A state judge ruled Tuesday that any article published by Tribuna in which the governor is mentioned must be approved by the court.

In addition, the judge directed González, who was the editorial director of the newspaper for 30 years until his retirement in 2017, to submit to the court for review any future material in which Sensores is mentioned.

“The verdict against Jorge Luis González and Tribuna is nothing less than a gag order that constitutes a clear case of the courts siding with a state governor in overt efforts to silence any critical reporting of her administration,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “CPJ is alarmed by the sharp increase in lawfare against critical media in Mexico, where journalists continue to be attacked with almost complete impunity.”

The ruling by the Campeche state court is only the latest episode in the ongoing legal assault by Sansores on Tribuna and González, both of whom she sued on June 13, 2025, accusing them of spreading hatred and causing moral damages in coverage of her administration.

It is unclear which specific reports caused the governor to sue Tribuna, González told CPJ. It is also unclear why the lawsuit targets González, as he is no longer with the paper after his retirement in 2017. 

A previous ruling ordered González to pay “moral damages” of $2 million pesos (about USD$110,000) to Sansores and prohibited both the reporter and Tribuna from mentioning the governor in any reports, according to news reports. That sentence was suspended on July 9, after González successfully filed an injunction, which CPJ has reviewed, citing the Mexican Constitution’s prohibition of censorship before publication.

González said he planned to appeal, but it wasn’t immediately clear what strategies were available to him.

Several calls by CPJ to Sansores’ office for comment were unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jan-Albert Hootsen/CPJ Mexico Representative.

A state judge ruled Tuesday that any article published by Tribuna in which the governor is mentioned must be approved by the court.

In addition, the judge directed González, who was the editorial director of the newspaper for 30 years until his retirement in 2017, to submit to the court for review any future material in which Sensores is mentioned.

“The verdict against Jorge Luis González and Tribuna is nothing less than a gag order that constitutes a clear case of the courts siding with a state governor in overt efforts to silence any critical reporting of her administration,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “CPJ is alarmed by the sharp increase in lawfare against critical media in Mexico, where journalists continue to be attacked with almost complete impunity.”

The ruling by the Campeche state court is only the latest episode in the ongoing legal assault by Sansores on Tribuna and González, both of whom she sued on June 13, 2025, accusing them of spreading hatred and causing moral damages in coverage of her administration.

It is unclear which specific reports caused the governor to sue Tribuna, González told CPJ. It is also unclear why the lawsuit targets González, as he is no longer with the paper after his retirement in 2017. 

A previous ruling ordered González to pay “moral damages” of $2 million pesos (about USD$110,000) to Sansores and prohibited both the reporter and Tribuna from mentioning the governor in any reports, according to news reports. That sentence was suspended on July 9, after González successfully filed an injunction, which CPJ has reviewed, citing the Mexican Constitution’s prohibition of censorship before publication.

González said he planned to appeal, but it wasn’t immediately clear what strategies were available to him.

Several calls by CPJ to Sansores’ office for comment were unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jan-Albert Hootsen/CPJ Mexico Representative.

But the claim is false. Although some U.S. government agencies introduced a ban on the use of DeepSeek, the government has not introduced a nation-wide ban on the Chinese application.

The claim was shared on Weibo on Feb. 5.

“The United States has announced a ban on downloading DeepSeek, with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison,” the claim reads in part, purportedly revealing the punishment for those who break the ban.

The claim was shared alongside an image that shows an article published by the Chinese finance news outlet Sina Finance.

“The U.S. Congress had already enacted legislation comprehensively banning AI models from China,” the article reads in part.

(Weibo)

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup known for its chatbot service, with its app becoming the most downloaded on Apple’s iPhone, surpassing ChatGPT. While praised for efficiency, it faces concerns over censorship of sensitive topics and data privacy, with some governments banning it due to ties with Chinese telecom firms.

But the claim is false. As of Feb. 10, the U.S. has not introduced a nation-wide ban on DeekSeep.

The U.S. introduced a bipartisan bill, the “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” in its Congress to ban federal employees from using the app on government-issued devices, citing potential risks of data access by the Chinese government.

At the state level, Texas became the first to prohibit DeepSeek on government devices. Governor Greg Abbott issued this directive, emphasizing the need to protect sensitive information from potential foreign interference.

Additionally, some government organizations, such as the U.S. Navy and NASA, banned their personnel from using the Chinese AI app, citing security and ethical concerns.

Prohibiting Americans from assisting Chinese AI development

The bill mentioned by Sina Finance is one introduced by Iowa Senator Josh Hawley in January 2025 seeking to prohibit Americans from assisting Chinese AI development.

The bill proposed to prohibit U.S. companies from supporting Chinese AI research and buying any AI technology developed in China. It did not specifically mention DeepSeek.

Hawley’s bill has not passed a confirmation vote by either the Senate or the House of Representatives.

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab.

Politicians in the small Caucasian nation of Georgia have been sanctioned by Washington for “undermining democracy” and depriving Georgian people of “fundamental freedoms,” simply because its parliament has passed a law to control foreign influence over Georgian politics.

Politicians in another small country, Nicaragua, were subjected to U.S. sanctions for doing the same. Although the two countries are very different, there are striking similarities in the ways that Washington and its allies have striven to undermine their sovereignty.

In both cases, legislation to limit foreign influence followed coup attempts against popularly elected governments. The governing Georgian Dream Party, having won three elections since 2012, has survived two U.S.-orchestrated coup attempts since 2020.

Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista Party had also won three elections in 12 years when a coup was thwarted in 2018 (it has since won another election, in 2021). Both countries’ governments found that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) financed from abroad were heavily involved in these insurrections and moved to control them. And both modeled their legislation—not on Russia as is claimed—but on longstanding U.S. federal law.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) came into force in the U.S. in 1938. It requires NGOs and other organizations and individuals who receive funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents.” FARA-style legislation now exists in many other countries.

