EU to ban RT and Sputnik news
RT | February 27, 2022
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Sunday that the EU will ban the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik accusing them of spreading “harmful disinformation.” She did not specify whether this ban will apply solely to television broadcasts, or whether RT and Sputnik’s websites will be affected.
In what she called an “unprecedented” step, Von der Leyen announced that “we will ban in the European Union the Kremlin’s media machine.”
“The state owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union,” she continued. “We are developing tools to ban toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”
Von der Leyen’s move comes a day after the Association of European Journalists called on the EU to implement a bloc-wide ban on RT, and have its journalists “removed.” It also comes several days after the EU sanctioned RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan.
Australia suspends RT broadcast
RT | February 26, 2022
Australia’s satellite operator, Foxtel, has notified RT on Saturday that it is suspending the channel’s broadcast distribution in Australia as part of its services “in view of concern about the situation in Ukraine.” The operator will then further “consider” its rights under the channel license agreement, it added, without elaborating on any potential additional measures.
Foxtel is a satellite operator covering all of Australia’s territory and has its own over-the-top (OTT) server allowing media services to be offered to the audience directly via the internet. It has around 3.8 million clients.
On Thursday, Poland removed RT, along with some other Russian broadcasters, from its cable and satellite networks as well as internet platforms.
Every time a government or a certain organization calls for RT to be taken off air or bans its broadcast it only demonstrates “the fallacy of media freedoms” in the nation it represents, RT’s deputy editor-in-chief, Anna Belkina, said in a statement on Saturday, responding to the latest decisions by Australia and Poland.
“RT journalists tirelessly work to bring valuable facts and views to an audience of millions around the world,” she said, adding that “if ever there were a time to recognize the importance of all fact-gathering news … it is now.”
Even before the start of the Russian military operation, London had asked the regulator Ofcom to reconsider RT’s license to operate in the UK, accusing the company of being part of a “global disinformation campaign.” At that time, Belkina said that Ofcom had for a long time endorsed the channel as a license holder.
RT has been facing pressure for quite some time. European satellite TV operator Eutelsat took RT’s German-language channel RT DE off the air shortly after it was launched in December last year under pressure from the German regional media regulator MABB.
In early February, Germany’s top media regulator also sided with MABB and upheld a ban on RT DE’s broadcast in the country, citing an absence of a locally-issued license. The channel previously obtained a valid pan-European permit in Serbia but the German regulators declared it void. RT DE now plans to appeal the decision in court.
In response to “unfriendly actions” against RT DE, Moscow announced it would halt operations of German state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Welle in Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has previously warned that bans on RT broadcasting in foreign nations would be met with reciprocal measures in Russia. The ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, specifically said on February 23 that “if the UK follows on its threats against the Russian media, a response will not be long in coming.”
Facebook places new penalties on Russian state media
RT | February 26, 2022
Facebook announced on Friday that it would ban Russian state media outlets from advertising or monetizing their content on the social media network in response to the conflict in Ukraine.
Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, revealed in a statement that the company would start prohibiting the media “from running ads or monetizing on our platform anywhere in the world.”
“We also continue to apply labels to additional Russian state media. These changes have already begun rolling out and will continue into the weekend,” he said.
Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, announced this week that access to Facebook would be restricted in the country after Moscow accused the social media network and its parent company Meta of breaching “fundamental human rights” and Russian law with its censorship of Russian media organizations.
The announcement was made after four Russian news organizations, including RIA Novosti, had their access to Facebook limited.
Roskomnadzor said Facebook had censored Russia media on 23 occasions since October 2020.
Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg – who previously served as the UK’s deputy prime minister between 2010 and 2015 – lashed out at Moscow’s decision in a statement. He added that his company wants Russians to use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp to “make their voices heard” as they “organize for action.”
Conflict in Ukraine broke out this week after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced military action aimed at “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” the country. Moscow claimed military action was a necessary measure to protect the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics in the Donbass, which had requested Russian military assistance against “Ukrainian aggression.”
Kiev, however, accused Moscow of conducting an “unprovoked” attack on the country, and Russia has been publicly condemned and sanctioned by many Western powers, including the US, UK, EU, and NATO.
UKRAINE: Hysterical Western Reaction, Retaliation – May Lead to Wider War
By Peter Ford | 21st Century Wire | February 26, 2022
Russophobe, germophobe, it’s all the same.
