WHICH GOD IS THAT?

Deadly COVID-19 spike after church event is 'unfortunate' but part of God's plan, says pastor

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Pastor Robert Smith says Gospel Light Baptist Church is 

being persecuted (ADMITING PARANOIA)

ITS FROM REVELATIONS; PESTILENCE 

ONE OF THE FOUR HORSEMEN

Taryn Grant · CBC News · Posted: Nov 16, 2021 

Pastor Robert Smith gives a sermon at Gospel Light Baptist Church in Amherst, N.S., on Sunday. A recent gathering hosted by the church has been linked to three COVID-19 deaths. (Gospel Light Baptist Church/Facebook)

The pastor of a Nova Scotia church that hosted an event linked to a COVID-19 spike and three deaths told his parishioners this week that what happened is "unfortunate," but it is all part of God's plan.

Robert Smith, the pastor of Gospel Light Baptist Church in Amherst, N.S., held his first in-person service in three weeks on Sunday and livestreamed video of his sermon on Facebook. The video was later taken down. 

At the end of October, Smith's church hosted a multi-day gathering of faith groups from across the province. Public health officials have said more than 100 people attended and were not asked to show proof of vaccination — a violation of public health orders.

"I followed what God wanted us to do," Smith said from the pulpit. "We had a great week of meetings … a young lady got saved."

Three people have died in the past week of COVID-19 — one at a group home in Amherst and two at a long-term care home in Pugwash, N.S. — and the province has said those cases trace back to the Gospel Light event.

Community spread in Nova Scotia's northern and western health zones is "primarily associated" with that event, according to the province.

Gospel Light Baptist Church in Amherst, N.S. (Robert Guertin/CBC)

Rise in hospitalizations, ICU stays

The number of hospitalizations and people in intensive care with COVID-19 has jumped in recent days, prompting Premier Tim Houston to say Monday he was "very upset and concerned." 

Smith equated the response his church has received to persecution.

Several times throughout his 30-minute sermon, Smith said people are trying to shame his community, but he urged his parishioners to resist internalizing the feeling, saying it's Satan, "trying to drag us down."

"The Bible says 'all things work together for good.' Hey, some of the things, people that we know that's in hospitals and stuff, that still applies, too," he said.

Smith has not responded to repeated requests for an interview.

Nova Scotia Public Health officials have previously said that about 70 per cent of the religious community that attended last month's event was fully vaccinated, and that the community has been co-operative with contact tracing and testing.

Public Health has set up a COVID-19 testing centre in Amherst as the coronavirus continues to spread in that community. (Robert Guertin/CBC)

Proof of vaccination is not required at regular religious services, such as Gospel Light's Sunday church service, but is required at any other events hosted by faith groups, such as Gospel Light's "week of meetings."

Masking is mandatory at religious services. 

As of Monday, Amherst police had not laid any charges. 

When Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia's chief medical officer of health, first reported the event and associated spread nearly two weeks ago, he said he planned to reach out to faith leaders across the province to make sure they understood the rules around vaccination and masking. 

'They did everything that they could have done'

Brandon Lake, pastor of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Bridgetown, N.S., said he and about 20 of his congregants attended Gospel Light's event.

"The pastor and the church that organized the event, they did everything that they could have done," Lake said in an interview. "We were operating within the guidelines that were available to the public."

He said Public Health did not make the rules around proof of vaccination requirements clear until after the gathering. 

"Meetings like this are things that we do on a fairly regular basis, so we were under no understanding from what we had read or downloaded on the [provincial government's] website that proof of vaccination was required for an event such as that," said Lake, who declined to speak about his own vaccination status or that of his congregants.

Those rules say proof of vaccination is not required for faith events, but is for "indoor and outdoor festivals, special events and arts and culture events," such as the Gospel Light gathering.

• Resident of Amherst, N.S., group home dies of COVID-19

• N.S. reports 3 deaths, 99 new cases of COVID-19 over weekend

Lake said he thinks faith groups have been unfairly targeted in the media as contributors to the spread of COVID-19. He also disputed the reported number of people who were at the gathering, saying there were never more than 100 people.

Asked about the three deaths that have been linked to the event, Lake said he was aware deaths had been announced, but denied the connection.

"I don't think it's fair to say that they're as a result of the faith gathering, but rather they're as a result of more liberty being given to people that are doubly vaccinated who still may be carriers of the virus," said Lake.

IT'S A HYPOTHESIS LOOKING TO BE A THEORY

Wormholes may be viable shortcuts through space-time after all, new study suggests

The new theory contradicts earlier predictions that these 'shortcuts' would instantly collapse.

