politics or business i'm show business i'll see you there. i'm breaking news to tell you about russia's foreign minister today warning moscow is ready to end ties with the e.u. if it slaps fresh sanctions on key sectors of the country's economy much more to come on out for the. other news remember the world health organization covert expert team just back from the virus epicenter in china tells us if that caused the disease then it came to humans through other animals 1st. and french outrage growing over american values being forced on the country as the renowned paris opera vows to diversify performances after complaints from black we hear from a french journalist on the rising scandal there that. i think there's a kind of laziness of the intellectual process where they say well we're going to

copy and paste and they come and they tell us how wrong we are. for a good day for russia kevin o. and he would be the next 30 minutes with our latest from r.t. international breaking news coming in the last few hours russian foreign minister sergey lavrov saying moscow is ready to break up with the e.u. if it imposes new sanctions that harm key sectors of the country's economy. when we don't go those who will see will so use them when are we heading for severed ties with the e.u. we're just saying they were ready to do this if we see once again like we've seen numerous times before that brussels imposes sanctions that post risks to our economy specifically to the most sensitive sectors once again we don't want to distance ourselves from the international community but we need to be ready for this if you want peace prepare to war. it goes down of

a correspondence cross this story today eagle some tough words on the face of it from the foreign minister strongly worded statement i suppose meant to draw a very firm line in the sand that attitudes have to change and change quickly as far as the use concerned absolutely basically sergey lavrov opens his hand and says this is what we're going to do if you go through with your plan to impose sanctions crippling some key sectors of russia's economy these sanctions i mean russia has been threatened with them in fact the e.u. has said has confirmed that there are plans in the works the european union the the representative he did not explain and he did not go into detail at all as to what these sanctions could be targeting about confidentially and behind closed doors this process is going on and so this is a strong message in response to that from sergey lavrov the russian top diplomat basically saying we won't be bullied into submission or into taking making any

decisions we aren't comfortable with at all this whole thing it kind of stems it's like a development from last week's visit use foreign policy chief joseph burrell he visited moscow and he talked to sergei lavrov and while the. i would i would call it unremarkable i would call it a business as usual trip if you look at it from a diplomatic standpoint i mean the sides did not agree on everything and sergei lavrov he gave his view of affairs and he was a burrell agave his view especially particularly revolved around around the situation with the russian opposition figure alexina falling he is now an imprint in prison he's been is suspended sentence was a real one. and so basically it was a burrell called for his release and sergei lavrov said that this is this hysteria

is overhyped and this is an internal matter of russian soldiers a barrel he went back to the e.u. and the european diplomats the majority of them they weren't impressed with his performance in moscow at all. moscow the busa the visit of high representative board l. to you merely 8 and offend the european union your ill executed a visit you know only a shame to european citizens you also helps putin and harms dressin people miscible real and the on the other hand made a fool of himself last week you must go by his actions you made a mockery of the ambition of the e.u. to play a major role in the world stage wake up call that finally prompted e.u. member states and yourself to to adopt a more realistic unprincipled russian foreign policy and to move toward sanctions finally among others the inclusion of human rights violators under sanctions list and to suspension of north stream to which is contrary to european and it should

security police so essentially jews a bro good all of this just because he wasn't as aggressive as they wanted him to be with moscow essentially for well being a diplomat because these people they did not mince any words as you've just heard so essentially and joe's abro he had no other option because in moscow he was kind of it looked like he was looking for an improvement when it comes to the relations between the un and russia but he had to defend himself it felt like he had to defend himself and to switch his stance on the fly on the go because this is what he sounded like in the european parliament at that on that day reason deep disappointment and growing mistrust between the debian union and russia i also wanted to test to do russian authorities are interested in a serious attempt to reverse did it did

a unity ation of our relations and seize the opportunity to have a more constructive dialogue the answer has been clear no. so again there's a cool there's a cool to impose sanctions on russia over the situation with election of ali because of the e.u. of course sees this process as well a political vendetta against him so to speak and they are saying that that his human rights are being violated so this is sort of the pretext but while the choir ovoid world trying to deliver this message is quite loud everybody agrees there was an irish member of the european parliament and she essentially said that europe is just looking for a pretext to slap more sanctions on russia and alexina volley is just a convenient opportunity for them to have a listen. i must be as anybody else to stand up for anybody's rights including not

found nice but let's be honest i'm sure he's officious i'm seein the current racist on maybe 4 percent of the supports and we wouldn't be discussing him oh if he'd been arrested anywhere else other than in russia. so there you have it and essentially sergei lavrov he has been talking about how russia is independent militarily in the military in the military sense like russia produces its own weapons and it's an exporter of arms and so on and so forth so russia is independent militarily and now he says that russia should get economic independence to be able to withstand the world well these economic sanctions and so on so again a clear line in the sand as to where the you better not go because russia is prepared to respond. a lot of think you've put it in context for us right now covert where did it all starts the question nobody still knows the answer to so a member of the world health organization team just. told r.t.

