George Galloway has said Latvia’s decision to ban RT channels could be seen as a “compliment,” indicating that Western viewers are sick of watching and reading mainstream media and seeking out alternatives.

Latvia’s National Electronic Media Council (NEPLP) announced on Tuesday that it would prohibit seven RT channels from broadcasting in the country.

Galloway told RT that there is “no question” that the country’s authorities have been blinded by Russophobia in making the decision. Indeed, perhaps that blindness is so severe that it prevented the Latvian regulator from doing some fact-checking before announcing the move.

The NEPLP rationalized the ban by falsely claiming that RT is “controlled” by Dmitry Kiselyov, who is under EU sanctions. Kiselyov is actually the head of another news organization, Rossiya Segodnya — and has nothing to do with RT.

Galloway, a former British MP, said the move to prohibit RT broadcasting is a sign that Western people are“looking elsewhere” for news and that authorities in those countries want to shut down different perspectives, despite claiming to be committed to the ideals of free speech and media. It’s a “crisis of information,” he said.

The West has “coasted for the best part of a hundred years” on the myth that it stands for freedom of the press and that this distinguishes it from authoritarian societies.

Galloway, who hosts the show ‘Sputnik’ on RT, said authorities around the world are now all “dancing to the same tune” in an effort to stamp out competing voices because “nobody believes mainstream media” anymore.

In that sense, banning RT could be seen as a “compliment,” he said.

Galloway also suggested that some other EU countries might try to follow suit and “mimic” Latvia’s move, though such a scenario would require others to also disregard basic facts.

The International Federation of Journalists condemned Latvia’s decision on Tuesday, saying it “violates freedom of the press” and calling it a “clear act of censorship.”

 

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/493384-george-galloway-latvia-ban-rt/

 

RT makes mistakes and has bias, but far less than the western media. RT and Sputnik employ western journalists who have fair alternative view points, some satire (and with far less superior sarcasm) which would not see daylight in the western media... Watch for the western media acrid, acidic reaction at the success of Putin's amendment to the Russian constitution... 

 

When we see the present crop of western leaders, from Donald trump to Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron, — and the next would-bees, like Biden, etc — the Russian people are smart to hold on to their solid grounds, despite being impacted by sanctions every second day... and not just US sanction on the Russian people:

 

Aside from being an affront to EU sovereignty and an imminent threat to European jobs, the sweeping US sanctions targeting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline mark the end of the Transatlantic partnership, Gerhard Schroeder has said.

A sanctions bill currently being debated in the US Congress is “a widespread, unjustified attack on the European economy and unacceptable interference with EU sovereignty and energy security in Western Europe,” former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder argued in a position paper drafted ahead of parliamentary hearings on the matter. 

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/493438-schroeder-end-transatlantic-partnership/

 

Not a peep in the western media about the unfairness of the sanctions re the Nord Stream 2 project. It's akin to the US preventing Australia from selling coal and iron ore to China on political and economical grounds. We can do this on our own if we choose to, on environmental grounds...

 

Golos, a non-governmental organisation that monitors elections, cited numerous irregularities with the vote and said it would not be able to confirm the outcome as legitimate.

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/07/02/vladimir-putin-vote/

 

 

Read also:

 

Guardian Australia has detected and addressed a significant vote-tampering event in the Australian bird of the year poll.

On Sunday 10 November [2019], a spike in the vote count for the cockatoo was observed by readers and flagged with us. We do check for strange voting patterns regularly, and have detailed logs to identify automated voting. We’re not going to go into too much detail on what we’re recording, as we’d like to make it slightly more difficult for poll-riggers.

After running our analysis, it is clear that automated voting was conducted for three birds – the rainbow lorikeet, the cockatoo, and then the black-throated finch, with unusual spikes in the number of votes received per minute from the same origin...

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/nov/11/voter-detected-in-guardians-australian-bird-of-the-year-poll

 

As far as the Russian elections are concerned, they were far less tampered with than your local branch stacking — Labor or Liberal*...

In the light of his forthcoming book, former Trump appointee John Bolton revealed in an interview with ABC News why he was afraid to leave US President Donald Trump alone with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, during a 2018 summit in Helsinki.

Bolton said this was because "at any given moment, we didn't know what he [Trump] was gonna say", moving on to note that it worked out in the end, but no American interests were advanced.

