Cancel Culture has taken over European politics
Do we really want to outlaw the views of a third of the electorate?
Ashes of Pompeii | July 6, 2026
A few days ago, I wrote about the “banal nonentities” that form the political elite in Europe. Across Europe, these leaders of traditional establishment parties are deeply unpopular, most with approval ratings below 20%. Their policy platforms have demonstrably failed, leaving them destined to lose upcoming elections to supposedly “far right” parties. The great irony of this moment is that the policy platforms of these newly minted extremists would have been considered standard center right orthodoxy merely twenty years ago. Today, however, the media and the cultural elite have redrawn the boundaries of acceptable discourse, declaring these once mainstream views completely beyond the pale. Unable to defeat these parties at the ballot box through popular appeal, the establishment has turned to lawfare.
For the past decade or two, Anglo academic and intellectual spheres have been suffocated by the relentless machinery of cancel culture. What began as a tool for social enforcement in universities and media has now metastasized, erupting into the mainstream political arena of continental Europe. This phenomenon represents a profound shift in how political power is maintained. Where elections were once won through the clash of policies and the appeal of personalities, the modern political landscape is defined by institutional exclusion. Context, truth, logic, and tradition have been rendered entirely irrelevant, replaced by a singular and overriding imperative that one must belong to the approved in club.
And please, the point is not if the ideas of Farage or AfD are wrong. I might not agree with much of their platform. The problem is the courts should not be where electoral politics are decided. But the European political mainstream, irrelevant whether (supposedly) left or right, has failed miserably and are desperate.
This weaponization of the legal system is now the primary mechanism of political cancel culture in Europe. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party which is poised to potentially win upcoming elections, is under intense investigation. He is accused of failing to declare financial support from his longtime assistant George Cottrell, including staff, security, and housing, before becoming a Member of Parliament. Furthermore, Farage faces scrutiny over an alleged undeclared gift of five million pounds from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harbourn, threatening him with sanctions and disqualification. Reform UK maintains that no rules were violated, but the investigation itself serves the purpose of clouding their campaign.
Similar tactics are being deployed across the continent with alarming coordination. In France, the leading opposition candidates Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella are under relentless legal attack. Le Pen has already been disqualified from the elections due to a criminal case, while Bardella faces his own fraud investigation. Even mainstream rivals are not safe, as Dominique de Villepin and Édouard Philippe have become targets of the financial prosecutor for alleged historical offenses. This prosecutor reports to the Ministry of Justice, headed by Gérald Darmanin of President Emmanuel Macron’s party. What a coincidence, as this legal machinery conveniently protects Gabriel Attal, the virtual successor to Macron, by eliminating his prominent rivals.
In Germany, the state is actively trying to prevent the Alternative for Germany party from participating in elections. They are attempting to deprive the party of funding, and the domestic intelligence service has prepared a report labelling them anticonstitutional. At the European level, investigators are conducting coordinated searches and raids across multiple countries against right wing groups in the European Parliament, accusing them of large scale financial fraud and the theft of EU subsidies.
Does anyone doubt whether all of the parties use similar financial schemes? Of course not. And this without even going into the case of VdL and Pfizer…
The net is cast even wider in the Baltic states, where legal cases are routinely launched against opposition figures who attempt to gain votes from the large Russian diaspora. Lithuanian politician Antanas Kandrotas, along with Latvian Stability party leader Alexei Roslikov and his colleague Igor Yudin, have all been targeted by authorities. In every instance, the legal mechanism is utilized not to uphold justice, but to neutralize political threats.
This erosion of democratic norms is further evidenced by the outright cancelling of presidential elections in Romania and the glaring irregularities witnessed in Moldova. When the ballot box cannot be controlled, the information space is heavily policed. There is increasing and aggressive censorship on social media platforms, which are now acting as willing deputies for state control. Just this week, the European Union has criminalized the sharing of RT content. This draconian measure applies regardless of whether the shared content is true or false, and it completely ignores the intent of the user. Even if a citizen shares a link simply to cite it as an example of propaganda, they are still committing a criminal offense. The state is no longer just controlling the narrative through positive reinforcement of its own views, but through the active criminalization of alternative information.
When we bring the story of academic cancel culture together with these political prosecutions and media blackouts, a clear and disturbing picture emerges. The underlying philosophy is identical. In the intellectual world, cancel culture dictates that context, objective truth, logical argument, and historical tradition do not matter if the speaker holds the wrong ideological views. The only thing that matters is moral and ideological conformity to the prevailing orthodoxy. This exact same logic has now captured the European state. The establishment knows it can no longer win the argument on the merits of policy. Instead, they rely on the administrative and legal apparatus to silence the opposition. The allegations of financial impropriety or anticonstitutionalism are merely the new vocabulary of cancellation. The goal is to delegitimize the opposition and bar them from the democratic process entirely.
Ultimately, this trajectory should be deeply troubling, even for those who do not agree with some or even all of the policies of these right wing parties. By utilizing lawfare, election cancellations, and information blackouts, the establishment is effectively outlawing the views of up to forty percent of the population. Outlawing ideas does not make them disappear. These people and their underlying grievances will not simply go away because a court has ruled against them or a media conglomerate has banned their preferred platforms. When a significant portion of the electorate is told that their voices are invalid and their political representatives are criminals, the social contract begins to fracture. Some will inevitably start to look for where to go outside the current political system entirely, seeking alternative structures that the current elites can no longer control.
I think we have been down that road before and none of us should want a return visit.
