In international law Palestinians, living under a brutal occupation, have a legal right to all forms of resistance – including that of armed struggle. It is argued that in designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation Britain’s actions are politically motivated and have rendered them complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas only operates within Israel and has never been a threat to Britain. Designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation within the U.K. will likely have come at the behest of Israel, US and Zionist organisations who openly support Israel’s racist, colonial settler aspirations to establish a Jewish State over all of historic Palestine and beyond.

During the free and fair elections in 2006, Palestinians, in both Gaza and the occupied territories of West Bank, overwhelmingly voted for Hamas as their government. While the Palestinian Authority has retained power in the West Bank, Hamas is the recognised government within Gaza and is responsible for all public services in Gaza, including schools, police and hospitals. As such, anyone working in the public sector is deemed by Israel to be ‘Hamas’ and is regarded by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force, as a legitimate military target. As the genocide of Palestinians has continued into its third calendar year, several Israeli officials have stated that all of the civilian population are legitimate military targets because of the wide support Hamas received from the people. This mass criminalisation of a civilian population, including its children and babies, is used by Israel to justify the slaughter that we are witnessing on a daily basis. The ethnic cleansing that began with the establishment of Israel in 1948, is in its final stages of clearing the land of its native Palestinian population.

The submission presented by the legal team makes reference to Nelson Mandela, who during his resistance of South Africa’s racist apartheid policies, was labelled as a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher’s British Government. The comparison is apt. These politically motivated labels serve to justify the criminal behaviour of oppressive brutal regimes. In South Africa the racism and labels led to the displacement of millions of blacks and the imprisonment and slaughter of those who stood up for freedom and dignity. Today Nelson Mandela is considered to be a hero and before his death, was welcomed into Britain as an honoured statesman. In the U.K. racism, discrimination and incitement to violence through ‘hate speech’ is now deemed to be a crime.

Zionism is Israel’s official racist policy. Palestinians are regarded as lesser beings, frequently subjected to military incursions, detention, murder and humiliating checks in the occupied territories of the West Bank. The refugees of 1948, who fled into Gaza, having had their land and homes stolen, are imprisoned in a small enclave without adequate support for life. For almost 20years there has been a growing crisis where potable water, food and medicine have become scarce commodities resulting in starvation and chronic disease amongst its most vulnerable – the old and the young. The people of Gaza have been subjected to ongoing displacement, bombing raids and military incursions, since 2006. This current Israeli crime of genocide – ‘Sending Gaza back to the stone age’, has left hundreds of thousands dead, families without shelter and is seen as Israel’s final extermination of an honourable people whose crime is to be the rightful ancestral inhabitants of the land.

After a case was brought by the Government of South Africa, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is guilty of plausible genocide. This means that governments and individuals are charged with a responsibility to do everything within their power to bring a halt to the genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for their participation in war crimes. Other non-governmental organisations have attempted to bring about further charges of complicity to war crimes and genocide, against several Western leaders.

People around the world have watched in horror as this holocaust is being played out in real time. This legal case is of immense importance in a first step toward putting things right. Britain has a special responsibility toward contributing to a just closure to this tragedy because of its historical role in the setting up of this hundred year plus, colonial settler project. Continuing to be subservient to Israel, US and Zionist power groups, the British Government is not acting in the interests of the British people. They are acting in the interests of a foreign state. By taking a leadership role in de-proscribing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Britain would go some way toward public recognition of the historical harm Britain has done to the Palestinians.The Government’s continued support of Israel’s crimes by military assistance and cover by giving ‘legal legitimacy’ to an otherwise murderous enterprise, must end. It is a violation of human rights and a violation of sovereignty that brings shame down upon all of us.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Heather Stroud.

Photo by Alexander Kunze

President Obama in 2015 removed Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism (SSOT). President Trump reversed that action in January 2020, thereby aggravating economic difficulties for Cuba. President Joe Biden needs to end the designation. The time is now for representatives, senators, and other elected officials to pressure him.

Cuba is no terrorist-sponsoring nation. In accusing Cuba of hosting terrorists, the Trump administration disregarded Cuba’s invitation to Colombian guerrillas to join representatives of Colombia’s government on the island to negotiate peace.

The SSOT designation requires that targeted nations not use dollars in international transactions. The U.S. Treasury Department punishes institutional offenders. Dollars are the world’s dominant currency, and in normal circumstances, banks would use them in transactions involving Cuba. Now, however, foreign lenders steer clear of Cuba. Payments for exported goods and services may not arrive. Cuba is financially paralyzed.

Cubans are suffering. Food is short, as are spare parts, raw materials for domestic production, school and healthcare supplies, spare parts, consumer goods, and cash.  The aim of U.S. policy, as specified by a State Department memo of April 1960, is to cause shortages, despair and suffering serious enough to induce Cubans to overthrow their government.

The labeling of Cuba as a terrorist-sponsoring nation is part of the decades-long U.S. policy of embargo, which is more accurately characterized as an economic blockade, this in recognition of its worldwide reach. Reasons for removing the SSOT designation are the same ones for ending the blockade.

After all, ending the blockade is the Cuba solidarity movement’s prime goal. The campaign to persuade congresspersons to pressure the president to remove Cuba from the SSOT list must refer to the blockade, even as it pursues the more limited goal.

Congresspersons know that, as per the Helms-Burton Law of 1996, congressional action is required for the blockade’s end. They know that current political realities are unfavorable for such action.  Were they to agitate for presidential action on the SSOT matter, they would, in effect, be preparing for a fight against the whole blockade. That’s why it makes sense to use the one rationale to back up each fight.

Ending the blockade (and SSOT designation) has its uses

+      Producers and manufacturers would sell goods in Cuba.

+      With despair and discouragement having diminished, fewer Cubans would be heading to the United States; 425,000 Cuban migrants arrived in 2022 and 2023.