An artist's impression of the inside of a wormhole. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

By Paul Sutter 

LIVESCIENCE

Wormholes, or portals between black holes, may be stable after all, a wild new theory suggests.

The findings contradict earlier predictions that these hypothetical shortcuts through space-time would instantly collapse.

The sea change comes because tiny differences in the mathematics of relativity, which is used to describe such wormholes, end up dramatically changing our overall picture of how they behave.

A game of metrics

First, some background on how general relativity operates. Relativity is like a machine. Put in certain objects — say, a mass or an arrangement of particles — and the machine spits out how that collection will behave over time due to gravity. Everything in general relativity is based on movement in space and time: Objects start at certain physical coordinates, they move around, and they end up at other coordinates.

While the rules of general relativity are fixed, the theory itself provides a lot of freedom to describe those coordinates mathematically. Physicists call these different descriptions "metrics." Think of the metric as different ways to describe g how to get to your grandma's house for Thanksgiving. That may be street directions, satellite-based latitude and longitude, or landmarks scribbled on a napkin. Your metric is different in each case, but no matter which metric you choose, you end up at the big feast.

Related: 8 ways you can see Einstein's theory of relativity in real life

Similarly, physicists can use different metrics to describe the same situation, and sometimes one metric is more helpful than another — akin to starting off with the street directions, but switching over to the napkin to double-check if you're at the right landmark.

The extended black hole

When it comes to black holes and wormholes, there are a few potential metrics. The most popular one is the Schwarzschild metric, which is where black holes were first discovered. But the Schwarzschild metric contains some funky math. That metric misbehaves at a particular distance from the black hole, a distance known today as the Schwarzschild radius or the event horizon.

And by "misbehaves," we mean that metric completely breaks down, and it can no longer distinguish between different points in space and time. But there's another metric, called the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, that does describe what happens to particles when they reach the event horizon: They pass right through and fall into the black hole, never to be seen again. What does all this have to do with wormholes? The simplest way to construct a wormhole is to "extend" the idea of a black hole with its mirror image, the white hole. This idea was first proposed by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, hence the reason wormholes are sometimes called "Einstein-Rosen bridges." While black holes never let anything out, white holes never let anything in. To make a wormhole, you just take a black hole and a white hole and join their singularities (the points of infinite densities in their centers). This creates a tunnel through space-time.

The result? A highly misbehaving tunnel.

A narrow path

Once a theoretical wormhole exists, it's perfectly reasonable to ask what would happen if someone actually tried to walk through it. That's where the machinery of general relativity comes in: Given this (very interesting) situation, how do particles behave? The standard answer is that wormholes are nasty. White holes themselves are unstable (and likely don't even exist), and the extreme forces within the wormhole force the wormhole itself to stretch out and snap like a rubber band the moment it forms. And if you try to send something down it? Well, good luck.


But Einstein and Rosen constructed their wormhole with the usual Schwarzschild metric, and most analyses of wormholes use that same metric. So physicist Pascal Koiran at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon in France tried something else: using the Eddington-Finkelstein metric instead. His paper, described in October in the preprint database arXiv, is scheduled to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Modern Physics D.

—Traversable wormholes are possible under certain gravity conditions

—Stephen Hawking's most far-out ideas about black holes

Koiran found that by using the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, he could more easily trace the path of a particle through a hypothetical wormhole. He found that the particle can cross the event horizon, enter the wormhole tunnel and escape through the other side, all in a finite amount of time. The Eddington-Finkelstein metric didn't misbehave at any point in that trajectory.

Does this mean that Einstein-Rosen bridges are stable? Not quite. General relativity only tells us about the behavior of gravity, and not the other forces of nature. Thermodynamics, which is the theory of how heat and energy act, for example, tells us that white holes are unstable. And if physicists tried to manufacture a black hole-white hole combination in the real universe using real materials, other math suggests the energy densities would break everything apart.

However, Koiran's result is still interesting because it points out that wormholes aren't quite as catastrophic as they first appeared, and that there may be stable paths through wormhole tunnels, perfectly allowed by general relativity.

If only they could get us to grandma's faster.

Russia hit own satellite with missile from Plesetsk

Crew members on the International Space Station had to board their lifeboats after the blasted satellite caused 1,500 pieces of debris were coming their way.


