Biden behind Nord Stream sabotage – Russia’s top MP
RT | September 26, 2024
US President Joe Biden “was behind” the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz helped him tank his country’s economy in the aftermath, Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of the Russian State Duma, has claimed.
The senior legislator commented on Thursday on the second anniversary of the explosions, which disabled the undersea connectors built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany, noting the failure of European investigators to name the culprit. There have been accounts in the media suggesting possible scenarios, “which were occasionally laughable,” he said.
“Washington and Biden personally were behind the Nord Stream bombing. His interest was to cut Western Europe off from cheap Russian gas and force it to buy it from America at a price three times higher,” he said.
The German economy took a hit and is now in recession due to a loss of competitiveness, Volodin added, “which means that the people of Germany were punished instead of Washington, as Biden and Scholz took money out of their pockets.”
“You cannot pin this one on some ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ and civilian divers,” Volodin stressed.
On Tuesday, the German news outlet Der Spiegel published its latest retelling of the events of September 2022. It mostly repeats the story that a privately-funded operation masterminded by a now-disgraced Ukrainian intelligence officer conducted the sabotage with the blessing of former General Valery Zaluzhny. The Western press has been repeating similar versions of this story for months.
Spiegel claimed to have identified the divers, saying that most were civilians, but the group was led by a commando. The operation was first contemplated years before the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022, it stated.
Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that Biden had ordered the sabotage of Nord Stream in a February 2023 article. He said US military divers had secretly planted explosives to destroy the pipelines at a significant depth, using a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea as a cover. The White House has denied the accusations, but Russian officials have called the story plausible.
Prior to the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2, senior US officials, including Biden, had issued threats to destroy the Russian-German pipelines.
NATO Countries’ Silence After Nord Stream Attacks is Shocking – French Politician
Sputnik – 26.09.2024
The silence of NATO member countries after the destruction of the Russian Nord Stream export gas pipelines is shocking; it is sabotage of strategic infrastructure, French politician, leader of the Patriots party, Florian Philippot told Sputnik.
“What is the most shocking is the degree of subordination of NATO countries, which have not even declared that they were victims of this sabotage. They simply do not even talk about it: the French government has not discussed it at all,” Philippot said.
He said it is surprising that European countries have not even admitted that they suffered from sabotage of the gas pipelines.
The Nord Stream pipelines, built to deliver gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, were hit by explosions on September 26, 2022. Denmark, Germany and Norway have left Russia out of their investigations into the attack, prompting Moscow to launch its own probe on charges of international terrorism.
Russia has repeatedly requested data on the explosions from the European countries, but has never received it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
European Union morphs into NATO’s financial war machine
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 24, 2024
Two key posts – in foreign and defense policy – reveal the militarist and anti-Russia direction of the European Union.
Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission – which works as the executive branch of the European Union – announced her new team of commissioners for the next five years.
Taking over as foreign affairs minister for the 27-nation bloc is Kaja Kallas who is a staunch Russophobe and vigorous supporter of Ukraine. Kallas has called for more EU and NATO military funding for Ukraine to “defeat Russia” and the break up of the Russian Federation.
The former Estonian prime minister has led the movement to destroy Soviet Red Army monuments across the Baltic states. (This is while her investor husband continues to profit from doing business with Russia.)
Working closely alongside Kallas will be another rabid Russophobe, the former Lithuanian prime minister Andrius Kubilius, who is taking up a newly created EU post as defense commissioner. The creation of that post is an alarming sign of how the EU bloc has transitioned from a trade and political union to a military organization.
But what’s even more alarming is the assigning of such an anti-Russia hawk as Kubilius to oversee military policy.
At a time when relations between the EU and Russia have become so fraught with tensions, the European bloc is giving politicians from hostile Baltic states a driving seat to push relations even further towards conflict.
Indeed, the first announcement Kubilius made as the prospective new defense commissioner was that the European Union would likely be at war with Russia in the next six to eight years. That assessment is shared by Kaja Kallas.
Kubilius said the sole focus during his tenure is ramping up military spending by the EU nations to boost NATO and aid Ukraine. He said that he will be working closely with foreign policy chief Kallas to tap funds.
What this means is that the European Union is moving towards making it mandatory for national budgets to allocate more to military procurement. That’s a breakthrough for all the worst reasons.
Kubilius is reportedly aiming for a budget of €500 billion over the next five years to be spent on the military by the EU.
That increase would represent about half of the projected EU total budget.
His comments indicate the purpose of the massive redirection of finances – to boost NATO. Kubilius noted that “the European Union has instruments to get larger financing, which NATO doesn’t.”
That implies that under his formulation and compulsory directives from Brussels, the EU will make it mandatory for member states to spend more on the military.
NATO and the EU have overlapping membership with 23 members of the EU’s 27 also being part of the U.S.-led military alliance. Non-NATO members are Austria, Cyprus, Malta, and Ireland.
NATO states are expected to spend a minimum of 2 percent of their GDP on military. That amounts to about $380 billion for European members of NATO in 2024. That is a huge increase compared with what was spent by these members only a few years ago. But what the NATO planners want is more and more going forward. The problem is locking that expenditure in.
The trouble for NATO planners is the 2 percent figure is not mandatory. It is subject to national policy. While most members of NATO are hitting that target currently, there is no guarantee it will continue. Changes in national governments might result in spending slipping back to former levels of 1-1.5 percent of GDP as was the case before the proxy war in Ukraine blew up in 2022.
