28 Sep 2009 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
Freelance journalist and human rights activist, Alexandr Podrabinek, has gone into hiding after getting death threats over a controversial article about the government’s defence of the Soviet Union.
Podrabinek wrote his controversial article for the Ej.ru news website on 21 September, which discussed the Soviet Union’s crimes against the Russian people and criticised the way the current government is defending its image in the people’s collective memory.
Read more here
28 Sep 2009 | Uncategorized
Well, it’s happened. The BBC has announced that British National Party leader Nick Griffin MEP will appear on political discussion show Question Time on 22 October. Facing him (among others) will be Justice Secretary Jack Straw, a man believed by frequenters of far-right web forums to be a key part of the International Jewish Conspiracy.
I mention this partly because it will be interesting to see if Nick Griffin manages not to mention it when he faces Straw. Griffin, of course, is the author of the 1995 pamphlet Who Are The Mindbenders, which catalogues in some detail how Jewish (and in many cases “Jew-ish”) people control the media. While the BNP is now more noted for its anti-Muslim outpourings, it retains a root in classic far-right conspiracy theories on pernicious Judaism. Anti-fascist website Hope Not Hate just last week claimed to uncover an audio file of Griffin and party comrade Simon Darby alleging that “anti-Islamisation” group the English Defence League is in fact a “Zionist false flag operation”.
(more…)
26 Sep 2009 | Uncategorized
While I was in Minsk helping out on a media rights survey last week, the actual source of the problems in that area, Belarus president Alaksandr Lukashenka, was in Vilnius on a state visit, reportedly excusing the absence of his wife to the local press by praising the beauty of Lithuania’s ladies.
Unreconstructed East European male he may be, he nevertheless left the shop at home – and the responsibility of dealing with me and my colleagues – in the care of his imperious and elegant first deputy head of administration, Natalia Petkevich.
(more…)
26 Sep 2009 | Comment, News and features
Freedom of expression groups joined forces this month to investigate the obstacles facing independent media in Alaksandr Lukashenka’s Belarus; censorship made possible by the combination of a number of blunt-edged tools in a deceptively sophisticated system of media control.
Rohan Jayasekera (second left) comments from Minsk.
(more…)