+      U.S. citizens could visit Cuba for recreation, cultural enrichment, and education. Their exposure to Cuban artists, scientists, and educators visiting in the United States would be gratifying.

+      For the blockade to end would disappoint proponents.  They should have been disappointed by the results of the decades-long experiment showing that the blockade did not work. Regime change did not happen. Blockade apologists could reasonably enough move on to something else.

+      An end to the U.S. blockade (and SSOT designation) would gratify nations in the UN General Assembly that annually, and all but unanimously, vote to approve a resolution calling for the blockade’s end. Critics of U.S. interventionist tendencies, wherever they are, would be pleased. The U.S. government would earn some love.

Ideals and values 

+      The blockade is cruel. It causes human suffering.

+      It violates international law: “Whatever view is adopted, either that of coercion or aggression, it is quite evident that the imposition of the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba constituted an illegal act … the blockade is a fragrant violation of the contemporary standard which is founded on … sovereign equality between states.” (Paul A. Shneyer and Virginia Barta, The Legality of the U.S. Economic Blockade of Cuba under International Law, 13 Case W. Res. J. Int’l L. 451 (1981) 

+  The blockade is immoral. It contributes to sickness and deaths: “By reducing access to medicines and medical supplies from other countries and preventing their purchase from US firms, the embargo contributes to this rise in morbidity and mortality.” (Richard Garfield, DrPH, RN, commenting on Cuba’s “Special Period” of shortages following the fall of the Soviet Bloc – Am. J. Public Health 1997, 877, 15-20.)

+ The blockade exposes certain failings of U.S. democracy. U.S. political leaders remain oblivious to polling data showing strong support for normal U.S.-Cuba relations and for ending the blockade. Leaders of the Cuban exile community have long exerted undue influence in determining U.S. policies toward Cuba. The appearance is that of an important aspect of foreign policy having been farmed out to a strident minority.

Contradictions

The U.S. government claims the blockade serves as punishment of Cuba for allegedly violating human rights. But the United States has easily co-existed with governments famous for disregarding human rights, like Nicaragua’s Somoza regime, Chile under Pinochet, Haiti ruled by the Duvaliers, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

U.S. policymakers see Cuba as a Communist dictatorship and, on that account, as deserving of economic blockade. Even so, the United States trades with Vietnam and China, where Communist parties are in power.

Vice President Joe Biden presumably backed President Obama’s action in removing Cuba from the SSOT list. Contradicting himself, he refuses to reverse former President Trump’s placement of Cuba back on the list.

Contradictions point to Cuba as special case in the history of U.S. relations with other countries. Only Cubans find an open door on arrival in the United States as irregular migrants. Such red-carpet treatment stands alone in the record of how the U.S. government handles immigration.

The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 ensured that Cubans arriving in the United States without documents would at once receive social services and a work permit and a year later be granted permanent residence and the opportunity for citizenship.

The fact of U.S. hegemonic intent and actions regarding Cuba for 200 years must be extraordinary in the history of international relations. From Thomas Jefferson’s time until the 20^th century, leaders in Washington sought to own or annex Cuba. They would later on find other modalities.

U.S.- Cuba relations have long been on automatic pilot. Pursuing justice and fairness, elected officials in Washington would be moving beyond that history. They would go against the grain as they pressure a U.S. president to no longer designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Persevering, they would fight to relieve Cuba of all U.S. harassment.

The post Biden Must Remove the Designation of Cuba as Terrorist-Sponsoring Nation appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by W. T. Whitney.

Russian lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov told deputies in Moscow on January 25 that Ukrainian military intelligence had been given a 15-minute warning before the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane entered the Belgorod region in Russia, near the border with Ukraine, and that Russia had received confirmation the message was received.

Kartapolov did not provide any evidence to back up his claim and Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov reiterated in comments to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that it had not received either a written or verbal request to secure the airspace where the plane went down.

Yusov said Ukraine had been using reconnaissance drones in the area and that Russia had launched attack drones. There was "no confirmed information" that Ukraine had hit any targets, he said.

"Unfortunately, we can assume various scenarios, including provocation, as well as the use of Ukrainian prisoners as a human shield for transporting ammunition and weapons for S-300 systems," he told RFE/RL.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

There has been no direct confirmation from Kyiv on Russian claims that the plane had Ukrainian POWs on board or that the aircraft was downed by a Ukrainian antiaircraft missile.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for an international investigation of the incident, and Yusov reiterated that call, as "there are many circumstances that require investigation and maximum study."

The RIA Novosti news agency on January 25 reported that both black boxes had been recovered from the wreckage site in Russia's Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine.

The Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case into what it said was a "terrorist attack." The press service of the Investigative Committee said in a news release that preliminary data of the inspection of the scene of the incident, "allow us to conclude that the aircraft was attacked by an antiaircraft missile from the territory of Ukraine."

The Investigative Committee said that "fragmented human remains" were found at the crash site, repeating that six crew members, military police officers, and Ukrainian POWs were on board the plane.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on January 25 called the downing of the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane a "monstrous act," though Moscow has yet to show any evidence that it was downed by a Ukrainian missile, or that there were Ukrainian prisoners on board.

While not saying who shot down the plane, Zelenskiy said that "all clear facts must be established...our state will insist on an international investigation."

Ukrainian officials have said that a prisoner exchange was to have taken place on January 24 and that Russia had not informed Ukraine that Ukrainian POWs would be flown on cargo planes.

Ukrainian military intelligence said it did not have "reliable and comprehensive information" on who was on board the flight but said the Russian POWs it was responsible for "were delivered in time to the conditional exchange point where they were safe."

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's commissioner for human rights, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that "currently, there are no signs of the fact that there were so many people on the Il-76 plane, be they citizens of Ukraine or not."

Aviation experts told RFE/RL that it was possible a Ukrainian antiaircraft missile downed the plane but added that a Russian antiaircraft could have been responsible.

