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Your vote is very important صوتو ضروري جدا
اختارو اسرائيل
https://twitter.com/stats_feed/status/1715730231510929493?t=S9cczMjk-i6Ih7LD1_GZGg&s=19
Filed under: "Israel", Palestine | Tagged: Twitter | Comments Off on A global vote on Twitter entitled Who bombed the Baptist Hospital in Gaza
At the zenith of the mass protests in Egypt on January 25, 2011, Twitter, Facebook and other Western-based social media platforms appeared to be the most essential tools for the Egyptian Revolution.
Though some observers later contested the use of the terms ‘Twitter Revolution’ or ‘Social Media Revolution,’ one cannot deny the centrality of these platforms in the discussion around the events that attempted to redefine the power structures of Egypt.
It was hardly a surprise that, on January 26, the Egyptian regime decided to block access to social media in a desperate attempt to prevent the spread of the protests.
Twitter, Google and other platforms quickly responded by “establish(ing) a system that allows users to continue posting 140-character tweets despite the Internet shutdown in Egypt”, France24 reported.
It seemed that US-based technology companies were keen on the removal of Hosni Mubarak and his regime. Indeed, their action was quite elaborate and well-coordinated:
“The solution proposed by the two Internet giants is called ‘speak-to-tweet’ and allows people to publish updates on the famous microblogging site by leaving a message on a voice mailbox. The service is free of charge, with Google offering users three international telephone numbers,” France24 wrote, providing the actual numbers in the US, Italy and Bahrain.
The irony is inescapable. How could these supposedly ‘revolutionary social media platforms’ be part of the same Western structure that is dedicated to attacking and censoring Washington’s enemies while elevating the US’ often-corrupt allies?
While some choose to overlook the obvious dichotomy, one cannot be so gullible.
This subject becomes yet more intriguing when we consider the war on Palestinian and pro-Palestine views on these very social media platforms.
While Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists are frequently banned, blocked and censored for rejecting Israel’s military occupation and apartheid in Palestine, Israeli propaganda is allowed to flourish on social media with little hindrance.
This is not just a social media phenomenon.
The fact is, social media companies’ attitude towards the upheaval in the Arab world was consistent with the general zeitgeist of the US; in fact, Western societies – governments, mainstream media, and even public opinion polls.
While some – in fact, many – people may have genuinely wanted to support a popular push for democracy in the Middle East, governments and their media allies knew that appearing as if on the ‘right side of history’ would grant them the geopolitical spaces to influence the agendas and, ultimately, outcomes of these revolts. Libya paid the heaviest price of that self-serving Western crusade.
But when the revolts largely failed to create the major paradigm shift that Arab masses had coveted, Western governments were the first to reincorporate the post-revolts Arab regimes back into the embrace of the so-called international community.
For Washington and its Western allies, the entire exercise had little to do with democracy, human rights and representation and everything to do with new opportunities, geopolitics and regional relevance.
By supporting the revolts, the West wanted to ensure the resulting political discourse in the Middle East was simply not anti-Western. Sadly, they partly succeeded, at least in creating a separation between corrupt regimes and the colonial powers that had sustained their corruption.
Though some labored to articulate a discourse that connected those who carried out the oppression – for example, Mubarak – and those who made the oppression possible in the first place – his Western allies – these attempts received little traction when compared to the mainstream Western-driven discourse.
Indeed, the anti-colonial discourse was not allowed to taint what the West wanted to paint as a purely ‘pro-democracy’ rhetoric, one that has no political or historical context that goes beyond the simplified version of the ‘Arab Spring’.
This is precisely why the New York Times, Twitter and the White House – and numerous other Western parties – ultimately parroted the same political line and accentuated the same language – while suppressing all other possible interpretations.
Since then, the political discourse in the Middle East has been rife with contradictions. For example, some of those who rejected the US war and genocide in Iraq in 2003 later joined the chorus of interventionists in Syria in the post-2011 uprising turned civil war.
Not a day passes without the US and other Western governments being called on by an Arab human rights group or civil rights organization to put pressure on this or that regime, to release political prisoners, to withhold funds and so on.
Bizarrely, Washington had become the guarantor of war and peace, chaos and stability in the Middle East. The unrepentant violator of our human rights has become, at least for some of us, our human rights champion.
But this is more than a simple case of unfortunate contradictions. It was done by design.
Sadly, Arab revolts were largely suppressed; the old regimes reinvented themselves and are back in business, again, with the direct support of, and funding by, Western governments.
But is a different path possible, or are we simply trapped forever in this conundrum?
