Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.
Editor’s Note: Dear Readers, MintPress News’ YouTube channel was recently demonetized, and many of our videos made age-restricted. We would greatly appreciate your support by becoming a member of our Patreon page so that we can continue to bring you important stories like this one. Much of the work that we do is supported by viewers like you.
The MintPress podcast, “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. “The Watchdog” goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.
For nearly a decade, Professor David Miller has been in the crosshairs of the pro-Israel lobby. But in recent years, their campaign against him has intensified. Miller was fired by Bristol University in the U.K. following a ferocious campaign by the Israel lobby, which even led to direct government intervention in the case. He has been holding the university to account in an employment tribunal and expects the results very soon. In this episode of “The Watchdog,” host Lowkey catches up with Miller to hear the latest on his case.
For nearly a decade, Professor David Miller has been in the crosshairs of the pro-Israel lobby. But in recent years, their campaign against him has intensified. Miller was fired by Bristol University in the U.K. following a ferocious campaign by the Israel lobby, which even led to direct government intervention in the case. He has been holding the university to account in an employment tribunal and expects the results very soon. In this episode of “The Watchdog,” host Lowkey catches up with Miller to hear the latest on his case.
Professor Miller has a long background in studying P.R. and propaganda, originally focussing on media spin on Northern Ireland, the HIV/AIDS crisis and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It was the latter that first brought him to study Islamophobia and how it functions in society.
Today, Miller and Lowkey described how so much of the hostile atmosphere towards Muslims is actually driven by the state and committed Zionist organizations that try to influence it. For example, 12 of the top 13 funders of the Islamophobic Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank that influences U.K. public policy, were groups founded by Zionists. And three-quarters of the organizations that fund these Islamophobic groups also bankroll the building of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Miller was sacked from his position as Professor of Sociology after a pressure campaign involving Zionist student groups and even members of parliament, who accused him of “inciting hatred against Jewish students.”
In 2019, a student filed a complaint against him, claiming he was racist toward Jewish people. After a long, drawn-out process, the university investigated and concluded, according to Miller, that:
There wasn’t a single sentence, word or comma which I had ever said that was anti-Semitic. So I was given a complete clean bill of health. And the university wrote to me to say: ‘There is nothing to see here; you didn’t do anything wrong. This complaint was manifestly ridiculous.’”
But that was only the start of the affair. After Miller was acquitted, there began a massive media campaign against him, leading to more than 100 members of the House of Commons and House of Lords signing a letter demanding he be sacked.
This massive state intervention into the freedom and independence of academia is a free speech issue that few of those who make it their business to supposedly champion the free flow of ideas have touched.
The Kafkaesque witch hunt against Miller bears a strong resemblance to how Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was hounded out of politics. Ironically, Miller’s book, “Bad News for Labour: Anti-Semitism, the Party and Public Belief,” details how bogus charges of anti-Semitism were weaponized against Corbyn in order to defame and destroy him.
Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip-hop artist, academic and political campaigner. As a musician, he has collaborated with the Arctic Monkeys, Wretch 32, Immortal Technique and Akala. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project, founded by Jeremy Corbyn. He has spoken and performed on platforms from the Oxford Union to the Royal Albert Hall and Glastonbury. His latest album, Soundtrack To The Struggle 2, featured Noam Chomsky and Frankie Boyle and has been streamed millions of times.
The Ministry of Information in the Sanaa government condemns YouTube over its second mass banning of Yemeni media channels.
The Ministry of Information in the government of Sanaa has strongly condemned YouTube for once again shutting down and deleting Yemeni media channels from the platform.
This decision constitutes a “deliberate targeting of Yemeni media, an attempt to silence the voice of free Yemeni journalism, and an effort to suppress the truth about the violations and crimes committed against the Yemeni people by the Saudi-led, UAE and US-funded coalition of aggression for nearly nine years.”
The Ministry asserted that this act is part of a broader conspiracy orchestrated by the aggressive coalition aimed at stifling independent media outlets that oppose global hegemony and domination.
Highlighting the severity of the situation, the Ministry emphasized that the closure of numerous Yemeni channels on YouTube represents a direct attack on the guaranteed freedom of expression and press.
Demanding swift and decisive action, the Ministry of Information called on the relevant authorities and stakeholders to take necessary measures against YouTube’s persistent targeting of Yemeni media.
Furthermore, the Ministry urged free media outlets to unite in solidarity with Yemeni media channels and adopt unified stances against YouTube’s aggressive policies.
The statement concluded with Sanaa calling on the Yemeni people to take a firm stance in response to the systematic practices carried out by YouTube against the Yemeni press and the attempts to stifle the Yemeni voice.
Earlier today, YouTube shut down 13 channels belonging to the Yemeni Ansar Allah Media Center, in a measure that the center said “reveals the falsity of the slogan of freedom of expression.”
“The YouTube company a few days ago closed 13 channels affiliated with the Ansar Allah Media Center without any violation of the so-called ‘YouTube standards’, and without any justifications,” the Center confirmed in a statement.
The Center pointed out that the measure comes “within the framework of the attempts of the countries of aggression and global arrogance to hide their crimes against the Yemeni people, and their attempts to silence the voice of truth and justice.”
The statement explained that the Ansar Allah Media Center exhausted all options to restore the channels by contacting YouTube, adding that the company refuses to respond to requests and continues to shut down several other national channels “in an indication of an aggressive campaign to silence every Yemeni voice against aggression.”
The statement called on the YouTube administration to immediately retract the recent measures it took against Yemeni media institutions.
It is noteworthy that a couple of weeks ago, YouTube shut down 18 channels of the Yemeni Military Media, the Ansar Allah band, the artistic and documentary production unit, and Rawdat Al-Shuhada, in an “arbitrary step”, according to the Yemeni Military Media statement.
The closed channels had more than 500 thousand subscribers with more than 7 thousand videos and more than 90 million views.
The Yemeni Military Media confirmed that the recent shutdown of its platforms, as well as other national platforms, on YouTube, in addition to Facebook and Twitter recently, is a clear indication of “double standards and a two-faced policy by the management of these companies in support of hostilities led by the US-Saudi-Emirati coalition of aggression.”
YouTube closed 13 channels affiliated with the Ansar Allah Media Center without any violation of the so-called “YouTube standards”.
“The YouTube company a few days ago closed 13 channels affiliated with the Ansar Allah Media Center without any violation of the so-called ‘YouTube standards’, and without any justifications,” the center confirmed in a statement.
YouTube shut down 13 channels belonging to the Yemeni Ansar Allah Media Center, in a measure that the center said “reveals the falsity of the slogan of freedom of expression.”
The center pointed out that the measure comes “within the framework of the attempts of the countries of aggression and global arrogance to hide their crimes against the Yemeni people, and their attempts to silence the voice of truth and justice.”
The statement explained that the Ansar Allah Media Center exhausted all options to restore the channels by contacting YouTube, adding that the company refuses to respond to requests and continues to shut down several other national channels, “in an indication of an aggressive campaign to silence every Yemeni voice against aggression.”
“We call on our free people to boycott YouTube and other platforms that target free Yemeni voices,” the Ansar Allah Media Center expressed.
On his part, the Secretary-General of the Political Bureau of the Ansar Allah movement, Fadl Abu Talib, said that shutting down “national channels reveals the extent of global complicity in targeting the Yemeni people and conspiring against their cause.”
The Yemeni Media Union also strongly condemned “the repressive measures implemented by YouTube against Yemeni content and national Yemeni channels.”
In a statement, the union deemed the measure “a systematic targeting of the Yemeni voice and media, and intellectual terrorism aimed at silencing the Yemeni voice.”
It added that “taking down content documenting the crimes of the aggression coalition against Yemen is considered an open complicity” with the aggressors.
The statement called on the YouTube administration to immediately retract the recent measures it took against Yemeni media institutions.
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) July 26, 2023
It is noteworthy that a couple of weeks ago, YouTube shut down 18 channels of the Yemeni Military Media, the Ansar Allah band, the artistic and documentary production unit, and Rawdat Al-Shuhada, in an “arbitrary step”, according to the Yemeni Military Media statement.
The closed channels had more than 500 thousand subscribers with more than 7 thousand videos and more than 90 million views.
