EU Commission demands Google takedown RT and Sputnik from search results
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Even floating this idea in an informal not binding way will do damage to the reputation of who is criticizing an authoritarian state. How can any benefit offset an own goal of this magnitude?
If they are doing something wrong, file a formal lawsuit etc, but removing from search results? Seriously?
This is just propaganda of another kind. NATO exists to protect states from the terror of bully-states like Russia. That's why you see states famously neutral now clamoring to get in.
Russia concern-trolled its way right into an invasion and it looks like its propaganda worked, on you.
And Poroshenko sending the army and battalions of neo-nazis to attack Ukraine's own citizens wasn't a first punch thrown by a bully ? Why didn't NATO nations or the UN react then to stop the massacre ?
They happily ignored it, which gave Putin the excuse then for Crimea and to send his famous "Green Men" back then. Letting it rot, and worse, enabling the worst elements of Ukranian society gave him an excuse in front ofthe Russian public to start this whole murderous theater piece now.
Similarly, 5.4 million dead in Congo between 1998 - 2008. What did anybody do about it ? Nothing. Most people in the west don't even know it happened. Same as Yemen's 370'000 dead. I'll also conveniently skip Lybia, Afghanistan, Iraq's million dead from sanctions, or more recently arming and funding Isis and Al-Quaed against Assad.
So let's pretend this has anything to do with any morals or protection of others from bullies, or democracy - or if you think different I'd say your local propaganda worked on you.
NATO is just the stick to the western lifestyle carrot - while in fact setup for an extractive system centered on dollar surplus recycled by the world's regional elites through Wall Street.
Russia, China, Putin and Xi are trying to create their own opposing version, and will be using the coming economic crisis born of this war to effect it.
It's all just the Great Game of colonial great powers all over again, 2022 Modern Redux.
Apart from comparisons to what the West did when... insert-your-favorite-conflict-choice-here being more of the whataboutism I expect -- though pointing it out never seems to stop such facile arguments -- as a Danish resident working directly with Ukrainian software developers daily, the war against Ukraine is very close to my heart.
Reducing our protests and plaintive cries to stop the war to more of the din of the political elites or the heartless machinations of the Great Powers is out of touch with the very real fears of former satellites of the USSR and the very real heartbreak of Europeans for our sisters and brothers in Ukraine.
Putin is a bully and has a lot to answer for, assasinations and election meddling including. That does not absolve west of its sins or make what they are doing right in this situation. This was a totally un-necessary conflict at this time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
As much as they would like for it to be so, Russia is not North Korea. The result of all these sanctions would be a Russia China alliance. An opening for China to invade Taiwan, founding of competing and fragmented global institutions, alternatives to SWIFT, because nations are watching and no one likes to be vurnerable.
> NATO exists to protect states from the terror of bully-states like Russia. Fat lot of protection it offered Ukraine while being the primary subject of contention.
> clamoring to get in A couple of inconsequential states wanting in while the major players wanting to chart their own course in defence is telling you the direction it is headed in.
> A couple of inconsequential states wanting in while the major players wanting to chart their own course in defence is telling you the direction it is headed in.
You'll need to point out specifically which major players are running away from NATO because NATO has never been stronger than now at the height of Russian predation. See Germany's revised defense budget or the increases of defense budgets across the board of all other NATO members in response to Putin's war.
This is way past ridiculous, not to mention social media allowing violence
Looks like a "all in" from a desperate EU/UK/USA having been handed a losing hand
Russia has been censoring media within Russia for many years, and has gone increasingly harsh. The RT ban in Europe came after Russia banned several western and local critical media and disaccredited journalists.
In addition RT and Sputnik have been spreading literal fake news for years to rail up opposition to national governments both with a pro Russia slant but often simply to attack national policy and cause rifts with minority groups or migrants (e.g. [1])
[1] https://observers.france24.com/en/20160128-fake-video-german...
If RT lied it would have gone to due process
It was a clear political decision to ban TV channel, online channels, and now search engine result. Coordinated between EU/UK/US leaders
https://observers.france24.com/en/europe/20220301-video-debu... Almost all "independent" or not media sources reported the tank being Russian and most still do
Honestly there is no point in discussing this if you cannot see the difference between a state sponsored channel that pumps out literal lies and fake footage, invents conspiracy theories, and tries to sow hate against e.g. jews and migrants vs one that has a conservative and pro-British bent but is free to criticise the government and often does so. BBC is boring and conservative and I would rarely waste my time on it, but it is an entirely different category of media.
I mean, the BBC is very happy to turn refugees drowning in the English sea into entertainment. And is currently waging a war on trans people.
Sure, the BBC is less bad than RT, but not pumping out doctored footage or blatant antisemitism is a very, very low bar.
There are numerous programmes on the lives of trans people covering a variety of topics (relationships, culture, health), some news stories reporting facts (mainly people and organisations getting 'cancelled' for being anti-trans) and articles based on public comments from well known people regretting decisions.
I assume you are referring to the controversy around a single article by a single journalist [1]. A journalist who previously wrote a sympathetic history of trans people in the modelling industry... for the BBC[2].
Out of curiosity, I tried to find any other evidence. All other descriptions of this anti-trans agenda ultimately just reference this single article e.g. [3]. One 'article' becomes 'articles' and then slips into being an 'agenda'[4]. I found one other reference - an article about an internal meeting which some attendees complained about, but that wasn't even public facing and was only called because of that single article [5]. (There were also some vague references to two individual news stories, which were considered by some to not be balanced - there are complaints like this about news coverage from either side of any argument every single week on the programme Feedback.)
If the BBC is trying to promote an anti-trans agenda across their massive output involving tens of thousands of people, they are doing a spectacularly bad job of it.
I get fed up of people bashing the BBC over individual incidents - it just feeds into the right wing narrative that it needs to be de-funded [6]. Be careful what you wish for, privately owned media tends not to be great for marginalised groups...
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59074096
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-49578690
[3] http://www.ilga-europe.org/sites/default/files/2022/united_k...
[4] https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/life/drag-race-uks-bimini-calls-o...
[5] https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/11/11/bbc-trans-lgbt-staff-s...
[6] https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/mps-and-trans-campaigner...
Before that, staff were told that attending Pride was no longer allowed.
This week the BBC Woman’s Hour platformed Maya Forstater as a feminist hero. They didn't critically mention the real reason she was dismissed from her contract was for handing out leaflets at work that said trans people are a danger to children.
This is the BBC doing its job admirably, presenting different points of view and perspectives, to educate and inform the reader in as neutral a manner as is possible in journalism.
(I don't work for the BBC and internal matters are somewhat opaque to the outside world, but even the Pride issue seems to have been some poor interpretation of a brand new guideline by someone internally that was spun into a bigger story and dealt with within a few days - https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54749024)
I'm still struggling to see the evidence for a war.
How do you know that ?
Feed forward to last week and Telegram is hailed as a beacon of free speech in Russia and as one of the last options for Russians to find out the truth...
Let's not overstate the support for it.
Germany's Interior minister, who threatened to shut telegram down, explained that "the pressure is working"
https://www.dw.com/en/telegram-blocks-over-60-channels-in-ge...
They're not state-owned but they are certainly not independent. All mainstream media is tightly bound to a political party or another. Fox and MSNBC are mirrors of misinformation.
That screams more "state" than "public" control.
Wikipedia portrays it differently, I wonder why.
No, not really: https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/licencefee.