Thomas Nilsen

BARENTS OBSERVER
November 16, 2021

A test of the Nudol anti-satellite weapon in April 2000 creased a spectacular trace of the missile that could be seen in the skies above the Komi Republic. Photo courtesy of Komiinform.ru

It was early Monday morning that a Nudol anti-satellite missile was launched from Plesetsk cosmodrome some 200 kilometers south of Arkhangelsk, northwest Russia. The cosmodrome is normally used for launches of military satellites placed in Arctic orbits.

Falling debris from rocket stages after a Plesetsk launch will mainly hit the vast uninhabited areas of taiga forest, tundra, and Arctic Oceans.

No official information about the anti-missile test has yet been posted by the Russian government, military divisions, or the space agency Roscosmos.

United States Space Command, however, says Russia’s test of a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile struck the Russian satellite Kosmos-1408 and created a debris field in low-Earth orbit. The Kosmos-1408 was an old Soviet military intelligence satellite launched in 1982 with a planned six months lifespan.

It is believed that the anti-satellite missile system tested from Plesetsk, called Nudol, will become part of a weapons program aimed to destroy enemy military satellites in case of conflict. The Nudol is developed from Russia’s anti-ballistic missile system designed to protect Moscow from incoming nuclear ballistic missiles.

A NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) was active in an area of the Laptev Sea, east of Severnaya Zemlya archipelago on Monday morning, indicating the fall-down area after the launch from Plesetsk.

According to the statement from the U.S. Space Command, blowing up the old satellite generated more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and will likely generate hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris

Operations aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was Monday interrupted and the seven-person astronauts, including two Russians, had to take shelter in their emergency ferry capsules.

“Russia has demonstrated a deliberate disregard for the security, safety, stability, and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations,” said U.S. Army Gen. James Dickinson, U.S. Space Command commander. “The debris created by Russia’s DA-ASAT will continue to pose a threat to activities in outer space for years to come, putting satellites and space missions at risk, as well as forcing more collision avoidance maneuvers. Space activities underpin our way of life and this kind of behavior is simply irresponsible.”

Secretary of State, Antony Blinked early Tuesday morning condemned the anti-satellite missile test.

Russia has also on several other occasions tested its Nudol anti-satellite missile weapon from Plesetsk, as previously reported by the Barents Observer.

U.S. Space Command commander Gen. James Dickinson said: “Russia’s tests of direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons clearly demonstrate that Russia continues to pursue counterspace weapon systems that undermine strategic stability and pose a threat to all nations.”

Russian weapons test resulted in debris now threatening space station, U.S. says

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Debris will pose an 'ongoing hazard' for years to come,

officials say

The Associated Press · Posted: Nov 16, 2021

In this image from video provided by NASA, the Expedition 66 crew poses for a photo on Thursday, after SpaceX's arrival at the International Space Station, their new home until spring. (The Associated Press)

A space missile fired by Russia into one of its own satellites in a weapons test on Monday generated an orbital debris field that endangered the International Space Station and will pose an ongoing hazard "for years to come," U.S. officials said.

The seven-member space station crew — four U.S. astronauts, a German astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts — were directed to take shelter in their docked spaceship capsules for two hours after the test as a precaution, allowing for a quick getaway had it been necessary, NASA said.

The research lab, orbiting about 402 kilometres above Earth, continued to pass through or near the debris cluster every 90 minutes, but NASA specialists determined it was safe for the crew to return to the station's interior after the third pass, the agency said.

The crew was also ordered to seal off hatches to several modules of the space station for the time being, according to NASA.

WATCH | ISS astronauts forced to seek shelter

German astronaut Matthias Maurer was told to move his sleeping bag from the International Space Station's European lab to a safer location Monday as orbiting fields of space junk disrupted the work of the seven crew members and forced them to seek shelter in their docked capsules. 1:55

"NASA will continue monitoring the debris in the coming days and beyond to ensure the safety of our crew in orbit," NASA chief Bill Nelson said in a statement.

Experts say the testing of weapons that shatter satellites in orbit poses a hazard by creating clouds of fragments that can collide with other objects, setting off a chain reaction of projectiles through Earth orbit.

Thousands of fragments

The Russian military and ministry of defence were not immediately available for comment.

The direct-ascent anti-satellite missile fired by Russia generated more than 1,500 pieces of "trackable orbital debris" and would likely spawn hundreds of thousands of smaller fragments, the U.S. Space Command said in a statement.

"Russia has demonstrated a deliberate disregard for the security, safety, stability and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations," space command chief U.S. army Gen. James Dickinson said.