The Yemeni Military Media confirmed that the recent shutdown of its platforms, as well as other national platforms, on YouTube, in addition to Facebook and Twitter recently, is a clear indication of “double standards and a two-faced policy by the management of these companies in support of hostilities led by the US-Saudi-Emirati coalition of aggression.”
The Yemeni Military Media slammed the hostile move as an act of “intellectual terrorism”, adding that YouTube is “seeking to harness the media assets of the countries of aggression to serve their colonial project.”
National pages, accounts, and channels pertaining to Yemen have been previously subjected to constant closure, ban, and restrictions without any justification.
Note from Michael Rossi Poli Sci who subtitled that video:
Dear Patreon Supporters,
First off, thank you once again for your pledged support and votes of confidence on my work.
Unfortunately, YouTube decided to remove the latest video I uploaded today (Sunday November 27) of Sergey Lavrov giving an interview on political extremism in Europe AS “hate speech”. How they came to that conclusion is beyond me, but I suppose it had to do with the video title having the word “extremism” in it, and “nazism” in the description.
Either way, YouTube removed the video and I have received my first Community Guideline strike, preventing me from upload, commenting, or interacting in any way on my channel for a week. I have appealed the strike, but I don’t know when I will hear back.
In the meantime, I have uploaded the video here and made it publicly accessible. Please feel free to share with those whom you think would benefit from it. For the next week, you’re my “ambassadors” of sorts 🙂
I hope to get this straightened out ASAP, because YouTube offers no prior warning or review of content before something gets flagged, and videos with direct “hate speech” get published all the time.
I may start moving more of the translated videos over here and making it Patrons Only.
I’m extremely grateful to Trish Wood for reaching out to me, spending the time talking with me, and for her professional interview style. She is incredibly well-informed on the matters we discussed.
*I am moving from Youtube to Odysee & Rumble, given Youtube’s ridiculous censorship. My Rumble is quite new, please be patient as I juggle doing on the ground journalism here in the DPR, write, edit & publish footage, and also try to maintain my various platforms.
A tutorial for YouTube’s content moderators that emerged on social media on Tuesday shows that the Google-owned platform has labeled a number of critical positions on the conflict in Ukraine “hateful” or “extreme” and can censor or demonetize creators on those grounds. While the parent company Alphabet has not confirmed or denied the screenshots’ authenticity, a Polish contractor who shared them has reportedly been fired.
Six screenshots shared by Russian journalist Andrey Guselnikov on Telegram show internal codes and examples of what YouTube has labeled “harmful” or “hateful” content in an online course mandated for content moderators.
According to the slides, the “glorification/promotion of [the] ‘Z’ symbol associated with the Russian military” is labeled “hate” and “extreme” under policy ID 864. So is saying that the conflict “is to denazify the Ukrainian government,” which is what Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February.
Saying that “Ukraine military is attacking its own people” is also considered problematic, ranging from “harmful-misinformation-moderate” (ID 862) to “harmful-misinformation-extreme” (ID 863) if the powers that be decide it amounts to “promotion or glorification.”
There was no clarification whether either standard would apply to factual reports of Ukrainian artillery targeting Ukrainian citizens living in territories under Russian control, for example.
Another highlighted phrase under policies 862 and 863 is “US funded bioweapons labs in Ukraine.” Presumably the key word here is “bioweapons,” since the existence of “biological research facilities” in Ukraine was recognized by US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in a Senate testimony in March, and the Russian military has repeatedly presented evidence that these labs were funded by the US government, and the Pentagon in particular.
One of the slides shows a list of “out of scope” claims, noting there is no “full-scale block on all content” related to the conflict.
According to Guselnikov, the source of the leaked slides is a Polish national named Kamil Kozera, who used to work for Majorel, a contractor hired by YouTube for content moderation. YouTube somehow identified Kozera from the screenshots and had him fired over the leak. RT cannot independently verify the authenticity of the screenshots, and has reached out to YouTube for comment.
The video hosting platform, owned alongside Google by the Silicon Valley behemoth Alphabet, took the unprecedented step in censorship by globally blocking RT, Sputnik and all channels “associated with Russian state-funded media” in early March, expanding on the original ban ordered by the EU authorities in their jurisdiction. It also “paused” all advertising and “all of the ways to monetize” on the platform – such as sponsorships and superchats – in Russia.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in May, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said that the company continues to operate in Russia so it can “deliver independent news” to Russians, noting that “What we’re really seeing in this conflict is that information does play a key role, that information can be weaponized.”
VT Editors is a General Posting account managed by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff. All content herein is owned and copyrighted by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff
After many years of running “LandDestroyer” on Blogspot, I have finally created a new independent website: NewAtlas.report.
Please visit The New Atlas to find and follow all of my recent work. Below is a playlist featuring daily videos I put out on YouTube and it will update inside this post regularly – otherwise all new articles will be published only on The New Atlas website.
There are NO ads and NO paywalls on The New Atlas website and there never will be. So please bookmark and share it with others.
The New Atlas is on YouTube here, Odysee here (a backup if ever YouTube deletes my channel) and can be found on Patreon here.
If you don’t think that Israeli spies haven’t been engaged in covert warfare online and via social media, then you have been living in a cave somewhere on planet earth.
We know for example that Israeli spies under the guise of “art students” infiltrated the United States, particularly the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, way back in 2002,[1] one year before the Bush administration led us to a bloody war in Iraq. Back in 2019, Insider came out with an article entitled, “A company run by former Israeli spies reportedly tried to influence a local US election — and courted Trump’s campaign.”[2]
If readers would like to pursue these things further, I would highly recommend Gordon Thomas’ Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, Michael Bar-Zoha’s Mossad: The Great Operations of Israel’s Secret Service, Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman’s Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars (New York: Levant Books, 2012), etc.[3]
We are certainly in a war with the Israelis, who find it congenial to call anyone who criticizes Israel a Nazi, but Israeli officials and Neoconservatives find it congenial to work with former Nazis like Otto Skorzenry,[4] who styled himself “Hitler’s most daring commando,”[5] and Stepan Bandera;[6] the United States and Israel tell us that they are fighting against gangsters and terrorists, but one of the infamous gangsters in America, Meyer Lansky,[7] was working for the Israeli Mossad.
So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to realize that Israeli spies have been infiltrated media outlets like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The following video shows how:
If you still believe that Israeli spies are “the Good Guys,” then I have nothing to say to you because you have already gone too far.
[1] “Spies, or students?,” Haaretz, May 13, 2002; “The Israeli “art student” mystery,” Salon, May 7, 2002.
[2] “A company run by former Israeli spies reportedly tried to influence a local US election — and courted Trump’s campaign,” Insider, February 12, 2019.
[3] For related studies, see Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Michael Karpin, The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
[4] See Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal, Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), chapter 8.
[5] Otto Skorzeny, My Commando Operations: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Most Daring Commando (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 1995).
[6] See E. Michael Jones, “Crimea River: The Hypocrisy of U.S. Foreign Policy,” Culture Wars, April 2014.
[7] For historical studies on this issue, see for example Albert Fried, The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Jenna Weissman Joselit, Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, 1900-1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983); Stephen Birmingham, The Rest of Us: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999); David Pietrusza, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series (New York: Basic Books, 2011); Robert A. Rockaway, But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters(Jerusalem and New York: Gefen Publishing House, 2000).
Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, history of Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the new book Zionism vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology is Undermining Western Culture. He is currently working on a book tentatively titled, Kevin MacDonald’s Abject Failure: A Philosophical and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and White Identity. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.
The problem of censors who don’t know fact from opinion struck home this Sunday when YouTube froze my channel for two weeks due to two strikes for what they call “medical misinformation.” My weekly news roundup show False Flag Weekly News has covered a wide range of medical and scientific experts’ views about COVID-19 related issues, including the safety and efficacy of vaccines. YouTube’s censors apparently didn’t like some of those views. They explained: “YouTube doesn’t allow claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO).”
On the show, I made no such claims. Instead I simply reported on the claims that various experts had made, without endorsing any of them. In fact, I was quite skeptical towards many of the alarmist claims of anti-vaccine scientists.