We reflected on all of this during the BRICS conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, on August 22-24.
Without downplaying the internal contradictions among the main countries that established the BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and, later, South Africa – or the newcomers – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, the UAE and Ethiopia – one cannot help but ponder a world without US-Western domination.
For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact, there seems to be a real global political momentum of actual worth that does not emanate from the West and its regional lackeys and representatives.
Without a viable alternative for change, for decades, we have been trapped in these seemingly inescapable contradictions: criticizing Western colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism while appealing to the moral values of the West; we continue to call for the respect of international law, though we are fully aware of how ‘international laws’ were designed, are interpreted and implemented.
In short, we want the West to leave us alone while beseeching the West to come to our rescue; we suffer the consequences of Western wars and flee to the West as desperate refugees.
We have experienced this dichotomy numerous times in the past – in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and every part of the Middle East – in fact, the Global South.
In truth, the contradiction is hardly Western; it is entirely ours. The ‘West’ rarely attempted to present itself as anything but a political mass that is motivated by sheer economic, geopolitical and strategic interests.
The West’s use of human rights, democracy and so on is but a continuation of an old colonial legacy that extends hundreds of years. The target audience for such double-speak has never truly been the colonized but the colonial entities themselves.
To claim that the West has changed, is changing or is capable of change has no historical basis and no evidence.
The case of Palestine remains the most powerful example of Western hypocrisy and our own gullibility. Without the West, Israel would have never been established; and without Western support and protection, Israel would have never continued to exist as a military power and an apartheid regime.
Over a hundred years after the British handed over Palestine to the Zionists, 75 years of Israeli conquest and violence and over fifty years of Israeli military occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the West remains Israel’s greatest supporter and benefactor.
These very recent headlines should illustrate our point:
“A Dutch court grants immunity to Israeli leaders from war crimes charges”
“UK slammed for opposing ICJ (International Court of Justice) ruling on Israel Occupation of Palestine”
“Biden dispatches top adviser for talks with Saudi crown prince on normalizing relations with Israel”
This is all taking place when Israel has become a full-blown apartheid regime and when Israeli war crimes in the West Bank are at their worst, at least since 2005.
And there are no signs of things improving for the Palestinians in any way, as Israel is now ruled by government coalitions whose ministers outright deny the very existence of Palestinians and are repeatedly calling for genocide and religious war.
Yes, the West is still financing, protecting, and defending that very racist apartheid entity against the mere possibility of legal accountability.
Mainstream Western media and most social media platforms continue to censor Palestinian voices as if the Palestinian quest for justice is unworthy and, in fact, offensive to Western sensibilities.
In the final analysis, neither BRICS alone nor any other economic or political body will save us from our own contradictions.
The new political formations in the Global South, however, should serve as a starting point for confronting our dichotomy, at least through the realization that a whole world, rife with potential, possible allies and new ideas, extends beyond the confines of Washington and Brussels.
In the Global South, we must explore these new margins and possibilities and move forward toward real, substantive and sustainable change. Imploring the West to help us cannot be our strategy because history has taught us, time and again, that our torturers cannot also be our saviors.
Filed under: "Israel", BRICS alliance, Egypt, Palestine, USA, Western Hegemony, Western Lies | Tagged: "Arab Spring", "Operation Iraqi Freedom", Apartheid Israel, Censoring Palestinian Voices, End of Western hegemony, Google, Palestinian cause, Ramzy Baroud, Twitter | Comments Off on WHEN THE TORTURER IS THE SAVIOR: CAN BRICS HELP US ESCAPE THE WEST’S HEGEMONY AND CONTRADICTIONS?
Hey everyone, I’m Mnar Adley, founder and director of MintPress News and editor of our video project “Behind the Headlines.”
This decade has felt like a whirlwind, watching in real time the crackdown on independent journalism and alternative voices.
In the last year alone, MintPress was banned from PayPal with our balance seized, blocking donations to our website –and as leaked emails reveal, this took place with possible involvement of British intelligence and the U.S. government.
At the same time, GoFundMe took down our fundraisers and banned us from their platform.
Our journalists have been detained, interrogated, surveilled, canceled and lobbied against by national security agencies and special interest groups, including directly by the Israel lobby. Our Wikipedia page has been written and managed by a mafia of pro-NATO editors and Israeli lobby groups. This, in addition to aggressive algorithmic blacklisting by Google’s Project Owl and Big Tech giants, shadowbanning from the likes of Twitter, Facebook & TikTok, all of whom we’ve exposed to have a deep relationship with the military-industrial complex to control your newsfeed and ensure a pro-war narrative is dominant.
