The US has waded into a row over media censorship in Ukraine, backing a ban on opposition TV channels as both the EU and President Volodymyr Zelensky's own father expressed grave concerns over the impact on free speech.

In a statement issued on Twitter Wednesday, the American embassy in Kiev wrote that it "supports efforts yesterday to counter Russia's malign influence." It described the shuttering of broadcasters as "in line with [Ukrainian law], in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity."

"We must all work together to prevent disinformation from being deployed as a weapon in an info war against sovereign states," the missive concluded.

According to a statement issued on Thursday, the broadcasting regulator Ofcom has revoked China Global Television Network's license to air its programs in the UK.

An Ofcom investigation found that the license under which CGTN was operating had been wrongfully held by Star China Media Ltd (SCML).

In a statement, Ofcom reiterated that "licence holders cannot be controlled by political bodies."


It said SCML does not have editorial control or responsibility for CGTN's programming, and therefore did not meet the requirement to hold a broadcasting license.

House Democrats have laid out their vendetta against former President Donald Trump for the entire world to see. Trump stands accused of "incitement of insurrection against the republic he swore to protect".

Democrats hold Trump "personally responsible" for the riot at the US Capitol, believing that he committed an "impeachable offense of historic proportions".

The vitriolic language being used to condemn Trump has whipped critics and the mainstream media into a whirling dervish intent on seeking blood as the malicious and manufactured impeachment trial looks to damage and destroy his reputation.

However, with Republicans standing beside their former president, the Democrats' attempt to convict Trump and lead him to the gallows for a public execution and ensure he never runs for office again could be doomed.

Sputnik spoke with political commentator Mitch William to find out whether or not the potentially dangerous precedent the Democrats are trying to set through this impeachment trial could come back to haunt them one day.

I stayed around in DC for the next several days. Flynn and Sidney left to their own worlds for a few days, but before Mike left we had a conversation. I will use this opportunity to share a bit more about Mike Flynn.

I knew from people who had worked in the field what Flynn had done to make himself an enemy of the Swamp. When he arrived in Iraq, materials gained in raids were being bundled up in bags, shipped back to Virgina to be "exploited" and analyzed and, a month or two later, useful information sent back to the troops on the front lines. Flynn sees the world like an entrepreneur, and set about to redesign the process, so that exploitation and analysis was done on-base in Iraq, the loop condensed into 18 hours, so that the next night when people went out raiding, they already had the benefit of insights gained from the previous night's work. Eventually the loop was so tightened that a raid early in the evening in one location was generating materials that were studied through the night, and informing raids that were still being conducted at dawn. People I knew and trusted in the field were telling me that this guy Flynn had his admirers, but he had detractors as well, primarily those comfortable with the ol' boy approach, disgruntled at the way he was shaking things up and bringing modern ideas into the Intelligence Community's comfortable way of doing things. As his career progressed Flynn's divisiveness to the Establishment became legendary, but in my experience, men and women I knew who seemed like bright, chipper, mission-oriented federal employees spoke well of Flynn, and the Mediocrities were the ones who seemed to hate him.

Former Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan slammed the Biden administration Tuesday for undoing significant border protections put into place by President Trump.

Morgan first took aim at White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki for trashing Trump's efforts to secure the border, and attributing the infamous Obama/Biden 'kids in cages' and family separation policy to Trump.

After Psaki had spoken, calling Trump's border policies "horrific", Morgan stated that "There isn't enough time to address all the spin and misinformation that the Press Secretary just sent out."

Morgan outlined that agencies within the Trump administration have been "working tirelessly" to reunite families separated at the border. Morgan explained that the "broken immigration system was exploited" by human smugglers and cartels who knew US authorities could not detain children.

Morgan further reeled off a list of actions by the Biden administration that have put border officers in grave danger.

"Just in a couple of weeks [Biden has] decimated our ability to secure this border, and keep our country safe," Morgan warned, adding that Biden has "completely dismissed" the pleas of those working on the border.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will direct a military-wide stand down to address extremism within the ranks, he told top military leaders in a meeting Wednesday, according to his top spokesman.

Austin wants all military units to take an operational pause to discuss extremism as he works to grasp the full scope of the issue and better address the longstanding problem, John Kirby, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, told reporters Wednesday. The pauses are expected to occur within the next 60 days, but Austin has yet to determine how the stand downs are to be completed, Kirby said:

"The intent is to reinforce the [Pentagon's] policies and values with respect to this sort of behavior and to have a dialogue with the men and women of the force and to get their views on what they are seeing at their level. He wants commands to take the necessary time to ... speak with troops about the scope of this problem. It's a two-way conversation."