"During the investigation, you can easily determine which system shot down the plane based on the missiles' damaging elements," said Roman Svitan, a Ukrainian reserve colonel and an aviation-instructor pilot.

When asked about Russian claims of dozens of POWs on board, Svitan said that from the footage released so far, he'd seen no evidence to back up the statements.

"From the footage that was there, I looked through it all, it’s not clear where there are dozens of bodies.... There's not a single body visible at all. At one time I was a military investigator, including investigating disasters; believe me, if there were seven or eight dozen people there, the field would be strewn with corpses and remains of bodies," Svitan added.

Russian officials said the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, six crew members, and three escorts.

A list of the six crew members who were supposed to be on the flight was obtained by RFE/RL. The deaths of three of the crew members were confirmed to RFE/RL by their relatives.

Video on social media showed a plane spiraling to the ground, followed by a loud bang and explosion that sent a ball of smoke and flames skyward.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

Human Rights Watch (4/27/21) recognized Israeli domination of Palestinians as an apartheid system more than two years ago.

Israel’s recent bombing of the Gaza Strip from May 9–13 killed 33 Palestinians, including seven children. FAIR looked at coverage of these attacks from the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN, and didn’t find a single reference to Israel as an apartheid state, despite this being the consensus in the human rights community.

Since apartheid is the overriding condition that leads to Israel’s violent outbursts, and since the US has vigorously supported Israel for the last 60 years, US media should be putting it front and center in their coverage.  Omitting it allows Israel to continue to portray any violence from Palestinians as a result of senseless hostility, rather than emerging from the conditions imposed by Israel. For audiences, that distortion serves to justify Israel’s attacks on civilians and continued collective punishment of all Palestinians.

The term apartheid originated with the South African system of systematic racial segregation, which was not unlike Jim Crow in the United States. Apartheid is considered a crime against humanity—defined in the UN’s Apartheid Convention as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”

The term has been increasingly applied to the Israeli apparatus of checkpoints, segregation, surveillance, arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial murders that it uses to oppress Palestinians. In particular, the exclusion of most Palestinians under Israeli control from participation in Israeli politics, under the pretense that Palestinian areas either are or someday will be independent, mirrors the disenfranchisement of Black South Africans through the creation of fictitious countries known as bantustans.

Human Rights Watch published a report in 2021 titled A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. That same year, the leading Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, labeled Israel’s rule “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Amnesty International published a major report in 2022 on “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.”

After the biggest, most respected human rights organizations labeled Israel an apartheid state, much of the US political establishment erupted in bipartisan indignation in defense of Israel. The New York Times actually refused to even mention the Amnesty International report for 52 days (Mondoweiss, 3/24/22).

‘Trading fire’

The Washington Post (5/12/23) depicts a “face off” between a society under siege and the besieging forces.

Gaza, the Palestinian enclave between Israel and the Mediterranean, is arguably the most abused territory under the apartheid regime. Most of the water in the enclave fails to meet international standards, and was even called “undrinkable” by the United Nations. The illegal blockade regularly prevents important medicine and other supplies from being widely available in the country.

Regular Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip are a key part of the repression, killing unarmed civilians, destroying neighborhoods, schools and hospitals—most notably in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. These periodic attacks on the Palestinians, often crassly referred to as “mowing the grass,” have killed 5,460 Palestinians since 2007. International observers have often referred to Gaza as an “open-air prison,” with 2 million people being crammed into 146 square miles.

The recent Gaza coverage fails to capture this context, and instead portrays the situation as a conflict between equals. The Washington Post (5/12/23) described it as a “face off” when (at that point) 30 Palestinians, including six children, were killed by Israeli airstrikes, along with one Israeli killed by Palestinian rocket fire; a New York Times article (5/11/23) described the conflict as Israel and Islamic Jihad “trad[ing] fire.”  Another New York Times (5/12/23) headline vaguely referred to the attack as “A New Round of Middle East Fighting.”

CNN (4/12/23) used the classic whitewashing word “clash” in describing the attacks. CNN’s use of the term was even more striking because it appeared in a headline that included the incongruity between 30 dead Palestinians and one dead Israeli.

Outlets gave several “how we got here” pieces that purported to give context for the current escalation (e.g., New York Times, 5/9/23; Washington Post, 5/13/23). Again, not a single article FAIR reviewed used the term “apartheid” or referenced the recent findings from human rights NGOs to describe the current situation in Palestine.

‘Consequences of territorial ambitions’

UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese (Guardian, 5/12/23): Israel “cannot justify the occupation in the name of self-defense, or the horror it imposes on the Palestinians in the name of self-defense.”

On a recent trip to London, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, criticized the the tendency to omit important context and trends in the discussions about Israel (Guardian, 5/12/23):

For me, apartheid is a symptom and a consequence of the territorial ambitions Israel has for the land of what remains of an encircled Palestine…. Israel is a colonial power maintaining the occupation in order to get as much land as possible for Jewish-only people. And this is what leads to the numerous violations of international law.

Member states need to stop commenting on violations here or there, or escalation of violence, since violence in the occupied Palestinian territory is cyclical, it is not something that accidentally explodes. There is only one way to fix it, and that is to make sure that Israel complies with international law.

The dominant and overriding context of anything that happens in Israel/Palestine is the fact that the state of Israel is running an apartheid regime in the entirety of the territory it controls.  Any obfuscation or equivocation of that fact serves only to downplay the severity of Israeli crimes and the US complicity in them.

The post ‘Apartheid’ Designation Ignored as Israel Kills Children in Gaza Again appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Bryce Greene.

Although Cuba’s Revolution survived military invasion, guerrilla actions, terrorist attacks, and bacteriologic warfare, enough was not enough. Now there are pay-offs to dissidents, manipulation of worldwide media coverage, and weaponization of social media capabilities. The U.S. economic and financial blockade persists, after 60 years, and will continue.