Uh oh. Canada’s in trouble!
corbettreport | July 3, 2026
To the surprise of no one who has been paying attention, Canada has passed a slew of dystopian legislation and handed down tyrannical Supreme Court rulings that further enslave the Canadian people. But even if you have been paying attention, you might not know the true extent of these new developments. Today James talks to independent Canadian journalist Dan Dicks about these latest moves and what they mean for Canadians and for people around the world.
SHOW NOTES AND COMMENTS: https://corbettreport.com/dan-dicks-o…
“Crimson Thread” apartheid project threatens family already displaced in north Jordan Valley
International Solidarity Movement | July 5, 2026
A family – displaced from Khirbet Samra in July 2025 after years of constant harassment by occupation forces and violent settler Uri Cohen – moved to Atouf, where they purchased a plot of land, determined to defy the occupation’s efforts to destroy their livelihood.
Having to leave their home of more than 20 years was both deeply traumatic and hugely expensive. The 40 dunams in Atouf cost half a million shekels (about 160,000 USD) and transportation costs for all their livestock and belongings were high. Atouf is a primarily agricultural area and there is little grazing land; the family is therefore forced to feed their animals grain and hay. They have also had to spend 150,000 shekels (50,000 USD) on building pens spacious enough to protect their sheep from the heat. The costs of maintaining their flock of 800 sheep have proved unsustainable, and the family has had no choice but to sell 300 of them.
In early December 2025, less than six months after their arrival in Atouf, the family received a demolition order: their property is situated on the path of “Crimson Thread”, a Zionist project that entails the construction of a 22 km long military road with an apartheid fence and a 20m wide “buffer zone” running along eitherside. Stretching from Ein Shibli to Tayasir, the barrier will cut through — and off from one another — the communities of Atouf, Tammoun and Yarza.
On the occupation’s plans, the road cuts almost exactly through the middle of the family property; 36 dunums have already been confiscated, and in January 2026 demolition orders were issued for the remaining 4 dunums, which include the family’s house and the sheep pens.
The family, together with other families and the Tubas municipality appealed the demolition orders, submitting the landowners’ deeds, and the barrier project was temporarily suspended. But then, on June 7, the Israeli court ruled that in 5 of the 7 areas impacted by the project the excavation work could continue (the two sections in which the suspension order still applies are those in the vicinity of Khirbet Yarza). Building demolitions (32 across five sections, 9 of which are residential structures) are still under discussion in court.
Since June 13, the family have had to endure the constant presence of soldiers and bulldozers on their property. The military have installed caravans and tents and dug a trench between the 36 confiscated dunums and the family’s home and pens. Now, the bulldozers are at work preparing for the construction of the barrier; the digging has destroyed the pipes that transport water to the family’s crops and livestock. When a family member went to get water from a well that is situated on the family’s land he was accused by the occupation forces of stealing water.
The family, together with the whole community of Atouf and all the Palestinian villages threatened by “Crimson Thread” are calling for international media and institutional attention in order to expose the brutality of this project which is intended to bisect the Jordan Valley, further isolating Palestinian communities from one another and dramatically worsening their conditions of life.
“during the day they carry out cutting, bulldozing, and destruction works, while at night they fire burning illumination flares over the area. These are dropped near the livestock shelters, creating constant fear, as we worry they might fall onto animal fodder or plastic greenhouses and set everything on fire.” – a family member
How Germany blew the EU’s chance for information freedom
By Rachel Marsden | RT | July 5, 2026
It’s not every day that an EU member state has the opportunity to push back in favor of freedom. At least not without elections. But a German court did have that chance – and promptly blew it on behalf of European citizens everywhere.
Back in 2022 when the Ukraine war was ramping up, the European Commission made an executive order banning Russian media broadcasting in the EU. Meaning that you couldn’t – and still can’t – access RT from within the EU, either on TV or on the web, without a VPN.
So some folks running a website in Saarbrucken, Germany, near the French border, started including some RT videos in their live feed. They reportedly did this exactly four times, back in 2023. Whoop-dee-do, right?
Wrong. This is the EUSSR we’re talking about, remember?
For this, the accused ended up facing criminal prosecution in Germany for promoting some EU-sanctioned RT Germany content. But it turns out that even the German court in Saarbrucken considering this case had doubts as to whether these guys and their website actually fit the definition of an “operator” under the EU sanction’s language that “prohibits any operator from broadcasting, enabling, facilitating or otherwise contributing to broadcast, any” Russian media content. So the German court referred the question to the European Court of Justice tasked with interpreting and clarifying EU regulations and laws.
Wrong question, guys. Why didn’t you start with asking the ECJ whether the regulation itself, made unilaterally by the EU’s unelected and unaccountable executive branch, is even valid at all under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and its Article 11 protecting freedom of expression? The fact that the question wasn’t put to the European court by the German one has spawned a judgment that’s stunning in its failure to interpret the application of any free speech restrictions narrowly enough to avoid the disproportionate limiting of free expression.
The German court missed the forest for the trees and got down into the weeds and all hung up on the comparatively minor issue of whether the website could be considered an “operator” without being a commercial entity. Which the European court then used as a prelude to launch a sweeping McCarthyist “reds under the bed”-style tirade.
“The term ‘disinformation’ is a translation of the Russian word ‘дезинформация’ (dezinformatsiya), coined in the early 1920s by the Soviet intelligence services. Joseph Stalin is credited as being the originator of that term, deliberately making it sound French in order to make it seem Western in origin and thereby enhance its credibility,” wrote the EU court, self-identifying as a history professor. How about if I take that as an open invitation to self-identify as a judge in my capacity as a final-year law student?