The debris from the missile test "will continue to pose a threat to activities in outer space for years to come, putting satellites and space missions at risk, as well as forcing more collision avoidance manoeuvres," he said.

WATCH | How astronauts coped with the emergency: 

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei thanked mission control for helping those aboard the International Space Station handle orbiting debris fields of space junk, calling it a great way for the crew to come together. Four of the seven crew members arrived at the orbiting outpost Thursday night. 1:07

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the missile test as "reckless and irresponsible." At the Pentagon, spokesman John Kirby said the test showed the need to firmly establish norms of behaviour in space.

"It is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only the American and international partner astronauts on the ISS, but also their own cosmonauts," Nelson said.

The incident came just four days after the latest group of four space station astronauts — Americans Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron of NASA and European Space Agency crewmate Matthias Maurer of Germany — arrived at the orbiting outpost to begin a six-month science mission.

They were welcomed by three space station crew members already on board — Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, and U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei.

Russia is not the first country to conduct anti-satellite tests in space. The United States performed the first in 1959, when satellites were rare and new.

Last April Russia carried out another test of an anti-satellite missile as officials have said that space will increasingly become an important domain for warfare

In 2019, India shot down one of its own satellites in low-Earth orbit with a ground-to-space missile.

The U.S. military is increasingly dependent on satellites to determine what it does on the ground, guiding munitions with space-based lasers and satellites, as well as using such assets to monitor for missile launches and track its forces.

These tests have also raised questions about the long-term sustainability of space operations essential to a huge range of commercial activities, including banking and GPS services.

Durbin calls for Garland to remove federal prisons director

UNDER BARR HE PROVIDED TROOPS 

FOR TRUMPS PHOTO OP

1 of 3

Committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., gives opening remarks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining the Department of Justice on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. (Tasos Katopodis/Pool via AP)


By MICHAEL BALSAMO

NOV. 16,2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded Tuesday that Attorney General Merrick Garland immediately fire the director of the beleaguered federal Bureau of Prisons after an Associated Press investigation detailing serious misconduct involving correctional officers.

Sen. Dick Durbin’s demand came two days after the AP revealed that more than 100 Bureau of Prisons workers have been arrested, convicted or sentenced for crimes since the start of 2019. The AP investigation also found the agency has turned a blind eye to employees accused of misconduct and has failed to suspend officers who themselves had been arrested for crimes.

Durbin took particular aim at Director Michael Carvajal, who has been at the center of the agency’s myriad crises. Under Carvajal’s leadership, the agency has experienced a multitude of crises from the rampant spread of coronavirus inside prisons and a failed response to the pandemic to dozens of escapes, deaths and critically low staffing levels that have hampered responses to emergencies.

Carvajal was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr but Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said recently that she still had confidence in him despite the many serious issues during his tenure. The AP reported in June that senior officials in the Biden administration had been weighing whether to oust him. He is one of the few remaining holdovers from the Trump administration.

“Director Carvajal was handpicked by former Attorney General Bill Barr and has overseen a series of mounting crises, including failing to protect BOP staff and inmates from the COVID-19 pandemic, failing to address chronic understaffing, failing to implement the landmark First Step Act, and more,” Durbin said in a statement. “It is past time for Attorney General Garland to replace Director Carvajal with a reform-minded Director who is not a product of the BOP bureaucracy.

Two-thirds of the criminal cases against Justice Department personnel in recent years have involved federal prison workers, who account for less than one-third of the department’s workforce. Of the 41 arrests this year, 28 were of BOP employees or contractors. The FBI had just five. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives each had two.

The AP investigation also detailed how the Bureau of Prisons allowed an official at a federal prison in Mississippi, whose job it was to investigate misconduct of other staff members, to remain in his position after he was arrested on charges of stalking and harassing fellow employees. That official was also allowed to continue investigating a staff member who had accused him of a crime.

And in the last week, two inmates have escaped from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, marking at least 36 escapes within the last 22 months.

“We have a new Administration and a new opportunity to reform our criminal justice system,” Durbin said. “It’s clear that there is much going wrong in our federal prisons, and we urgently need to fix it. That effort must start with new leadership.”

Separately on Tuesday, the Justice Department’s inspector general found that the Bureau of Prisons had stalled the development of more than 30 agency policies because agency officials have been refusing to meet with the union representing prison workers for in-person policy negotiations, as required under a contract.

About half of the policies that have stalled for the last 20 months were created or revised in response to the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice overhaul signed during the Trump administration and aimed at encouraging inmates to participate in programs aimed at reducing recidivism — which could let them out of prison earlier — easing mandatory minimum sentences and giving judges more discretion in sentencing.