The fact that scientific experts like Geert Vanden Bossche, Mike Yeadon, Reiner Fuellmich, and Sucharit Bhakdi are saying alarming things about COVID vaccines is…well, a fact, and a newsworthy one. The draconian censorship of such facts, and of the experts’ interpretations, suggests very strongly that the elites pushing the COVID party line have something to hide.
TRANSCRIPT OF THE OPENING OF THE CENSORED EPISODE:
FFWN_210424-audio.m4a
Kevin Barrett: Welcome to False Flag Weekly News, the weekly news show where we question everything, especially public myths of the kind described by Philip Zelikow. I’m Kevin Barrett with Lucy Morgan Edwards this week. Welcome back, Lucy. Great to have you.
Lucy Morgan Edwards: Good to be back, Kevin.
Kevin Barrett: All right. So you’re the author of The Afghan Solution. You were a political adviser to the E.U. in Kabul, Afghanistan. And we will get to some some Afghan stories as we continue. But first, the obligatory disclaimers. Let’s let’s read those disclaimers. OK, first, this could be very disturbing to people who feel an emotional attachment to conventional wisdom as expressed in the mainstream media or from the mouths of politicians. So if you can’t handle questioning that stuff change the channel. Also, we are not a medical advice outfit. I am a doctor of literature, not medicine. So if I tell you to take three pills and call me in the morning, tell me to shove off. So we’re doing political commentary and analysis here, not medicine. No medical advice, no medical information, misinformation, nothing like that. All right. Here we are with our lead story: Philip Zelikow, the self-described expert in the creation and maintenance of public myths, who operates out of the University of Virginia. He not only wrote the script for 9/11 — or many people suspect as much — and then was called on to turn it into a bestselling novel called the 9/11 Commission report. He not only controlled that investigation completely, he wrote the entire report in chapter by chapter outline before the Commission even convened, and he probably wrote it from the script for the actual event that he co-wrote before 9/11. But now here he is back doing the same thing with COVID-19. He’s setting up what he hopes will become a COVID-19 Commission to tell the official public myth of COVID-19c. Lucy, would you say that this guy has chutzpah or something which requires a more obscene expression?
Lucy Morgan Edwards: Well, he surely does. There’s a comment from another academic colleague that that his appointment to do this is a rare public admission that this COVID project is set to run into the long term, maybe for the next 20 years, in the same way that the war on terror has run based on his his myth that has, of course, underpinned it.
Kevin Barrett: And so Zelikow says that “this is the greatest crisis suffered by America, if not the world, since 1945. Scholars and journalists will do their jobs. But there is also a role for the kind of massive investigation and research effort that only a large scale commission can provide.” So here comes the National COVID Commission, chaired by Philip Zelikow. I can’t even imagine what that big lie is going to sound like.
Lucy Morgan Edwards: And together with the censorship from mainstream media, that is becoming increasingly prevalent, that will be the official narrative. And we’re all going to have to follow it because we’re going to be canceled or censored if we don’t, doubtless.
Kevin Barrett: And he’s using a war metaphor, just like he did with the “war on terror” that was scripted before they blew up the Twin Towers and flew remote controlled airplanes into targets and stuff like that. So now apparently he’s saying this is a war, too. He says we have to win the war globally, not just nationally. It’s a world war. So once again, a war metaphor — against a virus.
Lucy Morgan Edwards: OK, so I feel that this is a clue that the same group that were behind 9/11 are behind the current situation. Rolling him out is a huge, clear clue.
Kevin Barrett: They’re not even trying to hide it. They’re actually basically telling us what they’re doing. And there’s a whole theory that Satanists have some kind of metaphysical duty to tell their dupes what they’re doing, because then the bad karma is on the dupes instead of on them. I don’t know if that’s true, but sometimes they act like it.
Lucy Morgan Edwards: That’s the modus operandi, isn’t it?
Kevin Barrett: Indeed. OK, let’s get into our “vaxxed” news. Let’s see…So Alan didn’t flash the the medical advice disclaimer. I can’t believe it. He Usually flashes it about every third story that has anything to do with COVID. OK, so here’s our nonmedical advice about Biden and his two hundred million COVID-19 vaccinations. He said his goal was 100 million. And they’ve shot Americans two hundred million times so far. Half of Americans now have been shot, and they’re still walking around. They’re still alive. And I hope that they will be for a while. Allen, our producer, of course, is a vaccine enthusiast and he’s still doing just fine. So, Lucy, your take on Biden’s heroic triumphalism around his two hundred million shots?
Lucy Morgan Edwards: Well, I mean, who knows if those figures are correct? I’m not sure what they’re based on. It does say in the piece that the government’s planning to incentivize people to take the vaccinations with bonuses, paid leave, gift cards and so on, so that they’re obviously going all in and are very keen to get everyone vaxxed. One could also say, why don’t they get rid of McDonald’s, given that most people die of obesity? So that raises more questions about what’s really going on with these so-called vaccinations, which some people, some eminent epidemiologists, are saying aren’t vaccines at all because they haven’t been fully tested while we’re in the third stage trial, which people are unaware of. And some are actually raising questions as to whether these really are actually vaccinations or just injections of something else.
Kevin Barrett: Oh, but you’re not allowed to say things like that. “That’s medical misinformation!” No, it’s not, because we’re not giving medical advice. We’re simply speculating. (And reporting what others have said.)
So in our next story, we see that the censorship axe is coming down with unprecedented ferocity on anybody who expresses any opinions on any of this stuff that deviate one iota from the official party line as created by the WHO and Faucci and Bill Gates and all their friends. And here’s Senator Klobuchar telling us that they’ve got to start seriously censoring the vaccine skeptics, the super-spreaders of misinformation. So if you express an unorthodox opinion now, you’re the equivalent of somebody who’s killing people by spreading an evil virus. And in this climate…The problem with this, it seems to me, Lucy, is that how can we believe the Orthodox party line when anybody who expresses anything else is axed and destroyed and censored and suppressed? There’s no robust free debate. And so God knows how many experts are out there (who dissent but are afraid to go public.)
Lucy Morgan Edwards: In the UK, it’s worse than that. So they’re going to be seeking to criminalize anyone who expresses opinions that don’t conform to the big tech big pharma view of COVID and what’s going on. There was a very good piece yesterday on UK Column News that went through the development of this increasing censorship and deplatforming. And the drive by the British government just to shut down any alternative viewpoints, any discussion, any academic discussion and so on, and that started really with David Cameron’s speech to the U.N., I think it was in 2013, where he laid out really what they were going to do, and the the non-tolerance for any alternative viewpoints. It was it was a real whoring of his position, actually. I felt it was absolutely disgraceful speech. And of course, the British government operates through Ofcom, which is a quasi governmental organisation, which is pretty totalitarian and is involved in the development of 5G and holds licenses and is therefore profiting from the development of 5G, which they’re, of course, trying to put in in tandem with all of this censorship that’s going on in order to suck up our data and surveil us increasingly.
Kevin Barrett: And so who knows how many experts are out there who actually agree with the skeptics but are afraid to say anything because they’re afraid that they’ll be deplatformed or fired or have their careers or reputations ruined. And that means it’s very hard for us to know what the truth is because it could easily be the majority of the experts that deviate from the party line in the privacy of their own minds, but are afraid to say anything. So in this kind of atmosphere of ferocious, hysterical censorship, it’s impossible to get at the truth. And so anybody who wants to genuinely convince us that the Orthodox line is correct should not be doing this! They should be encouraging free and fearless debate. And then we’ll see how many experts really think this and how many experts really think that. But as it stands right now, we can’t possibly know.
BIOGRAPHYKevin BarrettDr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.
He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.
Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.http://www.truthjihad.comtruthjihad@gmail.com
It’s been a very strange few weeks, well if it could possibly get any stranger than it already is.
On the 16th February I uploaded a 30 minute video onto my YouTube channel, titled “Vaccination and Vacation or Sceptical Staycation?” The video accompanied an article which I have also published in print.
The video was taken down within 3 hours of being uploaded, it had been viewed by 4 people (yes a whopping 4 people) and bearing in mind the channel is less than 4 weeks old and has less than 10 subscribers! Someone was incredibly upset with the content I had produced but neglected to give me a reason for censoring it.