The ECJ ultimately ruled that commercialism is irrelevant when the website solicits donations, and had raised over €60,000 within a period of a year. It basically said, look, any commercial nature of the platform risks being a false dichotomy, because who’s to say that the sanctioned entities themselves wouldn’t be paying these independent outlets through donations to promote their banned content: ”Even though, for the purposes of classification as an ‘operator’, no economic activity or income generation is necessary, the context of an appeal for donations enabling such sums to be collected warrants some comment. The fact that some websites are financed by donations rather than by a registered commercial activity justifies increased vigilance as to their possible use as a tool for propaganda purposes, in particular in the case of State-sponsored disinformation campaigns,” the European court ruled. “That lack of clarity makes it more difficult to identify financial flows and, therefore, the actors likely to influence editorial policy or content. It thus creates an environment conducive to interference by external interests, including by third countries, which may intervene directly or indirectly in the production or broadcasting of content.”
Isn’t it the prosecution’s job to present actual evidence and proof of influence through the powerful state-backed legal instruments at its disposal? Shouldn’t the ECJ’s definition of “operator,” if it leans so heavily on the risk of foreign corruption, therefore hinge on whether actual collusion has first been established beyond any reasonable doubt? The ECJ sounds shockingly blasé here about the basic burden of proof for criminal conviction.
This court case had been stayed, or suspended, in Germany pending the ruling by this European Court of Justice. But now it’s free to convict these guys of promoting banned Russian content, under the pretext that just maybe they’re not-so-independent media that schemed on the down-low to distribute Russian media content – something that a lot of people have been doing all over social media of their own volition.
Ultimately, what the buzz around this case effectively does is put a chilling effect on that sharing, and it also risks making people self-censor out of fear of being dragged into court for a judicial proctology exam and having their lives potentially ruined in the press over accusations of Russian collusion. What if these guys (and others) just happen to agree with some of the views expressed on banned Russian media? Who’s going to protect their honestly-held views from establishment authoritarianism?
Hang on, here’s a volunteer for the task.
“Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones of democracy. And the EU protects what matters, including the right to receive independent, reliable information. The European Media Freedom Act helps keep journalists and sources safe, strengthens editorial independence and protects media organizations from undue interference or legal intimidation. Today, on World Press Freedom Day, we reaffirm our duty to support and protect journalists so they can do their work free from pressure, intimidation, or harm,” says unelected European Commission President and de facto Queen Ursula von der Leyen.
Oh, great. So the same people who censor speech are also its self-appointed defenders. Like an arsonist who goes running around setting fires but also works as a firefighter as their day job.
What’s clear from all this is that EU regulation may look precise on paper, but enforcement isn’t so straightforward. When even member state courts require an official interpretation, then how is the average person supposed to avoid running afoul of the law? The result ends up being less about what’s actually banned and more about what merely feels safe to touch. Not exactly the kind of vibe that one tends to aim for in a democracy.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
UK and Israel criticized for persecuting anti-genocide advocates
Protesters rally in London in support of Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah
Press TV – July 4, 2026
Protesters gathered outside the General Medical Council’s headquarters in London to slam the council’s attempt to silence those speaking out about the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Protesters describe the surgeon as one of the world’s leading war doctors and argue that the regulator’s actions amount to an attempt to silence those who speak publicly about the realities of war,
So we are demonstrating in front of the GMC, because the GMC has decided to appeal against the rulings of two of its own tribunals, so that the High Court would allow it to try me for a third time, in order to get the right political result that it wants.
The GMC is conducting a political campaign against, not just myself, but every doctor who’s spoken up against the genocide, in order to silence us, in the service of the genocidal project. – Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, British-Palestinian Surgeon
Doctors, campaigners, and members of the public traveled to attend the demonstration, asserting that the proceedings are about more than one individual, warning that they could have a chilling effect on healthcare professionals speaking about humanitarian crises.
Actually, there probably were a group of lawyers set up by the Israelis again to pursue highly charged politicized campaigns against professionals and workers in this country who stand against genocide.
So, really, it’s the action of how the British government and the Israelis who are trying to persecute and outlaw speech in support of Palestine in the heartland of Britain.
Actually, from, we know where our government, you know, the British government, the Labour government, and the Tory government before it have been complicit in genocide from bases like RAF Akrotiri, where Keir Starmer went and complimented the troops.
They run the genocide, they send the planes over Gaza, they stream that information live to the Israelis as they’re committing that genocide.
So our government is complicit, and what they’re doing with their complaints is they’re making it illegal for us to oppose it. – Ranjeet Brar, NHS Surgeon
Speakers at the rally urged the GMC to withdraw the appeal; assisting medical professionals should not face professional consequences for raising concerns over civilian suffering in conflict zones.
There’s a clear example here with Dr. Ghassan, where UK law is for Israel, that it is essentially standing up for the rights of a foreign entity, have been pressuring patients, pressuring people to make complaints against Dr. Abu-Sittah, and this is just one example of many other institutions, medical institutions like the Royal Colleges, and even the journals, the medical journals that we publish in, where they’ve been pressured from UK pro-Israel lobby groups to censor and to shut down any form of pro-Palestine activism.
So, I think we’re seeing this now very clearly with Dr. Ghassan, but the reality is it’s much more widespread than any of us think. – Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, British-Egyptian Pediatric Neurologist
Organizers say they will continue campaigning until the proceedings against Dr. Abu-Sittah come to an end, maintaining that doctors must be free to speak about humanitarian consequences of war without fear or professional repercussions.