The inspector general found that the Bureau of Prisons has not given credit to any of the about 60,000 federal inmates who have completed those programs because the agency hasn’t finalized its procedures or completed the policy negotiations with the union. The watchdog also found that the failure to negotiate has delayed the implementation of 27 recommendations from the inspector general’s office.

Carbon capture and storage – climate saviour or fantasy?

PODCAST
Download Carbon capture and storage – climate saviour or fantasy? (35.40 MB)
Download 35.40 MB

The Australian government wants to use technology to keep the fossil fuel dream alive.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a central plank in its plan.

What is it and will it work?

In Part 2 of this COP26 special Natasha Mitchell is joined by ABC environment reporter Nick Kilvert and guests, for a robust discussion.

In Part 1, leading scientists respond to 'Net Zero by 2050'.

Guests:

Dr Ahmed Abdulla
Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Carleton University, Canada
Deep Decarbonisation Initiative Research Fellow
University of California, San Diego

Dr Matthias Raab
Chief Executive Officer
CO2CRC

Mark Ogge
Principal Advisor
The Australia Institute
Duration: 25min 46sec
Broadcast: Sun 14 Nov 2021, 5:05pm

 

One of us was tortured for fighting a dictator. The other was fired for blowing the whistle on Donald Trump

Opinion by Alexander Vindman and Andrei Sannikov

Updated 6:03 AM ET, Tue November 16, 2021

Alexander Vindman, a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel, is a doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the author of the memoir, "Here, Right Matters" and a Renew Democracy Initiative board member. He previously served as the director for European Affairs on the White House's National Security Council. Andrei Sannikov was the former Deputy Foreign Minister for Belarus and is a fellow of the Renew Democracy Initiative's Frontlines of Freedom project. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)We come from countries thousands of miles apart, but we share one thing in common: In spite of the grave consequences we have faced, we still dare to speak the truth.

Alexander Vindman

Andrei Sannikov

Alexander is a whistleblower. He sacrificed his military career when he reported former President Donald Trump's threats to withhold support from Ukraine if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not help him dig up dirt on the Bidens.

Andrei is a dissident. He resigned from the Belarusian government in 1996 in protest the rising authoritarianism of President Alexander Lukashenko. In 2010, he dared to run against Lukashenko for President of Belarus.

From our experiences, we have learned that when coming to democracy's defense, whistleblowers may pay with their careers, but dissidents often pay with their lives.

In Alexander's case, independent media sought out the truth and Congress called on him to testify. While he suffered professional consequences, the government never imprisoned or threatened his life.

In Andrei's case, Lukashenko had him detained and tortured. He was beaten, refused medical care and pressured to kill himself. Andrei was only released after more than a year in prison when coordinated sanctions from the EU and US appear to have grown too great for Lukashenko's regime to bear. (Though Lukashenko has not commented on Andrei's case, in a 2012 interview in which he declared himself a dictator, he denied claims of holding political prisoners.)

'Europe's last dictator': I have nothing to apologize for 07:20

Although whistleblowers and dissidents play a critical role as truth seekers within society, our stories exemplify the sobering reality that we cannot effect change without additional support. Simply put, whistleblowers and dissidents can act as the catalysts for change, but it is the broader public that can alter the course of history.

In the US, that knowledge and belief ebbs and flows. During moments of widespread grassroots mobilization and public outcry -- including the Black Lives Matter protests, March for Our Lives protests, Women's March protests, as well as historic voter turnout during the 2018 midterm elections and 2020 presidential election -- the public has created the push for systemic reforms to American democracy.

An important fact to remember in this discussion is that these democratic demonstrations in the US have been largely peaceful. Protesters and grassroots organizations in the US are usually not forcefully repressed, and movements are allowed to develop organically. Like Alexander, people can generally speak out against injustice without fear of a government crackdown.

This has been a critical element of the ongoing fight against anti-democratic forces, as well as a key feature of the American system, which has been flexible and resilient in responding to the will of the people during tumultuous periods.

But the risk of political lethargy following the departure of former President Donald Trump is not something to be written off. Trump holds significant influence over the Republican Party -- and Trumpism will undoubtedly be on the ballot during the 2022 midterm elections.

American complacency has both short-term and long-term consequences. While in the short term, some proponents of the "Big Lie" could win elected office, significant danger lies in the long-term trends -- namely the incremental replacement of more traditional politicians with Trumpian populists and conspiracy theorists.