What the NATO hawks in the EU desire most is to lock in military spending year-on-year. NATO does not have the legal means to enforce such a commitment as mandatory on its members. But the EU can do it through its supranational powers as served by centralized directives from Brussels.
The Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have upped their military spending to nearly 3 percent of GDP when Kallas and Kubilius were in office.
Moreover, Kubilius has previously proposed that all EU members devote an extraordinary, additional 0.25 percent of their GDP to make mandatory military donations to Ukraine to “ensure victory over Russia”, amounting to €100 billion a year.
This is an astounding transformation of the European Union. The organization has its roots in the 1950s as a loose trade federation of Western European nations – principally France and the Federal Republic of Germany – which proclaimed that lessons of the Second World War had been learned and would never be repeated because of commitments to good neighborliness and commercial partnership. In its earlier incarnations, the European bloc sought out friendly relations with the Soviet Union, primarily with energy trade being a cornerstone of cooperation.
Since the supposed end of the Cold War in 1991, the EU has expanded in line with the expansion of NATO. Its powers have become evermore centralized and usurping national policy. A striking feature of both NATO and the EU is the hardening of Russophobic policy that has come with the leveraging of anti-Russia Baltic states. Historically, these states were virulent collaborators with Nazi Germany in its genocidal war against the Soviet Union. The Baltic states still harbor fascists who venerate the Third Reich. Hence, the destruction of Soviet-era war monuments and the rehabilitation of public displays commemorating Nazi collaborators.
NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is the continuation of Western imperialist designs on subjugating Russian territory that was previously pursued by Nazi Germany.
The European Union has subverted its earlier ideals of pacifism and cooperation to become part of NATO’s war machine. Crucially, what the EU brings to the war machine is legalized enforced funding, even for nations that are not part of NATO.
Added to that is the EU is being directed by people who drool about war with Russia: Von der Leyen, the former German defense minister and descendant of Nazi ideologues, is aided and abetted by Kaja Kallas and Andrius Kubilius who cannot think of Russia without fantasizing about its “defeat”.
The Nazi specter is resurrected in NATO and its EU financial wing.
Spain’s Disinfo Crackdown Censorship Trap, Sanchez Faces Backlash
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 23, 2024
Spain is yet another EU country that is coming up with legislative measures which officials say are necessary to combat “disinformation” both on social sites and in traditional media.
Such a plan, consisting of 31 points, has been approved by Spain’s Council of Ministers (the main government body), but the opposition is already rejecting it as a ploy to censor free speech.
“More transparency and accountability” is how Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez would like the measures, which will be debated in parliament, to be perceived.
The debate should be interesting, not least considering that the minority government has come up with the proposal supposedly to tackle disinformation – but in the wake of corruption allegations involving the prime minister’s wife.
The accusations leveled at Begona Gomez earlier in the year led to an inquiry, and now the government is determined to push new measures through the parliament that would stop “the spread of false news.”
And this in particular – and coincidentally? – applies to such news when they concern “public institutions and individuals.”
It seems pretty transparent what prompted all this, but that’s not what Sanchez says he has in mind when he talks about transparency: the prime minister frames the plan as needed to protect both accurate information, and democracy.
And not only that, but make that democracy “freer and cleaner” as the justice minister in the left-wing coalition government, Felix Bolanos, chose to put it. And he may or may not be the only one who knows what that is supposed to mean.
Meanwhile, the key opposition, right-wing People’s Party said it would vote against the proposal, as they believe the entire endeavor has to do with ushering in more censorship.
The plan which Bolanos stated should “restore confidence” in the media can also be read as putting some not-so-subtle pressure on them.
Amendments to the penal code are among the proposed provisions, but also a closer government look into media outlet’s finances – referred to as yet more transparency, this time around revenues.
Reports say that to achieve all this, the Spanish government wants to set up “a special commission to combat disinformation” and, speaking of revenues, another measure is to “restrict the operation of corporate advertising in the media.”
Czech opposition populist party wins in regional municipal elections, first-round senate vote
Reports are calling this a “wake-up call” for the ruling coalition
By Liz Heflin | Remix News | September 23, 2024
The opposition ANO party led by former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš won the weekend regional general assembly and first-round senate elections in the Czech Republic, the Czech Statistical Office announced on Sunday.
ANO won in 10 of the 13 regions, with 292 of the 685 regional self-government mandates, 114 more than in the last election four years ago. The governing coalition Civil Democratic Party (ODS) came in second with 106 mandates, an increase of seven.
The Mayors and Independents (STAN) party, also in the coalition government, came third with 73 representatives, plus another 20 for the Liberec Region movement within STAN. The government coalition Christian Democrat KDU-CSL finished in fourth place with 49 mandates, the opposition Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) came fifth with 32, followed by TOP 09 with 16 mandates.
The fifth member of the government coalition, the Pirate Party, on the other hand, will have only three representatives in the regional assembly, a loss of 94 seats versus the last election. The party leadership offered his resignation, and there are reports that the party will leave the government coalition as a result.
Babiš’ ANO movement also won in the first round of the Senate election, with 19 candidates advancing to the second round. Five seats were won outright, including two ANO candidates, while the remaining 22 seats at stake in Czechia’s 81-seat Senate will be decided in a second round of voting next week.