Supporters gathered outside the General Medical Council in London to stand behind British Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, accusing the regulators of attempting to silence one of the world’s most prominent war doctors.
Demonstrators say the case is not simply about one medic, but the right of healthcare professionals to speak out on the atrocities of Gaza without professional retaliation.
Israeli spyware used against ex-Greek MEP during probe of illegal surveillance: Report
MEMO | July 3, 2026
Israeli spyware was used to hack the phone of a former Greek member of the European Parliament while he was serving on a committee investigating spyware abuses in Europe, according to a report by Citizen Lab published on Friday, Anadolu reports.
The University of Toronto-based research group said that forensic analysis found Stelios Kouloglou’s iPhone was successfully infected with Pegasus spyware, developed by Israeli company NSO Group, in October 2022 and again the next March.
Kouloglou, a journalist and former MEP, was at the time a substitute member of the European Parliament’s PEGA committee, which was established to investigate the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware in EU member states.
Citizen Lab said the infections took place during key periods of PEGA committee activity and could have exposed non-public information, confidential documents, and internal committee deliberations.
“The spyware would have likely captured non-public information about committee activities, possibly breaching EU parliamentary confidentiality and privilege frameworks,” the report said.
The first infection occurred as the committee was preparing hearings on spyware, working on its draft report, and planning fact-finding visits to Greece and the Greek Cypriot Administration. Citizen Lab said Kouloglou’s phone was hacked 10 days before those visits began.
The second infection took place while the committee was engaged in intense discussions over the final drafting process of its report. Kouloglou was in Brussels on March 6-7, 2023, during the period of the infection.
Kouloglou said he was shocked by the findings, describing it as “inconceivable” that a member of the parliamentary committee investigating spyware abuses had himself become a surveillance target, according to Greek news outlet Dnews.
He said he plans to pursue legal action against NSO Group and those responsible for infecting his device, while also raising the issue again through contacts in the European Parliament.
Citizen Lab said the attacks used a “zero-click” exploit, meaning the phone could be compromised without the user opening a link or taking any action.
The group said it was not attributing the attacks to any specific government and found no indication that the Greek government was responsible.
However, it said the first infection overlapped with a previously identified Pegasus campaign targeting Russian and Belarusian-speaking exiled journalists and activists in Europe, suggesting that a Pegasus customer authorized to operate in multiple European countries may have been behind the attack.
Citizen Lab warned that the case posed a serious threat to democratic institutions, saying the hacking could have exposed confidential exchanges among lawmakers and staff, including to parties under investigation by the committee itself.
Mother of Twins Who Died 8 Days After Vaccinations Charged With Murder
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 1, 2026
A 23-year-old mother charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her twin toddlers was set to be arraigned later today, after an Idaho grand jury indicted her late Monday, the Payette Police Department said in a press release.
Police arrested Andrea Shaw on Tuesday afternoon, more than a year after her two children — fraternal twins Dallas and Tyson Shaw — were found dead at their home in Payette on May 1, 2025, eight days after receiving their 18-month vaccines.
The Payette Police Department said the arrest follows “a lengthy and thorough investigation” and said it would have no further comment regarding evidence in the case. “Future information will be presented through the judicial process,” officials said.
Shaw alleges that her twins’ deaths were caused by the vaccines they received at a routine doctor’s appointment. She is one of five plaintiffs — along with two other mothers, two physicians and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) — in a lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
The lawsuit accuses the AAP of running a decades-long racketeering scheme to defraud American families about the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule.
Attorney Rick Jaffe, counsel of record for Shaw on two civil matters related to the deaths of her children, including the AAP lawsuit, said he believes “the criminal investigation and now the indictment is the natural consequence of the institutional vaccine program that refuses to admit vaccination carries any risk to infants.”
Jaffe, who is not involved in the criminal investigation, added, “Andrea’s indictment makes all the more urgent that the public health authorities acknowledge and address the harm that vaccination is causing to some infants, rather than just shifting the blame to the parent.”
Nurse Angela Wulbrecht, an advocate for people injured by vaccines and who has been supporting the Shaws, told The Defender she was “ shocked and heartbroken” to learn of Shaw’s arrest.
“Over the past year, I have had the privilege of walking alongside Andrea and her family after the unimaginable loss of her twin babies,” Wulbrecht said. “I have witnessed a mother’s profound grief, unwavering love for her children, and determination to seek answers.”
Andrea gave birth to a new baby, born three weeks prematurely, on June 25, Shaw’s attorney Joseph Filicetti told the local KTVB7 news station. Her husband is caring for the newborn while she is incarcerated.
Shaw told physician of family history of adverse vaccine reaction
The details of the Shaw twins’ story are laid out in court documents that are part of the lawsuit against the AAP. Andrea and her husband Nathaniel also shared their story in May 2025 with CHD.TV.
According to Andrea, she and her mother-in-law say they warned the twins’ pediatrician that there was a family history of adverse reactions to the flu shot.
However, the pediatrician dismissed these concerns. Nurses administered the flu vaccine along with hepatitis A and DTaP shots on April 23, 2025. The twins had previously received most routine childhood vaccinations, including their 1-year shots.
Within hours, Andrea said the toddlers became lethargic and ill. The next morning, their lips were blue, and they struggled to move. Andrea took the twins to the emergency room and told the doctor they had received three vaccines the day before.
The treating physician in the emergency room diagnosed them as suffering from “post-immunization reaction, initial encounter.”
The babies remained symptomatic over the days that followed. A week later, on the morning of May 1, Andrea found both children unresponsive. Police and paramedics were called, and investigators immediately focused on the parents. Andrea and Nathaniel told CHD.TV that the police immediately treated them as suspects.