if bats are indeed behind corona virus that has spread to humans through other animals 1st science is dead gov has been probing the origins of the pandemic in that chinese city. we know from past epidemics for example sars covert and mares cause of that bats are the source of the epidemic moreover they contain genetic cells close to the ones that caused the pandemic but we also know that the transmission of the virus did not occur directly from the bat the previous time sars was transferred from a civet cat mers from a camel so there must be some other intermediate animal it is the most likely have participated in our knowledge. while the virus was 1st detected in the think in december 29th in the team's initial findings debunking claims that the disease

originated in a lab in research lab but the u.s. think beijing is hiding facts from the experts or science needs to lead us out of this pandemic and in preventing the next one geo political battling has already made that path harder is to learn to trust in the global systems we set up after world war 2 and give them a chance china gave them very controlled and limited access and got a report that was inconclusive and supports narrative. told us about the transparency of their probe. how successful was our mission i believe that we have fulfilled our program this was only the 1st part of our investigation and we didn't expect to determine the origin of the pandemic already w.h.o. team and chinese specialists work together as scientists it was something like

a huge conference where we shared opinions and information analyzed scientific literature that already exists discussed hypotheses and assessed possibilities i see no reason for the chinese side to hide anything they probably didn't do that because in the scientific world it is very difficult to conceal something information could be hidden from the public but it is more difficult if it's people who really understand the issue. there are 2 hypotheses about how the virus appeared the 1st is that the virus may have been induced the suspicions have already been refuted says we're not even considering this the 2nd is that a natural virus came from the lab we were at the institute of uralla ji observing the work with viruses and concluded that everything meets safety standards and leakage could not have occurred this lab is far enough from the market if there was

a leak we'd see signs of it there for such a leak is practically impossible we looked at hypotheses in the probability category it is likely that the virus came from space so it's impossible. so still none the wiser. next to disney stars fallen victim to so-called council culture of to being sacked for social media post the fail to pro-democrat trump line the sask a tailor reports many who demanded so far and were call themselves so they identically provocative messages to. disney's finally realizing that lives no fairy tale it couldn't stick to down saloons and knights and consuls a pumpkins no no it had to go out political on its funds a switching off i'm canceling my disney plus subscription right now they want to cancel us i will cancel them. i don't know many posts but if you find this qur'an

the for her freedom of speech i promise i will cancel my disney plus subscriptions council culture is going to far cancel disney plus if you were ever tricked into giving them money in the 1st place why instance we now face a backlash not a bunch of happy smiling kids singing along to let it go oh well a film company it owns of crumbled under the pressure of woe laureus a 5 g. to corrado that's the start of the disney plot so the mountain noria. no place for a child apparently because of a par and unacceptable social media posts which include being skeptical of mustering thinking that trump's impeachment is well out a bit of a hoax refusing to put her pronouns in her twitter handle the most recently

comparing the prosecution of republicans in today's america with out over the jews in nazi germany which was one of the dockets pages and human history obviously whoa it was not a hit because i mean you want to go around calling people fascists and nazis but if you voted for trump you voted for the person who claims supported you voted for the person who nazis supported by the jews. and we are ready is to say nothing. is happening here is the republican party as a personalized power like we haven't seen it's a cut deal it's a caesar it's a fear her and it's also entirely inappropriate to combat genocides to current political tensions right on the same we've seen it in bosnia we've seen it in rwanda where radio was telling people do you know who jews are telling the radio listen. as the cockroaches and you see it in these videos also did you know miss

this memo about art healing and unity and something transported counts i don't think we need a tree here is a vague terrorist the way we do actual terrorists i think we need to consider all oh all right possibilities i'm not against sending these people to get me out and that i'm a democratically elected former presidents from speaking out their own impeachment trial hearings about free speech 1st among learned about for those jobs to see approves of the constitution so. anyway so young disney on the rocks the people who are against council culture want to cancel disney for daring to cancel jena who believe that she had other michael peeps are being canceled by society it's all very. matter of the probably should have stuck to fairy tales. french intellectuals are stepping up their attack on what they call american values