I simplify. But it’s striking how the loudest Russophobic voices include all the same voices which were similarly hysterical about Covid – the mainstream media, the Labour Party, and the liberal elite (which includes much of the Conservative Party), while the few voices calling for even a modicum of restraint or understanding of Russia include anti-lockdown Farage (on GB News) and Trump, both of the Right. Piers Corbyn and Jeremy Corbyn, virtually alone on the Left have spoken up, while Starmer has forced 11 of his MPs who signed a Stop The War statement to withdraw their signatures.
The Labour Party in fact has tried to outflank the Tories on the Right, demanding the silencing of RT, the Russian broadcaster.
The Ukraine crisis rubs home the same messages we received loud and clear during the Great Covid Hysteria: Left and Right are meaningless now, the default option for any untoward contingency arising is to go to panic stations, muzzle any dissent, and bring in restrictions/interventions/sanctions without a thought about the side effects, or even direct consequences.
Just as Covid lockdowns were imposed regardless of wrecking society and economy, so the West is now imposing drastic sanctions on Russia without anybody even asking the question: well, might not Russia retaliate, with cyber attacks for example? It’s not appeasement to pause to consider if our moves might backfire, that’s just plain prudence and a sense of responsibility. And what about gas and petrol prices? Collapsing stock markets? Sterling, anyone?
Nor is it appeasement to appreciate that the problem didn’t begin just yesterday, that the West was asking for trouble sooner or later when it incorporated much of the former Soviet Union into its own sphere of influence (NATO membership), and started to establish forward military positions in Ukraine even though formally Ukraine was not a member of NATO. We poke the Russian bear and then cry in horror when it responds by showing its claws.
Grabbing other people’s land is always wrong. But tell that to the Americans, who have endorsed Israel’s annexation of Palestinian and Syrian territory without even a semblance of support from the inhabitants. The Americans have also stationed military forces in North East Syria, denying access to the region’s oil by the Syrian government, pretexting a pseudo-mission of ‘keeping ISIS out’ – when ISIS no longer poses any real threat. Tell NATO ally Turkey which mounted a similar ‘peacekeeping’ mission across its border into North West Syria, killing hundreds of Syrian government forces in the process and sustaining in control a local jihadi regime. Nobody in NATO breathes a word against any of this.
It’s not all bad news. The aggravation of the already dire energy situation is creating a new equation: people are realising you can have zero emissions, or you can be warm.
However, looking at the downside, the conflict over Ukraine could harm the cause of freedom supporters if the perception grows that we are siding with the nation’s enemies. Some might even say that our support for peace is toxic. But what is there to lose? We are demonised, harassed and persecuted already. And nobody else is interested in making peace, only in pouring fuel on the flames with arms supplies and punishing Russia with backfiring sanctions.
Putin may be making the same calculation, that he has nothing to lose. The West spurned feelers he put out about a neutral status for Ukraine, application of the Minsk accords on a settlement for the Eastern areas, and revival of arms limitation treaties. Why not go the whole hog and practise the same regime change tactics the West used or tried to use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria?
Peter Ford is a global affair analyst and former British Ambassador to Syria (2003-2006) and Bahrain (1999-2002).
Twitter Says It Will Consider Censoring “Emerging Narratives” About Ukraine War
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | February 25, 2022
Twitter announced that it was monitoring “emerging narratives” about the Ukraine war that will be censored if they represent a violation of the company’s policies.
The announcement was made in response to Twitter deleting tweets and suspending accounts that had posted videos of Russian tank divisions and helicopters heading to Ukraine.
After users complained, Twitter acknowledged that it had targeted the accounts in “error” and they were later restored.
However, a statement by a Twitter spokesperson is likely to cause alarm amongst free speech advocates.
“We took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error,” the statement said, adding, “We’ve been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies.”
The use of the term “emerging narratives” suggests that Twitter will begin censoring certain perspectives on the conflict in the context of their policy on “misinformation.”
These problematic “narratives” are almost certainly likely to be ones that question narratives being put out by the Biden White House and NATO sources.
Similar rules were applied to skepticism expressed towards COVID vaccines as well as the lab leak theory, which was once deemed to be ‘harmful misinformation’ but is now widely accepted as the most likely explanation for the pandemic.
The potential for the Russian attack on Ukraine to be exploited to push for further censorship and blacklisting of free speech in the west is a clear danger.
For weeks, leftists have been trying to smear Tucker Carlson as being guilty of “treason” over him accusing the Biden administration of exploiting tensions between Russia and Ukraine to distract from the president’s dreadful handling of domestic issues.
The word “traitor” also trended on Twitter yesterday in response to Nigel Farage suggesting that NATO should share some blame for Putin’s actions.
In a related story, the official Twitter Ukrainian government also lobbied Twitter to ban the official Russian government Twitter account.