"At any given moment, we didn't know what he was gonna say. Now, it turned out and I say in the book, I feel very confident nothing untoward happened in the one on one. But that means we escaped without injury in the meeting. That's not advancing American interests. I mean, it's better than sustaining the injury. But it's certainly not advancing the interests", Bolton said.

Bolton also said during the interview that he believes that Putin thinks he "can play him [Trump] like a fiddle", praising the Russian president for being "smart" and "tough". 

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/202006221079684630-bolton-reveals-why-he-was-worried-to-leave-trump-alone-with-putin-during-2018-helsinki-meeting/?

 

 

Read from top.

 

Bolton is a dangerous idiot...

Russia will not run away from the question of what comes after Putin, although the president gained another excellent excuse for his favourite tactic of avoiding a decision. Again, despite himself and against his other natural tendencies, he became the voice of the people, but lonely as the good tsar for eternity against the bad, unreliable, and Western-friendly boyars [rich Russian oligarches].

Of course, the Russian president definitely won the popular voting organized between 25th June and 1st July. He did it without any bigger administrative pressure, although probably not without the over-zeal of local bureaucrats. He obtained not only a very clear mandate of trust, but also a lot of valuable information about the attitude of the nation in his huge country. But Vladimir Putin cannot speak of full success after being forced to abandon his original plan to make Putinism a political system which would have contended him with a personal victory and petrification of his personal liberal authoritarianism until who knows when. 

In Yeltsin's Shoes

Of course, one would get the impression by looking at Western news about it that the plebiscite only asked Russians one question: "Do you want V. Putin to rule us until he gets bored?". However, the subject, scope, and real motives for implementing this plan were somewhat more complex. And more precisely, so complicated that (as we can see by the research carried out during whole procedure) the Russians themselves considered the particularly important issues that they were supposed to decide to not be among the questions that they were really asked. Even so, this did not discourage voters, so what was the real goal of the Russian referendum? 

First of all, we should understand well what the president wanted to change and in what document. The Constitution of the Russian Federation from December 1993 was established in very special circumstances after the coup attempt the White House (unfortunately, not the one that should have been targeted...) by Boris Yeltsin’s forces. The new regulations were therefore set primarily to guarantee the scope of power of the then-presidential factions (particularly criminals and other law dodgers, those connected with Yeltsin's "family" system, as well as those liberal Westerners under the Kremlin umbrella). In parallel, it was about calming the so-called Western public opinion, which was somewhat confused by the fact that democracy in Russia is defended by setting fire to the parliament building. The constitution thus established a system of liberal authoritarianism in Russia, maintained with minor changes until today thanks to the personality of the current president.

De Gaulle’S Trap

The initiative taken by Vladimir Putin in December 2019 and January 2020 had two clear goals. First of all, it was about proposing a new system that would allow the current president to leave his position while maintaining power continuity (and, by the way, better coordinating currently poorly balanced centres of power which real competences are not directly related to the Constitution). It was to be reached by the legal empowerment of the Council of State, which was assumed would be led by V. Putin himself. The second package was ideological issues, that is, writing straight in the Constitution an appeal to God, defining a family based on a heterosexual relationship, and emphasizing the role of the Russia nation and language within the Federation. If we add to this the introduction of elements of social guarantees (the most controversial issue being the retirement age, as well as the revaluation of wages and benefits), then we would receive a vision of reforming Russia in a national-conservative-community direction, ensuring an element of continuity of power. Thus, the personal liberal authoritarianism is to be replaced by a conservative state. This very original sense of the whole process was (again, consciously) abandoned by V. Putin.

This time, however, the reason was not the president's legendary procrastination, his tendency to reactive defensively, nor his tactic of masking his real desires by waiting until the last minute to make a decision. After a few weeks of the referendum campaign, Vladimir Putin probably understood that he was vigorously moving towards de Gaulle’s trap. As we know, the leader of France in 1969, in his neo-Bonapartist custom, decided to put under the judgment of the nation the proposals of seemingly cosmetic, and in fact systemic, reform of the state’s political system following the pure “l'esprit de participation”. Like all referendums of this type, it was a plebiscite, a vote of confidence or its refusal of the head of state. What was also the same was the matter of legal changes was too complicated for the masses, and the moment to ask people for expressing their opinion was controversial. And finally, the French presidential government and party machine not only didn't see its own interest in supporting the changes proposed by the General, but even decided to sabotage them. We know the effect: the referendum was lost and de Gaulle (after a moment of hesitation about using the army) gave power to the technocrats in whose hands it remains till today, destroying all the achievements of neo-imperial France, a child of Gaullism. It was exactly the same with Putin's idea.