“They said that it wasn’t medical and that they figured asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout and done it to my children,” Andrea said. The family filed a report with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
Rather than investigating Andrea’s vaccine concerns, the Payette Police Department opened an investigation into her.
Medical industry ignores vaccines as possible cause of SIDS
When infants under age 1 die suddenly, and a cause can’t be determined, the deaths are typically classified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). SIDS is the third leading cause of infant mortality in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Public health researchers developed a “triple-risk model” for explaining SIDS. That model says SIDS occurs when a baby has an unknown medical condition, is going through an important period of development where the body changes quickly, and encounters an outside stressor, such as sleeping on its stomach.
But even as the medical industry claims to remain puzzled about the cause of SIDS, numerous studies have reported a plausible association between vaccines and SIDS in peer-reviewed literature for decades.
Researchers theorize, for example, that some children with underdeveloped liver enzyme pathways may not be able to process excipients — inactive ingredients used as preservatives or to enhance a vaccine’s efficacy — which can lead to illness or death.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has also recognized links between vaccines and infant deaths. Last year the program compensated two families whose babies died. The program determined the deaths were vaccine-induced.
Due to concerns over the link between vaccines and SIDS, some states recently introduced legislation to require that medical examiners document recent immunizations on the death certificates of children who died from unknown causes.
How common is it to bring criminal charges against parents in infant deaths?
In recent years, some parents have been criminally charged when their infants die after sleeping on their stomachs.
Last year, two different sets of Pennsylvania parents were charged with felonies for placing their babies in unsafe sleeping positions. Attorney Daniel Nevins told Spotlight PA that such charges are rare and that the burden of proof on the prosecutors will be high.
But some parents have been convicted. In 2014, Virginia resident Candice Christa Semidey, age 25, was charged with murder after she swaddled her baby and put it to sleep on its stomach, The Washington Post reported. In that case, police did not think that she intended for the baby to die.
She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect. She was ordered to serve three years of probation to avoid a five-year prison term.
Some charges have also been brought against parents in the deaths of infants sleeping with Boppy pillows. There have also been several cases of parents charged for sleeping in the same bed as their child.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
EU court backs criminal prosecution for sharing RT videos
RT | July 2, 2026
The EU’s top court has ruled that private individuals can face criminal prosecution for posting RT videos on public websites, widening the bloc’s crackdown on Russian media.
The Court of Justice of the European Union issued the ruling on Thursday in a case from Germany, where three people are being prosecuted for publishing RT DE videos on a freely accessible website.
The site did not charge readers and was financed only through voluntary donations. The CJEU, however, said that made no difference and ruled that all persons who are “directly or indirectly” responsible for making banned content available to the public can be treated as “operators” under EU sanctions rules.
The judges argued it was irrelevant if the individuals were running a business, how long the content was available, or how widely it was spread.
Under the German law cited in the ruling, violations of EU sanctions-based media bans can carry up to five years in prison.
The ruling effectively pushes the EU ban on RT beyond broadcasters, platforms or media companies, allowing for the criminal prosecution of any individuals accused of making RT content publicly available online.
The EU banned RT and Sputnik, among other Russian media outlets, after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. Brussels said the sanctions would remain in place until the end of the Ukraine conflict and after Moscow ceases to conduct “disinformation and information manipulation actions against the EU.”
The measures were followed by platform blocks, app-store removals, banking restrictions, and personal sanctions against media figures and journalists accused of working with Russian outlets.
Germany had targeted RT even before the bloc-wide ban, with RT DE facing licensing pressure, platform bans, banking problems and regulatory action.
RT has vehemently condemned the restrictions and rejected the EU’s accusations, stressing that the bloc has consistently failed to point to a “a single example, a single grain of evidence” of false reporting.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned the restrictions as censorship and an information war against Russia, accusing EU governments of using the Ukraine conflict as a pretext to silence dissent, suppress Russian-language media, and intimidate journalists who challenge the mainstream Western narrative.
Monsters playing victims: Danny Danon’s twisted war on the truth
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 2, 2026
Whether Israelis will ever comprehend the irreparable damage inflicted upon their country’s reputation by their UN Ambassador, Danny Danon, is a moot point. The damage Israel has done to itself through its barbaric practices in occupied Palestine is simply impossible to overcome.
Danon, however, utilises a peculiar approach to defending Israel within international institutions: he relies on bullying, intimidation, and an overt attempt to silence anyone who dares to challenge the official Israeli narrative—particularly women leaders.
Yet, what makes his behaviour most outrageous is his deployment of these abrasive tactics to suppress an issue that demands the utmost sensitivity: the systemic use of sexual violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians.
The confrontation took place during a UN General Assembly session convened to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Senior UN officials were presenting harrowing findings documenting sexual violence against Palestinian detainees.
True to form, Danon refused to engage with the substance of the reports. For Israeli diplomacy, the enemy is never merely the armed adversary; it is the judge, the independent human rights observer, and the UN investigator whose sole mandate is to document violations of international law.
The immediate target of Danon’s wrath was Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Instead of reflecting on the grim findings, Danon demanded Patten’s resignation. He accused her and the broader international community of harbouring an “obsession” with targeting Israel.
When Vanessa Frazier, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, attempted to intervene on a point of order per established protocol, Danon unleashed a vitriolic verbal assault. Refusing to yield, he shouted over her, ordering her to “be quiet” and drowning out the chamber with his outbursts. “Shame on you. You are part of this obsession,” Danon bellowed.