In recent years the U.S. has used FARA to crack down on what The New York Times called “prominent Washington research groups [receiving] tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments,” creating a “muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington.”

The Times article is replete with arguments for taming the influence of foreign governments on U.S. politics. Indeed, Washington’s most recent concern has been to expose what have been dubbed “Trojan horse” charities, those NGOs that have political objectives behind their charitable work.

However, neither Washington nor its allies abroad or in the corporate media approve of countries outside the West adopting similar powers. The reason is, of course, that they might expose the very Trojan horses created by Washington or by European capitals to interfere in those countries’ politics or even to provoke regime change.

Both Georgia and Nicaragua want to protect their sovereignty and try to limit foreign influence over their national affairs—aims that are uncontroversial in Western countries.

Before implementing its equivalent of FARA, Nicaragua’s population of under seven million sustained no less than 7,000 NGOs, most of which were likely to have been dependent on foreign funding. Georgia’s current position is far more extreme: A country of just 3.8 million people hosts around 26,000 NGOs, the vast majority funded from abroad.

Of course, in both countries these non-profits have often been involved in worthwhile humanitarian work. But, again in both cases, Washington and its allies have also been financing bodies that can legitimately be called Trojan horses.

And as Kit Klarenberg points out in The Grayzone, NGOs in Georgia have until now benefited from lax rules about foreign funding—as indeed those in Nicaragua did before its 2020 legislation took effect.

What do Trojan horse NGOs actually do? Their websites typically have mission statements and programs aimed at “promoting democratic values,” “capacity building,” “strengthening civil society,” advocating “good governance,” “raising civic awareness” and finding “a new generation of democratic youth leaders.”

These are essentially labels for what is really pro-Western propaganda, often directed at young people who are simultaneously encouraged to adopt “modern,” “liberal” values and lifestyles and be critical of their governments for failing to toe Washington’s line.

There are prizes: salaried jobs, training courses (perhaps overseas) for NGO recruits, opportunities to learn English, and more. As Jacobin puts it, “working in an NGO is a fast track to high incomes, perks like foreign travel and embassy receptions, and being part of the elite.”

Georgians wave U.S. and Ukrainian flags as they protest the government’s proposed “foreign influence transparency law.” [Source: thegrayzone.com]

Unmentioned in public documents might be training in organizing “non-violent” anti-government protests and exploiting social media to foster discontent. In the Georgian context, this is called a “color revolution” which, as The Nation puts it, “has become a byword for pro-Western, protest-driven regime change.” In Nicaragua, Yorlis Luna talked to young people who explained how Trojan horse NGOs schooled them to prepare for the “peaceful protests” that quickly became a violent coup attempt in 2018.

When well-funded NGOs join forces with local “human rights” bodies and with local media that are also foreign-funded, the combined effects can be powerful. In Georgia, The Nation quotes labor activist Sopo Japaridze as saying that there does not appear to be a single major foreign-funded civil society or media organization that is not fervently opposed to the elected government. “The entire ecosystem is against them,” he says, “and the NGOs have more power and influence than the government does internationally.” Similar words could have been used to describe Nicaragua in 2018.

While regime change was the U.S. objective in both countries, the motivation differed. Nicaragua was targeted because it poses the “threat of a good example”—a socialist-oriented country in a region which the U.S. views as its “backyard.”

Georgia is being targeted because of its balanced political position, moving toward future membership of the European Union while maintaining peaceful relations with its next-door neighbor, Russia. As its prime minister points out, both Washington and its EU allies want Georgia firmly in the anti-Russia camp, a new “frontline against Russia.”

Where does a Trojan horse NGO get its funding for its regime-change work? The foreign funding of Nicaraguan NGOs was little known-about before the coup attempt in April 2018, but within a month an article in Global Americans, “Laying the groundwork for insurrection,” highlighted Washington’s role.

Then on June 14, Kenneth Wollack, now chairman of the federally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), bragged to the U.S. Congress that NED had trained 8,000 young Nicaraguans to take part in the uprising. USAID later launched a specific program aimed at influencing the outcome of the 2021 elections. I have documented the role of U.S.-funded NGOs in the coup attempt and in subsequent regime-change efforts in Nicaragua.

In Georgia, foreign funding of NGOs is out in the open. Jacobin says that 90% of NGOs are financed from abroad, and prominent ones, such as the Economic Policy Research Center, the Europe Georgia Institute and the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, make no secret of having funding sources such as the NED, the European Union and even NATO. One that receives NED funding, the Shame Movement, is explicit about its aim of drawing Georgia into the European Union.

Klarenberg reports that, in 2023, when Georgian Dream made a previous attempt to bring in a FARA-style law, it had to capitulate when vast, violent crowds, with the Shame Movement “in the vanguard,” threatened to overrun parliament and bring about a color revolution.

Members of Shame Movement speaking outside of Georgia’s parliament. [Source: rferl.org]

The “outsized role” played by foreign-funded bodies has, according to Jacobin, “led the country into a chronic democratic crisis.” It is therefore hardly surprising that the government continues to push ahead with legislation to control them.

What is such a law and what happens when it is implemented? FARA-style laws generally do not prohibit foreign funding, they simply require it to be declared, so that the way it is used can be documented and made transparent. NGOs that are really Trojan horses can then be identified. Closures of NGOs inevitably result—but usually only a small minority are identified as Trojan horses.

Most closures come about because NGOs cannot or will not comply with more stringent accounting requirements, or the change brings to light redundant NGOs that exist in name only.

In Australia, more than 10,000 non-profits were closed when its FARA-style law was implemented. The equivalent authorities in the U.S. and UK close thousands of NGOs each year for non-compliance or because they cease to operate.

Nicaragua has closed about half of the NGOs it had before its FARA-style law took effect, and while the initial closures were Trojan horses the vast majority have lost their NGO status through non-compliance or because they are effectively defunct.

