influence on command. Not only would this realization make these parties and their tech industry collaborators a state-like entity, but it could make such actors as the Democratic Party traitors at war with the electorate.
While this article doesn’t make such a claim, it is one Trump and his supporters have come close to making when the President accused unrelenting elements of the press of being “enemies of the people”, and could eventually create a national security crisis. The reason it would be a crisis is because both Trump and his critics will have a point. It is the role of activists and media to be adversarial, but if they are too aggressive and specifically driven to remove an elected head of state from power, their actions may be seen as the de facto overthrow of the republic to install themselves as political arbiters and impose a moral aristocracy.
Many leaders and followers in the political opposition in the US and UK are supportive of censorship, slithering around constitutional safeguards against state censorship. Whether in public hearings or behind closed doors, they have been going directly to tech companies and other parts of civil society to physically disrupt or silence speech they dislike. If they are such supporters of national security and censorship, and are really so concerned about traitors, they should not conspire. Rather, these people should approach the elected government with their concerns, to avoid being deemed traitors themselves.
They can achieve censorship by working to convince the elected government to change the law in relation to such practices and introduce programs of lawful censorship, as well as bodies to reliably and authoritatively identify traitors. This means national security can be pursued in a way at least consistent with electoral democracy, even if it erodes human rights further. Otherwise, we will continue to see electorally defeated parties and elements of civil society acting like terrorist hijackers determined to take power. They will be gaining state-like powers, harassing citizens who did not vote for them, carrying out targeted censorship, and enforcing their values over the corpse of the democratic state.
It should be concluded that none of the above is a desirable conversation to take part in and it is regrettable that it would need to be published. Ideally, neither state censorship nor corporate censorship should be tolerated. The internet should continue to be home to an anarchic culture at all costs, not a state-like one. However, as rhetoric becomes more warlike and paranoid and positions become irreconcilable, all spaces could become politically aligned and everyone’s freedom to communicate could catastrophically reduce. With constant political censorship, critical thinking will rewind a hundred years and the internet will talk like propaganda from 1914 when you try to search for the truth.
French Online Payment Service Provider HelloAsso Refuses to Close Accounts Belonging to BDS Activists
Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee / France (BNC) 09-12-18
HelloAsso, a French company that provides online payment services, has rejected pressure by Israel lobby groups to shut down the accounts of two French groups which support the BDS movement for Palestinian human rights. HelloAsso will continue to provide services to both Association France Palestine Solidarity (AFPS) and BDS-France.
HelloAsso publicized its decision in a tweet explaining that it supports the right of citizens to call for BDS as part of freedom of expression.
In 2016, the European Union stated:
“The EU stands firm in protecting freedom of expression and freedom of association in line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is applicable on EU Member States’ territory, including with regard to BDS actions carried out on this territory.”
Translation of HelloAsso tweet from French original:
[…] “HelloAsso is an apolitical platform that does not take any position regarding the claims of the BDS movement. HelloAsso nevertheless considers this movement as within the realm of free expression and not as discriminatory or antisemitic.
HelloAsso’s position is supported by the European Union, which has clearly stated it favours protecting freedom of expression and association, including the right to advocate for BDS .
Therefore, the HelloAsso account of AFPS (Association France Palestine Solidarity) will not be removed.
To all those who criticize us for hosting these organizations, we respond that the conflation that allows attacks on these organizations is dangerous because it conflates antisemitism, which we condemn without ambiguity, and criticism of the state of Israel, which is a political opinion. This freedom of expression is a fundamental right.
Since its creation, HelloAsso has striven to support freedom of association and to protect the right to freedom of speech because we are a platform that is committed to the model of [non-profit] association and at the same time apolitical, open and enriched by differences of opinion, a reflection of our society.”
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
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A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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