Warning to the BBC: You can’t gag TCW
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | February 23, 2022
THE BBC gets very righteous and uppity when it’s dishing out the criticism – but doesn’t like it when it’s on the receiving end.
A classic example came my way on Monday with a message from TV Licensing about a TCW Defending Freedom blog. Basically, it was asking me to ‘censor’ a sentence they didn’t like.
I wrote back to BBC Director-General Tim Davie and here I’m publishing my reply to him as an open letter. The contents are self-explanatory …
Dear Mr Davie,
I am the editor and proprietor of the website TCW Defending Freedom, which registers between one and 1.4million page impressions a month.
On Monday of this week, we published a blog about Justin Trudeau’s use of emergency powers to end the protest in Ottawa by Canadian truckers.
It contained the following paragraph: ‘For example, violent Black Lives Matter protesters have been free to run riot in the US, while peaceful pro-Trump supporters have been arrested. In the UK, minimal, even helpful, action was taken against disruptive Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain protesters, while single mothers are jailed for not having paid their TV licence fee. Unvaccinated citizens are penalised and scapegoated everywhere, while illegal unvaccinated boat immigrants are rescued by coastguards and the RNLI and welcomed generously into society.’
To my surprise, I received an email later that day from Alex Skirvin alexander.skirvin@bbc.co.uk in which he stated: ‘I am getting in touch from TV Licensing regarding your recent piece, ‘Iron fist for the truckers, velvet glove for eco-terrorists.’
‘The piece states: “In the UK, minimal, even helpful, action was taken against disruptive Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain protesters, while single mothers are jailed for not having paid their TV licence fee.”
‘This is inaccurate. Nobody is imprisoned for non-payment of the licence fee – the maximum sentence is a fine which may be imposed by a court.
‘If a court fine isn’t paid this is a separate matter, a custodial sentence may be imposed, but that is entirely a matter for the courts. In 2020, there were no admissions into prison associated with failing to pay a fine in respect of the non-payment of a TV licence in England and Wales. To ensure readers are correctly informed, please could you update the piece?’
I would like to ask you the two following questions:
Was this an authorised communication from BBC licensing?
Is it now the BBC’s official view that no one is jailed in consequence of non-payment of the licence fee?
Technically, of course, a custodial sentence is the consequence of non-payment of a fine imposed because of evasion of the licence fee. But the fact remains that the root cause of such a sentence – the sine qua non – is because offenders have not paid their licence fee.
In all the circumstances, I do not regard what our columnist wrote to be inaccurate, and I would also like an apology for being approached in this unprofessional and rather disrespectful way.
We are publishing this as an open letter on the TCW Defending Freedom website tomorrow.
Yours sincerely,
Kathy Gyngell
Editor, TCW Defending Freedom
Leading law firm issues Facebook letter of complaint over ‘anti-Palestinian bias’
MEMO | February 23, 2022
Leading law firm Bindmans LLP has sent a formal letter of complaint to Facebook over its “anti-Palestinian bias.” Instructed by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), the London based firm demanded explanation for the “systematic” and “far-reaching” censorship of content and accounts related to Palestine.
The complaint was also sent to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of opinion and expression. It requests an urgent review of, and explanation for, the decisions made by Facebook, which was rebranded last October as Meta Inc, to suspend accounts and posts which are affiliated to Palestinian news agencies, commentators and journalists.
Monday’s letter of complaint to Facebook is the second in nine months sent by Bindmans LLP to the social media giant. A previous communication submitted in May 2021 was made on behalf of five journalists and news agencies in Palestine. Facebook is said to have interfered with their accounts and/or posts and was accused of breaching their fundamental right to freedom of expression as well as its own Corporate Human Rights Policy.
In the May 2021 complaint, the main questions posed by Bindmans LLP included whether the censorship decisions were carried out by an algorithm or by a person exercising their discretion, and details regarding Facebook’s policy in justifying their censorship decisions, in addition to steps taken by the company to resolve unfair censorship.
In its response to the letter, a month later, Facebook said that it had investigated the accounts referenced in the letter and, after further review, has restored content and/or accounts where applicable. Notably, no substantial answers were provided to any of the main questions cited in the original communication.
Despite the commitments made by Facebook in their letter sent in June 2021, the censorship remained, said ICJP in its press release detailing the content of the complaint. The centre is an independent organisation of lawyers, academics and politicians that work to promote and support Palestinian rights.