Protest against NGO law. [Source: nbcrightnow.com]

The Trojan horse role of NGOs was perhaps most obvious in Russia, a developed country which nevertheless had many foreign-funded charities before it introduced a FARA-style law in 2012. Scott Ritter reports that the law “proved to be the death knell for U.S., UK, and EU-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that had spent more than two decades trying to, according to their leaders, shape Russian civil society along Western lines.”

In 2015, Russia blacklisted the National Endowment for Democracy but nevertheless, in 2021, the NED still had more than 60 Russia-oriented projects, valued in the millions of dollars, but presumably now based outside the country.

When the foreign funding of NGOs comes under threat from an equivalent to FARA, it is hardly surprising that the NGOs protest.

This happened in the U.S. when it toughened foreign agent rules in 2022, provoking a response from NGOs across the political spectrum.

It happened in Australia in 2018 and in the UK in 2023 when they announced similar laws. Protests from NGOs in Georgia were to be expected, just as they were in Nicaragua, because the NGO sectors are heavily dependent on foreign funding and fear its loss, job cuts and possible closures.

What distinguishes the protests in Georgia and Nicaragua, and indeed other non-Western countries such as Thailand where controls on NGOs have been tightened, is that the threat of FARA-style legislation is used to create a sort of moral panic by human rights bodies, the corporate media and the spokespeople for Western governments.

According to this narrative, such a law would not just bring over-zealous regulation of one sector of society, but threaten the whole society’s freedom of expression and its democratic values. This claim is used to justify the mobilization of well-publicized anti-government protests, ostensibly non-violent, but which can rapidly provoke a response from police that can justify violence in return.

As political scientist Glenn Diesen points out, “the media shows some pictures of protests and we are ready to redefine democracy as the rule of a loud Western-backed minority to support intimidations, sanctions and a coup.”

While the cases of Georgia and Nicaragua differ somewhat, because in Georgia “non-violent” protests responded to the impending legal changes while in Nicaragua they were ostensibly about minor changes in state-funded pensions, in both cases the regime-change motivation of the protesters quickly became apparent.

Diesen notes that the same occurred in Ukraine in 2014: Western governments and NGOs “backed an unconstitutional coup against a democratically elected government and the coup was only supported by a minority of Ukrainians. Yet, it was sold to us as ‘pro-Ukrainian’ and a ‘democratic revolution’ so we supported it without any critical debate.”

The unconstitutional coup in Ukraine was, from Washington’s viewpoint, a success. But similar actions in Georgia and Nicaragua have – so far – been counterproductive. To alleviate the damage being done by US sanctions, Nicaragua is developing close relations with both China and Russia. Meanwhile, after passing the legislation to control NGOs this month, the Georgian Dream party is reported to be “actively working” to restore the country’s diplomatic relations with Russia.

One final intriguing connection between Georgia and Nicaragua is the presence of a global NGO called the Center for Applied NonViolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), headed by Slobodan Djinovic, which claims to have trained regime-change activists in 52 countries. CANVAS, supported by USAID, had been training activists in Georgia at the end of 2023 when the “color revolution” appeared to be imminent.

Whether CANVAS had a role in Nicaragua’s 2018 insurrection is unclear, but the NGO has certainly been active in Venezuela and a CANVAS official visited Nicaragua in the aftermath of the coup attempt. Djinovic uses Nicaragua’s failed coup as a case study in a course on “non-violence” that he teaches at Harvard.

Sanctions imposed by the White House on Georgian officials who are promoting FARA-style legislation mirror the steps taken against the Nicaraguan government when it did the same in 2020. Instead of admitting that laws to oversee the foreign funding of non-government organizations have been adopted by many Western-aligned countries, Georgia’s plan has been dubbed “Russian Law,” just as—at the time—Nicaragua’s equivalent was labeled “Putin Law.”

Corporate media such as the BBC have repeated Washington’s line and quote Secretary of State Antony Blinken at length, without pointing out his hypocrisy in criticizing a country for adopting legislation that is, in reality, based on U.S. law, not Russia’s.

The irony is that FARA was originally sold as a means of defending democracy when it was introduced in the U.S. more than 80 years ago. But if a similar law is used by a country which Washington or its allies regard as disobedient, such use is painted as an attack on democracy and as a step on the road to authoritarian government.

Dubbing the legislation as “Russian law” or “Putin law” makes the message clear.

• First published in CovertAction Magazine

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Perry.

"Until meaningful government safeguards are in place to protect the public from the harms of generative AI, we need a pause."

So says a report on the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) published Tuesday by Public Citizen. Titled Sorry in Advance! Rapid Rush to Deploy Generative AI Risks a Wide Array of Automated Harms, the analysis by researchers Rick Claypool and Cheyenne Hunt aims to "reframe the conversation around generative AI to ensure that the public and policymakers have a say in how these new technologies might upend our lives."

Following the November release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, generative AI tools have been receiving "a huge amount of buzz—especially among the Big Tech corporations best positioned to profit from them," the report notes. "The most enthusiastic boosters say AI will change the world in ways that make everyone rich—and some detractors say it could kill us all. Separate from frightening threats that may materialize as the technology evolves are real-world harms the rush to release and monetize these tools can cause—and, in many cases, is already causing."