Babiš founded the Patriots for Europe grouping in the European Parliament last June with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) president, Herbert Kickl, with it fast becoming the third-largest group in the EP.
Orbán took to X to celebrate Babiš’ victory, with the two known as close allies when Babiš served as prime minister.
Babiš is known for his opposition to mass immigration and EU centralization. He is also skeptical about Czechia’s continued support for Ukraine.
Scramble to Tighten Europe’s Borders Shows Politicians are Playing ‘Catch Up’ With Public Concern
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 22.09.2024
After Germany instituted new checks at its borders to try and clamp down on the influx of refugees, the Dutch government and Hungary followed suit with announcements that they would seek an opt-out from the European Union’s migration policies.
The scramble to tighten border policies in some EU countries is a sign that politicians are desperately “trying to play catch up” with public concern, Dr. George Szamuely, a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute, told Sputnik.
Europe’s migrant crisis was imposed by the elites on their own population, he stressed. It was part of a “fateful alliance among the big corporations that want cheap labor and the kind of multicultural advocates who think that that’s a good thing for Europe to be more diverse,” Szamuely noted, stressing that this is “what’s causing this intense political feeling because people don’t really want it. This is something that the elites had desired.”
After Germany instituted sweeping checks at its borders and stronger deportation laws, the new Dutch government announced it was aiming to set in place “the strictest admission rules in the EU.” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said on Friday that the government would officially ask the European Commission for an opt-out on EU asylum and migration policies.
“We cannot continue to bear the large influx of migrants to our country. People are experiencing an asylum crisis,” Schoof said.
post by Hungarian Minister for EU Affairs János Bóka.
Echoing the same sentiments, Hungary is also going to request an opt-out from the European Union’s migration policies, Hungarian Minister for EU Affairs Janos Boka said in a post on X. As it is, Hungary has traditionally opted for a tougher migration policy than the rest of the bloc. During the 2015 European migrant crisis, Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees coming from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries torn apart by NATO warmongering.
Geert Wilders, the right-wing leader of the PVV (PfE) – the party that came out on top in the last national elections in the Netherlands – described the Dutch official request to opt out of EU migration policy as a ‘mini-Nexit’ in a nod to Brexit.
“Tens of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers come into Europe and then make their way into the most prosperous parts of Europe, becoming an additional huge burden on countries,” underscored George Szamuely.
Europe is witnessing “complete abuse of the asylum seeker scheme,” said the researcher, adding: “it’s a combination of these anxieties, and the rise of anti-immigrant populist parties that is leading to the stricter measures or, at least, demands for stricter measures throughout Europe.”
Regarding the opt-out of EU rules, the expert noted that such an outcome is very difficult to achieve, as it requires renegotiating the treaty and “that’s not something that’s easily doable, and could take a long time […] because EU rules are supposed to be binding on all member states.”
The issue of immigration is besetting one country after another, and results of elections in European countries are starkly reflecting this. The issue of unrestrained immigration helped Wilders and his populist right Freedom Party win a plurality of seats in the Netherlands’ House of Representatives last November. In Germany, the success of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in regional elections piled pressure on the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to tackle the migrant issue and close its borders, temporarily ending the Schengen-Visiting Zone.
US tech giant suspends huge German factory project
RT | September 19, 2024
US tech giant Intel is halting construction of two chip manufacturing plants in Germany as it struggles to counter shrinking sales and mounting losses, the company’s CEO Pat Gelsinger announced on Monday.
According to Gelsinger, the project in the city of Magdeburg in Saxony-Anhalt is expected to be delayed by around two years.
The company had planned to build two chip factories in Magdeburg worth over $33 billion, creating some 3,000 jobs as part of a larger investment plan for the EU. Intel had also signed an agreement with the German government for about $11 billion in state subsidies for the project, according to the DPA news agency.
The plans, however, have been put on hold as the US tech giant struggles to reduce losses and launched a cost-saving program earlier this year. Intel also said it is postponing a new factory in neighboring Poland.
“We must continue acting with urgency to create a more competitive cost structure and deliver the $10 billion in savings target we announced last month,” Gelsinger said in a letter to employees.
The German manufacturing site was due to become the largest chip-making facility supported under the European Union’s Chips Act which was passed last year. Intel’s decision to delay the project could deal a blow to EU plans of producing one-fifth of the world’s semiconductors by 2030.
“Without Intel in Magdeburg, Europe is lacking its flagship project,” Frank Bosenberg, the managing director of German industry group Silicon Saxony, told Bloomberg on Monday. “Neither a European market share of 20% or the desired technological sovereignty through semiconductor production below 10 nanometers seem realistically achievable by 2030,” he added.
The EU aimed to increase its global chip manufacturing share to 20% by the end of the decade, supported by over $44.5 billion in subsidies to attract semiconductor companies and reduce foreign dependency. Intel’s project in Germany was a key component of the strategy.
Following the announcement, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner called for subsidies earmarked for the Intel project to be repurposed to close a $13.3 billion federal budget gap projected for 2025.
Silence Speaks Volumes: Biden-Harris Admin Refuses To Comment on EU Censorship Threats
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 20, 2024
The Biden-Harris administration has reportedly sided with the EU against a major US social media company, X, and decided not to (at least publicly) contest the censorship threats against the platform.