While such unruly behaviour should have resulted in Danon’s immediate removal from the chamber, the diplomatic asymmetry of the UN prevailed. It was Frazier who found herself trying to de-escalate, politely clarifying that her procedural request was “not personal.” Danon shot back with typical defiance: “You will not be allowed to bully us.”
Herein lies the supreme irony of Israel’s diplomatic relationship with the UN and international law. Israel stands as one of the most egregious, serial violators of international law in modern history—a decades-long pattern of behaviour left unpunished by Western vetoes, which ultimately emboldened it to carry out an ongoing genocide in Gaza. Yet, Israeli officials persistently claim the mantle of the ultimate victim, alleging they are the targets of antisemitism, unfair bias, and now, “bullying” by the very institutions they defy.
But the mountain of evidence cannot be shouted away. According to an extensive report issued by Patten’s office, there are verified patterns of systemic abuse, sexual degradation, and psychological torture weaponised against Palestinian men, women, and children in Israeli detention camps like Sde Teiman.
The weight of this evidence reached such an undeniable threshold that the UN Secretary-General’s office formally added Israel to the global ‘List of Shame’—the blacklist of states committing grave violations against children in armed conflict.
None of this exposure is enough to convince Danon or the broader Israeli political establishment that Israel does not possess a sovereign right to violate international law. In their view, merely pointing out these crimes constitutes an act of aggression.
This systemic denial extends to every facet of the conflict. A comprehensive UN investigation recently concluded that Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza as a core component of its military campaign.
The numbers are staggering: Between 7 October 2023, and 7 October 2025, an estimated 20,179 Palestinian children were killed—about 30 percent of all Palestinian deaths.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” stated commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar, noting that Israeli authorities have systematically continued to commit the crime of genocide.
While these findings provide another layer of ironclad legal proof regarding genocidal intent, the true significance of the report lies in its exposure of the rationale behind targeting youth. Typically, the disproportionate slaughter of children and women is dismissed by Western apologists as “collateral damage”. The UN inquiry shattered this defense, offering a far more consequential conclusion: the targeting of Gaza’s children is part of a calculated strategy to destroy the biological continuity and future existence of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
As Muralidhar bluntly summarized: “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist.”
It remains a profound disappointment that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice—often swift to indict war crimes committed elsewhere—continue to move at a glacial pace regarding Israel.
Tragically, the catastrophe continues unabated because there is still no meaningful international mechanism willing to enforce sanctions or employ genuine pressure to halt it.
This is precisely why Danny Danon wants the world to be quiet. His outbursts are not merely directed at UN diplomats; they are directed at global civil society, ordinary citizens, and anyone refusing to look away. Israel demands absolute silence while Palestinians are starved, raped, and murdered. According to its twisted logic, committing these atrocities is an inherent right, and objecting to them is an act of malice.
If this logic is allowed to prevail, it becomes the blueprint for every future aggressor who wishes to kill, rape, and starve a population for geopolitical gain. Palestinians and Lebanese are already forced to inhabit this dystopian reality. Our collective responsibility is clear: we must refuse to be quiet. We must speak out, ensuring our voices drown out the shouts of Danon and his peers, so that murder and systemic violence are never normalised as tools of military necessity.
Does the Pentagon even know who its boat strikes are killing?
By Adam Isacson | Responsible Statecraft | July 1, 2026
The numbers are stomach-turning. In less than 10 months, U.S. forces acting on orders from the Trump administration have killed 215 people in 63 aerial attacks on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific.
Since the first attack on September 2, the Trump administration has told us that they are killing drug traffickers. But drug trafficking, especially being a low-level courier, is not a crime punishable by the death penalty, and, even if it were, the U.S. legal system assumes innocence and guarantees a day in court. Skipping that step makes this murder under U.S. law: the equivalent of a cop shooting a fleeing suspect in the back.
The administration is attempting to get around this by claiming that every one of the dead is a “narco-terrorist,” a member or “affiliate” of a profit-seeking criminal group recently added, with no outside review, to a secret Defense Department list of “Designated Terror Organizations,” or DTOs. Because the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” with the DTOs, a secret Justice Department memo argues, our military is permitted to kill them on sight, even with no self-defense justification.
Yet the administration has still not presented any evidence that a bombed vessel was even carrying drugs, much less that its deceased crew was affiliated with a criminal or “designated terrorist” organization.
What we know so far indicates that the U.S. military is being used to assassinate unknown individuals based on alarmingly flimsy evidence. And the targeting criteria are quite loose.
On the rare occasions when crew members have been recovered, “Military briefers have admitted to members of Congress that they cannot satisfy the evidentiary burden necessary to hold or prosecute survivors of the boat strikes,” reported the Intercept’s Nick Turse, who has covered the boat strikes extensively. Three survivors have been recovered alive; all have been let go without charges.
Questioning Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a hearing earlier this month, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) revealed that those carrying out boat-strike targeting are using three criteria that Kaine was not authorized to disclose publicly. He could disclose, however, that “evidence of narcotics on the boat” was remarkably not one of the three criteria.
In fact, the U.S. military usually doesn’t even know the identities of the people on the boats. The Washington Post reported that the targeting instructions in the boat-strike campaign’s August 5 Defense Department Execute Order (EXORD) “do not require positive identification of any individual but rather ‘reasonable certainty’ that adult males are members of, or affiliated with,” a DTO.
A former U.S. official who had read the EXORD told the Post, “The campaign may be killing individuals who in some cases have a tenuous link to any organized drug-running operation.” That official added, “When you define ‘DTO’ and ‘affiliate’ so loosely and you’re attacking boats, (the guidelines are) basically meaningless.”