Claypool and Hunt categorized these harms into "five broad areas of concern":

• Damaging Democracy: Misinformation-spreading spambots aren't new, but generative AI tools easily allow bad actors to mass produce deceptive political content. Increasingly powerful audio and video production AI tools are making authentic content harder to distinguish [from] synthetic content.
• Consumer Concerns: Businesses trying to maximize profits using generative AI are using these tools to gobble up user data, manipulate consumers, and concentrate advantages among the biggest corporations. Scammers are using them to engage in increasingly sophisticated rip-off schemes.
• Worsening Inequality: Generative AI tools risk perpetuating and exacerbating systemic biases such [as] racism [and] sexism. They give bullies and abusers new ways to harm victims, and, if their widespread deployment proves consequential, risk significantly accelerating economic inequality.
• Undermining Worker Rights: Companies developing AI tools use texts and images created by humans to train their models—and employ low-wage workers abroad to help filter out disturbing and offensive content. Automating media creation, as some AI does, risks deskilling and replacing media production work performed by humans.
• Environmental Concerns: Training and maintaining generative AI tools requires significant expansions in computing power—expansions in computing power that are increasing faster than technology developers' ability to absorb the demands with efficiency advances. Mass deployment is expected to require that some of the biggest tech companies increase their computing power—and, thus, their carbon footprints—by four or five times.

In a statement, Public Citizen warned that "businesses are deploying potentially dangerous AI tools faster than their harms can be understood or mitigated."

"History offers no reason to believe that corporations can self-regulate away the known risks—especially since many of these risks are as much a part of generative AI as they are of corporate greed," the statement continues. "Businesses rushing to introduce these new technologies are gambling with peoples' lives and livelihoods, and arguably with the very foundations of a free society and livable world."

On Thursday, April 27, Public Citizen is hosting a hybrid in-person/Zoom conference in Washington, D.C., during which U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and 10 other panelists will discuss the threats posed by AI and how to rein in the rapidly growing yet virtually unregulated industry. People interested in participating must register by this Friday.

"Businesses rushing to introduce these new technologies are gambling with peoples' lives and livelihoods, and arguably with the very foundations of a free society and livable world."

Demands to regulate AI are mounting. Last month, Geoffrey Hinton, considered the "godfather of artificial intelligence," compared the quickly advancing technology's potential impacts to "the Industrial Revolution, or electricity, or maybe the wheel."

Asked by CBS News' Brook Silva-Braga about the possibility of the technology "wiping out humanity," Hinton warned that "it's not inconceivable."

That frightening potential doesn't necessarily lie with existing AI tools such as ChatGPT, but rather with what is called "artificial general intelligence" (AGI), through which computers develop and act on their own ideas.

"Until quite recently, I thought it was going to be like 20 to 50 years before we have general-purpose AI," Hinton told CBS News. "Now I think it may be 20 years or less." Eventually, Hinton admitted that he wouldn't rule out the possibility of AGI arriving within five years—a major departure from a few years ago when he "would have said, 'No way.'"

"We have to think hard about how to control that," said Hinton. Asked by Silva-Braga if that's possible, Hinton said, "We don't know, we haven't been there yet, but we can try."

The AI pioneer is far from alone. In February, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a company blog post: "The risks could be extraordinary. A misaligned superintelligent AGI could cause grievous harm to the world."

More than 26,000 people have signed a recently published open letter that calls for a six-month moratorium on training AI systems beyond the level of OpenAI's latest chatbot, GPT-4, although Altman is not among them.

"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable," says the letter.

While AGI may still be a few years away, Public Citizen's new report makes clear that existing AI tools—including chatbots spewing lies, face-swapping apps generating fake videos, and cloned voices committing fraud—are already causing or threatening to cause serious harm, including intensifying inequality, undermining democracy, displacing workers, preying on consumers, and exacerbating the climate crisis.

These threats "are all very real and highly likely to occur if corporations are permitted to deploy generative AI without enforceable guardrails," Claypool and Hunt wrote. "But there is nothing inevitable about them."

They continued:

Government regulation can block companies from deploying the technologies too quickly (or block them altogether if they prove unsafe). It can set standards to protect people from the risks. It can impose duties on companies using generative AI to avoid identifiable harms, respect the interests of communities and creators, pretest their technologies, take responsibility, and accept liability if things go wrong. It can demand equity be built into the technologies. It can insist that if generative AI does, in fact, increase productivity and displace workers, or that the economic benefits be shared with those harmed and not be concentrated among a small circle of companies, executives, and investors.

Amid "growing regulatory interest" in an AI "accountability mechanism," the Biden administration announced last week that it is seeking public input on measures that could be implemented to ensure that "AI systems are legal, effective, ethical, safe, and otherwise trustworthy."

According toAxios, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is "taking early steps toward legislation to regulate artificial intelligence technology."

In the words of Claypool and Hunt: "We need strong safeguards and government regulation—and we need them in place before corporations disseminate AI technology widely. Until then, we need a pause."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

I’ve been sentenced to a 50-day jail term in Germany for refusing to pay fines imposed for trespass convictions after two “go-in” actions against nuclear weapons threats. The actions were two uninvited entries into Germany’s Büchel Air Base where up to 20 US hydrogen bombs are stationed under a policy called “nuclear sharing.” The sentence will begin January 10 at the Billwerder prison in Hamburg.

I’ve appealed the convictions to the Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest, which has yet to issue a decision. The appeal complains that expert witnesses in international law — who were prepared to validate my defense of “crime prevention” — were not allowed testify, effectively eliminating my right to present a defense.

My refusal to pay the fine raises a lot of questions, principally: Why not avoid prison and just pay?

One reason is because my protest was not wrong or a mistake in any sense, whereas paying the fine implies I’m guilty of some sort of offense or misconduct. Further, agreeing to pay has the appearance of an apology or remorse on my part when none is warranted. I believe any nonviolent action against preparations to commit mass destruction with nuclear weapons is in the public interest. Further, my so-called “trespass” was an attempt at crime prevention, or interference with ongoing government criminality, and as such was a civic duty.

Refusing to pay fines for nonviolent resistance to nuclear war preparations is, from my position of privilege, also an act of solidarity with the poor, the undocumented, and the outcasts who often don’t have resources or connections enough to purchase their way out of pre-trial detention or incarceration for minor offenses.