This incident involves the now former EU Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton’s scandalous letter threatening X and owner Elon Musk ahead of his interview with President Trump.
Yet another emerging actor here is the US State Department, which, according to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, refused to publicly condemn those threats.
Breton, who was known as a strong proponent of censorship and clampdowns within the EU’s top bureaucracy, referred to the Digital Services Act (DSA) in his letter to Musk in early August, mere hours before Musk’s interview with Trump. Under the (opponents say, censorship) rules, X could have faced anything from big fines to the EU blocking the platform.
According to a report from Breitbart, Jordan revealed the State Department’s stance in this matter in a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, where he also claims that Bliken’s department has internal documents revealing communications relevant to Breton’s conduct on that occasion – but it has not submitted them to the Committee.
To remedy that situation, Jordan is now asking that Blinken makes sure “all documents and communications between or among State Department personnel referring or relating to Mr. Breton’s August 12, 2024 letter to Mr. Musk” are made available to the Committee by October 1.
Breton chose to, in a manner clearly biased against Trump, “anticipate” that there may be “incitement to violence, hate, and racism” during the conversation between Musk and the former president, now presidential candidate. And so X was asked to act “preemptively” in order to prevent such – hypothetical – content from spreading in the EU.
Breton’s behavior in this instance can be viewed as a case of “prebunking” – but it was done at a very high level and basically turned into an attempt to meddle in another country’s affairs by muzzling a US presidential candidate, and a US social platform.
However, this instance of meddling from abroad was ignored by the Biden-Harris White House. Jordan points out in his letter to Blinken that the State Department not only had not yet condemned Breton’s actions but also apparently had no intention to do so.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s silence in the face of Mr. Breton’s threats against free speech in the United States signals to the world that it does not support free speech online and is unwilling to protect American companies from foreign actors who seek to punish their adherence to First Amendment principles at home,” reads Jordan’s letter.
Washington’s new plan to control the Global South
By Anna Belkina | RT | September 20, 2024
When US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced a new “joint diplomatic campaign” to be implemented in concert with Canada and the UK last week, he clearly set out the initiative’s goal – “to rally allies and partners around the world to join us in addressing the threat posed by RT and other machinery of Russian disinformation and covert influence.”
Make no mistake: there is nothing diplomatic in this latest US effort to silence any voice that does not adhere to the Washington- and London-dictated narratives about the world.
The point of all news media is to inform. Any information has the potential to influence people. Thus, the collective West has set out to curtail all potential influence that is not theirs.
Helping hand
James Rubin, the coordinator for the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center, elaborated on how this plan would work in an interview with his ex-wife, Christiane Amanpour, on CNN.
“Other countries will make decisions for themselves,” of course, but the charitable, the always-benevolent, the never self-interested American hand will be “helping other governments come to their own decisions about how to treat” RT.
Ah, all those poor, hapless “other governments” that clearly cannot read, watch, think, and decide for themselves. They were just waiting for Big Brother to help them.
What Rubin was really doing was scapegoating RT – and by extension, all other independent voices in what is supposed to be a free and diverse global information space, reflecting a diverse, very complicated, multipolar world – for the increasingly diminishing buy-in of much of the world into Washington’s foreign policies, and propaganda campaigns that accompany them.
As Rubin admitted during his press conference, “one of the reasons […] why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be […] is because of the broad scope and reach of RT – where propaganda, disinformation, and lies are spread to millions if not billions of people around the world.”
Which countries refused to jump on board with the US and NATO support of the Kiev regime and the continuous escalation of the conflict? In reality, it is most of the world, including such geopolitical giants as India and China, who preferred to leave regional issues to the region in question.
Where official positions are concerned, it’s mostly NATO and its cohorts’ one billion vs our planet’s other seven. And while in those seven not everyone in the general population is of the same mind, neither is everyone in the US and other NATO countries.
Yet, due to the decades-long domination of the international information space by American and European mainstream news media (can you believe the BBC is over 100 years old?), many have been conditioned to think of the world – in the sense of who defines the global order, its rights and its wrongs – as the US and its vassal-state allies.
Notably, Mr Rubin specifically referred to Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa as regions where RT must be stopped. In other words, the so-called Global South. What’s got the US State Department so worried there?
RT’s success is Western media’s loss
Western military, political, and media establishments have been panicked over their loss of monopoly on global information in general, and about RT’s growing reach and influence in particular, for a while now. The self-proclaimed champions of free press, speech and thought cannot handle any of that free-thinkin’ they campaigned for.
To wit, have a scroll:
THE FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES, US: “Washington is struggling in the battle for hearts and minds in the ‘Global South’, where Russian propaganda outlets are often more popular than Western media.”
NEWSWEEK : “… it’s in the Global South that Russia has reaped the most significant rewards. The popularity of the Kremlin-controlled TV station Russia Today is high…”
POLITICO : “… many of the Kremlin-backed accounts – especially those from sanctioned media outlets like RT and Sputnik – have an oversized digital reach. Collectively, these companies boast millions of followers in Europe, Latin America and Africa…”
ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE, UK: “Latin America has witnessed a growth in Russian information efforts. Just like in the Middle East, Russia is operating a number of popular media channels, such as RT en Espanol, Sputnik Mundo and Sputnik Brasil, with substantial followings.”