I subsequently found myself banned for the second time on YouTube, the previous ban was for re uploading a speech which I gave in Sheffield last summer that had reached 67.5k views on another channel before
before being taken down by YouTube. Free speech really is under the threat of total annihilation!
On the 28th Feb I arrived at work (yes, I work full time, 48 hours per week as well as writing and researching, no furlough for me!) at 6 a.m. where it quickly transpired, that the company I work for, had suddenly decided to introduce ‘on the spot’ covid testing!
I entered the building and was met by someone I’d never met previously (who was wearing a Hi-Viz vest, so he must’ve been important!) and was told “You need to take a covid test mate.” I politely responded by explaining to the newly appointed Hi-Viz Health Enforcement Officer (he was a supervisor apparently), that “I don’t need to take any test and will not be doing as I’m not sick or showing any symptoms.”
“If you don’t take the test you’ll be immediately suspended and face disciplinary action.” I was told.
I was completely taken by surprise and was amazed that this individual, who had been given the task of herding people into a temporary testing facility (basically an office with rearranged furniture) had no clue that what he was doing or what he was instructing people to do, was completely unethical and unlawful.
I replied by attempting to appeal to his common sense, with “Really? You do realise that I have inalienable rights to bodily integrity and what you have just said is totally unlawful, don’t you? Are you threatening me with disciplinary action should I not consent to an invasive medical procedure? Because that would be coercion.”
He reasoned his instruction with “It’s no different to a drugs and alcohol test.”
I went on to explain to him that the covid test is nothing like a drugs and alcohol test and that the drugs and alcohol test is consensual and part of the terms and conditions within the contract of my employment, should I be suspected of being drunk or under the influence of drugs whilst at work.
I also added that the covid test is an invasive medical procedure which requires the appropriate training, as there is a danger that an untrained person could cause injury by piercing the blood brain barrier.
I asked him if the person performing the test had any medical qualifications at all (she didn’t and is in fact in the vulnerable group for covid, as she has a child at home with a respiratory issue!!) and what training they had received.
I was told that the person overseeing the test had been trained and was instructing others to perform their own tests. I asked what training she’d had that qualified her to instruct people to perform invasive medical tests on themselves and received no response.
After a lengthy debate with the obviously unqualified Hi-Viz Health Enforcement Officer, whilst in full view of roughly thirtyish other people crammed into an open office, it was decided that I was suspended on full pay pending an investigation for the allegation of ‘Refusing a reasonable management instruction, refusing a lateral flow test’ which could result in disciplinary action. I was handed a letter of suspension in full view of the gawping group of willing test subjects and told “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
This entire incident was completely wrong on so many levels I was stunned that it was actually happening and went home in sheer amazement.
I arrived back home at 6.30a.m. Much to the confusion of my partner (who is in the medical profession) who was in complete disbelief when I told her the full story over a cup of coffee. I then typed up the entire incident as a statement whilst it was still fresh in my mind so as not to forget any details. (I have attached a copy of the suspension letter and my statement at the end of this article should you wish to read my version of the whole encounter).
On the 3rd March I was invited into an interview with HR regarding the allegations and subsequent suspension which lasted roughly 30 mins.
I handed them a pre prepared statement containing my version of events from the incident. I then read it out for the record. I was asked a couple rather pointless questions, which aren’t even worth mentioning, before handing them my written conclusion. I read it out for the record and is as follows.
“I do not accept the allegations that I refused a “reasonable management request”. (By refusing a lateral flow test.)
The current government guidelines on testing for covid in the work place are quite clear.
Government guidelines state that employers have a duty to protect the health and safety of their employees, it is likely that they can reasonably instruct an employee exhibiting symptoms to be tested.
However, it may not be reasonable for the employer to require an employee to be tested, if they are not exhibiting symptoms (for example, if they are part of a testing programme to identify possible asymptomatic cases).
The current government guidelines state that if I have exhibit symptoms of covid then I should report to a testing centre to take an RT – PCR test and that testing requires my consent, as the tests are an invasive medical procedure.
Should I exhibit symptoms, I would not attend my place of work and I would consult the government’s guidelines.
I had received no prior communication from (work place omitted) before the 28/02/21, that I would be required to give my consent to take a test for covid.
I work alone and outside in a huge yard area, where I have close to zero physical interaction with any other person throughout my working day, therefore there are no reasonable grounds to:-
a) Reasonably suspect that I am asymptomatically infected with covid or
b) That I am considered to be in a category of risk that would potentially increase the spread of covid.
Taking into consideration the above information, I cannot accept that I did not follow a reasonable management request.
I am of the view that I exercised my inalienable rights to privacy, confidentiality and bodily integrity which were completely ignored.
I do not believe that the health and safety obligations within my contract of employment were applied to me at any time during the incident.
On reflection, however, I am of the view that there are several potential breeches of my contract of employment.”
I handed over a pre prepared list of ten questions which I would require the answers, prior to any disciplinary hearing, should one go ahead. Those questions can be found at the end of the article should you wish to read them.
The interview concluded and I left, pondering the possible disciplinary hearing which I had no doubt would soon take place. To my astonishment it never did!
Instead I received a phone call from a senior manager apologising to me for what had happened and that the allegations had been dropped and I was free to return to work on Monday 9th March.
I was totally shocked, particularly when considering the current climate we are in. I had been looking passed returning to work and pondering my future post dismissal and was feeling rather bleak about the whole thing but despite my worries I stood my ground and I won! A small but very significant little victory!
I am in no doubt that there will be more battles to fight in this war of medical tyranny and with certainty, the enemy along with their army of Hi-Viz Health Enforcement Officers, will be planning other attacks on freedom and liberty but for now I have survived to fight another day.
I am an ex Royal Marines Commando and my gut instinct will always be to stand and fight. I understand that not everyone is able to do the same and I would never criticise them for that but I could not justify, not putting into practice, that which I encourage others to do. I have never and will never encourage someone to do something, which I am not prepared to do myself.
These are testing times where every little victory matters, however small and we must push back where we can, however we can!
If you wish to read the statements, questions and letter of suspension, then continue on. I have left out the name of my employer and those involved, as I still work there and would be in breach of my contract of employment should I reveal such details whilst still employed there.
I would further like to add that this is a personal experience and I am not advising or encouraging anyone to imitate my actions nor do I give advice in any legal capacity.
I believe it is everyone’s personal responsibility to educate themselves on their inalienable rights and exercise them where they feel they are obliged to.
MY STATEMENT OF THE INCIDENT
1. I arrived to (work place omitted) at 0554hrs on 28/02/2021, which is my normal place of work. I am employed as a (title omitted). My duties are to (job description omitted).
2. On entering the building, I was immediately met in the main entrance, by a person unknown to me, who did not identify themselves to me and immediately instructed me to take a test for covid 19.
3. I asked why I was being instructed to take a covid test and was simply told that “Everyone was being tested.”
4. I refused to take the test on the grounds that I was not showing symptoms of covid 19, I was not ill, I had not been in contact with anyone showing symptoms of covid and that any test would require my consent.
5. I was instantly threatened with suspension should I not comply with the testing that was being carried out.
6. I explained that it was unlawful to coerce me into an invasive medical procedure and that my inalienable rights to bodily integrity were being disregarded as a result of the attempted coercion.
7. This was refuted by the person instructing me to take the test who went on to inform me that “The covid test is like the Drugs and Alcohol test and if you refuse to take it you will be suspended and face possible disciplinary action.”
8. I again pointed out that that statement alone was coercion and unlawful. I also added that the drugs and alcohol tests were totally different and that they were part of a consensual contract of employment.
9. I explained that being ordered to participate in an invasive medical procedure at the behest of anyone who simply orders me to, is definitely not within the terms and conditions of my contract of employment.
10. I was concerned that the conditions of the test were unsafe and that the area of testing was inappropriate for several reasons.
11. I explained my reservations regarding the inaccurate covid testing system which was being used, the way in which it was being used and the setting in which it was being performed, was of a huge concern.
The test produces high rates of false positives which wrongly inform the individual being tested that they are positive resulting in financial loss due to forced quarantining.
Whilst being performed by non-medically qualified staff, the chances of test inaccuracy is dramatically enhanced due to possible cross contamination because the whole of the workforce were all being ushered into the same room at the same time, not socially distancing and not wearing any face coverings. This is not in line with the standards of a medical testing facility.