Do Not Ask The Chief To Write A Constitution

The whole institution of the referendum under the pretext for law-making makes even less sense than any other popular vote. Simply put, the abilities and especially the interests of the average citizen of any country do not even reach all that far, so asking them about the political system has the same sense as letting a monkey choose articles of the constitution hidden in nuts. In fact, despite the significance of the issues proposed, Russian national voting was to be a plebiscite in any case for or against Putin, but without proper mobilization of the president's supporters and even with a clear sabotage of this part of the state/party machine, which feels comfortable within the current liberal authoritarianism and does not want to change it.

In this situation, the president decided that there is no other way but to put himself into the questions to increase the turnout and the power of the vote "For". That has started on 10March 2020, after V. Putin clearly indicated that the change in the Constitution would also apply to this unfortunate paragraph about holding presidential office only "for two terms in a row". Polls were then conducted and officials as well as United Russia activists began to race each other in announcing who will organize more voters. So, the very popular narrative in Western propaganda that “Putin wanted from the beginning only to extend his power” is totally untrue. Quite the opposite, it was Putin himself who consciously and intentionally threw out his original project of institutional (and personal) change in the country, instead announcing and sanctioning this extension of the status quo till who knows when.

Three Waves Of Putinism

Did he, however, gain something in return for abandoning his original plans? Yes, without a doubt, at levels that cannot be overestimated for a politician. First of all, Putinism did not legalize itself as a system but revived itself as a peoples’ movement. To understand the support for the Russian president, we should see three waves of this sympathy. The first come soon after he had received personal power, in the early 2000s. Putin was then supported as the one who finally gave something after all those who only stole. Inevitably, such enthusiasm could not last long, because the memory how bad it had been was erased, aspirations were rising to make everyday life even better, and the next generation was coming of age full of people who were not able to remember the black times of Yeltsin’s rule. So, this first wave began to fall with the global financial crisis of 2007-2010 reaching Russia, and actually, the decreasing trend remained not too dangerous, only because of the lack of any noticeable competition (primarily as an effect of the complete castration and institutionalization of the communist party). At that time, however, Putin was rescued by an international situation, and more precisely by the national will and the determination of this part of the establishment, thanks to which Crimea was saved for Russia.

The second wave was support for V. Putin not only for not being as bad as the others, but for something tangible: for Crimea, for Donbass, for Syria, and for Russia's return to the international arena, even for Skripal’s affair and the fact that the world began feel afraid of Russia once again and finally stopped mocking it. That was the moment which turned V. Putin into The Katehon, a leader matching the ambitions of the inhabitants of the largest country in the world. And this wave, however, was dialectically doomed to crash due to the belief that a resurrected global superpower should provide its own citizens with better living conditions. The Russian people asked this question themselves and began to fidget more and more in the realities of the country that's still licking its wounds after the dark 1990s and the period of dominance by the oligarchs. Most importantly, in response, V. Putin clearly decided to no longer fight for another wave of support, but on the contrary, to go against it to leave something less glamorous, but maybe even more needed than Russian aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea.

We know that V. Putin really wanted to leave because of the pension reform he undertook in 2018, which was absolutely necessary for the Russian economy, but at the same time was obviously exploited by the liberal opposition and was extremely unpopular to such an extent that it again awakened hopes in the West for the “democratization of Russia”. The president himself defended his personal popularity, it also did not suffer any significant damage after poor governmental actions considered to be chaotic and inefficient during the so-called pandemic COVID-19, however, the Russians' enthusiasm for their own president clearly diminished, turning into passive approval. And suddenly something as hermetic as the reform of the Constitution once again aroused peoples’ Putinism!

Putin’s Veche

By some clever instinct, the Russians sensed that thanks to the popular vote, they are regaining their own president from the establishment. Putin winning, Putin staying – that is a trick against this part of the Kremlin administration, the government, and United Russia, which for the last several months has been focused on the issue of succession of the president. For voters, the vote was not only for the good tsar but above all against the bad boyars.