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, US: “Russia’s […] media presence and influence [in Latin America] are unmatched… The reach of Russia’s technique has proven to be effective … Actualidad RT and Sputnik Mundo have become so mainstream in LAC, that in December 2022, RT Spanish won three prestigious Mexican journalism awards for their coverage of the war in Ukraine.”
WILSON CENTER, US: “Russia has successfully implemented long-term strategies to capture and influence intellectual elites in Latin America.”
ATLANTIC COUNCIL: “Russia has established a significant media and information footprint throughout the [Latin American] region with Russia Today and Sputnik News.”
EL MUNDO, SPAIN: “In addition to hybrid channels, [Russia] uses public companies such as Russia Today, whose propaganda is triumphing in Latin America – the Spanish-speaking version of RT […] is integrated into family daily life from Venezuela to Bolivia.”
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES, UK: “Egyptian media ran headlines and reports verbatim from RT Arabic, […] EU Reporter, an independent media outlet, reported that ‘Russian media outlets like RT Arabic and Sputnik are extremely popular, with RT Arabic becoming one of the most trafficked news websites in the country.’”
FOREIGN POLICY : “RT Arabic and Sputnik Arabic emerged as major sources of legitimate regional news in the Middle East.”
JOSEP BORRELL, HIGH REPRESENTATIVE OF THE EU FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND SECURITY POLICY: “When you go to some African countries and you see people supporting Putin, supporting what Putin is doing in Donbass, saying Putin has saved Donbass, now he will come to Africa and save us.”
ABC, SPAIN: “The Kremlin has tried to increase its influence in the media using Russia Today and Sputnik News. And there have also been collaboration agreements with local media, hiring African journalists and African activists, and at the same time generating news in Arabic, English or French to gain the support of the African population.”
Thank you, thank you very much.
Exporting censorship
Since RT’s launch in 2005, our journalists have brought to light countless stories and points of view disallowed in the Western mainstream. We have built a massive global audience and won the trust of viewers and readers worldwide.
But, despite Western elites’ declarations to the contrary, any voice that fails to fit into the rather cramped echo-chamber they have set up to accommodate supposedly free discourse, is inherently seen as illegitimate. Therefore, it must be silenced.
Which is why, having pushed out official RT channels from Western airwaves and digital platforms, they now want – nay, need and ought – to export their particular brand of censorship globally. They pledge to wage a coordinated campaign to force other nations into following their example, all so that the West can recover its information monopoly. They must “disrupt [RT] activities” everywhere. It is not enough for them to silo off their own people from inconvenient facts and alternative viewpoints. They have the megalomania and the audacity to say that no one in the world should hear them either.
This is especially so in the Global South countries – the ones that the US has gotten accustomed to patronizing, manipulating, dominating, undermining and overthrowing unsuitable-to-them regimes, and outright controlling in any way they could, over the last century.
Welcome to neocolonialism, Taylor’s 2024 Version.
Government folks have also already lined up Silicon Valley wunderkinds – the tech giants that are ever so eager to curry political favor in order to stay on the lax side of corporate regulation – in this endeavor. Meta, which blocked access to RT’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the EU in 2022, has overnight removed RT from its platforms – entirely and worldwide.
YouTube removed RT’s record-breaking channels everywhere that same year, but Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had already worked to “de-rank” RT and Sputnik in Google searches back in 2017.
After all, “RT is the top recommended source for news concerning Douma’s chemical weapons attack, Skripal poisoning and the Syrian White Helmets,” wrote the Atlantic Council in 2018. In 2019, “Bild conducted a test and entered the query ‘Ukraine’ into Google News. Again, among the top ten articles were three from RT Deutsch and Contra Magazin.” When people looked for news, they came to RT.
This could not stand.
A quick aside: despite all the claims by the Americans and the Brits about RT’s supposed attempts to “sow discord” in their societies, the network really should be lauded for bringing people together instead. In the US, where political bipartisanship is a near-extinct species, the Biden administration’s present-day efforts are fully endorsed by Fiona Hill, of Donald Trump’s National Security Council, who argued that “there has to be concerted action against RT.” In the UK, the recently elected Labor leadership has fully adopted their Tory predecessors’ anti-RT playbook.
Not going away
Let me be clear: RT is not going anywhere, in the West nor in the Global South. Our journalists will continue to do their jobs. We will continue to find ways to have our voice heard. Our audiences “of millions if not billions of people around the world” expect nothing less of us. This is our duty to the global community.
As for the global community, where does it stand, in the face of this new US-led campaign?
The Hindu, one of India’s newspapers of record, reported that already “US officials have spoken to [India’s] Ministry of External Affairs about joining their actions against what they call ‘Russian disinformation’, by revoking accreditations and designating [RT] journalists under the ‘Foreign Missions Act’. However, while the ministry has been silent on the issue, government officials said that the debate on sanctions is not relevant to India, while a former diplomat said that banning media organizations showed ‘double standards’ by Western countries… An official said that the matter ‘does not pertain’ to India and pointed out that India does not follow unilateral sanctions that are not approved by the United Nations.”
We are confident that the rest of the truly independent world will follow suit.
Anna Belkina is RT’s deputy editor in chief and head of communications, marketing and strategic development.