We wear this as a badge of honor.
This is just a taste of what we’ve faced as an independent media outlet that has been at the forefront of exposing the profiteers of the permanent war state – holding the military class accountable, as every journalism outlet should be doing as protected by our first amendment.
Journalism is being criminalized.
This is why we’re turning to our readers and supporters to help us sustain our watchdog journalism. While Big Tech ramps up its efforts to make our journalism algorithmically disappear, we’re ramping up our efforts to circumvent this censorship and provide our readers with the most hard-hitting journalism that empowers ‘we the people.’
But to continue to do this and keep our investigative journalism free and accessible without a paywall, we’re appealing to our readers for their financial support. Suffice it to say big governments and corporations are not exactly banging down our door to support us.
We just launched our annual fundraiser to help sustain us, and I hope that you will join us as we continue to fight against the war machine in this information war.
MintPress is one of a handful of independent investigative news outlets left in the United States, featuring some of the most important journalists and activists of our time.
This includes investigative journalist, Ph.D. and author Alan MacLeod who co-hosts the “MintCast” podcast with me. His investigative work has exposed the deep relationship between NATO, weapons manufacturers and the national security state within Big Tech as well as U.S. regime change operation mechanisms against the global south.
Rapper and activist for Palestinian human rights Lowkey hosts “The Watchdog” podcast on MintPress. His research and journalism have exposed how the Israel lobby, its intelligence and military have inserted themselves into Big Tech and NGOs to surveil and target pro-Palestine and antiwar dissent.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist whose work explores the role of intelligence services in shaping politics, perceptions and war policies in the U.S., UK and across NATO member nations.
Jessica Buxbaum is an investigative journalist based in Jerusalem. She is our Palestine correspondent who has spent the last five years uncovering how Israel works with Big Tech and NGOs to surveil and target Palestinian resistance to apartheid.
MintPress also features regular columns by renowned documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist John Pilger, Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, and Palestinian academic Dr. Ramzy Baroud.
As for myself, Mnar Adley – the founder and director of MintPress News, I founded MintPress over ten years ago in an effort to revive the fourth estate in a post 9/11 world, when our first amendment was put on life support by the ever-growing military-industrial complex and its connections to the media. Since 2001, we saw major news outlets beat the drums of war to drive public support for the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that left millions dead and millions more as refugees.
Having lived under Israeli occupation and apartheid as a teenager, I witnessed firsthand the horrifying human rights abuses no child should have to see. From the New York Times to the Washington Post to MSNBC and CNN, every major news outlet has for decades whitewashed Israeli crimes and apartheid under the banner of “democracy and shared values” while dehumanizing Palestinians as mere terrorists, the same way our media dehumanizes the victims of our disastrous wars. This, of course, continues to this day.
Whether it’s war in Palestine, Yemen, Sudan or Somalia, economic sanctions against Iran, Venezuela or Cuba or the U.S. proxy war with Russia in Ukraine– it is clear that corporate media act as PR for weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to justify military adventurism and economic warfare to fuel the military-industrial complex that drives our war economy.
Thus MintPress was born out of this need to provide the public with investigative journalism that holds the ruling class and military accountable where corporate media has failed.
Our journalism gives a voice and spotlight to the people of the Global South ravaged by economic sanctions.
We’re continuously covering regime change operations, military coups and wars imposed by the US military, NATO and their proxies. Policies that line the pockets of the executives at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
We’ve been amplifying the voices of those who are silenced by the media, like government whistleblowers and publishers like Julian Assange and Daniel Hale.
This is exactly why we’ve been targeted and why we can’t take MintPress to the next level without your support.
With the conflict raging in Ukraine, we’ve entered wartime and are living in an intellectual no-fly zone where online censorship of dissenting journalism has become the new norm and the sanctions regime has come to target independent journalists – but it’s up to us to change that reality.
We’re proud to have broken through this censorship over the years, but it has only been possible through your continued support.
No matter the war waged against us, we refuse to be backed into a corner and bullied by tech giants who have a deep relationship with weapons manufacturers who work hand in hand with NATO to profit off of the blood of millions of people around the world.
The only way forward is for us all to unite on a broader front of non-partisanship and help fund our own media. There are no governments or corporations who will move in to save us. We are completely dependent on you.
Join us in reviving the fourth estate and protecting our First Amendment. Join our campaign today – LIVE on Indiegogo.