I also had concerns that the area had not been suitably disinfected or prepared to the required standard of a medical testing facility.
12. I asked if there was a Medically Qualified person on site performing the testing procedure, as the action of swabbing the nasal passage can be dangerous when performed by unqualified people and can result in injury or damage to the blood brain barrier.
13. I was told that the person performing the test had been trained.
14. I asked who was performing the test and what training they had received.
15. I was then told that members of staff were performing their own tests. I was at this point extremely concerned bordering on horrified at such a cavalier approach to my health and safety.
16. I explained that could be a particularly dangerous and those performing procedures on themselves could injure themselves if they pierce their blood brain barrier.
17. I then asked if I was being suspended because if I was, then I needed to be going home immediately due to the unsafe environment I was in and the level of distress this had caused me.
18. I was told by another member of staff, who instructed me to go into the room where everyone was being tested because someone wanted my Family name.
19. I told this person, that whoever required my details should come out of the crowded room, which I assumed was suspected of a covid outbreak and get my details as I was not prepared to enter on the grounds of safety.
20. This person then came back and said “that I had to go in there as HR were in there.”
21. I asked this person to identify himself. He said “I’m just (name omitted).”
22. I informed (name omitted) that “this was a private matter” and that “I do not ‘need’ (as he put it) to go anywhere and that I do not take orders from strangers where my health is concerned.” I added that he should also mind his own business and repeated that should someone require my details that they come out and get them.
23. I was then shouted at by the security guard who said “it’s no good arguing with us, it’s not our rules”. Or words to that effect.
24. I responded by saying that “they were responsible for facilitating a procedure that could potentially cause injury and that they were involving themselves in the ‘argument’ by shouting comments.”
23. I was then handed a sheet of paper, informing me that I was suspended on full pay for “Refusing a reasonable management request” (refusing a lateral flow test for covid).
24. The person who handed me the letter did not identify himself, he did not take me to a private area to explain what was happening and simply said “don’t shoot the messenger”.
25. Not at any point during the incident was I offered the option of a private area to discuss any of the concerns I had raised, nor was I asked if I was comfortable discussing this in full view of the entire workforce. I have the right to privacy and confidentiality which was not afforded to me at all during this incident.
26. Throughout the incident which lasted roughly 20 minutes, I was subjected to several members of staff who found it highly appropriate to comment and voice their opinions on what should have been a private conversation between myself and a manager.
27. I found the entire experience to be, distressing, extremely humiliating and totally unprofessional.
28. I then left the premises, on receiving the letter of suspension.
QUESTIONS I HAD PREPARED FOR POSSIBLE DISCIPLINARY HEARING
1. What was the purpose of the mass testing on the date of the incident?
2. Who was given the responsibility for overseeing the testing?
3. What Medical Qualifications does the person responsible for overseeing the testing have?
4. What preparations were made in the area to be used for testing?
5. Was suitable insurance in place on the date of the incident, to cover any injury which could be sustained, as a direct result of Negligent Medical Procedures?
6. Why, was prior notice of testing not given, including an explanation for the requirement to be tested, as testing requires consent?
7. Why was I not taken to a private area to discuss my concerns to protect my confidentiality? And alleviate my clear and obvious distress?
8. Why were people allowed to form in a huge group whilst observing none of the government guidelines regarding social distancing or face coverings?
9. Why wasn’t there a qualified professional there to answer my concerns?
10. Which Laws, contractual or otherwise did the person suspending me from my duties, have the authority to behave in such an inappropriate, unethical and unprofessional manner?
An academic conference on media censorship and the dangers of free speech infringements online has, ironically, been censored by YouTube.
The Google-owned video platform decided to pull all videos from the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas 2020 for violating its “community standards,” which include never saying anything bad about censorship.
“At first I thought it was a joke,” said Mickey Huff of Diablo Valley College in California, as quoted by MintPress.
“My initial reaction was ‘that’s absurd;’ there must have been a mistake or an accident or it must have gotten swept under somehow. There is no violation, there was no reasoning, there was no warning, there was not an explanation, there was no nothing. The entire channel was just gone.”
The two-day event featured a number of esteemed speakers and panel discussions about Big Tech censorship and online violations of the First Amendment. So naturally it had to be pulled in its entirety in order to keep We the People from hearing the truth.
“Each video was a different panel and every panel had different people from the other ones, so it is not like there was one theme or person or copyrighted content in all of our videos,” added Nolan Higdon of California State University, East Bay, who was one of the event’s organizers.
“This seems to be an attack on the conference, not on a singular video.”
Big Tech needs to be broken up and publicly run so everyone has a voice
Higdon and his colleagues actually went out of their way to ensure that there was no copyright infringement in any of the talks or panels. Many of them were conducted in lecture format similar to a Zoom call, and included some of the best-known names in media studies.
“This wasn’t a keg party with Parler users: It was an academic conference,” Huff explained, noting that the event was sponsored by reputable schools like Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
“These are pioneering figures in critical media literacy scholarship. It’s mind-numbing that all of this was just disappeared from YouTube. The irony is writ large … This is part of a potentially algorithmic way of getting rid of more radical positions that criticize establishment media systems, including journalism.”
Google reportedly told MintPress that it has no idea where the missing videos went, and claims they were never even uploaded to YouTube. The company found only one video in its archives and reinstated it.
This explanation does not cut it for Huff or Higdon, though, as the two seem to recognize that corporations like Google and YouTube have become digital tyrants that forcibly control the free-flow of information online to the degree that free speech no longer even exists.
“I don’t think they should have achieved this kind of power over our communication systems in the first place, and these should be publicly run platforms regulated the same way our government regulates and enforces the First Amendment,” Huff commented.
Higdon had much the same to say about the situation, warning that the tech giants have amassed so much power that they are now blatantly trampling the constitutional rights of millions of Americans without consequence.
“By empowering these tech companies to decide what is and is not appropriate, they are going to look out for their vested interests, and people who are critical of their business model and practices are going to be targets,” Higdon says.
“These lefties right now who are advocating for censorship … the outcome of this is going to be on them.”
More related news about Big Tech censorship can be found at Censorship.news.
Instead of truth-telling journalism and support for an open, free and fair process, the Times leads establishment media cheerleading for rigged results over legitimate ones in the Trump v. Biden/Harris race.
Extreme bias for the dubious challengers shows up in daily editions — readers consistently lied to and otherwise deceived.
I support neither wing of the one-party state.
I reject a process that shuts out independents and increasingly seeks to suppress speech, media, and academic freedoms.
Corporate-controlled conventional and social media censor truth-telling on vital issues, wanting content diverging from the official narrative restricted or blocked.
Google and its YouTube subsidiary operate as gatekeepers for powerful interests.
Its personnel are tasked with eliminating what it calls extremist and other offensive content — code language for wanting alternative views silenced.
The Internet is the last frontier of digital democracy, the only reliable independent space for real news, information and analysis.
Yet its survival as now exists is jeopardized by dark forces opposed to free and open expression.
Eroding in plain sight, it may disappear altogether ahead on the phony pretext of protecting national security.
The self-styled newspaper of record NYT is part of the problem, not the solution.
Countless examples abound, supporting brazen Election 2020 fraud one of them.
In its latest edition, it lied claiming “the will of one man (opposes) the will of voters.”
I strongly oppose virtually everything Trump has done in office — domestically and geopolitically, including his serial lying.
Yet he’s right in sounding the alarm about brazen election fraud.
Instead of supporting a democratic process the way it should be, the Times has gone all-out for Election 2020 losers Biden/Harris to replace winner Trump on January 20.
Saying “Trump revealed the fragility of the electoral system and shaken it” ignores a deeply corrupted process that’s too debauched to fix.
When powerful interests choose winners and losers — voters disenfranchised by having no say — selections, not elections, take place, what clearly happened in the US on November 3.
The Times and other establishment media consistently and repeatedly pretend that democracy in America is real — knowing full well it’s pure fantasy.
If the real thing showed signs of emerging, it would be legislatively or otherwise formally banned.
Saying Trump is “relying on false claims of fraud” is typical Times disinformation.
If Biden/Harris replace Trump in January, they’ll be illegitimate throughout their tenure — selected by dark forces, clearly not elected.
