Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has suggested registering RT and Sputnik news agency as "foreign agents," claiming that they supported Donald Trump during the presidential elections. "We know that Russian-government-controlled 'media' outlets such as RT and Sputnik campaigned openly for one candidate, Donald Trump," McFaul wrote in his article for the Washington Post on Saturday.

The current law on foreign agents (Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA) prohibits foreign government funding of US presidential candidates. However, it does not restrict the activities of the foreign media, which are protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, regarding freedom of speech. McFaul suggests this may be changed with regard to Russian media.

"We have laws preventing foreign governments from contributing financial support to candidates. Should we have similar laws about in-kind support? Such regulation seems hard, in tension with our First Amendment, but shouldn't our lawmakers wrestle with the issue?" he speculates.

He went on to ask whether Sputnik and RT employees should "be accredited as journalists or as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act?"

The EU Is Warning American Tech Giants to Crack Down on Hate Speech Now ... "They will have to act quickly and make a strong effort in the coming months." U.S. tech giants including Facebook, Twitter, Google's YouTube and Microsoft will have to act faster to tackle online hate speech or face laws forcing them to do so, the European Commission said on Sunday. -Reuters

Western governments are censoring speech in Europe and the US, an obvious pattern that clearly shows coordination.


In the US, there is a congressional effort to fund intel agencies that will investigate alternative media for ties to Russian propaganda. Such investigations, if they occur, will retard this sector and make further, free-reporting difficult.

In Europe, efforts to control speech and reporting are actually being aimed at American communication enterprises such as Google, YouTube and Microsoft (see excerpt above).

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The European Union (EU) executive's warning comes six months after the companies signed up to a voluntary code of conduct to take action in Europe within 24 hours, following rising concerns triggered by the refugee crisis and terror attacks. This included removing or disabling access to the content if necessary, better cooperation with civil society organizations and the promotion of "counter-narratives" to hate speech. The code of conduct is largely a continuation of efforts that the companies already take to counter hate speech on their websites, such as developing tools for people to report hateful content and training staff to handle such requests.

I have watched incredulously as the CIA's blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story - blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

A little simple logic demolishes the CIA's claims. The CIA claim they "know the individuals" involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilize a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of "We know who it was, it was the Russians" are beneath contempt.

As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks - there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

The outgoing US administration painted itself into a corner with the Ukraine issue, says Dmitri Trenin. Above all, Russia's cynical President Vladimir Putin expects to conclude agreements with the new US President Donald Trump regarding the Ukrainian question: to pressure Kyiv into implementing the Minsk agreements in Donbass and to promise not to accept Ukraine into NATO, explained the Director of the Moscow centre of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—one of the most influential think tanks in the world—Dmitri Trenin, in his interview with Diplomaatia. Trenin gave the interview in Moscow two days after Trump's unexpected victory.

Who in Moscow regarded Trump's victory as good news and who felt the opposite?

To me it seemed to be good news for the US. Trump's victory may change the course of both domestic and foreign policy, which can only benefit the US. The US elite have alienated themselves from the majority of Americans. This is a very serious issue. In this respect, Trump's victory sends the elite a very serious message—do not forget the citizens who live in a world that is materially and mentally very different from that of those who call themselves the leaders of the American nation. The US has always fascinated me with its ability to transform itself without a revolution and, for the last 150 years, without any civil wars. The forthcoming period in US history will be undeniably bitter but beneficial.

Will Trump's victory improve the alarmingly poor relationship between the West and Russia or make it even worse?

Western-Russian relations are not the most crucial issue from the perspective of US foreign policy. The US has wandered off too far in the world. By that I mean that in my opinion, US foreign policy is gradually moving away from representing America's national interests. For instance, in her campaign, Hillary Clinton advocated a no-fly zone over Aleppo almost until the very last weeks. If this included Russians, everything would be clear. Yet the question was not put in that way. If the no-fly zone was imposed without Russian involvement...

One of the intellectual gargoyles that has crawled out of Donald Trump's brain is the idea that we should "open up" libel laws to make it easier to punish the media for negative or unfair stories. Trump also wants top officials to sign nondisclosure agreements, so they never write memoirs that upset the boss. Trump is so disdainful of free speech that he has even vowed to use the Espionage Act to imprison anyone who says or leaks anything to the media that displeases him.