Mnar Adley is founder and director of MintPress News and Behind The Headlines and is also a producer and host for both platforms.
Filed under: "Israel", Britain, Journalism, Palestine, US-led NATO Alliance, USA | Tagged: Apartheid Israel, Big Tech, Facebook, Google and Zionism, Julian Assange, Miko Peled, Ramzy Baroud, Twitter, US proxy wars | Comments Off on MINTPRESS NEWS IS BEING TARGETED: JOIN US IN STANDING UP TO THE WAR MACHINE
Few hours after martyrdom of Palstinian hunger striker Sheikh Khader Adnan in Israeli jail, political cartoonist Carlos Lattouf shared a cartoon of the Palestinian prisoner on his Twitter account, with a caption: “Rest in power.”
Filed under: "Israel", Palestine | Tagged: Khader Adnan, Lattouf, Palestine martyrs, Palestinian Prisoners, Twitter | Comments Off on Khader Adnan… Rest in Power!
The damning exposure of collusion between the Pentagon and Twitter raises further suspicions about Washington’s ongoing online operations in West Asia.
The Cradle has previously deconstructed the Pentagon’s online bot and troll operations targeting Iran. These wide-ranging efforts, over many years, sought to destabilize the Iranian government by disseminating and inciting negative sentiment against it, on a variety of social media platforms.
Their exposure led to the White House demanding an internal audit of all Department of Defense (DoD) “psychological operations online.” Ostensibly, this was triggered by high-level concerns that Washington’s “moral high ground” was potentially compromised by the “manipulation of audiences overseas.”
The audit was revealed in a Washington Post article, the details of which pointed to a very different rationale. One passage noted that representatives of Facebook and Twitter directly informed the Pentagon, repeatedly, over several years, that its psychological warfare efforts on their platforms had been had been detected and identified as such.
Weaponizing social media
Frustratingly, the focus wasn’t even that these operations were being conducted in the first place, but that the Pentagon got busted doing so.
For example, Facebook’s Director of Global Threat Disruption, David Agranovich, who spent six years at the Pentagon before serving as the US National Security Council’s Director for Intelligence, reportedly reached out to the DoD in the summer of 2020, warning his former colleagues that “if Facebook could sniff them out, so could US adversaries.”
“His point was, ‘Guys, you got caught. That’s a problem,’” an individual “familiar with the conversation” told the Washington Post.
The obvious takeout from this excerpt – unnoticed by any mainstream journalist at the time – was that Facebook and Twitter staffers actively welcome their platforms being weaponized in information warfare campaigns, as long as it’s the US intelligence community doing it, and they don’t get caught in flagrante.
Moreover, in the event they are compromised, those same social network luminaries readily provide intimate insight on how US spooks can improve their operational security, and better conceal their activities from foreign enemies. Unmentioned is that these “foes” include tens of millions of ordinary people who are the ultimate target of such malign initiatives, of which residents of West Asia are preponderant victims.
‘Whitelisting’
Internal emails and documents from Twitter, published by journalist Lee Fang, have now confirmed that Twitter executives not only approved of the Pentagon’s network of troll and bot accounts, but also provided significant internal protection for them through “whitelisting.”
This practice allowed these ‘superpower accounts’ to operate with impunity, despite breaking numerous platform rules and behaving egregiously. The “whitelist” status also effectively granted these accounts the algorithmic and amplificatory privileges of Twitter verification without a “blue check.”
As The Cradle previously reported, these accounts over many years sought to influence perceptions and behavior across West Asia, in particular Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In many cases, users had “deepfake” profile photos – mocked up pictures of realistic human faces generated by artificial intelligence.
Target: West Asia
In respect to Twitter-enabled activities against Tehran, multiple different personae were formed to attack the Iranian government from different ideological and political positions. These were not your standard ‘opposition’ accounts – the ops were more sophisticated. Some posed as ultra-conservative Shia Muslims critical of the administration’s “liberal” policies; others as progressive radicals condemning the extent of the Republic’s enforcement of Islamic code.
Many users amplified Washington’s disinformation, disseminated by US government-funded Voice of America’s Farsi-language service, among a myriad of other US funded and directed propaganda platforms. All along, Twitter higher-ups were aware of these accounts, but did not shut them down and even protected them.
The impact of the collaboration between Twitter and the Pentagon on the tweets that users around the world saw and did not see is unknown, but likely significant. Twitter staff were aware of what they were doing.
For example, in July 2017, an official from the Pentagon’s central command for West Asia and North Africa (CENTCOM) emailed the social media network to request the “blue check” verification of one account and the “whitelisting” of 52 accounts that “we use to amplify certain messages.”