That’s mostly because power to end the blockade switched from the executive branch to Congress, courtesy of the Helms Burton Law of 1996. Now the House of Representatives will be considering a bill that, similarly, would have Congress and no longer the president decide on removing Cuba from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring nations.

Miami representative María Elvira Salazar introduced H.R. 314, the so-called FORCE Act, on January 12,2023.  Its aim is “To prohibit the removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism until Cuba satisfies certain conditions, and for other purposes.”

Senator Marco Rubio introduced a companion bill in the U.S. Senate on March 16. The House bill has 24 co-sponsors; five are Floridians. The House Foreign Affairs Committee sent the bill to the House floor on March 28.

Meanwhile, a revived campaign is pressuring President Biden to end the designation of Cuba as terrorism-sponsoring nation. That campaign takes on urgency now inasmuch as Congress may co-opt Biden’s power to do so.

The designation represents a false account of Cuba’s facilitation of peace talks between Colombia’s government and leftist guerrillas. It traces back to old accusations that Cuba was harboring fugitives from the United States.

The designation persisted from the 1980s until 2015, when President Obama removed it, only to be reinstated by President Trump in 2021. The effect is to broaden economic war and bring new grief to Cuba.

U.S. dollars are weaponized; they the de facto currency in all international financial dealings, anywhere, by anyone. A convenient choke point exists, as pointed out recently by Cuban diplomat José Ramón Cabañas: “The issue is the clearing system based in New York. 90% of [Cuba’s] international transactions with US dollars go through that system … [and are] automatically frozen.”

U.S. regulations, introduced through executive action, long ago prohibited state sponsors of terrorism from using U.S. dollars in international transactions. Consequently, payments that Cuban exporters expect from foreign buyers may not arrive, and Cuban importers have difficulties paying foreign suppliers. International loan payments are blocked and grants from international agencies go astray.

The U.S. Treasury Department may impose heavy fines on those international banks and foreign corporations that do handle dollars in transactions with Cuba.  Non-offenders avoid Cuba, out of caution. The connection between the terrorism-sponsoring designation and prohibition on the use of U.S. currency has led to shortages and distress in Cuba.

Massachusetts Peace Action has spearheaded the necessary campaign against H.R 314. A recent communication provides information and shows how to contact members of the House of Representatives.

The extended Cuban exile community provides the main support for the legislative proposal. The Cuba part of U.S. foreign policy is regularly farmed out to the population sector with the most to lose or gain. That approach is dysfunctional, irrational, and unfair.

The text of the proposed bill assigns Cuba goals, fulfillment of which would signal that Cuba no longer is be designated as a sponsor of terrorism. These are the very goals that, as specified in the Helms-Burton Law, need to be achieved so that the blockade may be ended.  The goals are:

+ Release all political prisoners and allow for investigations of Cuban prisons by appropriate international human rights organizations.

+ Transition away from the Castro regime to a system that guarantees the rights of the Cuban people to express themselves freely.

+ Commit to holding free and fair elections.

Perspective reveals contradictions.  The subject of political prisoners demands consideration of the fate of U.S. prisoners held in Guantanamo. It’s worthwhile also to recall that neither Fidel or Raul Castro now plays a part in Cuba’s government; that their influence may persist, just as did Abraham Lincoln’s in the United States; and that in Cuba organized discussion among wide sectors of the population invariably precedes the introduction of important initiatives. The last such occasion was the discussion period in 2022 prior to the vote on the Constitutional Amendment for a Family Code.

And, lastly, Cuba’s conduct of elections is exemplary. In voting on March 26 for Cuba’s National Assembly, 75% of the voting population took part. The portion of those who vote in U.S. national elections is far smaller. The make-up of delegates to the Assembly reflects the demographics of Cuba’s population. As delegates, they choose Cuba’s leaders, who are themselves members of the National Assembly. That’s a process followed in the parliamentary systems of many countries.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by W. T. Whitney.

The post The Terrorist Designation is a Crime Against Us: An interview with Tahreer Jaber appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Diana Block.

More than 10,000 people and 100 progressive advocacy groups have signed an open letter urging U.S. President Joe Biden to reverse the Trump administration's terrorism designation for Cuba and to reinstate Obama-era policy with the Caribbean island.

"Your policies toward Cuba, which have been more aligned with those of President [Donald] Trump than President [Barack] Obama, are hurting the well-being of the Cuban people and run counter to the will of the majority of U.S. citizens," says the letter, organized by peace campaigners at CodePink. "An important policy change that we urge you to take immediately is to remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism."

Just days before Biden's inauguration, Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was roundly criticized for putting Cuba back on the U.S. State Department's list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism."

The Obama White House—in which Biden served as vice president—had removed Cuba from the department's blacklist in 2015, writing that "(i) the Government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period; and (ii) the Government of Cuba has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future."

In a statement attempting to justify his last-minute decision to re-designate Cuba a "state sponsor of terrorism," Pompeo accused Cuba of "repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to terrorists" and engaging "in a range of malign behavior across the region."

These were references to Cuba's refusal to extradite members of Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN) over alleged involvement in a 2019 bomb attack in Bogotá and to the nation's ongoing support for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who survived a U.S.-backed coup attempt in 2019.

As the new letter explains:

ELN representatives were in Cuba as part of an internationally recognized process of peace negotiations, similar to the one Cuba hosted with the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia], which was supported by the United States, Norway, Colombia and other nations. In addition, the recently elected Colombian president, [Gustavo] Petro, has asked Cuba to serve as the host country again for peace talks with the ELN, erasing any lingering concern or justification that the United States may have of Cuba's role as anything but a guarantor country for peaceful dialogue.

As a result of Pompeo's terrorism classification, which U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has yet to undo after 20 months, Cuba has been forced to endure additional "sanctions and international financial restrictions that limit Cuba's ability to carry out critical financial transactions, including those needed to advance its efforts to combat the pandemic," the letter notes.