Greed, New Form of Religion, or Compliance Test: Why Are Britons Forced to Eat Bugs?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 13.09.2024
The UK’s National Alternative Protein Innovation Center (NAPIC) has received £15 million ($19.5 million) in British taxpayer money to bolster the alternative proteins sector in the country.
According to the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) website, cultured meat and insect-based proteins could soon be “a sustainable and nutritious part” of Britons’ diets.
Over the past few years, the British press has peddled the idea of embracing edible insects as an alternative to meat. They are rich in protein, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals, and have a lower environmental footprint, the media asserts to Britons.
“British firms strive to create a buzz around insect farming,” “Edible insects and lab-grown meat are on the menu,” “Would you eat insects if they were tastier?” and “Why it’s time to embrace edible insects?” UK headlines read, stressing that the global insect protein market is projected to reach $8 billion by 2030.
Where Did the Idea of Eating Insects Originate?
Entomophagy, or eating insects, has been actively promoted at the World Economic Forum (WEF), which insists that the consumption of insects “can offset climate change in many ways” and prevent the “impending food crisis,” as the world’s population is set to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050, with just 4% of arable land remaining available.
In 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) issued a report stating that around two billion people worldwide eat insects as part of their traditional diets.
In 2014, the Belgian food safety agency AFSCA approved 10 worm and cricket species for sale on the Belgian market, exploiting a loose interpretation of a 1997 EU law on “novel food.” The Netherlands, UK, Denmark, and Finland also authorized insects for consumption.
In 2017, the EU and UK permitted seven species of insect to be used as feeds in fish farms.
In January 2018, a European Parliament regulation concerning “novel foods,” including insects, came into force.
In May 2021, the EU officially approved the first insect, the yellow mealworm, as food for humans.
By 2023, four insects had been approved by the EU Commission: the yellow mealworm; the migratory locust); the house cricket; and the lesser mealworm. The EU food safety agency signaled at the time that another eight insects could be authorized soon.
The EC claims that “the environmental benefits of rearing insects for food are founded on the high feed conversion efficiency of insects, less greenhouse gas emissions, less use of water and arable lands, and the use of insect-based bioconversion as a marketable solution for reducing food waste.”
Who’s Driving the Bug Business?
EnviroFlight (US), Innovafeed (France), HEXAFLY (Ireland), Protix (Netherlands), Global Bugs (Thailand), Entomo Farms (Canada), and Ynsect (France) are named as key players in the market.
Europeans are believed to be the first who delved in the insect protein business, with French firm Ynsect, founded in 2011, and the Dutch producer of insect ingredients Protix, established in 2009.
Insect protein firms are attracting hefty investments from global foundations and food giants.
In 2017, Protix raised $50.5 million in equity and debt funding, marking the largest investment in the industry at the time.
The US rushed to catch on, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation granting $100,000 to All Things Bugs in 2012 to explore insect food production.
Two American food corporations, ADM and Cargill, invested a whopping $250 million in the French insect protein firm Innovafeed in September 2022. In 2023, the US food giant Tyson poured around $58 million into Protix.
According to some estimates, the edible insect market reached $3.8 billion in 2024, and is projected to amount to $9.04 billion by 2029.
The European market is seen as the largest, while South Asia is the fastest growing. Still, it pales in comparison with the fresh meat market, which amounted to $1.11 trillion as of 2024 and is set to expand further.
Insects Can Be Toxic, But Entomophagy Proponents Don’t Care
Scientists warn that the consumption of edible insects may result in allergic reactions, particularly in people with asthma, hay fever, or allergic skin rashes. Individuals with shellfish allergies – 2% of the worldwide population – are likely to suffer allergic reactions after consuming insects due to their chitin exoskeleton.
Edible insects, including those approved by the EU, are often infected with pathogens and parasites that pose a threat for humans and livestock, a 2019 study by researchers from the University of Warmia and Mazury, Poland, concluded.
What Does the Western Public Say?
Insects have never been part of Western societies’ diet. A 2023 YouGov survey showed that 18% of Americans would be willing to eat whole bugs, while 25% would agree to eat food made with insects.
High living standards still allow Westerners to consume animal protein. The edible insect protein business doesn’t offer high margins amid low consumer acceptance. Consumption of insects is fraught with risks of allergic reactions and parasitic infections.
Nonetheless, entomophagy is being rammed down their throats by the WEF, media, and Hollywood stars eating bugs on camera.
Then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2023 investigated the environmentalist push to eat “creepy crawlers” and suggested that it’s a “compliance test” similar to excessive COVID restrictions.
“Our politicians know that when they control the food, they control the people,” Dutch political activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek told the journalist, referring to EU environmental regulations which make traditional farming in the bloc unprofitable.
“It’s all a new religion… We have to be fearful and scared for COVID, for nitrogen, for carbon dioxide, for [Vladimir] Putin… and meanwhile these people who are in power, now they do whatever they want,” Dutch politician Wybren van Haga said.
Meanwhile, the research and propaganda relating to insect eating has already become a source of wealth for researchers, media companies, speakers, and international forums.
Russian ‘Force Majeure’ on Resource Exports Could Clobber Western Economies: Here’s Why
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 12.09.2024
President Putin has asked the government to consider restrictions on the export of strategic materials like nickel, titanium and uranium in response to unfriendly countries’ actions. Sputnik asked investment experts specializing in resource markets how these restrictions would impact the world economy. In short: it wouldn’t be pretty for the West.