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as Dr. King said. The ongoing threat to attack people with nuclear weapons (known as “deterrence”) is prohibited by international law. My go-in actions at Büchel were based on international legal obligations, which in the words of the Nuremberg Principles “bind every citizen just as does ordinary municipal law.” Plans for massacres routinely practiced under nuclear sharing and nuclear deterrence policy are prohibited and have been criminalized by the combined obligations — considered as a whole — set out in the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter, Principles, and Judgment, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and the US and German federal constitutions. I hope never to pay respect to governments that declare that its ratified treaties are the “supreme law” but then proceed to wantonly violate them.

The latest and best condemnations of the threat to use nuclear weapons are found in the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice. The NPT is particularly key to my case, because its Articles I and II explicitly prohibit any transfer whatsoever of nuclear weapons from one country to another. Confirmation of this prohibition is Article 31 of the 1969 Vienna Convention or “The Law of Treaties,” which states that “A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty…”

It can never be a crime to interfere with the deployment, rehearsals for use, or the threatened use of nuclear weapons, or to resist the U.S. and German governments’ joint plans to commit indiscriminate, uncontrollable mass destruction using firestorms and radiation. No criminal conspiracy of any kind anywhere compares to the level of deliberate public lawbreaking inherent in our famously “credible” nuclear weapons threats. Rather than a trespass, my peaceful interference with nuclear attack machinery is justifiable, preventative, precautionary, and lawful.

Court systems in Germany and the US have labored to dismiss this lawful defense of necessity and to ignore their own constitutional mandate to abide by international treaties. Instead, when courts in both countries have been confronted with the treaty obligations outlined above, they have routinely denied their applicability in protest cases involving nuclear weapons. Courts in Germany have gone so far as to say that because Germany and the US have agreed to nuclear sharing, the practice is therefore legitimate. This argument is a sham, akin to organized crime’s collusion with police authorities who are paid off to overlook criminal conduct, rewarded for protecting it with political and judicial winks and nods that deny the obvious.

I have presented to the courts in Cochem, Koblenz, and Karlsruhe the facts about nuclear weapons, their effects, the government’s preparations for using them against civilians, and the treaties that forbid any such planning for massacres. By ignoring or denying these facts, the judges are guilty of pretending the criminality of deterrence is lawful, and they are complicit in the self-destructive maintenance of prohibited and suicidal nuclear threats. It is naïve or mentally unbalanced to act as if this charade is not homicidal and suicidal. Otherwise the courts are cynically corrupt to ignore the criminal intent of the governments of Germany and the United States regarding nuclear sharing. I hope to be able to stand up to the courts’ coercion and intimidation, and to refuse to cooperate, paraphrasing Thoreau, with such a government that is the nuclear terror’s government also.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Laforge.

If every single high-profile journalist, politician and priest is currently expressing heartfelt devotion to Britain’s deceased, 96-year-old monarch, it is not because she ‘served’ her country diligently in doing her ‘duty’ for 70 years. The powerful interests that determine Britain’s political and media agenda are not sentimentalists; they do not impose ‘managed democracy’ as a kind of game. Propaganda blitzes are always pragmatic.

It could hardly be more obvious that earlier propaganda campaigns defining the Iraq war, the Libya war, the Syria war, Jeremy Corbyn, and now NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, were shaped to serve those same interests.

It is no accident that damning claims – many of them simply fabricated – relentlessly target enemies of state from the front pages of every newspaper, from every TV and touch screen. And it is no accident that corporate editors and journalists are united now in expressing deep affection for the late Queen. When everyone clearly feels obliged to say the same thing, it means they are deferring to a key requirement of elite control.

This latest blitz should be no surprise, because wherever there is royalty, there is militarism, organised religion, bipartisan political agreement, patriotism and, of course, concentrated wealth. After all, as Peter Oborne reminded his readers, the Queen was ‘head of state; head of the Anglican Church; head of the judiciary; head of the armed forces, head of the Commonwealth; and ultimate fount of honour in the British state’.

All of these roles rest on a series of interlinked, mutually supportive deceptions. The monarchy roots autocratic rule in esoteric ‘tradition’ which, lost in the mists of time, presents elite control as ‘the natural order of things’. Organised religion extends the same illusion to a cosmic King sanctifying His earthly representatives who thus rule by ‘divine right’. Military power, swathed in the same esoterica, protects this system in the name, not just of the monarch, but of God. Who would dare challenge the will, not just of the King, but of God Himself?

As Harold Pinter liked to say, these deceptions are almost ‘witty’ in their audacity.

The new king said of his mother:

‘She set an example of selfless duty which, with God’s help and your counsels, I am resolved faithfully to follow.’

The ideal, endlessly repeated, is not to discover Truth, Happiness and Freedom for ourselves as creative, free-thinking individuals. Rather, it is to reject our personal needs and interests – rejected as ‘narrow’ and ‘selfish’ – to focus on ‘service’, on performing a ‘duty’ pre-defined for us by the mumbo-jumbo of patriotic ‘tradition’. Tolstoy captured his moment and ours exactly:

‘All these people do what they are doing unconsciously, because they must, all their life being founded upon deceit, and because they know not how to do anything else… Moreover, being all linked together, they approve and justify one another’s acts – emperors and kings those of the soldiers, functionaries, and clergymen; and soldiers, functionaries and clergymen the acts of emperors and kings, while the populace, and especially the town populace, seeing nothing comprehensible in what is done by all these men, unwittingly ascribe to them a special, almost a supernatural, significance.’ ¹

Thus, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said:

‘Her Majesty showed us that when we build our lives on God’s faithfulness, we are on the solid ground of eternity that cannot be shaken.’

There is indeed nothing comprehensible here. Alas, human folly is such that many of us find these comments all the more impressive for that reason – we are surely in the presence of truth so profound that it escapes our feeble understanding.

‘The Moment History Stops’

It is ironic indeed that a classic feature of the Western propaganda system involves depicting citizens of Official Enemies as having succumbed to a Cult of Personality. We, in the West, are encouraged to scoff at those poor lost souls who glorify leaders with hagiographic portraits and statues; and militarised patriotic festivals and grand commemorative events.