claiming questionable leftist ideas imported from the us have no place in the republic them as they pose a threat to french societies that claim these warnings are new for the country the president and other government officials have already raised fears those the certain social science theories entirely imported from the united states with the problems which i respect and which exist but which is just added to. there is a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from american university. where some national thinkers now blame the us for from says mass protests against police brutality similar to america's black lives matter movement america's made to campaign on awareness about sexual abuse has also gained traction with french feminists surely do with explains paris's transatlantic headache currently. french intellectuals and politicians are said to be up in arms over the cancelled culture

ideology seeping over from the united states and spoiling well the french way of life i think there's a kind of laziness of the intellectual process where they say well we're going to copy and paste and they come and they tell us how wrong we are black lives marked 2 are examples of movements that flew over the atlantic and spread their wings here now that's led to debates over race gender france's crackdown on islam is still going on is asians and demands for the country to fess up to its colonial past they come and they tell us that we are racist. phobic about our universal values on nothing. and quite frankly i mean this is a combination of incredulity and. annoyance i wouldn't say anger because we don't think it's run of the europe has existed for a long time. i think we can live without american christian will theory for

a few few years more and it seems the french should really had enough of council culture so when the director of the paris opera issues it diktats saying that he wanted to diversify staff and band black face the editor in chief of one of france's biggest daily papers and took issue making works of art disappear echoes the cancel culture which has been a national sport for america and aims to wipe off the map culture and creators symbolizing the domination of the white male and the oppression of minorities some say this problem it's much deeper it's a threat to its political identity is a threat to the republic and to french democracy and to the functioning of the state it's not a matter of cultural identity i do think that there. is a big threat to civilized life and obviously freedom of speech and so on by

these kinds of movements while imposing ideas on race inequality feels for many a little bit rich coming from the u.s. considering the state to race relations in america right now it doesn't look like their solutions work so well so i'm not sure we need them really but the other thing is that there's this whole speech discussion about how colonialist it is to impose a different culture on the unsuspecting populations and the french are saying well you are imposing something that may or may not work for your country but it's not working for france i mean after all isn't the whole point of freedom of speech also having some respect for the point of view of others what is actionable in this room is the idea that instead of having a discussion or a debate or even an argument about it that there should be should somehow be consoled and so we are dealing sorry to say this it sounds rather rude but we are

dealing with the difference between intelligence and stupidity it's just stupid to talk like that of course we can all disagree about napoleon or any other historical figure but that's what makes us a civilization that is what civilization is there's a claim that this fight back comes from a small frightened republic that's in decline but isn't it just possible that perhaps france a country with a long proud tradition of intellectual debate the country where the enlightenment movement was birthed is perhaps still ahead of the curve well at least compared to america and for now it appears that the left culture just isn't cutting the must it in france so let's even ski r.t. paris. well 'd the paris opera diversity scandal we just heard about erupted when black performers complained about almost exclusively white costs and use of blackface in performances the organizations artistic director agreed to. we're not

here promoting a climate of censorship or dictatorial actions in the leadership the whole point of this initiative is we want to put on opera and ballet by 21st century artists for 21st century audiences the pledge to hire more people of color as part of a 66 page report by the theater and alexander you just heard from there was also quoted by le monde newspaper warning that some performances he said would disappear from the repertoire if deemed insensitive but the plans as part condemnation from traditional commentators in french media and from nationalist politician marine le pen may be no surprise that we put it all up for debate. this year is really political correctness gone mad because they actually do have 5 bloc ballet dancers in there so i really don't know what the people who are calling for change here are all worried about we have some talented people here who are forced to leave france to go express that the one where this is

a huge problem and what alex underneath is saying now is he's take he's taking the problem to the roof that's mean that in the recruitment he's changing the way of for a christmas cripple and it's a very new thing in france because we know that this is a very elitist well what you should do in every case is pick the best person for the job the most talented the most skilled person for the roles the parasol they have their ballet school and they've changed their admissions procedure to let people in from ethnic minorities and black people to come in and as they come in through the system they're actually going up into the opera so this is already happening and hopefully the people that come through will be selected because they are talented and skilled we need of course 'd the best dancer to be in but before that we need to open the door the thing is to did the door close for the and the minority this is the right reality is to have the most the wanted people in this

new joint so for example what he's doing he's a law then so for example to have the dress who much would the court of that say it lotsa because a lot of young dancer west pushed away just because they didn't fit to do to do white tour i we can say we need to adapt the density of the people who own and was wondering about that the whole debate here is that they're actually talking about reducing the repertoire and changing the kind of performances they put on because some people have chosen to be offended about things that have been there's been no problem with for decades or centuries the region of the classic is the right this is the origin but we have to say that france and england and u.k. and germany and do you. it's today in 2021 it's not the same france. or france or the u.k. and the population in europe is different so i wouldn't agree at all i don't think that we need to change performances in the way that they've been written this is a conservative opera house conservative company it is there to put on