Cuba has been dispatching doctors to various parts of the world to help tackle Covid-19, and it has launched an effort to share its homegrown vaccine technology with other countries to expand global supply. In defiance of decades of harmful U.S.-led sanctions, the biggest export of the small island nation, which has a lower child mortality rate than its more powerful and hostile neighbor to the north, is medical care.

Despite Democratic lawmakers' entreaties and Biden's own campaign pledge to abandon Trump's "failed" approach to Cuba—which included implementing more than 200 punitive policies following Obama-era efforts at normalization—the White House has imposed other sanctions in recent months, intensifying Washington's 60-year embargo on the Caribbean island.

"The economic deprivations to which U.S. sanctions contribute have resulted in the mass migration of Cubans, which is currently a major challenge to U.S. interests in border security, as well as causing a humanitarian crisis for the same Cuban people that your administration claims to support," states the letter.

Biden's recent easing of travel restrictions to Cuba is poised to "help Cuban Americans connect with their families," but that's far from enough to redress the deteriorating economic conditions harming millions of people on the island, the letter continues.

When the Obama administration certified the removal of Cuba from the State Department's blacklist in 2015, it declared that the U.S. would "continue to have differences with the Cuban government, but our concerns over a wide range of Cuba's policies and actions fall outside the criteria that is relevant to whether to rescind Cuba's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism."

Signatories to the letter contend that "the same situation exists today."

"The United States does have clear differences with the Cuban government—as they do with many governments—but we also have both national and international interests in supporting global pandemic coordination" and in mitigating "Cuba's humanitarian crisis that is causing tens of thousands of Cubans to seek dangerous passage to the United States," says the letter.

At the start of his presidency, Biden said that Cuba's status as a so-called state sponsor of terrorism was "under review," the letter points out.

"Given that removal from the list requires an inquiry into any terrorism-sponsored activity before providing a rescission request to Congress, we request that your administration immediately complete that review and initiate proceedings to remove Cuba from the list," it adds. "Such a move will advance legitimate U.S. security and humanitarian interests and help the future of the Cuban people."

CodePink plans to deliver the letter to various progressive lawmakers this week, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). McGovern was one of a few members of Congress who urged Biden to provide aid to Cuba in the wake of last month's catastrophic oil fire.

The anti-war group also intends to deliver the letter to "opposition figures that continue to advocate for hostility toward Cuba," including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), as well as Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.).

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

New Zealand has designated US groups the Proud Boys and The Base as terrorist entities.

Set down in the government’s official journal of record — the Gazette — last Monday, 20 June, it was published publicly a week later but with no wider dissemination.

The move — authorised by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster and signed off by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern — makes anyone with property or financial dealings related to The Base and the Proud Boys liable for prosecution and up to seven years imprisonment under the Terrorism Suppression Act.

• READ MORE: Other US terrorism reports

The American Proud Boys is a US neo-fascist group with members and leadership who have been federally indicted over the 6 January 2021 riots at the US Capitol.

The Base is a paramilitary white nationalist hate group active in the US and Canada, with reports of training cells in Europe, South Africa and Australia.

Commissioner Coster said in practice the designation would mean funding, supporting, or organising with those groups in New Zealand became a criminal offence.

“Those groups are respectively neo-Nazi, neo-fascist, white supremacist groups who have been responsible for some key unlawful events overseas, and so police supported the designation,” he said.

Met terrorist definition
They met the definition of terrorist groups, he said, and the designation had gone through a rigorous analytical process with input from several agencies, which generally took several weeks.

“It’s ultimately a matter for each jurisdiction to decide, but I would note that these groups have been designated in Australia and obviously they’re one of our closest partners in assessing the terrorism threat.”

He said such designations were not done lightly, but he was not aware of any suggestion it was a current problem domestically.

“It’s a preventative, deterrent mechanism for those groups not to operate here.”

Researcher into the far-right Byron Clark said most other groups on the list were Islamic terrorist groups, and the designation showed New Zealand was taking far-right terrorism seriously.

“It’s aligned I guess with what intelligence agencies are saying, that this is the biggest risk now is far-right terrorism — it’s a higher likelihood of a far-right terrorist attack than an Islamic terrorist attack in the current climate.”

It would likely mean those linked to the groups would be under more scrutiny from law enforcement and journalists, he said. With the Christchurch mosque attacker having come from Australia, there was still some complacency over the far-right in New Zealand.

‘Shared the ideology’
“There are some small groups here who share a lot of the ideology of the Christchurch shooter and I think perhaps we’re still not paying enough attention to those.”

Te Pūnaha Matatini’s The Disinformation Project researcher Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa said anti-vaccination proponents were deeply sceptical of government, had moved on to other causes, and were more often coming in contact with far-right ideologies.

“So within that constellation that is informed by mis- and disinformation predominantly, what we find are belief systems, structures, attitudes and perceptions linked to white supremacist discourse and ideologies coming in and taking root here,” he said.

“It’s no longer something you can say are imported harms because there are people within the country who are producing and mirroring that kind of discourse as well.”

He said the Disinformation Project had seen an increase in transnational funding for ideological groups in Aotearoa, which the designation could capture.

“One would hope … that the designation timing creates friction around the growth of these entities,” he said.

Fight Against Conspiracy Theories (FACT) Aotearoa spokesperson Stephen Judd said it would also send a message to people considering setting up local branches or equivalents of those groups.

‘Legitimate concerns’
“There are legitimate concerns about groups along the lines of the Proud Boys or The Base forming and operating here … you can see the same ideologies and some of the same conspiracy theories circulating online and in real life between people here.”

He said the ease of online communication meant such groups could form, organise and recruit much more easily than ever before, and develop their ideas and messages more easily.

Massey University Centre for Defence and Security Studies director Dr William Hoverd said New Zealand was following its partners: Both Australia and Canada had banned the two groups, and the US was starting to focus more on right-wing extremism.