The official was concerned that some of these accounts, “a few” of which “had built a real following,” were no longer “indexing on hashtags.” He moreover requested “priority service” for several accounts, including the since-deleted @YemenCurrent, which broadcast announcements about US drone strikes in Yemen. The account emphasized how “accurate” these attacks were; that they only killed dangerous terrorists, never civilians – a hallmark of US drone war propaganda.
Of course, US drone strikes are anything but precise. In fact, declassified Pentagon documents indicate there was “an institutional acceptance of an inevitable collateral toll,” and that innocent people were killed indiscriminately.
In 2014, it was calculated that, in attempting to slay 41 specific, named individuals, Washington had murdered 1,147 people, among them many children – a rate of 28 deaths for every person targeted.
‘Misleading, deceptive, and spammy’
In June 2020, Twitter spokesperson Nick Pickles testified to the US House Intelligence Committee on the company’s determined efforts to end any and all “coordinated platform manipulation efforts” on the part of hostile enemy states, stating these efforts were his employer’s “top priority.”
“Our goal is to remove bad faith actors and to advance public understanding of these critical topics. Twitter defines state-backed information operations as coordinated platform manipulation efforts that can be attributed with a high degree of confidence to state-affiliated actors,” he declared.
“State-backed information operations are typically associated with misleading, deceptive, and spammy behavior. These behaviors differentiate coordinated manipulative behavior from legitimate speech on behalf of individuals and political parties.”
The following month, however, Twitter executives were invited by the Pentagon to attend classified briefings in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) to discuss the defense of the Pentagon’s “coordinated and manipulative” social media activities.
Then-Twitter lawyer Stacia Cardille noted in an internal email the Pentagon may be seeking to retroactively classify its malign online activities “to obfuscate their activity in this space, and this may represent an overclassification to avoid embarrassment.”
Jim Baker, then-deputy general counsel of Twitter and an FBI veteran, subsequently noted that the DoD had employed “poor tradecraft” in setting up numerous Twitter accounts, and was now covering its tracks in order to prevent anyone finding out multiple users “are linked to each other” or to the US government, one way or another.
“DoD might want to give us a timetable for shutting them down in a more prolonged way that will not compromise any ongoing operations or reveal their connections to DoD,” he speculated.
Free speech absolutism
So it was the compromised accounts that were permitted to stay active, spreading disinformation and distorting the public mind all the while. Some even remain extant to this day.
To say the least, Twitter executives were well-aware that their eager and enthusiastic support of Pentagon psyops would not be received well if publicized. Shortly before the September Washington Post report on the DoD’s audit of these efforts, Twitter lawyers and lobbyists were alerted by a company communications executive about the forthcoming exposé.
After the Post story was published, Twitter staffers congratulated themselves and each other over how effectively the company concealed its role in covering up CENTCOM’s deeds, with one communications official thanking a welter of executives “for doing all that you could to manage this one,” noting with relief the story “didn’t seem to get too much traction.”
Were it not for the series of #TwitterFiles disclosures since Elon Musk controversially took over the company, these dark, shameful secrets would likely have remained buried forever. The full extent of the company’s mephitic collusion with US intelligence agencies, and the comparable, simultaneous collaboration of every major social network, must now be told in full.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Filed under: American crimes, Iran, Pentagon, Social Media, Syria, USA, Yemen | Tagged: The US Central Command (Centcom), Twitter, West Asia | Comments Off on Iran, Syria, Yemen: Twitter’s collaboration with the US military in information warfare
Google Deleted 6,000,000 of my Search Results-BLAH!
[Warning. This text is about US Big Tech shadow-banning, visibility-filters, and engagement-blockers on the Internet. YOU SHOULD BUY THIS BOOK for your protection collection!] Contact: Thorsten.Pattberg@yahoo.com
The Internet Is So *Broken*
IMAGE 1 US Twitter Has 2 Billion Fake Accounts And Can Amplify Or Bury Stories, Persons, And Even Entire Nations
On December 13 I joined a Twitter hang-out of 14,000 people, entitled ‘Blacklisted by Twitter: Charlie Kirk, Benny, Poso, ALX, Gaetz & More’. Since billionaire Elon Musk bought the news-aggregator/social media company Twitter, it came to light that Twitter had been the German Stasi doppelganger of global censorship and gaslighting.