Monitoring group, Sada Social, which has been documenting the suspension of Palestinian content and accounts on Facebook, recorded in 2021 alone, hundreds of instances of inappropriate censorship of social media content in support of the rights of Palestinians. This censorship was exacerbated significantly during the last Israeli offensive on Gaza in May 2021.
The complaint reinstates the request that Meta/Facebook discloses and reviews its decision-making process, and explains why the accounts were closed, suspended or posts taken down, and whether in doing so an algorithm or human discretion was used.
Following the Money on Climate Change Media Coverage

By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | February 20, 2022
The Associated Press (AP) is assigning another two dozen journalists across the world to cover ‘climate issues’. AP Senior Vice President Julie Pace described the move as a “far reaching initiative that will transform the way we cover the climate story”. Over 20 of the journalists will be new hires and they will be funded by an $8m gift from five billionaire philanthropic organisations, including the Left-wing Rockefeller Foundation. The money is just the latest in a series of such gifts and AP reports that 50 writing jobs are funded from these sources.
AP is not the only large media company to collect such hand-outs. The BBC and the Guardian regularly receive multi-million dollar contributions from the trusts of wealthy philanthropists. It is estimated that Bill Gates has given over $300 million over the last decade to a wide variety of media outlets. Faced with plummeting paid readers and advertisers, mainstream legacy media seems eager to tap a new revenue stream.
The money is spread wide across such media. This month, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting received $1.5 million from Rockefeller to “expand coverage of under-reported and/or inaccurately reported critical public health information”. The Quadrivium Foundation, run by Democrat power couple James and Kathryn Murdoch, is also paying climate wages at AP. On its website, the Foundation notes that it also invests in Climate Central, using meteorologists as “trusted messengers” of the links between extreme weather and climate change. Since it is not possible to link individual weather events to long term climate change with any scientific certainty, this aim looks to be a waste of money, or perhaps not.
‘Trusted messengers’ seems to be a phrase much in vogue around philanthropic operations. Last October, Rockefeller gave $4.5 million to Purpose Global, a non-profit company that aims to help corporate clients with their “cultural intelligence”. The money was given in support of facilitating a “communication network of trusted messengers”. This would “amplify accurate information and combat mis- and dis- information on COVID-19 vaccines”. In September 2020, the Gates Foundation gave the Guardian $3.5 million to “support” its regular reporting on global health. Likewise, the Global Health Security Team at the Telegraph is Gates-funded.
Old school journalists might be a little happier to see less of the ‘trusted messenger’ stuff and more of the requirement to investigate. But critical inquiry of climate change science has been more or less banned from many mainstream outlets. This is despite the fact that the hypothesis that humans cause all or most global warming is unproven, and many scientists look more to natural causes for long term change. Predictions – often termed evidence – of future warming, are based on climate models that have never provided an accurate forecast in the last 40 years. Global warming started to run out of steam two decades ago, and it has been at a standstill for the last seven. When Google Adsense banned the main climate web page tracking accurate satellite data showing the standstill, the interest was confined to just a few outlets, including the Daily Sceptic.
One of the largest suppliers of cash for climate change is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the BBC and the Guardian are two of its favourite giftees. The Guardian has received upwards of $20 million over recent years starting with £6m in 2011 to establish a “millennium Development Goals” feed that provides “compelling evidence-based content”. During the last decade, Gates has given at least $20 million to help fund the BBC World Service and $5.5 million for the Corporation’s Media Action charity.
In that time, the software tycoon, once treated with great suspicion for early monopolistic tendencies, has become a prized ‘talking head’ across the BBC for epidemics, vaccines and anti-meat diets. His recent scary tales of climate change, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, was recently given five airings on prime time Radio 4.
Elsewhere, there are prizes for the best behaved – sorry – most distinguished climate journalist. Every year, the foundation of BBVA, a Spanish bank heavily involved in financing Net Zero projects, hands out €100,000 to the lucky recipient. Last year it went to Marlow Hood of Agence France-Presse, who describes himself as the “Herald of the Anthropocene”, the latter being a political renaming of the current Holocene era. In 2019, Matt McGrath of the BBC pocketed the cash, while in 2020 the award went to – no great surprise – the Guardian.
Much of the BBC money appears to support advocacy in the developing world, although the terms of specific grants are sometimes hard to understand. A letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in August 2019 describing the purpose of a $2.03 million grant to the BBC reads as follows: “To help us learn deepen our underpinning of processes and user journeys for different sets of women’s empowerment collectives, develop use cases for where digital can help amplify effects bring efficiencies, and close gender gaps for women”.
No doubt when this non-sensical gibberish was translated into understandable English, the money was spent wisely.