“They are decentralised right-wing extremist groups with internet platforms who are seeking to influence others, and whilst there’s absolutely no evidence that I have seen of them operating here, that’s not to say that the right wing isn’t operating here in New Zealand.”

The designation automatically expires on 20 June 2025, unless extended or revoked.

Justification for the move
Dr Hoverd said the fact the groups were advocating armed violence, and had the capability to do it, was where the state became particularly interested in such groups.

“We’ve got groups in New Zealand and individuals in New Zealand who do have these types of profiles, but they aren’t violent – so how do we prevent that type of violence happening here.

“The big threat .. in terms of terrorism is lone actors, and decentralised groups like The Base, through the internet, could potentially radicalise someone here.”

Documents setting out the evidence and reasoning behind the designation — called a Statement of Case — had not been publicly available until after media reporting of the move.

Using referenced sources, they said the Proud Boys used a tactic called crypto-fascism — disguising their extremism to appeal to mainstream people and avoid attention from authorities — and constructed the idea of an antifa (anti-fascist) organisation as a strawman to rally self-described patriots.

Since its beginnings in 2016, the group had deliberately used violence — though to date, not typically deadly — against ideological opponents, and celebrated members who succeeded in doing so, the documents said.

“The APB have an established history of using street rallies and social media to both intimidate perceived opponents and recruit young men via the demonstration of violence.”

Detailed account
They also gave a detailed account of the Proud Boys’ involvement in the Capitol riots.

The Base was identified as a survivalist paramilitary group planning for and intending to bring about the collapse of the US government and a “race war” in the country, leading to a day of the mass execution of people of colour and political opponents.

It had achieved limited success in expanding to other countries including Australia, by targeting impressionable teenagers and socially isolated individuals lacking a sense of community, uniting a disparate body of largely online activists into a network of like-minded individuals.

“A key goal of TB is to train a cadre of extremists capable of accelerationist violence,” the documents said.

The group’s St Petersburg-based leader Rinaldo Nazzaro guided cells of three or four individuals to regularly meet and train, including at so-called “hate camps” — with at least some members having military training or skill in small arms, they said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that American investigators had determined the Myanmar military was responsible for atrocities including mass killings, gang rapes, mutilations, crucifixions, and the burning and drowning of children during its offensive in Rakhine state, and said the acts constitute genocide under United Nations definitions.

Thousands died in the raids, which forced an exodus of more than 700,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh and followed a 2016 crackdown that drove out more than 90,000 Rohingya from Rakhine.

In a statement, the junta’s Ministry of Foreign affairs rejected the designation as “far from reality” and dismissed Blinken’s comments as “politically motivated and tantamount to interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”

The announcement also drew scorn from pro-military voices in Myanmar, including outspoken nationalist blogger Kyaw Swar, who slammed the U.S. in a post on the social media platform Telegram.

“We killed them. What can you do about it,” he wrote, suggesting that Washington “be quiet and concentrate on dealing with Russia” following its invasion of Ukraine.

Others welcomed the decision and called on Washington to take further action against the military, which has killed at least 1,687 civilians and jailed 9,773 others since seizing power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup.

Win Aung, a resident of the commercial capital Yangon, told RFA’s Myanmar Service he was pleased by the U.S. announcement, but said it was long overdue.

“These Rakhine state massacres were not the only ones committed by this army. Many have occurred in other ethnic areas as well,” he said.

The junta is currently embroiled in multiple conflicts with armed ethnic groups and prodemocracy paramilitaries in the country’s remote border regions and reports have emerged of troops torturing, raping and killing civilians.

But while Western governments have ostracized and sanctioned the military regime, Win Aung said it is unlikely to step down without a fight.

“The whole world is now waiting to see what the U.S. will do,” he said. “Regardless of timing, I think this announcement will have an impact somehow. Especially at a time when the ICJ [International Court of Justice] is looking into the issue. I think it will hurt the junta’s defense at the ICJ genocide hearing.”

Gambia has accused Myanmar’s military leadership of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in Rohingya areas in a case it brought to the Hague-based ICJ. The court is holding hearings to determine whether it has jurisdiction to judge if atrocities committed there constituted a genocide.

Su Myat, a young woman from Yangon, called the U.S. declaration “the right thing to do.”

But she said that the announcement should have been made long ago “because this kind of brutality has not only been directed against the Rohingya.

“They have committed many crimes everywhere, but these crimes only surfaced after the Rohingyas had their turn and that’s because [they were documented using] modern technology,” she said, noting that similar accusations of atrocities have been leveled against the military by members of the Kachin and Kayin ethnic groups.

Prior to Monday, the U.S. government had described the crackdown in Rakhine state as “ethnic cleansing” — not using the “genocide” designation, which carries more legal weight and which the Genocide Convention defines as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

The new designation marks the eighth by the State Department since the Cold War, following its recognition of genocides in Bosnia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Iraq (1995), Darfur (2004) and areas under the control of ISIS (2016 and 2017), according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Blinken delivered his announcement on Monday.

Htet Myat Aung, a young man from Mandalay, said that the U.S. government’s declaration should mark the first step in a series of more significant and effective actions.

“All our people welcome the declaration of a genocide. But we hope to see more tangible and meaningful initiatives,” he said.

“People are now realizing that if the military can commit atrocities in cities like Yangon and Mandalay, where we have access to the internet and media, it must have been very bad in the remote areas where the Rohingya lived. Now we can sympathize with them and … we’d like to see more action on this issue.”

Htet Myat Aung said that while junta leaders may think that they can elude accountability by ignoring the international community, “they will have to pay for their crimes.”

Myanmar, a country of 54 million people about the size of France, recognizes 135 official ethnic groups, with Burmans accounting for about 68 percent of the population.

