social revolution – Page 471

EU hypocrites Smash Media Freedom! – RT Productions in Germany and France Closed Down

from thefreeonline by Russia Today on February 3, 2023 via WordPress.com

RT DE Productions – a German-based company that produces content for the RT DE TV channel and website in Moscow – has announced that it’s halting all its operations in the country. The company cited “the repressive state of media freedoms within the EU.”

Germany & Censorship: EU censorship of US social media

The ninth sanctions package introduced in December 2022 amounted to “effectively cutting off oxygen for staff,” the firm said, adding that the EU had “betrayed the reliance on the fundamental rights and freedoms recognized in the Charter of Fundamental Rights” of the bloc itself.

“The EU, in permitting the imposition of sanctions on media freedoms, has shown that the very values claimed to define the core of its existence are without any substance,”

Poland threatens media freedom in Europe – European Federation of Journalists…

the statement read, adding that the freedom of the press “does not exist in Germany today.”

The latest round of sanctions adopted by Brussels has made any further activities of the company in Germany impossible, RT DE Productions said in a statement on Friday.

The production company also said it was “happy and proud” to be able to provide German-speaking audiences in multiple countries with “essential stories and opinions, often side-lined or overlooked by the mainstream media outlets.”

The sanctions package announced in December blacklisted RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as revoking the EU broadcasting licenses of Russian media outlets including NTV, NTV Mir, Rossiya 1, REN TV and Perviy Channel.

Following the introduction of these new restrictions, Paris froze the accounts of RT France, citing the need to comply with the new regulations. The move forced RT’s French subsidiary to cease broadcasting.

Even before the conflict in Ukraine, RT had faced multiple obstacles to launching a live TV channel for a German audience back in 2021. German banks abruptly refused to work with the broadcaster, and Luxembourg shot down its licensing bid.

When the channel was eventually launched in December 2021, its YouTube page was immediately banned and European satellite TV operator Eutelsat took it off air shortly after, giving in to pressure from the German media regulator, MAAB.

The regulator then demanded a broadcast ban on the RT DE channel, accusing RT DE Productions of broadcasting without a valid German license.

RT DE Productions is not a broadcaster, but a production company, while the RT DE channel was broadcast from Moscow under a valid EU-wide Serbian license.

However, a German court sided with the media regulator in March 2022.

Germany considers diverting ‘green’ subsidies to arms production – Bloomberg

Peace activist sentenced for criticizing German war policy in Ukraine https://thefreeonline.com/2023/02/03/peace-activist-sentenced-for-criticizing-german-war-policy-in-ukraine/

Number of Germans Rejecting Military Service skyrockets – media – NO MORE WAR! –

In Praise of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Genuine Magic in ‘The Lathe of Heaven’- Kelly Link

from thefreeonline on 3rd Feb 2922 by Kelly Link at Literary Hub via Scribner

“It is striking how resonant Le Guin’s work remains even as the future she describes recedes into our past.”

Originally, The Lathe of Heaven appeared in two installments in Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine started in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. Ursula Le Guin, born in 1929, read Amazing Stories as a child and would go on to outlive almost all the science fiction pulp magazines.

You can read or copy the pdf of The Lathe of Heaven HERE and listen to a reading HERE

While many of the writers Gernsback introduced to the field have fallen out of fashion and been forgotten, Le Guin’s influence has expanded beyond all original bounds of genre, appropriately so, as her writing was profoundly slippery, generous, shape-shifting, and outreaching from the very start.

The Lathe of Heaven has the feel of a fable, part fairy tale, part philosophical and psychological exploration of questions central to much of Le Guin’s work: What are the consequences of working for change, even with the best of intentions? What is the cost of utopia? What is the use and meaning of dreams?

The protagonist, George Orr, changes the world in dreaming. He is frightened by this power, which he does not control consciously, but his therapist, Dr. Haber, seeks to harness his power to make a better world.

It’s a novel with very few characters, the sort of narrative I can’t help but imagine as a kind of black box theater performance, and The Lathe of Heaven was, in fact, twice made into a movie (Le Guin’s contemporary, the artist Ed Emshwiller, served as a visual consultant to the first adaptation, which is perhaps the only faithful adaptation of any of Le Guin’s work).

It is also, notably, Le Guin’s deliberate foray into Philip K. Dick’s territory, with its hallucinatory beginning, its drug-using protagonist, and its surreal, literally world-melting alternate realities. Dick and Le Guin were admirers of each other’s work and occasional correspondents.

They had attended the same high school at the same time, though in a detail once again straight out of a Dick novel, neither Le Guin nor any of her high school class could afterward recall him in any of their classes or circles.

I would argue that The Lathe of Heaven is also in conversation with the work of Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon was one of the first writers to introduce psychological realism into science fiction, exploring not only outer space but also the frontiers inside the human mind. Le Guin admired Sturgeon’s writing, and Sturgeon reviewed The Lathe of Heaven for the New York Times.

