World’s Leading Human Rights Abuser Points Fingers the Wrong Way
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)
No nation in world history did more harm to more people over a longer duration than America - beginning before the republic was established, more ruthless today than ever, including waging war on dissent and digital democracy, freedoms being compromised and eliminated.
In justifying unjustifiable imperial wars of aggression, Washington consistently blames victims for its high crimes, accountability never forthcoming.
Russia responded as expected to the US Justice Department requiring RT America to resister as a foreign agent, a hostile act, along with an FBI probe of Sputnik News to check for FARA violations.
Russia’s lower and upper house passed a new foreign agents media law. Putin signed it, designating media in the country receiving funding from abroad as foreign agents.
Media named foreign agents by Russia’s Justice Ministry now face the same requirements and restrictions as NGOs labeled the same way.
The law has nothing to do with censorship the way America operates - everything to do with tit-for-tat retaliation for Washington’s hostile act against Russia, requiring an appropriate response.
On Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert lied, calling the new measure “another threat to free media in Russia,” adding:
“Freedom of expression - including speech and media which a government may find inconvenient - is a universal human rights obligation Russia has pledged to uphold.”
On Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded, saying:
“Yesterday, the US Department of State said that the ‘new Russian legislation that allows the Ministry of Justice to label media outlets as ‘foreign agents’ and to monitor or block certain internet activity presents yet another threat to media freedom in Russia,’ while the law was adopted in response to Washington’s persecution of the Russia Today TV channel.”
Harassing RT and Sputnik challenges their speech and media freedoms, perhaps a step toward banning them in America altogether.
Unacceptable US actions and Nauert disinformation show a “deliberate (US) intention to further aggravate bilateral relations and constantly meddle in Russia’s domestic affairs, but also to the desperate lack of professionalism within its bureaucratic machine that has been stuck in an intellectual crisis for years,” Zakharova stressed.
Russian media shame their Western counterparts, sources of real news, information and analysis, why Washington challenges them.
It oppose truth-telling that differs from the official narrative, parroted by major media I call scoundrels for good reason.
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