These countries are identified as belonging to their respective heads of state. It’s ‘Putin’s Russia’, ‘Xi Jinping’s China’, ‘Kim Jong-un’s North Korea’, ‘Gaddafi’s Libya’, ‘Saddam’s Iraq’.

The death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September was a salient reminder that ‘our’ propaganda system is a vital cog in the British social machine that upholds elite privilege and domination over the majority of the population.

BBC News runs continuous live-streams on its channels, its website is draped in black, featuring ‘news’ stories with titles such as:

• ‘Nation mourns Queen with flowers, gun salutes and address from new King’
• ‘Obituary: a long life marked with a sense of duty’
• ‘Queen Elizabeth II: World leaders remember a “kind-hearted Queen”’

There was even a BBC News piece titled ‘Death of Queen Elizabeth II: The moment history stops’. The power of the British monarchy is such that history itself stops!

‘Royal correspondent’ Jonny Dymond gushed:

‘This is the moment history stops; for a minute, an hour, for a day or a week; this is the moment history stops.

‘Across a life and reign, two moments from two very different eras illuminate the thread that bound the many decades together. At each a chair, a desk, a microphone, a speech. In each, that high-pitched voice, those clipped precise vowels, that slight hesitation about public speaking that would never quite seem to leave her.’

The BBC purple prose continued:

‘One moment is sun-dappled, though the British people were suffering through a terrible post-war winter. A young woman, barely more than a girl really, sits straight-backed, her dark hair pulled up, two strings of pearls around her neck. Her youthful skin is flawless, she is very beautiful. A life opens out ahead of her.’

Newspapers ran full, front-page portraits with forelock-tugging headlines:

• ‘A life in service’ (The Times)
• ‘Our hearts are broken’ (Daily Mail)
• ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’ (Daily Telegraph)
• ‘Thank you’ (Daily Mirror’)
• ‘Our beloved Queen is dead’ (Daily Express)
• ‘We loved you Ma’am’ (The Sun)

The Sun’s headline adorned one of the most brutal, cynical, loveless, soulless gutter tabloids on the market. Does The Sun have any idea what the word ‘love’ means?

As for the Telegraph’s declaration, ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’; this is a paper that reflexively supports every blood-drenched Western war going, that waged merciless propaganda war on Corbyn, incinerated Assange, and mocked the climate crisis threatening all humanity for decades. But their hearts are full of love for the icon of unlimited wealth.

Anyone still harbouring illusions that the Guardian might offer a modicum of republican scepticism would have been disabused by the acres of royal-friendly coverage on display. The day after her death, the print edition of the paper led with fully 19 pages on the Queen plus a 20-page supplement. By painful contrast, a news piece titled, ‘World on brink of five “disastrous” climate tipping points – study’, was buried on page 25. The following day, the Guardian published a 40-page special supplement on the Queen. That paired example captures exactly the imposed insanity of the ‘mainstream’ media that are leading us to disaster.

High-profile Guardian columnist, Gaby Hinsliff, wrote a piece packed with references to ‘grandmotherly manner’, ‘female power’, ‘rare trick for a woman’, ‘a woman in charge’, ‘“ultimate feminist”’, ‘a legacy for women’, ‘ultimate matriarch’, ‘Matriarchal power’, and so on.

We tweeted in response:

‘Ok, ok, gender matters! But so does medieval authoritarianism, militant patriotism and 0.1% control.’

As we noted, Hinsliff’s dismal piece garnered 12 retweets and 71 likes in the first 16 hours. Six days since publication, the tally stands at just 14 retweets and 72 likes.

As for the Labour party, any hint of republican sentiment has long been well and truly expunged from statements issuing from its corporate HQ. Sir Keir Starmer, Knight Commander of the Order of Bath and the Leader of the ‘Opposition’, declared:

‘For seventy years, Queen Elizabeth II stood as the head of our country. But in spirit, she stood amongst us.’

Party managers have clearly been working hard on Keir’s ‘compassionate’ facial expression, but his delivery is still devoid of genuine human feeling. He continued in his now trademark robotic delivery:

‘Queen Elizabeth II created a special, personal relationship with us all. A relationship based on service and devotion to her country.’

This is the standard narrative being rammed down the throats of the British, indeed global, audience.

Starmer added:

‘And as the world changed around her, this dedication became the still point of our turning world.’

Our world revolved around the Queen? Really?

In glaring contrast to the obsequious royalist coverage elsewhere, the Morning Star’s front page ran with:

‘Truss’s energy boon – for the fuel fat cats’

So, in case anyone ever wondered to what extent we are living in a deeply propagandised society, the front pages of the ‘free press’ provided a clear answer. Ash Sarkar of Novaramedia noted:

‘The fact that every single newspaper and broadcaster in the country is united in waving though the accession of an unelected head of state makes the “no one tells us what to write” stuff all the more embarrassing.’

The Unquestioned Institution Of The Monarchy

Former diplomat Craig Murray also highlighted the absurdity of the notion of media ‘impartiality’ when press and broadcasting are so blatantly pro-monarchy:

‘Think seriously on this. 29% of the population want to abolish the monarchy. Think of all the BBC coverage of the monarchy you have seen over the last decade. What percentage do you estimate reflected or gave an airing to republican views? Less than 1%?’

He continued:

‘Now think of media coverage across all the broadcast and print media.

‘How often has the media reflected the republican viewpoint of a third of the population? Far, far less than a third of the time. Closer to 0% than 1%. Yes, there are bits of the media that dislike Meghan for being black or are willing to go after Andrew. But the institution of the monarchy itself?’

Murray concluded:

‘There can be no clearer example than the monarchy of the unrelenting media propaganda by which the Establishment maintains its grip.