Tens of millions of ‘undesirable’ Twitter users had been banned [among them 2 million European dissidents and the US President Donald Trump] or had their visibility crippled. A whopping 2 billion Twitter accounts are bots or sock-puppets [fake identities], created by marketing agencies for the illusion of active followers for the legacy media and woke leftist propagandists. It is now a demonstrable fact that the former Twitter administration had aided the US Democrats to steal the reelection from US President Donald Trump in 2020.
In my personal view and from experience, this is ‘Drama America’. The speakers in that Twitter hang-out were America’s top Internet pundits, like the 0.01%. Yes, maybe they were banned on Twitter, but now they are back on Twitter with 100,000 followers, min.
Besides, they can discuss ‘Blacklisted by Twitter’… or ‘Blacklisted by Google, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Amazon, Instagram, the Media all they want—they cannot change the trajectory path of US Tech totalitarianism. And that trajectory path of US Big Tech totalitarianism through US Twitter, US Google, US Facebook, and US Media… is set on exuding absolute power over all human perception of reality as dictated by powerful US interest groups. And as so-called Big Tech monopolists, these US companies, and not a single foreign one, will—regardless of who becomes the next billionaire Twitter owner—abolish all foreign competition, enslave our nation states, and destroy the little man of the Internet.
Legally, US Big Techs are largely Illegal
The Internet 1.0 of 2002 initially might have given many first users the impression of a Wild Western place with no checks and balances and regulations or certificates. No requirements to take part in silly pranks, regime change, and brazen illegality whatsoever. Be whoever you like: A gamer nerd faking a Russian accent instructing Americans on the French Revolution, gaining 2,400,000 views on Youtube, no problem. You could film people randomly in the streets without their consent and then upload them to the Internet or you could talk non-governmental approved stories and nobody could fire you because law-enforcement and the governments were still Internet-illiterate, I suppose. And this may have been true from 2002 to 2015, the Golden era of “the anonymous surfer” or the “citizen journalist” or the “influencers on Youtube,” but is now over—and irreversibly so.
IMAGE 2 The USA Is The Internet. There Is No Other Internet
The free Internet 1.0 is no more. We are now in Cube zero territory. Assisted clicking and swiping. All is digitally arranged, compartmentalized, with deadly traps, eternal labyrinths, and a surveillance apparatus with 1 million faceless curators. Sure, it varies in some countries. For example, in America, people like Kim Dotcom or Rich O’Toole or Mark Dice can comment freely on political affairs without being professional, accredited journalists. In regulated Europe, however, they would need an expensive governmental licence, a legal Internet landing page with physical address, telephone number, and social security/tax number, and if a governmental lawyer called that contact number and nobody took his call during office hours, this could trigger him and the regime watchdogs to persecute your shadowy [illegal] ‘fake news’ enterprise.
In addition, 90% of speech in America is prohibited in Europe. For example, without university credentials and governmental registration, a person cannot ‘act’ as a journalist like he was American ‘Tim Pool’ or whoever. Tim Pool became famous as a Youtube personality because Youtube is a US video sharing site now owned by Google, and the US government has a strong interest in sharing US video content all over the planet, and fast. Illegally, if necessary. US Big Tech between 2002 and 2015 could simply overwhelm backward Europe before European regulators could act.
Thought experiment: Had a random citizen like US ‘Tim Pool’ wanted to broadcast his political opinions in Europe, he would have needed 100,000 euros, a registered media company, an annual governmental audit, a governmental accredited hire for the protection of minors, and a board of members composed in parts of government watchdogs and party members. [What, did you think you could just declare yourself a media organization on Youtube in France or Germany? They have media dynasties who protect their 40-billion-euro media estates—with NATO military forces if needed!]
But American Big Tech could steamroll the European Union markets, at least in the beginnings of the Internet, because central Germany, Europe‘s biggest economy, is a US-occupied market colony and push-over. Inside Europe, we have all ordinary Europeans oppressed by our corrupt regimes, while American occupiers can pretty much set up businesses and do things we Europeans can‘t… just like that.
Example: Political commentary on amateur blogs, vlogs, or sharing sites. The EU has shut down so many ‘illegal messaging boards’ it is hard to keep track. Boards like 4Chan or 8Chan or even parts of Reddit and Spotify, a streaming service. In America, everyone and Bob‘s uncle can use music, photos, images and quotes from the mainstream or the Internet under an ubiquitous ‘fair use’ imperialist doctrine, or deliberately spread falsehoods under the ‘free speech’ first amendment, while in Germany, this is all strictly prohibited. Also strictly prohibited in Germany and much of Europe is nationalism, criticism of Iews, science, migrants, doubting democracy, and insulting our leaders. Germans walk straight into prison for such offenses, while truthers holding an American passport such as C K Hopkins in Berlin just gets a Twitter threat-tag and that was it.