This is also the second advantage that he gained. In the voting, Putin obtained a mechanism of seeing the real social attitude which cannot be covered by creative reporting of professional administrative Putinism. This is a microscope put in the bowels of Russia, on a much larger scale than the famous president's great conferences, so mocked in the West but so effective as an instrument of exercising power through an archetypal reference to a Slavic Veche. From the results of the vote, for example, we know that Nenets do not want their autonomous country to be subordinated to the Arkhangelsk Oblast, or that the Yakuts want Moscow to finally do something with all the mess left after the oligarchs stole the local factories. The results of the vote are therefore invaluable to the presidential administration and the governance scheme best suited to Russia.

As a result of the popular vote, President Putin improved his own election result from 2018, receiving 57.7 instead of 56.4 million votes. The third wave of peoples’ Putinism turned out to be particularly high despite the fact that the Russians did not exactly know what they were voting for. It is important, however, what they meant and why in their opinion V. Putin is to stay. When asked which constitutional amendments they considered the most important, voters in the first place (28%) put forbidding persons having (now and in the past) foreign citizenship from working in public service. This is not only an anti-oligarchic move, but also expresses the distrust of ordinary citizens towards the elites and the current power system, but hardly anyone knows that such bans already exist on the basis of lower-level acts though they do not seem to be really impactful. 21% of respondents, in turn, indicated the protection of natural resources against sale to foreign hands (the point of which was only in the original, earlier version of the changes) and equalizing the salaries of officials with the minimum wage, which was not the subject of voting at all. In fourth place was the issue of guaranteeing retirement age at the level before the 2018 announcement (which was not promised) and the priority of the Russian Constitution over foreign law. The formal regulation giving V. Putin the right to apply for the next presidential term was far behind these expressions of hostility towards the elite and foreign influence in Russia. Therefore, the social-national part of the president's program gained a clear peoples’ legitimacy, and the question remains whether and how Putin will turn this third wave of support into a program that also covers his other political and ideological proposals.

The Question That We Cannot Escape From

Russia will not run away from the question of what comes after Putin, although the president gained another excellent excuse for his favourite tactic of avoiding a decision. Again, despite himself and against his other natural tendencies, he became the voice of the people, but lonely as the good tsar for eternity against the bad, unreliable, and Western-friendly boyars. About this, the topic of Putin's loneliness was probably thought about the most by one of his associates, Ramzan Kadyrov, when (having in mind 97,92% support in the referendum in Chechnya) was asked why bother people at all if V. Putin should be offered a lifetime presidency. This would allow him to dismiss all the troubles of the system and the problem of succession in time beyond his death. But still, this would not be the answer to the question: what comes AFTER Putin? What comes next for Russia?

Another talented Russian, Konstantin Malofeev, reponded even more insolently but seriously by following the long-standing tradition of letting the new Zemsky Sobor offer Putin Monomakh's Cap! The problem with such a thing is that the Russian president was only just recently trying to carry this out, albeit without the decor, but to no avail. 

The extent of Putin's dilemma should be evidenced by the fact that the tsar was "gratefully" shot the last time that he tried to grant Russia a constitution. Remembering this lesson, his successor, the great Alexander III, showed his son a great tight fist on his deathbed and ordered him to “Keep everything!”. But V. Putin not only knows that he has no one to say that to, but also he himself has no tsarist fists. Putin will rule as long as he wants, but he'll remain lonely. The peoples’ Putinism is all that still remains since the systemic one does not exist. Fortunately, however, Russia itself is eternal.

 

 

By Konrad Rękas

 

Polish journalist

Read more:

http://oneworld.press/?module=articles&action=view&id=1568

 

 

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Stop misusing the corona pandemic for your wars!

