Defend RT!

The Russia Today (RT) news channel was forced off the air this week by the Johnson government in a move that follows similar measures against Russian media outlooks throughout Western Europe. Though still available online the Russian television station can now no longer be accessed on any of our TV platforms. Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries says “the Russian dictator will now find it harder to spread his disinformation and lies” but banning RT is, in reality, a sign of weakness by the bourgeoisie that have taken us to the brink of all-out war in Europe over Ukraine. Now European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has decided to ban RT across the European Union. But Europe's largest association of journalists has, quite rightly, blasted the move.The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), which represents 320,000 journalists across Europe, has called the European Commission President's decision "counterproductive" and questioned her right to make it.
    EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez said: "This act of censorship can have a totally counterproductive effect on the citizens who follow the banned media. It is always better to counteract the disinformation of propagandist or allegedly propagandist media by exposing their factual errors or bad journalism, by demonstrating their lack of financial or operational independence, by highlighting their loyalty to government interests and their disregard for the public interest”. He said the EU had no right to grant or withdraw broadcasting licences, which was the "exclusive competence of (individual) states."
    RT was never a major player on the British scene. Its niche UK audience was put at around 2.5 million viewers compared to the 6.4 million prime time viewers claimed by the American CNN, Fox and MSNBC stations and way behind the immense reach of the BBC and the other mainstream TV channels. But the fact that RT is seen as a threat to the war propaganda of the British government and the European Union shows what little confidence they themselves have in the credibility of the nonsense their own media is churning out at the moment.
    

Stand by the Donbas!

John McDonnell has been criticised for pulling out of a Stop The War rally after being told he would be kicked out of the Labour party if he spoke at the meeting.
    The man who was once Jeremy Corbyn’s second-in-command caved in to Starmer’s threats and left it to Corbyn to speak alongside Tariq Ali and other Stop the War Coalition leaders at the meeting in London on Wednesday.
    John McDonnell is no friend of the Russian Federation. Only last week he was marching alongside his friends in the “Ukraine Solidarity Campaign” to protest against the Russian intervention while the rest of the Stop the War leadership, including Corbyn, are all calling for an immediate cease-fire and an unconditional Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. But this isn’t enough for Starmer. He wants total support for whatever comes out of the White House and, at the moment, that doesn’t include a cease-fire.

We say US/NATO hands off Russia! Stand with the communists of the Donbas and the anti-fascist resistance in Ukraine!

Round Two to Putin

Russia’s intervention in Ukraine will, hopefully, mark the beginning of the end of a crisis that was entirely the product of imperialist intrigue.
    In 2014 Anglo‑American and Franco‑German imperialism brought down the elected government of Ukraine. They propped up a fascist regime in Kiev that has banned communist and other left-wing movements, in pursuit of violent sectarianism that forced the Crimean republic to secede and the people of eastern Ukraine to take up the gun and proclaim their independence.
    These days the Ukrainian government is little more than a US protectorate. Its refusal to implement the Minsk accords and its endless breaches of the cease-fire agreements could only have happened with the blessing of its American mentor.
    The imperialists pose as defenders of ‘human rights’ and ‘international law’ when it suits them but ignore these lofty principles when it comes to the Palestinians under the heel of a brutal Zionist occupation.
    They talk about NATO as if it were some sort of benevolent society set up to guarantee democracy and security in Europe, when it is just another US-led military machine that has brought death and destruction to innocent Africans, Asians, Arabs and Latin Americans over the years.
    These are the people who claim to uphold what they call ‘democracy’ whilst turning a blind eye to the Ukrainian fascists that prop up the puppet government in Kiev and see themselves as the heirs to those who worked with Hitler during the German occupation in the Second World War.
    The Russian move was a timely response to the constant provocations of the Kiev government that has blocked all progress towards resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine over the last eight years. It has, however, provoked a predictable response from the imperialist camp that is now bleating on about the rights of small nations which they claim for Ukraine but deny when it comes to millions of people that they have attacked and tried to enslave over the last 70-odd years.