Actually, that last bit is made up; Trump hasn't talked about the Espionage Act. Instead, the Obama administration has used the draconian 1917 law to prosecute more leakers and whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. Under the cover of the Espionage Act and other laws, the administration has secretly obtained the emails and phone records of various reporters, and declared one of them — James Rosen of Fox News — a potential "co-conspirator" with his government source. Another reporter, James Risen of the New York Times, faced a jail sentence unless he revealed a government source (which he refused to do).

Obama has warned of the imminent perils of a Trump presidency, but on the key issue of freedom of the press, which is intimately tied to the ability of officials to talk to journalists, his own administration has established a dangerous precedent for Trump — or any future occupant of the Oval Office — to use one of the most punitive laws of the land against some of the most courageous and necessary people we have. One section of the Espionage Act even allows for the death penalty.

Former British ambassador Craig Murray confirms DNC and Podesta leaks were the work of a Washington insider; and says he knows identity and has met with this person. FBI meanwhile casts doubt on CIA claim DNC and Podesta leaks were the work of Russia.

Craig Murray, Britain's former ambassador to Russia and a close friend of Julian Assange, has now confirmed that he knows the identity of the person who leaked the DNC and Podesta leaks to Wikileaks, and that this person is not Russian and has no connection to the Russian government.

On the contrary, he is a Washington insider.

Just when you thought the MENA region could not churn out any more crises... This time two giants are locking horns over conflicting geopolitical ambitions, or rather, Saudi Arabia might have overstepped one boundary too many against Egypt.

With so many eyes locked in on Aleppo, much of Cairo and Riyadh's belligerent political foreplay has gone largely unnoticed, labelled by most as unimportant in comparison to the Syrian furore.

Without taking anything away from the breath-taking advances the Syrian Army has accomplished against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Aleppo - a victory we know will change the course of the war forever, and firmly assert Syria as a grand pillar of resistance against the insanity of covert western imperialism, Egypt's growing ire towards the kingdom could lead to a tectonic political shift of such magnitude that it could spell the end of all Persian Gulf monarchies. And just like that, the ghost of President Gamal Abdel Nasser is coming back to haunt Riyadh's golden palaces.

'Anti-western' and pro-Russian figures are being given top diplomatic and NATO posts by Turkey, in what will be a major victory for Russian president Vladimir Putin, it is claimed. Hundreds of NATO officials and diplomats have been purged by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan since a failed coup in July, in a move branded illegal by the Council of Europe.

Concerns have been voiced that they are being replaced by 'ultra-nationalist' and 'anti-Western' officials after experienced staff were removed from their positions. It is estimated that 100,000 state personnel have been suspended or dismissed in Turkey, accused of supporting Fethullah Gulen, a cleric the government claims orchestrated the uprising on July 15, which claimed 240 lives.

The first firm indications of the line up of President elect Trump's foreign policy team emerged last night, and if they are correct - which they almost certainly are - then they show once again Donald Trump's unexpectedly sure touch, and his commitment to a rapprochement with Russia.

It seems that Rex Tillerson, Exxon's CEO, is Trump's choice for Secretary of State.

To the dismay of many people, including especially the US's European allies and the UN Secretariat, the terrifying hardliner John Bolton is to be Deputy Secretary of State.

Nikki Haley has already been chosen for US ambassador to the UN in place of the truly dreadful Samantha Power.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the preferred choice for Secretary of State of those people anxious for a rapprochement between the US and Russia, is to be US ambassador to Moscow.

These are shrewd choices if they are Trump's actual choices.

If ever there was evidence that the media and the incoming Trump team inhabit alternate universes, it would be Jennifer Rubin's Wednesday article expressing mystification and horror at the idea of Rex Tillerson becoming Secretary of State.

To get a sense of what this Rubin creature is like, we advise watching 'Can't Cuck the Tuck' Tucker Carlson take her apart yesterday on his show on Fox, which is becoming something of boxing ring, with Carlson thus far victorious, sending his opponents off badly bloodied.

In this highly entertaining episode, he demonstrates very convincingly that she states rather serious 'facts' without providing any evidence, otherwise known as 'making things up'.

Rubin is just a product of the completely out-of-touch Washington media world, a relatively minor cog, a little drummer girl marching to the neocon tune which emits daily from Mr. Bezos' awful and widely detested publication. In the article she names the preposterous John Bolton or Mitt Romney as great possible choices. Then she whines about Mike Flynn's 'Russia-toadying.'