EU claims of “disinformation” are questionable

by Karl-Jürgen Müller

On 10 June 2020 the High Representative of the [European] Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Spaniard Joseph Borrell, has published in German a 19-page “Joint Communication to the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.” The “Communication” is entitled “Tackling COVID-19 – Getting the facts right.”1
    This opinion of an EU authority and the documents associated with it are not only a renewed attempt to seal off the EU from criticism,2 but also to impair freedom of expression and information in the EU states and to extend the powers in this respect at EU level. Since September 2015,3 the European Union has also been contributing to the war policy of the NATO states (and the EU) against Russia and now also against China. One of the ways in which it is doing this, is by pretending to expose and pillory “disinformation” (until 2018 referred to by the EU as “fake news”). The “Joint Communication” of 10 June belongs in this context.
    Indeed, page 4 of the “Communication” states: “Foreign actors and certain third countries, in particular Russia and China, have engaged in targeted influence operations and disinformation campaigns around COVID-19 in the EU, its neighbourhood and globally, seeking to undermine democratic debate and exacerbate social polarisation, and improve their own image in the COVID-19 context.”There is no direct reference to these statements in the “Communication” itself. However, a footnote within this paragraph refers to another paper from the EU to support these statements. This extensive text was published on 28 May 2020 and is entitled “EEAS Special Report, Up-date: brief assessment of the narratives and disinformation on the COVID 19 pandemic (update: 23 April to 18 May) – EU versus disinformation.”4 EEAS is the abbreviation for the “European External Action Service”, which reports to the “High Representative”.
    Anyone who expected to find any concrete evidence in this text that would be comprehensible to the reader for the statements from the “Communication” quoted above would be deceived. However, it is very interesting to read what the EEAS believes is all supposed to be “disinformation“.


Russia and China
It says for example: “The efforts of state actors like China to deflect blame, to use the pandemic to promote their own governmental system and enhance their image abroad continue.” Is that “disinformation” already? What government does it differently?
    Or: “In line with our previous analysis, China’s general aim of controlling the narrative on COVID-19 and deflecting any criticism of the country is still present. China – “having made sacrifices to buy time for the rest of the world” – is portrayed as a responsible and transparent actor in the pandemic and a model for other countries to follow. In parallel, where established facts or prevailing narratives could be seen as unfavourable to China or could support criticism of Chinese authorities there seems to be the effort of creating doubt in relation to those. For example, creating doubts about China’s role in the COVID-19 outbreak and countering international calls for an independent inquiry into the origins of the outbreak of the virus in China. At the same time, there has been a shift towards more directly challenging and mocking the US administration and its response to the pandemic. China’s state-run media has been implying a US cover-up and demanding answers from the country.” A lot of interesting points to start talking about. But “disinformation”?
    The paper goes on to say: “Multiple Russian state-controlled media channels, including RIA Novosti news agency and RT, explicitly defended China in face of international criticism of handing the COVID-19 outbreak. EU-sanctioned TV host and media manager Dmitry Kiselyov compared criticism of the Chinese government to Russia being held responsible for the chemical attack in Salisbury and meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections – referring to two prominent pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives.” Here, too, there are many interesting points to get into a discussion. But “disinformation”?


The USA and NATO
Then it says: “Multiple pro-Kremlin outlets have reported (in Russian, French and English) about alleged clandestine US biological laboratories in Ukraine. The implication behind such disinformation messages is that the US is afraid of leakage of infectious substances on its own territory, that such labs facilitated the US support for Euromaidan that epidemics start around the labs, and more directly that COVID-19 might have been created in one of the labs in Ukraine. These type of messages build on a prominent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the ‘secret military laboratories’, most notably in the case of Lugar lab in Georgia. As such, they are easily replicated throughout the region: in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova.The same conspiracy theory about US biological laboratories in former Soviet republics has been also spread by Chinese officials and state media.” Once again, many interesting points to get into a discussion. But “disinformation“? Or even “conspiracy theory“? The reader will find no comprehensible evidence of this here either.
    It is also interesting to see who the EAD cooperates with: “In addressing disinformation and identifying and analysing disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, the EEAS is working closely with the European Commission, European Parliament services and EU Member States. The EEAS also cooperates on this issue with international partners (G7, NATO and non-state actors).” [Emphasis added by the author]


Syria and the sanctions
The following monstrosity fits to this. It is being disputed that the sanctions against Syria are also hindering the country in its fight against the corona pandemic: “The Syrian regime is further advancing its disinformation campaign against sanctions claiming that Western countries are perpetrating an ‘economic war’ against Syria and the Syrian people and that sanctions have crippled the health sector and are impeding the country’s response to COVID-19. This was reiterated by Assad claiming that COVID-19 comes in addition to an economic challenge, which we have been facing as a result of over nine years and unjust sanctions imposed on our people’.”
    The fact that this is also referred to as a “disinformation campaign” illustrates which way the wind is blowing. The truth about the consequences of the war policy should be dismissed as “disinformation“. You can call this war propaganda.