classical performances they shouldn't be changed just because a few people this year decide they should be changed in a certain way what will happen in 20 years' time 50 years time someone else might come along and say oh well we need to change them again and again and again they should stick to the classical way it should have been done the way that they've always been done that's what audiences want and that's what they should be sticking to. tensions occurring between the u.k. and china after beijing banned b.b.c. world news accusing the t.v. channel of false reporting about week of muslims britain's foreign minister responding criticizing china's move branding it an unacceptable curtailing of media freedom. joiners decision to ban b.b.c. world news in mainland china is an unacceptable curtailing of media freedom china has some of the most severe restrictions on media and internet freedoms across the

globe and this latest that will only damage china's reputation in the eyes of the world their dispute heaps further pressure on a relationship already deeply damaged by the situation in the former u.k. colony of hong kong following the riots that escalate there last year 2 weeks ago beijing stopped recognizing british national overseas passport holders in the territory isa rally reports on the increasingly troubled ties. with such practices seriously violate professional journalistic ethics are totally inconsistent with the facts and deviate from an objective balanced and impartial reporting position while its full exposes the b.b.c.'s malicious intent to confuse the public and smear their we go region through rumors that announcement by chinese all thought it sees that b.b.c. wallet need not be allowed to continue their service within chinese territory coming in the wake of our reporting on how china has held the corona virus pandemic

in the country saying that they dispute how the b.b.c. of covered the issue and that they simply do not tolerate fake news and it follows in the wake of the u.k.'s forecasting regulator taking away the license for c.t.s. and the chinese broadcaster and saying that they've taken up bisons away because the channel and the editorial line and it's hated by the chinese government we are unable to approve the application to transfer the license to the china global television network corporation because it's ultimately controlled by the chinese communist party which is not permitted under u.k. broadcasting law we provide a c.d.n. with numerous opportunities to come into compliance but it has not done so. we now consider it appropriate to withdraw the license for c g t n to broadcast in the u.k. now the chinese decision to ban b.b.c. well may not have many message consequences that is the channel that is

a great thing watched round china over in chinese hosts it's the channel that's mainly draw caused all watched by visitors in the hotels but it just goes to show that even in the wake of donald trump leaving the white house in the hopes that many have the west in general and china may begin to rebuild their relationship with this type of tit for tat action when it comes to the opposing sides media outlets certainly doesn't build confidence for the future. here we discussed it too with guest political analyst chris bambery and u.k. based politics lecturer dr patton longwall. sure i'm sure the c.t.a. has colleagues to change its governments but the b.b.c. foreign service is run funded by the 4 about this that's well known british secret a very aggressive policy over how and why and various other things in wind the united states the traditional british will in that situation we're talking about

soft power soft power is that use of the media you know these to influence events in other countries it's the change that yes it was serious of course this is an escalation but once the british got actually in c.t.f. this response was sure sure to follow its neighbors of all it did we'll talk about more of the popular see here when we see every government control of the media government control of the media is rife not just in china but you know taking i think from the kind of more strategic point of who. in the hope it will or information will or on the british side are trying to pick on the chinese side on the and on the chinese side on burma is worth saying is that if it moves on or you go but also all pick on hong kong and in other going to the british representation of china in general after china signed these europe china investment deal last year it looks like the british which we do china and europe has significance that import but because the president. of the europe and the u.k.

has to find a way to work with to buy than a miscreation and salt china would naturally you see in the u k would be u.s. side of the u.s. from i know on. there will continue to follow the terms that finally just about 30 seconds to show these pictures dramatic pictures a massive explosion leveling a supermarket is southern russia this morning blamed on a gas leak well some gas leak a that blast taking place in vladik have cats the capital of republican the caucuses but 2000 kilometers south of where i'm talking to from moscow so these huge plumes of smoke. many clears and then we see this this explosion is literally leveled a supermarket a preliminary probe blames it on us because of the time with the morning no one there fortunately fingers crossed no casualties serious anyway reported scenes of there this is our take.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm keenly bill how do you define the word reality something like this the state of things as they actually exist as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them to say the least this is a philosophical definition let's throw in politics now is there one political reality can and should one be enforced with this in the end produce a ministry of truth. discuss these issues and more i'm joined by my guest tom reilly and granted she is a contributor with real america's voice in austin with.