The term “affiliate,” which the Trump administration is using to end lives on the open ocean, is especially squishy. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told the New Republic’s Greg Sargent that, in a briefing with Pentagon officials, “They did not in any way, shape, manner, or form explain what the ceiling and floor are for ‘affiliated.’” People who received a classified briefing interviewed by the Intercept “said that they were under the impression that little more than a conversation with a DTO member might confer ‘affiliate’ status.”
Vague claims of “affiliation” or behavioral patterns introduce confirmation bias and guesswork into a lethal process. This vastly increases the probability that the boat strikes are killing people who have committed no crime at all.
“Some people who are familiar with boat movements” along the Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela told the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism that “it is common for the same boats that carry drugs on the outward journey to bring passengers back. The capitanes, as the boat operators are known, take whatever work they can get.”
The Intercept raised the possibility, acknowledged by a senior military officer, that some of those killed in the first strike on September 2 may have been migrants or human trafficking victims. That boat had 11 people aboard, a strangely large number for a short-hop drug delivery of less than 100 miles between Venezuela and Trinidad.
Evidence points to some of those killed in boat strikes being fishermen plying their trade. While residents of poor coastal fishing communities may “take occasional trafficking jobs to get by,” which blurs their identities, the likelihood of dying in a strike is scaring people away from getting in boats simply to fish, the New York Times reported from coastal Colombia and Ecuador. “Residents described entire communities abandoning fishing because the small ‘lanchas,’ or speedboats, used by traffickers and fishers are often indistinguishable.”
In Santa Marta, Colombia, the family of fisherman Alejandro Carranza, killed in a September 15 strike, insists that he was not involved in the drug trade. “If he was some kind of narcoterrorist,” the mother of three of Mr. Carranza’s children asked New York Times reporters, “then why are we living in misery instead of a mansion?”
Two of those killed in an October 14, 2025 strike were Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, both from the village of Las Cuevas, Trinidad. Their families are suing the United States for damages under the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute. The complaint in Burnley v. United States argues that both men had been in Venezuela for months working on farms and, in their final communications, told their families that they had obtained passage by boat home to Trinidad.
In Sucre, Venezuela, where 90% of the population lacks basic food security, some of the dead were fishermen or taxi drivers who agreed to crew a boat that shipped drugs to Trinidad in exchange for a few hundred dollars. Some, like a “beloved” indoor soccer player, may simply have been aboard for the ride.
To all the concerns about the quality and reliability of intelligence used to target people for lethal boat strikes, we must add recent cases elsewhere pointing to U.S. reliance on faulty intelligence, or even just hunches. In March 2025, the Department of Homeland Security rendered 252 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s feared Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, alleging that they were all “terrorist” group members, an assertion that proved shockingly wrong, according to subsequent investigations. The New York Times revealed that an early March raid on an alleged DTO encampment in northern Ecuador, planned jointly by U.S. and Ecuadorian forces, in fact targeted a dairy farm. A March bombing in Iran that killed students at a school for girls is a well-known recent example elsewhere.
If even a few of the boat-strike victims are just fishermen, passengers, or low-level couriers with no relationship to big criminal syndicates, the Trump administration’s justification for the strikes simply cannot be sustained. It would confirm that this justification rests on a very rickety foundation of questionable intelligence, which should expose many in the chain of command to national and international criminal or civil liability.
The boat strikes need to stop immediately, and its architects and willing implementers must be investigated and held accountable at the earliest opportunity.
Adam Isacson has worked on defense, security, and peacebuilding in Latin America since 1994. He now directs WOLA’s Defense Oversight program, which monitors U.S. cooperation with Latin America’s security forces, as well as other security trends.
The Committee To Protect Journalists Continues To Become The Committee To Protect Israel
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | June 30, 2026
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) continues to do a disservice to its stated mission and is now actively aiding Israel in killing Palestinian journalists instead of protecting them.
The CPJ has removed eight names from its list of slain Palestinian journalists because “Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published obituaries identifying them as members of their armed groups” and over baseless claims that they “had participated in combat”.
But as Quds News Network noted , “CPJ has not disputed that these individuals were doing journalism work at the time they were killed. What CPJ cites instead is their prior affiliation with the media departments of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, known in Arabic as al-i’lam al-harbi, or military media, a distinction between media relations work and combat that the organization’s own new criteria appears to collapse.”
It added that “Under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol I, specifically Article 79, journalists conducting dangerous professional missions in armed conflict are protected as civilians. The legal threshold for losing that protection is direct participation in hostilities at the moment of the attack, not past employment, political affiliation, or membership in a media relations unit. Working in a media department for a political or armed movement is not equivalent to bearing arms or planning attacks. None of the individuals removed from CPJ’s count have been shown by Israel or by CPJ to have been carrying weapons or engaged in combat operations at the time they were killed. To date, Israel has never produced verified evidence proving it killed a single Palestinian journalist while that journalist was carrying arms.”
In other words, the CPJ seems to be suggesting that any Palestinian journalist who at any time was affiliated with armed resistance groups, even in the media department, will now be labeled as a combatant.
Furthermore, as journalist Tareq S. Hajjaj noted, this same standard is not applied by the CPJ to Israeli journalists.
As he noted:
But if these standards are to be applied, do they apply only to Palestinian and Lebanese journalists? What about Israeli journalists, all of whom served in the Israeli military? Does military service in an army carrying out a genocide raise no comparable questions? These journalists continue their work after receiving military training alongside other soldiers. And as journalists, they actively incited genocide against Palestinians around the clock.