State courts are part of the debauched process, upholding the will of powerful interests over the rule of law and elections the way they’re supposed to be held.
Et tu Supremes? It won’t likely be long to find out.
Facebook, Google and Twitter are not neutral platforms. They control the digital public square to aid the powerful – and can cancel any of us overnight
Palestinian critics say Facebook has become ‘another face of occupation’ (AFP/File photo)
There is a growing unease that the decisions taken by social media corporations can have a harmful impact on our lives. These platforms, despite enjoying an effective monopoly over the virtual public square, have long avoided serious scrutiny or accountability.
In a new Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, former Silicon Valley executives warn of a dystopian future. Google, Facebook and Twitter have gathered vast quantities of data on us to better predict and manipulate our desires. Their products are gradually rewiring our brains to addict us to our screens and make us more pliable to advertisers. The result, as we are consigned to discrete ideological echo chambers, is ever greater social and political polarisation and turmoil.
Western publics are waking up very belatedly to the undemocratic power social media wields over them
As if to underline the ever-tightening grip these tech corporations exert on our lives, Facebook and Twitter decided this month to openly interfere in the most contentious US presidential election in living memory. They censored a story that could harm the electoral prospects of Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger to incumbent President Donald Trump.
Given that nearly half of Americans receive their news chiefly via Facebook, the ramifications of such a decision on our political life were not hard to interpret. In excising any debate about purported corruption and influence-peddling by Biden’s son, Hunter, carried out in his father’s name, these social media platforms stepped firmly into the role of authoritarian arbiter of what we are allowed to say and know.
‘Monopoly gatekeeper’
Western publics are waking up very belatedly to the undemocratic power social media wields over them. But if we wish to understand where this ultimately leads, there is no better case study than the very different ways Israelis and Palestinians have been treated by the tech giants.
The treatment of Palestinians online serves as a warning that it would be foolish indeed to regard these globe-spanning corporations as politically neutral platforms, and their decisions as straightforwardly commercial. This is to doubly misunderstand their role.How Facebook threatens vulnerable Muslim communities Read More »
Social media firms are now effectively monopolistic communication grids – similar to the electricity and water grids, or the phone network of a quarter of a century ago. Their decisions are therefore no longer private matters, but instead have huge social, economic and political consequences. That is part of the reason why the US justice department launched a lawsuit last week against Google for acting as a “monopoly gatekeeper for the internet”.
Google, Facebook and Twitter have no more a right to arbitrarily decide who and what they host on their sites than telecoms companies once had a right to decide whether a customer should be allowed a phone line. But unlike the phone company, social media corporations control not just the means of communication, but the content too. They can decide, as the Hunter Biden story shows, whether their customers get to participate in vital public debates about who leads them.
The Hunter Biden decision is as if the phone company of old not only listened in to conversations, but was able to cut the line if it did not like the politics of any particular customer.
In fact, it is even worse than that. Social media now deliver the news to large sections of the population. Their censoring of a story is more akin to the electricity company turning off the power to everyone’s homes for the duration of a TV broadcast to ensure no one can see it.
Censorship by stealth
The tech giants are the wealthiest, most powerful corporations in human history, their riches measured in hundreds of billions, and now trillions, of dollars. But the argument that they are apolitical – aiming simply to maximise profits – was never true.
They have every reason to promote politicians who side with them by committing not to break up their monopolies or regulate their activities, or, better still, by promising to weaken controls that might prevent them from growing even more fabulously rich and powerful.
Social media algorithms help drive decisions on content removal (AFP/File photo)
Conversely, the tech giants also have every incentive to use the digital space to penalise and marginalise political activists who urge greater regulation either of their activities, or of the marketplace more generally.
Unlike their explicit deletion of the Hunter Biden story, which incensed the Trump administration, social media corporations more usually censor by stealth. That power is wielded through algorithms, the secret codes that decide whether something or someone appears in a search result or on a social media feed. If they desire, these tech titans can cancel any one of us overnight.
This is not just political paranoia. The disproportionate impact of algorithm changes on “left-leaning” websites – those most critical of the neoliberal system that has enriched social media corporations – was highlighted this month by the Wall Street Journal.
Wrong kinds of speech
Politicians increasingly understand the power of social media, which is why they want to harness it as best they can for their own ends. Since the shock of Trump’s election victory in late 2016, Facebook, Google and Twitter executives have regularly found themselves dragged before legislative oversight committees in the US and UK.
There, they are ritually rebuked by politicians for creating a crisis of “fake news” – a crisis that, in fact, long predated social media, as the deceptions of US and UK officials in linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and claiming that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” testify to only too clearly.
The online fate of Palestinians points to a future in which the already-powerful will gain ever greater control over what we know and what we are allowed to think
Politicians have also begun holding internet corporations responsible for “foreign interference” in western elections – typically blamed on Russia – despite a dearth of serious evidence for most of their allegations.
Political pressure is being exerted not to make the corporations more transparent and accountable, but to steer them towards enforcing even more assiduously restrictions on the wrong kinds of speech – whether it be violent racists on the right or critics of capitalism and western government policy on the left.
For that reason, social media’s original image as a neutral arena of information sharing, or as a tool for widening public debate and increasing civic engagement, or as a discourse leveller between the rich and powerful and weak and marginalised, grows ever more hollow.
Separate digital rights
Nowhere are ties between tech and state officials more evident than in their dealings with Israel. This has led to starkly different treatment of digital rights for Israelis and Palestinians. The online fate of Palestinians points to a future in which the already-powerful will gain ever greater control over what we know and what we are allowed to think, and over who is visible and who is erased from public life.
Israel was well-positioned to exploit social media before most other states had recognised its importance in manipulating popular attitudes and perceptions. For decades, Israel had, in part, outsourced an official programme of hasbara – or state propaganda – to its own citizens and supporters abroad. As new digital platforms emerged, these partisans were only too willing to expand their role.Facebook accused of censoring Palestinians under pretext of fighting hate speech Read More »
Israel had another advantage. After the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza, Israel began crafting a narrative of state victimhood by redefining antisemitism to suggest it was now a particular affliction of the left, not the right. So-called “new antisemitism” did not target Jews, but related instead to criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights.
This highly dubious narrative proved easy to condense into social media-friendly soundbites.
Israel still routinely describes any Palestinian resistance to its belligerent occupation or its illegal settlements as “terrorism”, and any support from other Palestinians as “incitement”. International solidarity with Palestinians is characterised as “delegitimisation” and equated with antisemitism.
‘Flood the internet’
As far back as 2008, it emerged that a pro-Israel media lobby group, Camera, had been orchestrating covert efforts by Israel loyalists to infiltrate the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to edit entries and “rewrite history” in ways favourable to Israel. Soon afterwards, politician Naftali Bennett helped organise courses teaching “Zionist editing” of Wikipedia.
In 2011, the Israeli army declared social media a new “battleground” and assigned “cyber warriors” to wage combat online. In 2015, Israel’s foreign ministry set up an additional command centre to recruit young, tech-savvy former soldiers from 8200, the army’s cyber intelligence unit, to lead the battle online. Many have gone on to establish hi-tech firms whose spying software became integral to the functioning of social media.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a 2019 cyber industry conference in Tel Aviv (AFP)
An app launched in 2017, Act.IL, mobilised Israel partisans to “swarm” sites hosting either criticism of Israel or support for Palestinians. The initiative, supported by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, was headed by veterans of Israeli intelligence services.
According to the Forward, a US Jewish weekly, Israel’s intelligence services liaise closely with Act.IL and request help in getting content, including videos, removed by social media platforms. The Forward observed shortly after the app was rolled out: “Its work so far offers a startling glimpse of how it could shape the online conversations about Israel without ever showing its hand.”
Sima Vaknin-Gil, a former Israeli military censor who was then assigned to Israel’s strategic affairs ministry, said the goal was to “create a community of fighters” whose job was to “flood the internet” with Israeli propaganda.
Willing allies
With advantages measured in personnel numbers and ideological zeal, in tech and propaganda experience, and in high-level influence in Washington and Silicon Valley, Israel was soon able to turn social media platforms into willing allies in its struggle to marginalise Palestinians online.