‘The corporate and state media are unanimous in slavish support of monarchy. Thailand has vicious laws protecting its monarchy. We don’t need them; we have the ownership of state and corporate media enforcing the same.’

In 2015, author Irvine Welsh observed that:

‘The UK is now a pointless entity, existing solely to protect entrenched privilege and continue the transference of the country’s resources to a global elite.’

The Queen sat atop this unjust system of extreme inequality, just as her eldest son, King Charles, does now. She was the figurehead of an unhealthy and divided British society, corrupted by hereditary wealth, degraded by the racist and exploitative legacy of Empire, and scarred by a highly-stratified class structure in which most people are struggling to obtain a decent standard of living.

Journalist and political analyst Jonathan Cook encouraged the public to scrutinise the media’s subservient behaviour:

‘Please take this moment to study, really study, the journalists working for the BBC, ITV and Ch4. Do they seem like fearless, independent, objective observers of the world, or more like fawning courtiers? This is the moment when the mask slips. Drink it in deeply…’

Australian political analyst Caitlin Johnstone observed:

‘British media are even more servile and sycophantic than American or Australian media, which is truly an impressive feat.’

And, indeed, live coverage in particular was, at times, hugely revealing of the mindset and priorities of these ‘fearless’ journalists. Shortly before the Queen’s death, BBC News presenter Clive Myrie declared that the crisis in rising energy costs ‘is, of course, insignificant now’ given ‘the gravity of the situation’ regarding the Queen’s health. Even Myrie’s colleague, Damian Grammaticus, reporting live from Buckingham Palace, felt compelled to respond:

‘Well, certainly overshadowed, Clive’.

Anna Soubry, former Tory minister, revealed a similarly bizarre mindset as Myrie when she tweeted:

‘Everything pales into insignificance as our thoughts and best wishes are with Her Majesty the Queen and her family.’

Everything? Climate breakdown? Rising energy and food bills? Poverty? War?

This is a form of fanaticism that would be ridiculed in the West if it had come from a former member of government in Russia, China or North Korea.

The Forgotten History Under The Royal ‘Legacy’

There have been reams of cringing rhetoric about the Queen’s ‘legacy’ after seven decades of reigning the UK and the Commonwealth. The deeply-scrubbed and sanitised version of history was highly revealing. BBC News Africa tweeted a clip lasting 4 minutes, 35 seconds, taking ‘a look back at Queen Elizabeth II’s longstanding relationship with Africa.’ It was imbued with patriotic sentiment throughout:

‘Queen Elizabeth visited more than 20 countries in Africa. She developed a close relationship with the continent during her reign.’

As a South Africa-based Twitter user pointed out, the BBC was essentially:

‘rebranding colonialism as long-standing relationship.’

Another Twitter user compiled an incomplete list of the UK’s crimes around the world under Elizabeth II’s reign. These included Kenya:

‘In 1952 Churchill argued Kenya’s fertile highlands should only be for white people and approved the forcible removal of the local population. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were forced into camps.’

Yemen:

‘Britain carried out a covert war in Yemen which led to 200,000 deaths between 1962-70 and killed with impunity in Aden.

‘Today Britain arms advises and oversees Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen.’

British Guiana:

‘In 1953, Britain under Churchill ordered the overthrowing of the democratically elected leader of “British Guiana”. He dispatched troops and warships and suspended their constitution, all to put a stop to the [British Guianan] government’s nationalisation plan.’

Iran:

‘On 19th August 1953, Britain leads a coup d’etat that overthrows democracy in Iran known as Operation Ajax which overthrows democratically-elected PM Mossadegh. Coded messages were put on the BBC to let the Shah know democracy was overthrown.’

Northern Ireland:

‘On 30th Jan 1972, the Bloody Sunday massacre was perpetrated by the parachute regiment of the British Army who killed 14 civilians at a peaceful protest march. Following the massacre the British lied about the victims.’

Iraq:

‘Britain under Blair invaded Iraq and killed over 1 million people, displaced millions more, brought unknowable depths of suffering to the Iraqi people & gave birth to ISIS.’

Afghanistan:

‘Pictured here is Prince Harry, Elizabeth’s grandson who boasted he killed in Afghanistan. He flew Apache helicopters and coordinated jets to drop 500lb bombs on people he called “Terry Taliban”.’

Libya:

‘Pictured here is what Libya was transformed into after 6 months of NATO bombing which assisted thousands of terrorists backed by Britain. The British gov played an integral role in ensuring the most developed country in Africa as per the UN’s Human Development Index was crushed.’

In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland opined that the Queen ‘made scrupulous neutrality appear easy’ with ‘vanishingly few intrusions by the monarch into politics’. John Pilger made a nonsense of these claims:

‘The dark power of royalty. In 1971, the Chagos Islanders were expelled by the British to make way for a US base. This was made possible by a meeting of the Queen’s Privy Councillors (advisers) and approved in person by the Queen. Using the same power, Blair invaded Iraq in 2003.’

In 2014, Freedland’s own newspaper reported:

‘The day after Prince Charles donned traditional robes and joined Saudi princes in a sword dance in Riyadh, Britain’s biggest arms company announced that agreement had finally been reached on the sale of 72 Typhoon fighters sold to the Gulf kingdom.’

The Guardian cited Andrew Smith, spokesman for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade:

‘It is clear that Prince Charles has been used by the UK government and BAE Systems as an arms dealer.’

According to the Guardian, Prince Andrew has performed a similar role.

You will be hard pushed to find ‘mainstream’ mentions of the above egregious examples of British history under Elizabeth II’s ‘reign’ (belated rare exceptions can be found here and here). Instead, there is a saturation level of elegies across the supposed ‘spectrum’ of national news media about how she and the royal family have provided ‘stability’, ‘held this country together – held countries together’², ‘the rock on which modern Britain was built’ (Prime Minister Liz Truss), ‘unwavering dedication and devotion’, and so on.