And there’s more. Some Israeli journalists even participated in war crimes while they were covering them. In October 2024, Israeli journalist Danny Kushmaro participated in the demolition of a home in a village in Southern Lebanon while filming himself doing it for a Channel 12 report. After pressing the button that blew up the house, he signed off by saying, “Don’t mess with the Jews.”
Palestinian journalists documenting the suffering of an occupied people are portrayed as suspects, while the perpetrators escape meaningful scrutiny.
This stunt by the CPJ to appease Israel and its lobbyists was used by Israel to justify its mass slaughter of Palestinian journalists.
The official account of the IDF posted a message to the CPJ saying “We hate to be the ones to say ‘we told you so’”, above a meme saying “The CPJ after finding out that the ‘journalists’ on their list are actually terrorists”.
As Quds News Network noted, “Israel has never proven that it killed a single Palestinian journalist while that journalist was armed or engaged in combat. What the latest CPJ decision does is hand Israel a tool to claim retroactive legitimacy over killings it was never required to justify in the first place, while the broader, undisputed, and overwhelming record of journalists killed simply for doing their jobs remains unanswered.”
In reality, Israel has repeatedly lied about journalists being engaged in combat to justify slaughtering them.
In the most high-profile case, Israel released fabricated documents to portray the well-known Palestinian journalist Anas Al Sharif as a combatant to justify his murder, but a closer look at the documents shows they were badly fabricated by Israeli intelligence.
Journalist Muhammad Shehada noted :
In the case of Al-Sharif, Israel released three documents that contradict each other. One, dated 2023, lists him as a “combatant” with his status described as “suspended” and “unassigned.” It highlights that he suffered incapacitating injuries in a training explosion that left him with “extremely weak hearing in the left ear, weak eyesight” and constant migraines and headaches.
Another from 2019 describes Al-Sharif as a “group leader” but lists his 17th birthday as the day he joined Hamas, despite the minimum age for membership being 18. And a third undated document suggests Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas’ Nukhba unit, the most elite combat division of the Al-Qassam brigades. But it is nearly impossible that someone with incapacitating injuries could join this unit, or would have previously been a member and then demoted to a foot soldier.
If Al-Sharif was part of Hamas, why did Israel release him after detaining and interrogating him in al-Shifa hospital, per Israeli journalist Amit Segal? Or why wasn’t he taken out earlier? For 22 months, Al-Sharif lived in the open, reported from the streets of Gaza, slept in tents in public spaces, and had his phone on him at all times — a far cry from the behavior of a dangerous militant, who would be under strict orders to operate under the radar.
As Shehada noted, the Likud-friendly journalist Amit Segal admitted that Anas Al Sharif “was also detained by the IDF during the takeover of Shifa Hospital, but was later released,” disproving any notion that he was a combatant.
In reality, Israel killed Anas Al Sharif to silence his factual reporting on Israel’s crimes. After his murder, his brother revealed that “Days before being killed in a targeted attack by Israeli forces, Anas al-Sharif was offered a deal: stop covering Gaza, and he and his family could leave safely.”
Israel ran similar deception campaigns against countless journalists in Gaza to justify slaughtering them.
All of these deceptions came out of the Mossad’s “Legitimization Cell,” which the Israeli magazine 972 reported was tasked to “identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters”.
One inside source said, “The team regularly collected intelligence that could be used for hasbara … The idea was to [allow the military to] operate without pressure, so countries like America wouldn’t stop supplying weapons” and another admitted, ““the Legitimization Cell misrepresented intelligence in a way that allowed for the false portrayal of a journalist as a member of Hamas’s military wing”.
The Gaza Government Media Office has documented that Israel has killed 262 journalists and wounded 420 since the start of the genocide in Gaza.
These murders often included intentionally killing family members of the journalists, including children.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate documented that , “the targeting of the Palestinian journalistic situation by the Israeli occupation army was not limited to direct killing, injury, arrest or preventing coverage, but developed to take a more dangerous and brutal dimension represented by targeting the families of journalists and their relatives, in a clear attempt to turn journalistic work into an existential burden paid for by children, wives and parents”.
It added that, “Based on the monitoring and documentation of the Freedoms Committee in the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, the targeting of journalists’ families has become a systematic and repeated pattern during 2023, 2024 and 2025, killing about 706 families of journalists in the Gaza Strip. All indicators prove that the targeting is not accidental incidents resulting from the conditions of war”.
This was as attempt to scare Palestinian journalist into silence, the organization noted, writing, “The effects of these crimes are not limited to human losses, but extend to deep psychological traumas among journalists who lost their children, wives or parents, the disintegration of families and the loss of a sense of security, the forcing of journalists to flee or temporarily stop working, the journalist with a harsh sense of guilt, within the framework of an organized psychological war, and the Freedoms Committee confirms that this psychological dimension is an integral part of the system of repression”.
To help cover up this genocidal campaign, Israel no longer needs to solely rely on the Legitimization Cell; it now has the CPJ as well.
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Book Review
New book reveals how the Israel lobby destroyed US diplomacy with Iran
Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick Reveal How The Israel Lobby Paved The Way For A U.S. War On Iran
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 11, 2026
Investigative journalist Eli Clifton and political scientist Ian Lustick have released a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence on U.S. foreign policy titled “Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power”.
The book contains a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence over various U.S. administrations going back to its creation.
Among the book’s most interesting revelations is how the Israel Lobby pushed anti-Iran propaganda in the United States in order to destroy U.S. diplomacy with Iran. … continue
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