IMAGE 3 US Big Tech Censor To Keep German Regime in Power In Exchange For US Internet Supremacy
A person is not every other person. Passports matter. All Russians experience censorship right now. All Ukrainians are promoted. This is why Americans live partly in this Fairy Tale World of their own ‘US supremacy’ bubble, I say. They are not even aware, mostly, that they are doing things day-in-day-out that we other nationals are NOT allowed to. European governments can censor anyone who pretends to be ‘a somebody’ on the Internet, then and now. Those include fake commentators, fake experts, and fake news. And who or what is considered ‘fake’? Everything and everyone who isn’t with the government. And the government includes, at this point in 2022 in Europe, all legacy media, all state universities, all ideologically compliant corporations, and the thought police. That’s why in Europe we scrap China news or pummel Russian experts who will always be held in the negative, cut to fit, and limited in their reach.
IMAGE 4 My Country Germany Is US-Occupied AND Censors Its Poor People
The 10 Stages of US Internet Censorship
Everyone who in the eyes of the moderators is unqualified, unverified, or undesirable is going to be expunged, blacklisted, or banned. Here is a quick list of what Big Tech firms and Internet watchdogs can do to you, often completely automated and in a macro-second, by algorithms and censorial software:
The BLUE STAGE
Playing by the Rules, Walking in Line: Follow and Obey
The RED STAGES
Early Intervention Phase
Stage 1 Demonetization:
Immediate disabling of all transactions, ad revenues, and payment services
Stage 2 Shadow-Banning:
Immediate hiding of your posts, comments, and activities from other users without you knowing
Stage 3 De-Amplification:
Immediate deactivation of all your efforts to boost content, cancel agreements, no reimbursement, reduction of visibility, for example by keywords or tags
Stage 4 Manual Tracking:
Immediate intervention by hired moderators, censors, or curators. Personal interest in you is taken. Not good
Stage 5 Deletion and Ban:
Immediate removal of your content or termination of your account
The BLACK STAGES
Active Persecution Phase
Stage 6 Blacklisting:
Your IP-address (digital footprint), your account, your name will be listed as troll, criminal, or terrorist
Stage 7 Reporting:
Your activities will be reported to law enforcement, activist groups, and thousands of red guards
Stage 8 Defamation:
Your person will be smeared all the bad names in the Book of Zion for the public, the press, friends and visitors and all the world to see
Stage 9 Removal:
Your Internet existence will be removed based on ‘unlawful’ behavior or breaking ‘community guidelines’ or registered ‘hate speech’. At this stage also: Loss of job, cancellation of privileges
Stage 10 Imprisonment:
The person is deprived of all its freedoms on the Internet, presence, visibility, transactions, communication, verification. This signals to all others that this person is an outcast, irrelevant, non-notable, and can be abused on- and offline without repercussion
Never Meet Google in China
As you may have already guessed, your author has pretty much experienced all of these, because he has had the audacity to work in China, Russia, and Iran, which is a deadly sin for the Western storm troopers who patrol the Internet.
Still, the real-life consequences always baffle me anew. It is beyond absurd and kafkaesque [surreal and terrifying]. For example, there exists this website ‘pattberg.org’ which isn’t mine. It is a mirror page of a site that I discontinued in 2018. It was evidently hacked and just showed up again as ‘bitcoin spam’. But of course, it will look to everyone as if it was me. It isn’t me.
Or take this brutal encounter with US Google people in Beijing. In 2009, I set up a website, ‘east-west-dichotomy.com’, mainly to purport to culture and contrast. In 2013, something miraculous happened. Google Corp., the US Tech monopoly on ‘Search’ on the Internet, qualified my site as ‘Newssite’—alongside Yahoo! or Newsweek or even The New York Times. Can you imagine that! I thought this was funny, and clearly a mistake. Anyway, I got 10,000 organic page views immediately, and for nothing really. [Such is the power of Big Tech and Google algorithms. Google can give you all the visibility in the world, or take it away again, and torture you some more.]
In 2014 I woke up one morning and saw my site de-ranked. Total collapse. From Google page rank 5 to 0, garbage level.