Investors and market experts are buzzing over the Russian president’s instructions to Prime Minister Mishustin to whip up a report on measures Russia could take to limit the export of certain strategic minerals in response to Western sanctions policy, with uranium stocks enjoying an immediate price surge, and observers warning of shortages and hefty price increases for strategic metals if were to Moscow move forward with restrictions.
Along with nickel, titanium and uranium, Putin hinted that “other” resources may be affected, while emphasizing that restrictions should be considered so long as “this does not harm us.”
A resource superpower, Russia is endowed with substantial reserves of virtually all the primary commodities required to keep a modern economy functioning.
- The country possesses up to 12% of the world’s oil reserves, 32% of its natural gas, 8% of all untapped uranium, and 11% of the planet’s coal.
- Russia accounts for 25% of global iron reserves, 33% of nickel, 15% of zinc and titanium, 11% of tin, 10% of lead and rhodium, 8% of chromium, 7% of copper, 3% of cobalt, 2% of bauxite and about 1% of gallium, plus substantial amounts of beryllium, bismuth, and mercury. Russia also has about 12% of global potash (used in an array of areas, from agriculture and industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals).
- Up to 23% of the world’s gold, 12% of silver, up to a fifth of platinum group metals, and as much as 55% of diamonds are buried under Russia’s soil.
- Russia is also a potential world leader in the production of rare earth minerals (which are used in an array of modern high-tech devices, communications systems and advanced weaponry). While it only accounts for about 2% of rare earths production today, Russia has the second-largest reserves, constituting up to 28.7 million metric tons, and has committed to major investments in production and processing. Known rare earths possessed by Russia include samarium, europium, gadolinium, lanthanum, neodymium, promethium, and cerium.
World’s Dependence on Russian Resources
Russia’s detractors have often played up its resource exports as a sign of the country’s lagging development or low place in the global hierarchy of ‘developed vs. underdeveloped’ nations. However, the partial breakdown in ties with Western countries after 2022 showed that while Russia can definitely survive without Western technological and consumer goods, the same cannot be said of the West when it comes to Russian oil, gas, uranium, fertilizers and other materials.
The US, for instance, continues to rely on Russian uranium to fuel its nuclear power plants, vowing to wean itself off its dependency only by 2028. Europe, having largely cut itself off from Russia’s cheap and dependable pipeline-delivered natural gas, is currently buying record volumes of Russian LNG amid shortages of US and Gulf-sourced supplies. Furthermore, major Western agricultural producers including the US, Germany, France and Poland have carved out special exceptions for themselves to allow the continued purchase of Russia’s world-class nitrogen fertilizers, which are energy-intensive to produce.
“The pain” of a Russian freeze on strategic resource exports “would be felt by both the US and the EU, and all countries listed as ‘unfriendly’ to Russia, as they would have to source the required elements from third country suppliers, and that would entail an appreciable price increase for the commodity, and the extended supply chain costs that entails,” Paul Goncharoff, general director of consulting firm Goncharoff LCC, told Sputnik, commenting on Putin’s proposal.
“In this case, most if not all alternative suppliers would be countries listed as ‘friendly’ to Russia. This is a value-added benefit for those countries,” Goncharoff added.
“In every instance the end user pays this mandatory unlegislated tax bill in the form of even higher inflation,” Goncharoff said, hinting that the higher commodity prices would add to the pain already being experienced by producers and consumers in many Western countries as a consequence of the two-and-a-half-year-old hybrid war against Russia.
The US and Europe should expect a 15-20% bump in the costs of its strategic resource imports if Moscow moves ahead with the restrictions, especially since Russia is in a unique position globally in the production of high-quality nickel, aviation-grade titanium, and enriched uranium, says Maxim Khudalov, chief strategist at Vector X, a Moscow-based investment and brokerage firm.
For instance, while Russia today accounts for ‘only’ about 8% of total global nickel output, it accounts for about 20% of the production of “high-grade nickel used to produce high-quality stainless steel and nickel-containing alloys, which are needed for space, aviation and defense technologies,” Khudalov explained.
The same goes for high quality titanium, Khudalov said, pointing out Russia’s titanium giant VSMPO-AVISMA in Sverdlovsk region is “unique in the world” as far as its ability to produce vast amounts of aviation-grade titanium is concerned.
Finding a replacement supplier would take time, including running a gauntlet of quality and safety testing and recertification which could take years, and in the case of aviation-grade titanium be required to meet strict temperature, bending, pressure load and other requirements, the expert noted.
“In an airplane, you can’t just say ‘well, I don’t like this supplier of an element used for the wing, I’ll take it from somewhere else.’ Nothing of the kind. If you replace the element used in the wing, you change the airplane, and have to retest it, because it’s no longer safe for civilian use,” Khudalov explained. “The conclusion here is that it is very difficult to replace Russian supplies in the aviation industry, requiring significant recertification efforts.”
If Europe loses access to Russian aviation-grade titanium, that would add to Airbus’s production costs, affecting the aviation giant considerably in its high-stakes rivalry with Boeing.
Meanwhile, higher nickel costs would mean higher prices for virtually all of Europe’s high-tech products, from electronics to specialized mechanical engineering products, Khudalov said, emphasizing that “all of this will become more expensive in Europe and again allow their American ‘friends’ to grab the remainder of their markets.”