The Rohingya, whose ethnicity is not recognized by the government, have faced decades of discrimination in Myanmar and are effectively stateless. They have been denied citizenship. Burmese administrations have refused to call them “Rohingya” and instead use the term “Bengali.”

The atrocities against the Rohingya were committed during the tenure of the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, who in December 2019 defended the military against allegations of genocide at the ICJ. The Nobel Peace Prize winner and one-time democracy icon now languishes in prison — toppled by the same military in last year’s coup.

A Rohingya named Hla Kyaw, who has lived in Thei-Chaung Muslim refugee camp in Sittwe since the 2016 and 2017 crackdowns, told RFA that he was saddened by the losses endured by his ethnic group as well as by people throughout the country.

“There are laws in Myanmar, but the laws have been ignored,” he said. “This should not have happened. We hope that we will enjoy freedom in the future and that life will improve for our children.” 

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA’s Myanmar Service.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that American investigators had determined the Myanmar military was responsible for atrocities including mass killings, gang rapes, mutilations, crucifixions, and the burning and drowning of children during its offensive in Rakhine state, and said the acts constitute genocide under United Nations definitions.

Thousands died in the raids, which forced an exodus of more than 700,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh and followed a 2016 crackdown that drove out more than 90,000 Rohingya from Rakhine.

In a statement, the junta’s Ministry of Foreign affairs rejected the designation as “far from reality” and dismissed Blinken’s comments as “politically motivated and tantamount to interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”

The announcement also drew scorn from pro-military voices in Myanmar, including outspoken nationalist blogger Kyaw Swar, who slammed the U.S. in a post on the social media platform Telegram.

“We killed them. What can you do about it,” he wrote, suggesting that Washington “be quiet and concentrate on dealing with Russia” following its invasion of Ukraine.

Others welcomed the decision and called on Washington to take further action against the military, which has killed at least 1,687 civilians and jailed 9,773 others since seizing power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup.

Win Aung, a resident of the commercial capital Yangon, told RFA’s Myanmar Service he was pleased by the U.S. announcement, but said it was long overdue.

“These Rakhine state massacres were not the only ones committed by this army. Many have occurred in other ethnic areas as well,” he said.

The junta is currently embroiled in multiple conflicts with armed ethnic groups and prodemocracy paramilitaries in the country’s remote border regions and reports have emerged of troops torturing, raping and killing civilians.

But while Western governments have ostracized and sanctioned the military regime, Win Aung said it is unlikely to step down without a fight.

“The whole world is now waiting to see what the U.S. will do,” he said. “Regardless of timing, I think this announcement will have an impact somehow. Especially at a time when the ICJ [International Court of Justice] is looking into the issue. I think it will hurt the junta’s defense at the ICJ genocide hearing.”

Gambia has accused Myanmar’s military leadership of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in Rohingya areas in a case it brought to the Hague-based ICJ. The court is holding hearings to determine whether it has jurisdiction to judge if atrocities committed there constituted a genocide.

Su Myat, a young woman from Yangon, called the U.S. declaration “the right thing to do.”

But she said that the announcement should have been made long ago “because this kind of brutality has not only been directed against the Rohingya.

“They have committed many crimes everywhere, but these crimes only surfaced after the Rohingyas had their turn and that’s because [they were documented using] modern technology,” she said, noting that similar accusations of atrocities have been leveled against the military by members of the Kachin and Kayin ethnic groups.

Prior to Monday, the U.S. government had described the crackdown in Rakhine state as “ethnic cleansing” — not using the “genocide” designation, which carries more legal weight and which the Genocide Convention defines as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

The new designation marks the eighth by the State Department since the Cold War, following its recognition of genocides in Bosnia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Iraq (1995), Darfur (2004) and areas under the control of ISIS (2016 and 2017), according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Blinken delivered his announcement on Monday.

Htet Myat Aung, a young man from Mandalay, said that the U.S. government’s declaration should mark the first step in a series of more significant and effective actions.

“All our people welcome the declaration of a genocide. But we hope to see more tangible and meaningful initiatives,” he said.

“People are now realizing that if the military can commit atrocities in cities like Yangon and Mandalay, where we have access to the internet and media, it must have been very bad in the remote areas where the Rohingya lived. Now we can sympathize with them and … we’d like to see more action on this issue.”

Htet Myat Aung said that while junta leaders may think that they can elude accountability by ignoring the international community, “they will have to pay for their crimes.”

Myanmar, a country of 54 million people about the size of France, recognizes 135 official ethnic groups, with Burmans accounting for about 68 percent of the population.

The Rohingya, whose ethnicity is not recognized by the government, have faced decades of discrimination in Myanmar and are effectively stateless. They have been denied citizenship. Burmese administrations have refused to call them “Rohingya” and instead use the term “Bengali.”

The atrocities against the Rohingya were committed during the tenure of the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, who in December 2019 defended the military against allegations of genocide at the ICJ. The Nobel Peace Prize winner and one-time democracy icon now languishes in prison — toppled by the same military in last year’s coup.

A Rohingya named Hla Kyaw, who has lived in Thei-Chaung Muslim refugee camp in Sittwe since the 2016 and 2017 crackdowns, told RFA that he was saddened by the losses endured by his ethnic group as well as by people throughout the country.

“There are laws in Myanmar, but the laws have been ignored,” he said. “This should not have happened. We hope that we will enjoy freedom in the future and that life will improve for our children.” 

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA’s Myanmar Service.

The US government in 2020 declared five Chinese media entities to be “not independent news organizations” but rather “effectively controlled by the [Chinese] government” (Politico, 2/18/20).

Most nations have some form of state media. These days, it’s pretty easy for Americans to access any number of foreign state media outlets, and many of them have journalists covering US affairs. Some of those journalists must register as “foreign agents” with the US government. But others don’t have to—a distinction that has more to do with geopolitics than with journalism.