And what Putin really says
However, there is no reference to a video conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin with various ministers, heads of authorities and other responsible officials of Russia on 28 April 2020, which also dealt with the corona pandemic (see “Russian President Vladimir Putin on Corona“). And one wonders why such statements have not been and are not reported in our countries.        •
1  https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/communication-tackling-covid-19-disinformation-getting-facts-right_de.pdf
2  For example, much emphasis is placed on dismissing as “disinformation” the reports about the lack of solidarity within the EU, which was quite obvious to everyone in the initial phase of the responses to the corona pandemic.
3  In September 2015, the EU Commission set up the East StratCom Task Force to track and analyse “disinformation” flowing from Russia to Europe. It publishes a Disinformation Review.
4  https://euvsdisinfo.eu/de/ead-sonderbericht-update-kurzbewertung-der-narrative-und-desinformation-zur-covid-19-pandemie-aktualisierung-23-april-bis-18-mai/


———————————

“Russia has lived a thousand years with values such as mutual assistance, mutual support and solidarity. And today these are the main pillars of our statehood."

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Corona 

”In this context, I would like to explain again what my decisions are based on.
    Freedom is, of course, an absolute value in modern civilisation. I am referring to the freedom of every citizen. But every human’s life is inimitable and is also an absolute value given to us from above. And we must protect it so that people can experience joy, love, raising children and just living.
    Let me also recall a well-known adage: the freedom of everyone is limited by the freedom of others. This is very appropriate during the pandemic. If some people prefer to behave differently and raise their unlimited personal freedom above the interests and freedoms of others, then they are threatening their lives. In this case, freedom becomes irresponsibility, egotism and, to a certain extent, violence as regards others and could trigger serious trouble.
    And one more point – about the ethical, moral choices we are facing today. Some people in the world in general and Russia in particular maintain that it is more important to think about the economy and material prosperity, which is, of course, important.
    But what is being implied here? Basically, it implies moving forward, by stepping over everything and everyone without looking back. This basically implies ignoring the risks of the epidemic and simply lifting the restrictions as soon as possible. And if some people get sick, then they will be sick and become incapacitated or even die and this is their lot. It comes down to survival of the fittest, where everyone is only out for himself.
    We know from history and world literature that in primitive times, seniors, sick children and weak people were simply abandoned for the sake of the survival of an entire tribe. Perhaps, there was simply no other way to get through those times. But we live in the 21st century and I will say straightaway that those who suggest sacrificing people today and leaving them to their own devices are only calling for a return to savagery and barbarity.
   Legends say that in ancient Sparta, ill-born babies were tossed into a chasm at the foot of Mount Taygetus, but most historians and archaeologists now dismiss this as myth. Yet, we do know that the Spartan society operated on rigid orders. However, even that did not help; ultimately, Sparta lost its statehood. A revealing story.
    Let’s now recall a very short – just a few pages – but poignant story by Jack London, The Law of Life, which can move one to tears. It describes a tribe that abandons its old people who became a burden. Their children gave them some food and left, leaving their parents to be eaten by animals, leaving them to die. But the old father, left alone by the fire, trusted and hoped until the end that his sons would return for him. Can you imagine for a moment that we would treat our parents, our grandparents like that, like they did in that story? I will never believe it. This is not our genetic code.
    Because we take from our ancestors who taught us completely different things. Russia has lived a thousand years with values such as mutual assistance, mutual support and solidarity. And today these are the main pillars of our statehood. We inherited them along with Orthodoxy. These values are also ​​at the core of other religions professed by the peoples of Russia – Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. A philosophy of humanism has helped us survive for centuries. And today the future of our families, the fates of other people, depend on our responsibility.
    I repeat – people and their lives are what matters most to us now. Any other choice would be unacceptable for our people. I know, I am fully confident that the absolute majority thinks so, and acts in good conscience.
    We need to save people, to keep them alive, and the rest will follow. We will certainly rectify things and make up for everything; we will defeat this coronavirus and when it’s all over we will bail out the economy together, bolster prosperity, and will certainly support those who have lost their jobs and savings, those going through hard times now; we will prop up our struggling businesses, help them save jobs, and get strong again. More state support measures will be added and expanded.
    And now, each achievement, however small, but still a real success, especially each life saved, is strengthening our hope and confidence in a victory over the pandemic.
    We will force it to retreat. Life will get better, I promise. And it lies in our power to make this happen as soon as possible, so we will not only overcome these trials and tribulations, but also create a reliable context for future development.
    Thank you all. Thank you.“

Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63288


Read more:
https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2020/no-14-7-july-2020/stop-misusing-the-corona-pandemic-for-your-wars.html