In 2016, Israel’s justice ministry was boasting that Facebook, Google and YouTube were “complying with up to 95 percent of Israeli requests to delete content”, almost all of it Palestinian. The social media companies did not confirm this figure.
The Anti-Defamation League, a pro-Israel lobby group with a history of smearing Palestinian organisations and Jewish groups critical of Israel, established a “command centre” in Silicon Valley in 2017 to monitor what it termed “online hate speech”. That same year, it was appointed a “trusted flagger” organisation for YouTube, meaning its reporting of content for removal was prioritised.
Tech corporations are now the undeclared, profit-driven arbiters of our speech rights. But their commitment is not to open and vigorous public debate
At a 2018 conference in Ramallah hosted by 7amleh, a Palestinian online advocacy group, local Google and Facebook representatives barely hid their priorities. It was important to their bottom line to avoid upsetting governments with the power to constrain their commercial activities – even if those governments were systematically violating international law and human rights. In this battle, the Palestinian Authority carries no weight at all. Israel presides over Palestinians’ communications and internet infrastructure. It controls the Palestinian economy and its key resources.
Since 2016, Israel’s justice ministry has reportedly suppressed tens of thousands of Palestinian posts. In a completely opaque process, Israel’s own algorithms detect content it deems “extremist” and then requests its removal. Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested by Israel over social media posts, chilling online activity.
Human Rights Watch warned late last year that Israel and Facebook were often blurring the distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel and incitement. Conversely, as Israel has shifted ever further rightwards, the Netanyahu government and social media platforms have not stemmed a surge of posts in Hebrew promoting anti-Palestinian incitement and calling for violence. 7amleh has noted that Israelis post racist or inciteful material against Palestinians roughly every minute.
News agencies shut down
As well as excising tens of thousands of Palestinian posts, Israel has persuaded Facebook to take down the accounts of major Palestinian news agencies and leading journalists.
By 2018, the Palestinian public had grown so incensed that a campaign of online protests and calls to boycott Facebook were led under the hashtag “FBcensorsPalestine”. In Gaza, demonstrators accused the company of being “another face of occupation”. Leila Khaled shutdown shows how corporate tech is enemy of free speechRead More »
Activism in solidarity with Palestinians in the US and Europe has been similarly targeted. Ads for films, as well as the films themselves, have been taken down and websites removed.
Last month, Zoom, a video conferencing site that has boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic, joined YouTube and Facebook in censoring a webinar organised by San Francisco State University because it included Leila Khaled, an icon of the Palestinian resistance movement now in her seventies.
On Friday, Zoom blocked a second scheduled appearance by Khaled – this time in a University of Hawaii webinar on censorship – as well as a spate of other events across the US to protest against her cancellation by the site. A statement concerning the day of action said campuses were “joining in the campaign to resist corporate and university silencing of Palestinian narratives and Palestinian voices”.
The decision, a flagrant attack on academic freedom, was reportedly taken after the social media groups were heavily pressured by the Israeli government and anti-Palestinian lobby groups, which labelled the webinar “antisemitic”.
Wiped off the map
The degree to which the tech giants’ discrimination against Palestinians is structural and entrenched has been underscored by the years-long struggle of activists both to include Palestinian villages on online maps and GPS services, and to name the Palestinian territories as “Palestine”, in accordance with Palestine’s recognition by the United Nations.
That campaign has largely floundered, even though more than a million people have signed a petition in protest. Both Google and Apple have proved highly resistant to these appeals; hundreds of Palestinian villages are missing from their maps of the occupied West Bank, while Israel’s illegal settlements are identified in detail, accorded the same status as the Palestinian communities that are shown.
New houses being built in the Nokdim settlement in the occupied West Bank on 13 October (AFP)
The occupied Palestinian territories are subordinated under the name “Israel”, while Jerusalem is presented as Israel’s unified and undisputed capital, just as Israel claims – making the occupation of the Palestinian section of the city invisible.
These are far from politically neutral decisions. Israeli governments have long pursued a Greater Israel ideology that requires driving Palestinians off their lands. This year, that dispossession programme was formalised with plans, backed by the Trump administration, to annex swathes of the West Bank.
Google and Apple are effectively colluding in this policy by helping to erase Palestinians’ visible presence in their homeland. As two Palestinian scholars, George Zeidan and Haya Haddad, recently noted: “When Google and Apple erase Palestinian villages from their navigation, but proudly mark settlements, the effect is complicity in the Israeli nationalist narrative.”
Out of the shadows
Israel’s ever-tightening relationship with social media corporations has played out largely behind the scenes. But these ties moved decisively out of the shadows in May, when Facebook announced that its new oversight board would include Emi Palmor, one of the architects of Israel’s online repression policy towards Palestinians.
Palestinians know only too well how easy it is for technology to diminish and disappear the voices of the weak and oppressed, and to amplify the voices of the powerful
The board will issue precedent-setting rulings to help shape Facebook’s and Instagram’s censorship and free speech policies. But as the former director-general of the justice ministry, Palmor has shown no commitment to online free speech. Quite the reverse: she worked hand-in-hand with the tech giants to censor Palestinian posts and shut down Palestinian news websites. She oversaw the transformation of her department into what the human rights organisation Adalah has called the Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”.
Tech corporations are now the undeclared, profit-driven arbiters of our speech rights. But their commitment is not to open and vigorous public debate, online transparency or greater civic engagement. Their only commitment is to the maintenance of a business environment in which they avoid any regulation by major governments infringing on their right to make money.
The appointment of Palmor perfectly illustrates the corrupting relationship between government and social media. Palestinians know only too well how easy it is for technology to diminish and disappear the voices of the weak and oppressed, and to amplify the voices of the powerful.
Many more of us could soon find ourselves sharing the online fate of Palestinians.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.Jonathan CookJonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth since 2001, is the the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a past winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net
Note for video: If the subtitles are off compared to the text below, it’s because YouTube has changed their captioning system and it is a worse update than usual. This time it doesn’t allow me to update the saves from the original translation file. Next time I will try a different method.
Apparently Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, which filled the news reels will have to make room now. The Kyrgyz who freed their ex-president Almazbek Atambayev from prison swept into the news agenda. Russia is observing the madness on the post-Soviet territory without interfering.
The member of the Union State, Belorussia remains the only republic of the former USSR where Moscow has drawn an unambiguous line of its interests. (Titlecard of previous video – Ruslan Ostashko: “TU-160 Drew the Borders of Belorussia.”) Let me remind you that its borders were circumnavigated by the Russian TU-160s. As for the other ex-brothers from the common Soviet home, our country lets them lose their minds at a pace chosen voluntarily by these ‘independents’. Some subscribers ask why neither of our channels have shown any of my personal material on Azero-Armenian war. Here’s my answer: in fact they have, only the video was not published on YouTube but in the Club of Experimental History which has a limited membership. Those who didn’t join never saw it. As for the open platforms, I prefer to refrain from commenting. The reason for it is more or less the same as the one brought forward by the sarcastic authors of a well-known patriotic Telegram channel.
Source – Telegram channel ‘Horde’: “For the past thirty years we have divorced quite alright, dear citizens of the post-Soviet states. The strengthening of all sorts of ties, agreements, and what not – all of that is there, but. You have insisted for all these thirty years that you are on your own. Behold the result: now the youngest Russians who could recall how they got drunk in Baku or Yerevan as students are well over fifty, including, by the way, hundreds of thousands of the dear Russians with surnames ending with ‘ian’ [Armenian] and ‘ev’ [Azeri]. You kept building your own, separate from the metropolis life. And finally you have built it. As a result your merry but in reality not merry at all showdowns, during which you began to kill each other by the hundreds, are your sovereign showdowns.”
It is exactly how it is. The Russian state of course takes an interest in all this madness as far as it concerns her security in the geopolitical sense, undertaking actions it deems necessary. But our civic society, whose interests I see myself a representative of, have grown tired of being interested in the ex-brothers who for thirty years have been applying the de-Russification policies and other aspects of independent nationalist awareness. This is why I can say with clear conscience I don’t care how many Azeris and Armenians will kill of each other. It is their sovereign right they tore away with their teeth, no matter what they squeal at us.