“In this sense, Europe is more vulnerable than the US, because the US, with all its capabilities, can afford to increase production costs, at least because their energy is cheap. Europe cannot afford any increase in production costs and will objectively lose,” Khudalov said.
In the case of enriched uranium, the situation is even more complex, according to Khudalov, because it is a restricted resource typically exported to a specific customer for a specific use, and planning for the replacement of suppliers is a long and painstaking process, since nuclear power plants can’t simply be turned on and off at will.
“The French are the second player after Russia in uranium enrichment, but Russian enrichment technology is head and shoulders above anyone else in the world, and our enrichment costs are 35-40% cheaper than anywhere in the world. So if a country is forced to switch to French-sourced material, it will have to pay a very hefty premium,” Khudalov emphasized.
In that sense, France could meet increased US demand over time, but not overnight, since it would have to ramp up its own enrichment capacity.
“The US themselves were planning on disconnecting from our uranium starting in 2028. Well, we could ‘help them’, so to speak, to implement their decision by making deliveries more regulated,” Khudalov suggested.
Short-Term Losses, Long-Term Win
Russia, over the short term, could lose a bit of its export revenues if resource exports to the West were suddenly curtailed, Khudalov noted.
“But on the other hand, what do we need export revenues for? Generally speaking, the whole point of international trade for us is to sell raw materials in exchange for technology. Western countries have refused to supply us with technology basically going back to 2014. Then the question is: why do we continue to supply them with strategic raw materials? To get some green pieces of paper which they then seize from us? This is a rather strange position. Therefore, here it is turning out that since they limit our access to technology, we are starting to limit their access to raw materials,” Khudalov said.
“It can’t be said that all these possible restrictions on the Americans and the Europeans are critical and would kill their industry. It won’t. But it will add very serious difficulties, first and foremost of an organizational nature, because they would have to look for a supplier of comparable quality, and of course, pay a price they’re not accustomed to paying. Because when a force majeure occurs on the market, and for them this would constitute a force majeure, any normal businessman will be obliged to take advantage of their status as an alternative supplier. Most of the alternative suppliers are located in China, with whom the Americans are in the process of kicking off a global trade war,” the observer stressed.
“The cherry on the cake is that the president’s proposal sounded like a proposal to limit the supply of strategic metals to unfriendly countries, but probably implies no restrictions for friendly countries. In that case, we would deliver a nice pass to China, whose entire industry is aimed at producing high-tech equipment, and would effectively get a 15-20% advantage on the cost of strategic materials over Western competitors,” benefiting Beijing in its push to put “pressure on Europe and the US in all markets” globally, Khudalov said.
Russia, meanwhile, will be able to reorient its strategic metals exports to other major alternative markets as well, including India, according to the expert.
EU could cut funding to German state of Thuringia if AfD forms government
The German state of Thuringia could get the Hungary treatment from the EU if the “wrong” government comes to power
Remix News – September 12, 2024
The EU could hit the German state of Thuringia with €1.5 billion in funding cuts if it exercises democracy and installs the wrong government led by the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The proposal to cut funding to the entire German state comes from the influential Jacques Delors Centre (JDC), a think tank at the Hertie School in Berlin, with a former EU commission advisor, Luise Quaritsch, suggesting cutting EU funding if the AfD comes to power.
She writes: “Right-wing populist and extreme parties are gaining support across Europe,” and the consequences of this can be seen “in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.”
In the case of Hungary and Poland, the EU has already been active using its “rule-of-law” instrument, which is a relatively new tool Brussels gained back in 2020. It has allowed Brussels to freeze billions of funding to Hungary in an attempt to oust Viktor Orbán’s government from power.
However, she argues that such a tool is not only suitable for states, but also for regions within nations, writing that Brussels can “use almost all of its instruments to take action against the authoritarian government of a federal state.”
She writes that the EU should cut all of Thuringia’s funds, totaling €1.5 billion, which it was supposed to receive from 2021 to 2027.
“This sum could have a serious impact on Thuringia’s regional and economic development and thus put a state government under pressure,” she writes.
These EU funds make up 15 percent of the state’s structural funds. She writes that the decision should still be taken carefully, but she argues that the EU has such power. She points out that such a tool has already been used in Poland against regions that had alleged “LGBT-free zones.”
Quaritsch recommends using Articles 258 and 260 TFEU to convict a state government that does not implement EU laws promptly or fails to uphold fundamental rights. However, such procedures can take years. She thus says that using the “conditionality mechanism,” which has also been used against Hungary and Poland, could help the EU immediately freeze funds.
AfD’s first-place finish in Thuringia and close second-place finish in Saxony have sent the political establishment in Berlin and Brussels into a meltdown, which has already led to a range of threats.
If the EU does decide to cut funding to Thuringia, such a move could also backfire. For one, Thuringia is an east German state, and many voters there may react with outrage if such an action is taken, including Christian Democratic (CDU) voters. Furthermore, Germany as a whole is a net contributor to the EU. While Thuringia is not as rich as some of the states in western Germany, voters and the state are not so dependent on EU largesse as other Eastern European nations.
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The Crusades – colliding narratives
Ashes of Pompeii | June 13, 2026
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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