Austin spoke frankly with the acting service secretaries and uniformed service chiefs about his concerns about extremism in the military, including white supremacism, said Kirby, who attended the meeting. The new defense secretary, who is the first Black leader of the Defense Department, wants the service leaders to better grasp how pervasive the issue is within their formations and work with leaders to stamp it out, Kirby said.

The leaders concurred with Austin's belief the issue was problematic and perhaps more pervasive than past Pentagon officials have known, Kirby said. "One of the first things he said was: 'This is a leadership issue, and it's leadership that goes all the way down ... to small-unit leadership level,' " he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's labeling of Republicans as the "QAnon" party suggests that the latest Capitol drama isn't about a single Georgia congresswoman, but about purging and repressing all dissent in Our Democracy.

To hear the Democrats and the mainstream media say it, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) is a clear and present danger, a threat of imminent harm that must be at the very least stripped of her committee assignments, or expelled from Congress altogether.

The Democrats had hoped House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy would purge the congresswoman for them, but when he apparently refused, Pelosi released a vitriolic statement on Wednesday, calling him a representative from "Q-California," and accusing him of "failure to lead his party" and "handing the keys over" to the "anti-Semite, QAnon adherent and 9/11 Truther" Greene.

When it comes to domestic extremists such as those who stormed the Capitol, a longtime CIA officer argues that the U.S. should treat them as an insurgency.

That means using counterinsurgency tactics — similar in some ways to those used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Robert Grenier served as the CIA's station chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001. He went on to become the CIA's Iraq mission manager and then director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2006.

Grenier wrote in The New York Times last week:

"We may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency within our own country, perpetrated by our own countrymen. And without national action, extremists who seek a social apocalypse ... are capable of producing endemic political violence of a sort not seen in this country since Reconstruction."

In an interview with All Things Considered, Grenier discusses what that national action would mean.

On the evening of Friday, December 18, Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn, a sharp female attorney on Sydney's team (whom I will call "Alyssa"), and myself decided to call an SUV and get driven to the entrance that serves the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is on the grounds of (and connects to) the White House. We had a vague plan regarding how we were going to get through all the rings of Capitol Police, Secret Service, and Marines without any invitation: Sidney and Mike were the center of global attention, and we were going to try to use that to bullshit our way past them all and get to the Oval Office. Beyond that, we'd be playing it by ear (I did say the plan was "vague"). There was a fine young NSC staffer whom I had gotten to know who, a real mensch, and I called him and left a message that I was accepting the open offer he had extended to drop by his office anytime, and was coming over ... right then. At 6:15 PM. Not knowing if he would play ball, I may have been less than clear that there would be some people with me.

We were dropped off a block from the security gate, and walked through the light snow falling in the darkness. We got to the first security booth, and Sidney and Mike approached to talk. The Police and Secret Service saw it was General Flynn ("The People's General"), and stiffened to attention. There was no appointment scheduled but they clearly were confused and trying to figure out what to say. Suddenly my staffer-buddy came out from inside, and when he saw Flynn and Sidney he froze and looked at me with raised eyebrows. I gestured that we were all together, and he looked shocked for a moment..... then did the right thing, strode over to the guard, flashed his ID, and asked him to let us all in, even though none of the requisite paperwork was arranged. With muted relief the guards quickly said, "Take care, General" and we were through the first layer. For the second layer my staffer-buddy and another of his colleagues who had joined up walked into the inner ring entrance before us, and spoke for us: again, when they saw Mike the guards again all stiffened to attention, looked puzzled for a moment (I think there is no such thing as a high-level visitor like that coming in without it being in the books), then briskly and professionally processed us all through as quickly as they could. They were silent and asked no questions, apparently guessing we might not have good answers if they did. I was the last one through, and as they handed my ID back to me one leaned in and said quietly and intimately, "Thank you Mr. Byrne." I was surprised, and it was the first time I understood that in the constellation of Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, there was a faint little star of my own.

We've reported various aspects of the account of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) of what happened to her on Jan. 6 during the breach at the Capitol. But there are some very critical facts that have been missing from her story that I wanted to talk about here.

The story, as it was initially related by AOC, suggested that she was about to be assassinated by rioters in her office in a video that has been viewed over 6 million times.