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/putin-a-russian-spy-story

 

What would we, the upright angelical freedom fighters, do if Putin had not tried to poison the Skripals or shoot MH17 down? We would have no-one to hate nor to describe as the devil incarnate... We would have to recoil and blame Putin for Trump being elected instead of Hilarious... Or Johnson being elected instead of... who was he again? We would have to go and dig our files on polonium and how the beautiful football-loving Oligarchs were prevented from making a few bucks in their own countries. Or we would have to find how a young puny kid born in a poor neighbourhood of Woopwoopsky survived by making deals with his bigger school mates to do his dirty work of bashing Someonesky, in exchange of doing their homework...  And did he not make it to the top by being a ruthless spy employed to cut articles from newspapers in Dresden... We would have to make sure our audience know how devious Vlad-the-article-cutter was to learn German.

 

At one stage or another, we would have to mention his sleeping with the Orthodox church by re-gilding their domes and building new space of worship — thus doing a Donald trump, who wooed the evangelicals in the USA, contrarily to the traditional Catholic Democrat flavour since JFK, the church of Biden on the rocks, who are so liberal they believe Jesus is a white rock star smoking hashish, until he got busted by the bad Romans after having been denounced by a bad Jew...

 

But Putin is the devil. have a look at his small eyes and his clever smooth ways that are Mephisto-like to which more than 75 per cent of the Russians sell their souls for a small piece of bread... And those who oppose him, end up in the gulag, in hospitals or worse still, in the streets demanding freedom to become like us, Americans, chanting Long live MacCocaca and Pepsoburgers...

 

And now, to those blasted godless Chinese who forcefully reform the Falungongians into decent mortals!

 

 

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Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Donald Trump, a message posted on the website of the Kremlin said.

 

The conversation was constructive and informative. The presidents discussed problem of strategic stability and arms control, as well as the role of Moscow and Washington in maintaining international peace.

"The presidents discussed the situation around the Iranian nuclear program. Both sides emphasized the need for collective efforts to maintain regional stability and the global nuclear non-proliferation regime," the Kremlin said.

Putin and Trump agreed to develop US-Russian trade and economic cooperation. The leaders of the two countries also positively assessed the joint process of combating the coronavirus pandemic and agreed to continue contacts at different levels.

Earlier, Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton reproached Trump for not having sufficient training to be able to talk to Putin on equal ground. He expressed confidence that the US president is inferior to the Russian counterpart in terms of the ability to think strategically.

"You put somebody like that on one side of the table and Donald Trump ... on the other side of the table and it is not a fair fight," Bolton said.

The last time when Putin and Trump had a telephone conversation was in April of this year: they had three telephone conversations in three days. In 2019, Putin and Trump had three conversations in total. 

During the last of the three conversations, a number of pressing problems were discussed, including issues of strategic security and arms control, the American president said.

Читайте больше на https://www.pravdareport.com/news/russia/144776-putin_trump/

 

PLEASE MR BOLTON, THIS ISN'T A FIGHT... THIS IS PEACE TALK, WHICH YOU HATE...

 

Meanwhile at the BEEB.... with not a single proof whatsoever :

 

The US and UK have accused Russia of testing a weapon-like projectile in space that could be used to target satellites in orbit.

The US State Department described the recent use of "what would appear to be actual in-orbit anti-satellite weaponry" as concerning.

Russia's defence ministry earlier said it was using new technology to perform checks on Russian space equipment.

The US has previously raised concerns about new Russian satellite activity.

But it is the first time the UK has made accusations about Russian test-firing in space. They come just days after an inquiry said the UK government "badly underestimated" the threat posed by Russia.

In a statement on Thursday, US Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-proliferation, Christopher Ford, accused Moscow of hypocrisy after it said it wanted arms control to be extended to space.

"Moscow aims to restrict the capabilities of the United States while clearly having no intention of halting its own counter-space programme," he said. 

• Who owns outer space?
• Nasa 'probing first allegation of space crime'

The head of the UK's space directorate, Air Vice Marshal Harvey Smyth, said he was also concerned about the latest Russian satellite test, which he said had the "characteristics of a weapon".

"Actions like this threaten the peaceful use of space and risk causing debris that could pose a threat to satellites and the space systems on which the world depends," he said. He urged Russia to be "responsible" and to "avoid any further such testing".

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53518238

 

 

See also: 

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/948

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34408

 

 

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