Question More

Sir Keir Starmer is calling for a ban on the Russia Today (RT) TV station as part of his self-appointed role as cheer-leader for imperialist aggression. The Labour leader says RT is pumping out “misinformation” and pro-Putin “propaganda” and therefore it should have its broadcasting licence withdrawn.
    Starmer first raised this demand two years ago. This time he’s got the backing of Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, who is peeved at the fact that her nationalist rival, Alex Salmond, has a regular slot on the Russian channel.
    But no-one is forced to watch RT and if anyone doesn’t like what they see they can simply switch off or over to another channel. As RT’s Afshin Rattansi says: “We should be hoping that NGOs for free speech – from [Reporters Without Borders] and Amnesty International – will be there to defend this channel against Sir Keir Starmer and the British Labour party who want to ban free speech.”

The Russians are coming…

Or maybe not. It all depends on whether you believe the ‘Russia report’ by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC), which was published this week. The ISC says that the 42-page “summary” is “supplemented with a substantial annex” that gives greater detail, which has been read by the chosen few but cannot be published at this time “in view of the current Russian threat”.

In the meantime, we have to make do with a flimsy dossier that covers purported Russian interference in the European Union referendum and other “malicious” cyber-activities by the Kremlin to influence opinion in the UK.

The parliamentary report predictably confirmed "hostile foreign interference" by Russia. It concluded that Downing Street “took its eye off the ball” and failed to respond to a range of threats from Moscow. It said it was “astonishing” that no-one in government had sought to protect the electoral processes from potential subversion – and concluded that the influence of Russian money in the UK is so pervasive that it amounts to a “new normal”.

The Remainers, now led in Parliament by the crowd surrounding Sir Keir Starmer on the Labour benches, have long tried to discredit the 2016 EU referendum result by claiming it was covertly influenced by Russian propaganda. But any hopes of a “smoking gun” were dashed by this report, which was strong on the sort of anti-Russian smears and innuendo that many believed had died with the end of the Cold War in 1990 but produced few facts to back its claims.

Although the report said the Government had “avoided” looking into potential Brexit vote meddling, it admitted that it was unable to determine whether Russia had attempted to influence the EU referendum in 2016. When asked for evidence, MI5 had provided the ISC with just “six lines of text”, the report stated. “We were told they hadn’t seen any evidence, but that is meaningless if they hadn’t looked for it,” said Stewart Hosie, a Scottish nationalist MP on the ISC who told the media that no-one in government wanted to touch the issue with a “10-foot pole”.

But all the parliamentary report could come up with was “open source” studies that pointed to “pro-Brexit or anti-EU stories on RT and Sputnik”. It also claimed “there has been credible open source commentary suggesting that Russia undertook influence campaigns in relation to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014”, but it provided little or no evidence of co-ordinated Russian propaganda media campaigns or that detected cyber intrusions were from proven Russian intelligence centres.

What all this boils down to is simply that Russia Today (RT), a commercial TV news channel, and Sputnik, the old “Voice of Russia”, report the news as they see it. The rest is half-baked conspiracy theory about activities that the intelligence services of the major powers all indulge in together with freelance hackers all over the world.

Members of the Left Leave campaign (Lexit) and Leave – Fight – Transform (LeFT) say that the idea that Russian interference swayed the electorate over the EU vote is nonsense and Nigel Farage, a prominent leader in the Brexit campaign, has demanded an apology.

Farage, the former UKIP leader, said: “Years of lies and smears from Remain politicians and much of our media. There is no evidence of Russian involvement with Leave.EU or me in the referendum. It was all a hoax – apologies are now required.”

The Government has wisely said it sees no need to look again at the Brexit referendum because it has no evidence that Russia affected its outcome in any way. A statement released by the Johnson government said: “A retrospective assessment of the EU referendum is not necessary.”

It actually has no need to look at anything else in this rubbishy report based on pointless speculation that has only served to further sour relations with the Russian Federation.