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colonialism 21st century style, by the american empire....

Washington’s new plan to control the Global South...
Not satisfied with banning RT in most Western countries nearly three years ago, the US and its allies have unveiled a new plan to bully the rest of the world into following suit...

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.”

 

BY Anna Belkina

 

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 states, er, 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, thankyouverymuch. 

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, 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.

https://www.rt.com/news/604357-us-plan-control-global-south-rt/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

costly free speech....

 

A Brief History of Free Speech in America

    by 

 

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
–First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

When James Madison agreed to be the scrivener at the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787, he could not have known that just four years later he’d be the chair of the House of Representatives committee drafting the Bill of Rights.

In doing so, he insisted that the word “the” precede the phrase “freedom of speech” in what was to become the First Amendment, so as to reflect the views of the Framers that the freedom of speech preexisted the government.

Madison believed that pre-political rights, which he enumerated in the Bill of Rights, are natural to our humanity. Madison knew that when he wrote, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” he and the ratifiers meant no law. As direct and unambiguous as those words are — the Constitution as amended is the supreme law of the land — Congress and the courts have not always been faithful to them.

The first serious federal attack on free speech came in the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which criminalized criticisms of the foreign policy of the federal government and the administration of President John Adams. The same generation — in some cases, the same human beings — that had ratified the First Amendment in 1791, a mere seven years later assaulted, defied and nullified it.

In response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, the two most prominent thinkers in America — Thomas Jefferson, who had written the Declaration of Independence, and Madison — secretly authored the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, respectively. These state laws reflected the views of many ratifiers of the Constitution that the states that formed the federal government retained the power to correct it. All but one of the dreadful Alien and Sedition Acts were repealed by 1802.

During the War Between the States, President Abraham Lincoln arrested around 3,000 journalists and newspaper publishers in the North due to their harsh criticism of his government. He argued that the state of war gave him emergency powers to preserve the Union, which included evaluating and silencing the content of speech. Shortly after his death, the Supreme Court profoundly rejected his argument and set free those whom he had arrested, ruling that the Constitution admits of no emergency powers and free speech exists during war as well as peacetime.

At the height of the anti-immigrant hysteria whipped up by President Woodrow Wilson, Congress enacted the Espionage Act of 1917, which punished speech deemed harmful to America’s war efforts. Wilson was determined to win the First World War at the price of the suppression of ideas that he hated or feared.

He went so far as to arrest some of his former Princeton students for reciting “subversive materials” aloud outside a military draft office in Trenton, New Jersey, arguing that the First Amendment only restrained Congress, not the president. The materials they read aloud? The Declaration of Independence.

Then, a series of Supreme Court decisions instructed that if the government’s principal purpose or effect is to suppress speech because of its content, the suppression is unconstitutional. These opinions harkened back to Madison, who believed that the only moral and constitutional remedy for hateful or harmful or even seditious speech was not suppression and punishment but rather more speech.

A famous Chicago case put to rest the concept of freedom of speech versus public safety. The issue was the “heckler’s veto,” which takes place when audience members are so intentionally disruptive that they effectively prevent the speaker from speaking. Father Arthur Terminiello, a Roman Catholic priest who was an outspoken opponent of the Truman administration, gave an incendiary speech in a hall in Chicago, which the sponsors of the speech had rented for that purpose. 

The speech delighted Terminiello’s supporters and infuriated his opponents. The opponents numbered about 1,600 people, and the supporters about 800. When it became apparent that violence might break out, the police ordered Terminiello to stop speaking and to leave the venue. When he disregarded their instructions, and the audience stormed and destroyed the podium, Terminiello was charged with and convicted of breach of the peace.

The Supreme Court reversed and held that the government cannot silence a speaker because it fears his words or the reaction of the audience. It also held that it is the duty of the government to protect speech, not to nullify or avoid it. In doing so, the court moved First Amendment jurisprudence significantly closer to where it is today — an absolute protection for public political speech.

In 1969, the court articulated that protection when it held unanimously that all innocuous speech is absolutely protected and all speech is innocuous when there is time for more speech to challenge it. With notable exceptions like the cases of Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and the Patriot Act of 2001, that attitude generally prevailed in government in America.

Until now.

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice secured indictments of Americans and Russians for advancing “Russian propaganda” in America. The feds claim that articulating views of the war in Ukraine from a Russian perspective and holding out those views to be fact are somehow criminal.

These are political prosecutions. The effect of words is measured by their ability to be accepted in the marketplace of ideas, not whether they offend the government. The core purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the business of speech. That purpose protects the most caustic, incendiary and hateful speech hurled at the government, and admits no exceptions or prosecutions for content.

We are at the cusp of dark days for free expression. The remedy is to exercise it — loudly, persistently and in the government’s face.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

 

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/a-brief-history-of-free-speech-in-america/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

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