What are the consequences of working for change, even with the best of intentions? What is the cost of utopia? What is the use and meaning of dreams?

And now I have to digress for a moment, because I have so far only mentioned male writers, to put Le Guin’s work into context, when Le Guin was part of a cadre of women writers who were beginning to publish science fiction.

Peace activist sentenced for criticizing German war policy in Ukraine

Justus Leicht 31 January 2023

“..It is incomprehensible to me that German politicians are again supporting the same Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German [Nazi] Reich found willing helpers in 1941, with whom they closely cooperated and jointly carried out murder…”.

The Berlin-Tiergarten District Court sentenced peace activist Heinrich Bücker in January for speaking out in public against Germany’s war policy in Ukraine. The verdict is a massive attack on the basic democratic rights of freedom of speech and assembly. It is reminiscent of the persecution of anti-militarists in the Weimar Republic who—like Carl von Ossietzky—opposed the rearmament of the Reichswehr (armed forces).

Bücker is a member of the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime–League of Anti-Fascists (VVN-BdA) and the Left Party. He runs the COOP Anti-War Café in Berlin, where anti-militarist events are held regularly.

On June 22, 2022, he gave a speech at the Soviet Memorial in Berlin’s Treptow Park on the 81st anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, in which he condemned the cooperation of German politicians with former Nazi collaborators in Ukraine and expressed understanding for the views of the Russian president.

Heinrich Bücker during his speech on the 81st anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union [Photo by Screenshot AntikriegTV]

As a result, the judge at the local court, Tobias Pollmann, sentenced Bücker to a fine of €2,000, or 40 days imprisonment.

çHis criminal offence under Section 140 of the Criminal Code had consisted of “publicly approving a crime of aggression (Section 13 of the International Criminal Code) in a manner likely to disturb the public peace at a meeting.”

The verdict was issued as a summary penalty order, which does not provide for an oral hearing of the defendant and examination of witnesses. The defendant can appeal within two weeks of the issuance of the penalty order, which Bücker reportedly did. If he had not done so, the penalty order is considered a final judgment, and appeals against it are then no longer possible.

The penalty order states that Bücker, in his speech, approved “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in violation of international law, the illegality of which you knew.” To prove this, a longer paragraph from the speech is quoted, the entire wording of which is documented here (in German).

In the quoted paragraph, Bücker opposes cooperation with far-right forces in Ukraine:

It is incomprehensible to me that German politicians are again supporting the same Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German [Nazi] Reich found willing helpers in 1941, with whom they closely cooperated and jointly carried out murder. All decent Germans should reject any cooperation with these forces in Ukraine against the background of German history, the history of millions of murdered Jews and millions and millions of murdered Soviet citizens in World War II. We must also vehemently reject the war rhetoric emanating from these forces in Ukraine. Never again must we as Germans be involved in any form of war against Russia. We must unite and oppose this madness together.

In this context, he called for understanding for the Russian point of view:

We must openly and honestly try to understand the Russian reasons for the special military operation in Ukraine and why the vast majority of people in Russia support their government and their president in it. Personally, I very much want to and can understand the view in Russia and that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. I have no distrust of Russia, because the renunciation of revenge against Germans and Germany determined Soviet and then also Russian policy since 1945.

How and why Bücker thus “agrees” to the invasion of Russia, the Berlin District Court did not elaborate with a single syllable. The request to understand and comprehend the reasons for something is quite different from consent.

Otherwise, the work of psychiatric evaluators would be as impossible as that of historians, sociologists, mediators or even police investigators. Any effort to understand the actions of others would be deemed complicity.

Because Section 140 of the Criminal Code severely impinges upon the fundamental right to freedom of expression under Article 5 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has set high standards in its case law.

Manifestación en Alcalá de Henares el 5 de febrero en apoyo a la activista por el derecho a vivienda Nani Martínez

desde thefreeonline on 3rd Feb 2023 por Tercera Información

Este domingo, 5 de febrero, está convocada una manifestación en Alcalá de Henares en apoyo a la activista por el derecho a vivienda Nani Martínez.

Manifestación en Alcalá de Henares el 5 de febrero en apoyo a la activista por el derecho a vivienda Nani Martínez

La manifestación saldrá a las 12:00h. de la Plaza 11 de marzo, junto a la estación de ferrocarril de Alcalá de Henares, y finalizará en la Plaza de la Paloma, frente a los juzgados.

Comunicado

Nani Martínez ha sido la cara más visible de la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca del Corredor del Henares durante 10 años, ha asesorado a cientos de familias afectadas, ha participado en gran cantidad de acciones reivindicativas por el derecho a vivienda y en la paralización de decenas de desahucios hipotecarios.

El próximo mes de febrero se enfrenta a la solicitud de una pena de dos años y medio de prisión por participar en 2017 en la paralización del desahucio de una familia con cuatro menores en Alcalá de Henares.