Mark Easton, BBC News Home Editor, even referred to the Queen as the nation’s ‘comforter-in-chief’ whose ‘calming presence’ was often required during ‘bewildering days’. As though citing Tolkien, Easton added:

‘The new king and new prime minister, both only days into their roles, must find a way to guide an unsettled kingdom through troubling times.’

At times, media reporting descended into preposterous rhapsodising about Mother Nature mourning the death of the Queen. The Daily Mail actually published photographs of clouds in the sky under the headline:

‘Astonishing moment a cloud resembling Queen Elizabeth floats over English town just hours after she died’

One tweeter japed, posting a picture of a fuzzy oblong cloud, saying:

‘Just saw a cloud that looked like a document advocating for a republic’

Other reports waxed lyrical about a double rainbow over Buckingham Palace ‘as crowds gather to mourn Queen’. Respectfully dressed in black, Russell Brand, author of a book titled, Revolution, said the rainbows had ‘curiously’ appeared. The Daily Mirror’s chief reporter deemed the rainbow story worthy of a tweet.

Imagine how journalists would respond to such supernatural mawkishness about the heads of state in North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, Syria or Venezuela. There would, of course, be a tsunami of Western scorn.

The extremist combination of idolatry and ideology pervades the ‘mainstream’, with dissent or even open discussion, seemingly banned. We are all supposed to wallow in grief or, at the very least refrain from saying anything that might be considered ‘unseemly’.

As Cook wrote:

‘The demand for silence is not a politically neutral act. It is a demand that we collude in a corrupt system of establishment rule and hierarchical privilege.

‘The establishment has a vested interest in enforcing silence and obedience until the public’s attention has moved on to other matters. Anyone who complies leaves the terrain open over the coming weeks for the establishment to reinforce and deepen the public’s deference to elite privilege.’

One non-violent protestor, Symon Hill, reported:

‘It was only when they declared Charles to be “King Charles III” that I called out “Who elected him?” I doubt most of the people in the crowd even heard me. Two or three people near me told me to shut up. I didn’t insult them or attack them personally, but responded by saying that a head of state was being imposed on us without our consent.’

Police then took hold of him:

‘I was outraged that they were leading me away, but was taken aback when they told me they were arresting me.’

Hill was driven home in a police van:

‘Eventually, on the way home, I was told that I had been arrested under the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act 2022 (the outrageous act passed earlier this year) for actions likely to lead to “harassment or distress”.’

Climate scientist Bill McGuire provided some vital perspective:

‘The second Elizabethan age was one of rampant, free market capitalism and the raping of our planet. The ages that follow will see us, our children, and those who follow, reaping the whirlwind of catastrophic climate collapse.’

He linked to a disturbing news report – the report relegated to page 25 in the Guardian, mentioned above – about a scientific study showing the world is on the brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points:

‘Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change.’

One of the study’s researchers, Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, warned that the Earth is:

‘on course to cross multiple dangerous tipping points that will be disastrous for people across the world. To maintain liveable conditions on Earth and enable stable societies, we must do everything possible to prevent crossing tipping points.’

In a recent article, John Pilger described how he once met Leni Riefenstahl, one of Hitler’s leading propagandists ‘whose epic films glorified the Nazis’. Pilger wrote:

‘She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the German public.

‘Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked.  “Yes, especially them,” she said.

‘I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies.’

You only have to observe the deranged level of royalist propaganda, and the serious dearth of rational analysis of today’s societal crises, to see this for yourself.

1. Leo Tolstoy, Writings On Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence, New Society, 1987, p. 109.
2. Nick Robinson, BBC Radio 4 Today, 9 September 2022

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

The China-based trade officials are tasked with doing business with Chinese partners to earn foreign cash for their government, in some cases for leader Kim Jong Un’s personal slush fund. Occasionally the government will demand that they pay funds in addition to what their businesses earn for the government, effectively cutting into their own earnings.

The call for loyalty funds usually coincides with important events, a North Korean trade official in the Chinese city of Dalian, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, told RFA’s Korean Service Monday on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“This is the third time the authorities have imposed a loyalty fund on us this year. The first and second time, though, trade had been partially open, so we could at least pay half of the fund,” the source said.

“This time it is not easy because China is on complete lockdown due to the coronavirus,” said the source.”

The North Korean economy is in shambles, partially because of the closure of the Sino-Korean border and the suspension of trade for essentially the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this year rail freight resumed, but it was quickly shut down due to new outbreaks of COVID-19 in China. With no trade, it is difficult for the officials sent overseas to pay their loyalty funds, and they have come to resent it, the official in Dalian said.

“Trade officials are indignant that they keep imposing loyalty funds. We know through the internet that yesterday, once again, they tested ballistic missiles, this time eight from four locations,” said the source.

“We are well aware that tens of millions of dollars are spent to launch a single missile. But how many ballistic missiles have been launched this year? I can’t quite understand the behavior of the authorities, who waste foreign currency on missile launches and forcibly impose loyalty funds on us.”

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the eight missiles were fired from four locations, including the Sunan area of Pyongyang into the sea east of the Korean peninsula.

RFA sources estimate that North Korea has sent around 1,000 trade officials to China, meaning that the loyalty funds imposed this time should bring in around $3 million, far less than the estimated cost of Sunday’s missile test.

Another trade official in Donggang, a port located close to the North Korean-Chinese maritime border, told RFA that the last time the government imposed loyalty funds, it was for a military parade in Pyongyang. That event later forced the government to acknowledge the virus after fever cases began to erupt among parade participants after they returned to their homes.

“Trade officials cannot disobey orders from Pyongyang, so some of us have had to borrow money from our Chinese counterparts to contribute last time,” the second source said.

“Because of that parade they ended up blocking train and maritime trade again, leaving us in debt. The complaints are pouring in because they are asking us to pay loyalty funds again,” the second source said. “They are squeezing more money out of us and wasting it on missile launches.”

Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hyemin Son for RFA Korean.