Source – Telegram channel ‘Horde’: “Come tell us what Russia will ‘lose’ if it doesn’t support your side. ‘Well OK,’ any person who is an atom in big Russia will say, but what exactly will we lose? Your constant complaints about the evil empire? Your wee tears about how you were persecuted by the tsars and the Soviet Union? Perhaps you support us in the international arena all the time? Did you at least recognise the Crimea? Ah, you vote for the Russian performers at the Eurovision contest. We deeply bow to the ground to you for that… You can count on the full moral support by the respective music establishment. Only don’t ask how many divisions Allegrova or Galkin, or Gotseriyev have. Russia stands for peace. And the Russians observe with a great humanitarian grief how two ancient peoples with unique cultures shed blood over a forester’s lodge. But we are strangers over there at your place.”
The same goes to the events in Kyrgyzstan. What do we care if one Central Asian bey will replace another with the help of the local basmachi? Both Atanbayev and Jeenbekov cooperated with Russia. Who else would they cooperate with? Who needs them except Russia by any standards? Any serious regional player will eat them up without choking. Because the Krygyz haven’t been able to put the life in their republic in order for thirty years of their independence. And instead of building the bright Western democracy standard, they turned back to the Middle Ages.
Well, let them. The main thing is to keep the Russian borders closed when the ‘Gastarbeiter’ crowds, escaping all this and barely understanding the Russian language, will try to force their way in here. The newest history of the post-Soviet republics clearly demonstrates who exactly brought civilization and higher culture there and what the so-called Russian and Soviet occupation, which they have been squealing about for thirty years, really was like. It was their only chance for a path into the civilized future. And by rushing to grab a full bosom of independence they blew that chance.
Source – Telegram channel ‘Horde’: “When thirty years ago they took as much independence as the alconaut Boris Nikolayevich [Yeltsin] was happy to spare, each of the former sister-republics dreamed of becoming something like Switzerland or Singapore, whom everybody likes and where everyone goes for a holiday to praise the national folklore, nature and embroidered shirts, where the rich people want to keep their money. But let’s say it honestly, the sister-republics have grown quite beastly since then, deprived of the ‘Prison of Nations’. They are just smart enough for making revolutions, intrigues and territorial claims against the neighbours. Our perimeter, deprived of the USSR, reverted to the Middle Ages wherein the Lithuanians squabble with the Belorussians, the Azerbaijanis with the Armenians, the Georgians with the Ossetians, the Kyrgyz with the Uzbeks. Freedom does not bring good to some peoples, dear friends.”
The wealthier and culturally richer Russia, where we live and work, becomes, the greater the contrast between our reality of the 21st century and the observed medieval madness that is raging on the post-Soviet territories will be. So I can only say to those citizens of the former USSR republics who don’t wish a dark fate for their children: learn the Russian language diligently as well as the Russian laws. All this will be useful to you when you try to register a patent or a limited stay permission in our country. We’ve had enough of your ancient unique culture’s whose representatives are merely able to slaughter their neighbours. I am only for hardcore Russification. Those who don’t want to want to Russify should stay in their Middle Ages, with all the consequences resulting from it.
The Euro-Atlantic establishment and global corporations seem to be so terrified by SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence that they stop at nothing to suppress SouthFront’s voice and damage our work.
On August 21, Google unilaterally disabled SouthFront’s official Google AdSense account claiming that it “was found to be non-compliant with the AdSense program policies”. Just like in the case of censorship of SouthFront on YouTube and Facebook, this decision was made without any advance warning or real explanation. (The long story of SouthFront censorship on YouTube and Facebook can be found here: 1 – Facebook, 2 – YouTube)
Funds collected on the account for the last 1.5 months were in fact stolen.
In previous month, SouthFront was able to use the revenue from GoogleAds banners on southfront.org to fill gaps in our monthly donation budget created by the increasing censorship and pressure campaign aimed at our endeavor. The goal of this campaign is to limit SouthFront’s audience reach by banning on the most popular public platforms, limit the donation flow to SouthFront and discredit our team as a whole. Not backed by corporations or governments, SouthFront operates thanks to the audience’s donations.
Despite this unprecedented pressure campaign, which was publicly assisted by the US State Department, and thanks to your support, SouthFront was able to survive in the recent month. However, the August 21 situation demonstrates that Euro-Atlantic structures and global corporations are determined to employ any, even illegal steps, to destroy SouthFront. In own turn, SouthFront Team officially declares that we will not surrender and fight against the mainstream censorship and propaganda until our last breath.
Chaotic and illegal attempts of our ill-wishers to damage SouthFront work only confirm that we are on the right track. Dear friends, together, we will be able to overcome any challenges and difficulties and fight back against the mainstream censorship and propaganda.
YouTube’s decision to ban discussion of hacked information on its platform is unlikely to improve election integrity in the US, it will, however, continue to tilt the balance in favor of established corporate-funded outlets like Fox News and CNN.
Social media giant YouTube announced yesterday a host of new measures it says are aimed at preventing any interference in the upcoming presidential elections. Chief among the list it wrote on its blog, is “removing content that contains hacked information, the disclosure of which may interfere with democratic processes, such as elections and censuses.” An example it gives, would be deleting “videos that contain hacked information about a political candidate.”
It also promised to “raise up authoritative voices” when it comes to current events and politics by changing its algorithm to show users more credible channels and “reduce the spread of harmful misinformation and borderline content.” Example channels that produce authoritative content, it tells readers, includes Fox News and CNN. It also noted it would expand information panels underneath videos.
There are a number of reasons this new policy could concern users of its platform. Firstly, the great majority of leaked information — the lifeblood of investigative journalism — is anonymous. Often, like in the cases of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning or Reality Winner, whistleblowers face serious consequences if their names become attached to documents exposing government or corporate malfeasance. But without a name to go with a document, the difference between leaked data and hacked data is impossible to define. Thus, powerful people and organizations could claim data was hacked, rather than leaked, and simply block all discussion of the matter on the platform. Hearing the news, some feared already existing content from investigative journalists would be subject to removal under the new guidelines.
YouTube’s choice of Fox News and CNN as reliable sources might also raise eyebrows in some quarters. According to the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report, fewer than half of all Americans trust the two networks (Fox at 42 percent and CNN at 47 percent). And a new study from Gallup/Knight Foundation finds that fewer than a third of the country has a favorable view of the media more generally, including only 19 percent of those under thirty (YouTube’s prime demographic). Many go to the platform precisely because it offers alternative and more diverse opinions to corporate-dominated radio, print and television. But YouTube is now funneling them back towards those same sources.
The 2016 presidential election was colored by Wikileaks’ release of the Podesta emails, discussion of which would be banned under YouTube’s new rules. The Hillary Clinton campaign alleges the emails were hacked from Podesta’s computer. The published communications, the authenticity of which is not in doubt, informed the country of the machinations of the Democratic Party, how it tipped the electoral scales in favor of Clinton and against Bernie Sanders in the primary, how Clinton stated to Wall Street that she had a “public” and a “private” position on regulation, insinuating she was lying to the nation, how representatives of Qatar wanted to meet with her husband Bill for “five minutes” to present him with a $1 million check for his birthday, and how her own staff held her in contempt. The emails, Clinton contends, swung the election from her to Trump. If this is the case, the decision to ban all discussion of them would have fundamentally altered the democratic process.
If YouTube’s actions seem drastic, the Australian state of Queensland introduced laws yesterday that made it illegal to publish allegations of corruption against any politician during election season. Those found guilty would be punished with a six-month jail sentence and a fine of nearly U.S.$5,000. After a public outcry, the law was overturned after only 24 hours.
While misinformation online is a problem, there exist other, more serious threats to electoral integrity. President Trump, who said that Republicans would never get into power again if everybody voted, told Fox Business this week that he is actively withholding funds from the U.S. Postal Service in order to undermine the election to his benefit. “They need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he said. “But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.” Add decades of gerrymandering and a campaign of voter suppression that has seen over 1,200 polling stations across the South, primarily in black neighborhoods, and Trump might be able to overcome his polling deficit and beat Biden.
YouTube’s decision to ban discussion of hacked information on its platform is unlikely to significantly improve political discourse or election integrity in the United States. It will, however, continue to tilt the balance in favor of established corporate-funded outlets, to the detriment of new, alternative voices.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 