Convoca la Plataforma Nani Absolución, compuesta por diferentes movimientos sociales, asociaciones vecinales, sindicatos y partidos políticos. El manifiesto Nani Absolución ha sido firmado por la Federación Regional de Asociaciones de Vecinos, la Federación Comarcal de Asociaciones de Vecinos, CCOO, CGT, Izquierda Unida, Podemos, PCE, PCTE. Asociaciones como 13 Rosas, Agua de Mayo, Bienvenidos Refugiados, MAR, XR…

Tanto ella como otras nueve personas sufrieron lesiones por la intervención de los agentes de la Policía Nacional en este desahucio. El juicio contra Nani tiene fecha para el 14 de febrero de 2023, a consecuencia de las denuncias presentadas por los agentes.

Los agentes de Policía Nacional trataron de entrar en la vivienda de la familia desahuciada antes de la llegada de la Comisión Judicial, que es con la que los abogados de la PAH tratan de dialogar en estos casos para paralizarlo por motivos humanitarios y falta de alternativa habitacional. Los activistas se opusieron pasivamente a la entrada de la policía, pues ello hubiera significado la ejecución del desahucio sin haber tenido la opción de dialogar con la Comisión Judicial. Es en ese momento cuando la policía comenzó a cargar, causando 10 heridos. Finalmente, el desahucio no se realizó por decisión de la Comisión Judicial.

Nani no fue detenida en ese momento, ni hizo nada que lo hubiera justificado, pero días después recibió la denuncia, en la que la acusaban de un delito de atentado contra la autoridad en un relato cargado de contradicciones y falsedades.

Nani ya se vio obligada a pagar una fianza de 4.000€ que consiguió reunir gracias a la solidaridad del tejido asociativo. El próximo 14 de febrero se celebrará el juicio, en el que se pide para ella una pena de dos años y medio de prisión; un juicio contra la persona más visible del movimiento por el derecho a vivienda en la comarca.

Desde la Plataforma por la Absolución de Nani hacemos un llamamiento al apoyo y a la solidaridad con nuestra compañera y con todas las represaliadas por luchar por el derecho a la vivienda o por cualquier otro derecho.

Relacionado

La Plataforma Nani Absolución da inicio a su campaña en Alcalá de Henares

SUBMEDIA! – Trouble #24 – Organize: For Autonomy & Mutual Aid -video

Note: These interviews were mostly filmed in January 2020, before the COVID-19 outbreak. Be sure to turn on the subtitles (CC), as some parts are in Spanish.

from thefreeonline on 3rd Feb 2023 by Sub.Media/Trouble

These are dark days. As the COVID-19 crisis turns our world upside-down, the social isolation and atomization of capitalism has given way to full-blown social distancing.

At a time when we most need to come together, we’re told that human contact can kill us. Alarm bells are flashing everywhere as the dead pile up, the economy burns, and more and more people’s mental health deteriorates. This is the most severe and far-reaching global crisis that most of us who are alive today have ever experienced.

Its a terrifying, alienated, and stressful time. It’s also no time to give up. No time to turn on Netflix, bury our heads in the sand, and wait for things to pass. Certainly not for anarchists, or anyone who calls themselves a revolutionary.In the midst of the current pandemic, it’s easy to forget that 2019 was a year of global uprisings on a scale not seen since 1968.

The system is dying. Today we stand at the precipice of a massive restructuring of the global order. There will be no going back to the way things were. We can either fight for a future that we want to live in, or we can sit by and let the banks and the tech companies pick it for us.

It’s important that we take the necessary steps to keep each other safe during this crisis. Of course. But it’s also important that we take the necessary steps to keep each other safe from what comes after. And that means getting organized.

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Perú, brutal Repression of Massive Resistance against US inspired Coup + Videos /La Mosca /entrevista

Protests in Peru’s capital continue as the demonstrators who traveled from across the country for the “takeover of Lima” have been brutally repressed through mass arrests, the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and beatings, and the deployment of armored vehicles.

from thefreeonline on 3 febrero, 2023 by agencies/ lamoscatv /almacubanita

June 6, 2021, was the day which shocked many in Peru’s oligarchy. Pedro Castillo Terrones, a rural schoolteacher who had never before been elected to office, won the second round of the presidential election with just over 50.13% of the vote.

More than 8.8 million people voted for Castillo’s program of profound social reforms and the promise of a new constitution against the far-right’s candidate, Keiko Fujimori.

In a dramatic turn of events, the historical agenda of neoliberalism and repression, passed down by former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori to his daughter Keiko, was rejected at the polls.

From that day on, still in disbelief, the Peruvian oligarchy declared war on Castillo. They made the next 18 months for the new president a period of great hostility as they sought to destabilize his government with a multi-pronged attack that included significant use of lawfare.

With a call to “throw out communism,” plans were made by the oligarchy’s leading business group, the National Society of Industries, to make the country ungovernable under Castillo.

In October 2021, recordings were released that revealed that since June 2021 this group of industrialists, along with other members of Peru’s elite and leaders of the right-wing opposition parties, had been planning a series of actions, including financing protests and strikes.