Three years from now, Trump could be the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election, decrying another close election loss. But this time he could have the support of enough state Republican officials complying with his demands to overturn unfavorable election results.

We cannot merely address these issues once they have already become realities, as was the case during the surge of civil activism under the Trump presidency. We must be proactive in stemming authoritarianism now.

In Belarus, by contrast, the most brutal form of authoritarianism is already a fact of life. Protests are met with violence. Under the repressive Lukashenko regime, the last vestiges of democratic institutions within civil society are being eradicated, and the opposition is actively suppressed.

Our generation will either renew democracy -- or lose it forever

Much like Andrei, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians have protested for an end to the Lukashenko regime's authoritarian excesses and a turn toward democracy. Yet their bravery and sacrifice have not been enough. Protestors have been under maximum pressure for years and need greater external support in order to be successful.

Western governments have the tools and resources to exert increased pressure on Lukashenko and his officials. These governments can raise the costs of Lukashenko's repressions by tightening restrictions on the regime's ability to abuse Interpol, imposing additional sanctions, enhancing Global Magnitsky sanctions for human rights violations or targeting the oligarchs whose networks of corruption support the Kremlin, and by proxy, the Belarusian dictatorship. While this may not be enough on its own to force Lukashenko to negotiate with the opposition, it would demonstrate solidarity with pro-democracy forces while signaling that Lukashenko's regime will face consequences if they act with impunity.

Some, such as the European Council, say the changes in Belarus have to come from within. But the push for change in Belarus is coming from within. To actually bring about democratic reform, Belarusians will require the collective action of other Western nations committed to the values and principles of basic human rights and freedoms.

The United States could take the lead on this, since it already fulfills an indispensable role on the international stage as a defender, sponsor and promoter of democracy. It could play a critical role in strengthening Belarusian civil society by providing material and ideological support to the country's pro-democracy elements.

Given the current situation in Belarus, a prudent approach may be to provide financial, rhetorical, and organizational support to the leaders of the pro-democracy movement beyond the borders of the country. Critical figures, like Andrei, and organizations continue to strengthen and empower Belarusian civil society, even in exile. They facilitate a platform for the Belarusian opposition that provides hope for the future and offers a democratic alternative to the illegitimate Lukashenko regime.

It is dangerous and irresponsible to believe that the US can abrogate its duties as the leader of the free world without consequences in the regions of the world where democracy is still struggling to establish a foothold. Belarusians, alongside countless other peoples, look to the US to set an example and represent an ideal worth striving for. American values and interests demand the defense of democracy both at home and abroad.

While the US and Belarus are worlds apart, the Belarusian experience offers a frightening window into a world without basic freedoms. Believe us when we say, American democracy is worth defending, lest it come to resemble something closer to Belarus.

Repression by Law: Independent media as an enemy of the state

Illustration photo by 7x7-journal.ru

Pressure mounts on Russian independent journalism and a repressive regime steps up disinformation efforts targeted at domestic and international audiences alike. The situation is reflected also in the North, including in relations with neighboring Scandinavian countries, the new media monitoring report 

The Barents Observer
May 12, 2021

Independent Russian journalists have over the past two decades increasingly been silenced and curbed, and a powerful state propaganda machine has been built to streamline public opinion.

This repressive system was in the years 2020 and 2021 taken to a new low, the report titled “Repression by Law” reads.

The poisoning of Aleksei Navalny, his recovery in Germany and subsequent return to Russia posed a new and fundamental threat against the regime and was followed by more draconian laws and repressive action.

The “Repression by Law” is the fourth Barents Media Freedom report published by the Barents Observer

“Media in Russia are today experiencing repression and censorship, and journalists that pursue an independent line risk harsh reactions from the authorities,” says author Atle Staalesen.

Independent media was previously seen by the Kremlin as a threat to the system, but has now become an outright “enemy of the state,” Staalesen argues.

At the same time, the regime has stepped up its disinformation campaigns targeted on western audiences, conveyed by state-controlled media, propagandists and trolls. These campaigns are evident also in the Scandinavian North, including the Norwegian borderlands to Russia.

The “Repression by Law” is the fourth Barents Media Freedom publication by the Barents Observer. In 2019, the small Norwegian media house issued the ”Free Media on the Scaffold, and in 2017 the “Journalism in the Borderland”. In 2016 came the “Barents Observer - the Process” (in Norwegian), which describes how Norwegian regional politicians in the period 2014-2015 tried to halt the editorial freedom of the only Norwegian online newspaper that publishes in Russian.