The Trump administration mandated “five Chinese state-run media organizations to register their personnel and property with the US government”: Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International and the parent companies of the China Daily and People’s Daily newspapers (Politico, 2/18/20). The administration also “limited to 100 the number of Chinese citizens who may work in the United States” for those organizations (New York Times, 3/2/20).

The privately owned Hong Kong newspaper Sing Tao was forced to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act because it “is viewed as a pro-Beijing outlet” (South China Morning Post, 8/26/21). US state media organ Radio Free Asia (8/27/21) trumpeted the “foreign agent” designation for Sing Tao, quoting one Hong Kong journalist saying that it is “a fairly open secret that it is an underground CCP [Chinese Communist Party] organization.”

Russia’s RT registered in 2017, as US intelligence agencies claimed it “contributed to the Kremlin’s campaign to interfere with [the 2016] presidential election in favor” of Donald Trump (Reuters, 11/13/17). Qatari-owned Al Jazeera was forced to register (New York Times, 9/15/20) because content “designed to influence American perceptions of a domestic policy issue or a foreign nation’s activities or its leadership qualifies as ‘political activities,’” according to one US official. Relations between Qatar and the US are complex, as they had strained during the Trump administration (NBC, 6/9/17) and have improved under President Joe Biden (NBC, 9/13/21), although the oil-rich nation is accused of funding Palestinian terror operations, adding to tensions (Washington Post, 12/15/20; Jerusalem Post, 2/17/22).

But other state-owned outlets, like the BBC, CBC and Deutsche Welle, do not register as foreign agents in the US. Clearly, the standard is that the “foreign agent” label applies when an outlet’s government owner has rocky relations with Washington. And for many press advocates, that’s causing problems.

Not just symbolic

The US government is proposing to spend half a billion dollars on “independent” anti-China media (American Prospect,  2/9/22).

The designation isn’t just symbolic: Through FARA enforcement, the government can keep a closer eye on these outlets’ activities. US state media network Voice of America (5/12/21) reported that CGTN “spent more than $50 million on its US operations last year, accounting for nearly 80% of total Chinese spending on influencing US public opinion and policy,” while China Daily “reported more than $3 million in spending last year, including expenses related to advertising in American newspapers.”

VoA called this a “propaganda spending spree,” as China wanted to “burnish its global image,” but even if that’s true, there’s plenty of evidence suggesting the US does the same thing. The US has looked to invest half a billion dollars into media organizations that counter the Chinese narrative (American Prospect, 2/9/22), causing the South China Morning Post (4/28/21) to scoff: “When the Chinese do it, it’s propaganda. When Washington does it, it’s ‘investing in our values.’” Xinhua (2/23/22) went further, saying that America’s move to fund journalism in Asia for political purposes makes the world “wonder how the self-styled ‘beacon of press freedom’ dares to openly manipulate media in an attempt to squeeze China out of what it calls a ‘Great Power Competition.’”

In a statement to the Department of Justice concerning the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Committee to Protect Journalists (2/11/22) noted that not all state-owned media outlets are the same, but “the glaring difference in the way these media outlets are treated under FARA raises questions about the fairness of its implementation.” CPJ called for “the end of compelling media outlets to register, which impacts their operations and their ability to engage in journalism freely.”

It went on:

The inconsistent application of FARA has created the appearance that the act is a foreign policy tool, and has provided justification for foreign governments to use similar labeling against news organizations that receive funding from within the United States. Countries including Hungary, Israel, Russia and Ukraine have all cited the US use of FARA when they passed legislation requiring civil society organizations to register with the government.

Even the Council on Foreign Relations (8/24/20), which wields enormous pressure on US foreign policy and press coverage of foreign affairs, sees a problem, saying that “such tough measures against Chinese state media could backfire.” By using FARA against these outlets, the US government “potentially overstates the influence of China’s state media outlets, and rather than modeling an open society, it risks appearing as if it does not care about press freedom.”

Politicized applications

Forcing journalists with overseas ties to register is an “oppressive new law” (Guardian, 9/11/21)—when Moscow does it.

Indeed, the choice by these countries to register each other’s journalists is a part of a brewing media cold war. Russia acted in kind when it decided to list journalists working there as foreign agents (NPR, 7/31/21; Guardian, 9/11/21), and Russia added to its foreign agents list Bellingcat, which is highly critical of Russia, and the US-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is specifically meant to counter Russian-government narratives in Eastern Europe (RFE/RL, 10/9/21).

The Chinese government showed its might during these escalating tensions when it expelled New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post journalists and “demanded that those outlets, as well as the Voice of America and Time magazine, provide the Chinese government with detailed information about their operations” (New York Times, 3/17/20). Both countries eventually eased “restrictions on access for journalists from each other’s countries” (Reuters, 11/16/21), but foreign reporters continue to complain of stifling working conditions in China (Wall  Street Journal, 1/30/22; CNN, 1/31/22). China is ranked 177th on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, beating out North Korea, Eritrea and Turkmenistan.

Not all state broadcasters are the same, but even the venerated BBC, whose journalists do not have to register under FARA in the US, isn’t free from the idea that it works in the service of the state.

One study by Cardiff University researchers, looking at “BBC news coverage from 2007 and 2012, concluded that conservative opinions received more airtime than progressive ones” (The Week, 11/26/21). Journalist Peter Oborne (Guardian, 12/3/19) sees the BBC not as a partisan news agency, but as one that favors the state generally: “The BBC does not have a party political bias: It is biased towards the government of the day,” he said. And as one former BBC journalist put it, staffers at the broadcaster’s BBC Monitoring program, which collects and re-reports from global media, historically were “working for…the Ministry of Defense,” specifically for the purposes of foreign intelligence (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 10/26/13).

This isn’t an argument for forcing the BBC to register under FARA. It is an argument that the application of FARA to foreign journalists is politicized and should be stopped, as it only makes it harder for all journalists to do their jobs.

The post Foreign Agents Designation Causes Media Cold War appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.