IMAGE 5 Before And After Being Deranked By US Google (5 to 0)
This happened to 96% of the Internet. It was the first big clean sweep. By 2016, Google had prioritized the legacy media—CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, WSJ, Economist, ABC News—and trashed the so-called alternative media websites. This meant, sites like Infowars (USA), Alan Watt (UK), Debito (Japan), Compact (Germany), Rebel Media (Canada), and even The Saker (Iceland) were blacklisted—‘page rank 0’. They survived, but in the shadows. They were digitally bullied, constricted, and held back so that they could never rank up with the mainstream press [even if they had more views].
IMAGE 6 US Big Tech Colluded With US Big Media And Shadow-Banned Alternative Media Websites And Blogs By The Hundreds Of Thousands
So, websites. But people? I wasn’t sure. Since Google agents sat right across our Peking U campus, at Tsinghua U’s Technology Park, I met two Google IT guys who confirmed to me that of course Google can punish IP addresses, website domains, AND individuals – What was I thinking?! Also, Google does ideological and racial profiling too. You won’t find a single Russian or Chinese or German voice organically when you ‘google’ for information. Silly countries like Greece or Poland never feature. The Americans want to speak on our behalf. [Strange you hadn’t noticed].
Once you are Google-blacklisted… that is like having a US criminal record. Travel, job search and all social activities are negatively affected. Imagine you told somebody you work at a top research institute and published in over 300 publications across Asia… and there is nothing to be found on US Google. That would be awkward, right? It is analogous to arriving at an airport and being told your passport is invalid. Or going to the bank with your credit card and being told your account was terminated.
My records of schools, employers, conferences, public talks… all disappeared. I once had a weird interview with a German lady from Trio Media in Germany, and then she got a night call from a government agent and the next day the interview disappeared, my affiliation with my German sponsors disappeared. Everything disappeared, including my graduation in Edinburgh in Scotland, my public talks in Tehran and Qom in Iran, my dissertation in Beijing in China. It’s a slow decomposition process. Like that wretched midlife bugger Ivan Ilyich in the novel of the same name by Tolstoy, remember him? Around 40 years of age, for no apparent reason, you pang against something, and you now start dying. Just the meta version of it.
Digital Death is on the Dissident‘s Menu
I described at great length and in depth what is happening to the China-hands. Here no repetition. It is peculiar that I should be marked for online death just because I, too, hung the clean curtains, fell awkwardly, and hurt my favorite side. ‘Peculiar’ until it isn’t peculiar any more: It is going to be the norm for a lot of us ‘unreality deniers’ soon. You’ll see. Many of us are going to suffer or die at the mercy of digital curators, computers even, we’re never going to see or reach.
Three years ago, in 2019, Google further stifled my research results. It had gotten so obvious that friends worried about the domino effect; worried largely from self-interest and their will to self-preservation. They began to cut ties: A Harvard mentor mailed me that I should be removing our friendly picture. A professor in Münster ‘googled’ me and said “Lingling here from Xiongqiao village has more social proof than you.” Google now pulled my profiles from Tokyo U and Leipzig Mathematical Society. My Confucius Institutes… lost. My TV appearances in China… gone.
Really, I can’t remember what I have done to offend Google in earnest. If I told anybody about our blood feud, they said I was insane and that they trusted those Google engineers. But when I listened yesterday to this Twitter space with the 14,000 participants who all said they and the US President had been canceled by Twitter, just like that, years of content erased from the Internet’s memory, I felt in the self-assuring company of suffering swine. It really happens.
See, I never had beef with Bill Gates’s Microsoft Corporation, alright. Microsoft owns the [now sadly insignificant] search engine Bing. And Bing does not censor me. Now, I can’t tell the media, the Harvard professor, the Münster professor, or anyone to use Bing instead of Google. 99.9% of mankind minus China uses Google to search for information about people. But it is striking that Bing shows 6,500,000 of my search results, while Google now shows 243.
IMAGE 7 Google Deletes 6 Million Of My Search Results LOL
When you are the US President or a public figure and Twitter bans you, I guess you are marked as an easy game for the hyaenas and wolves in this world. Censorship is a form of torture. Torture by the public. When Google distorts reality, very vile and nasty creatures come to feast and dance on our digital corpses.
I know because I fought for China in 2015 when US Google sniped or shall we say nuked 100,000 Chinese university professors off the Internet. No profiles for the evil Communists, I suppose. I also fought for Germany in 2018 when Google canceled over 20,000 German dissidents. Can‘t have a revolt in US-occupied Germany, I guess.
IMAGE 8 Does China Even Exist Without The US Cataloging It
Imagine you are a country as big as China, and with 1.4 billion people, and you cannot find it on the Internet. So in September 2013 I was haggling with Liz Mohn at Sunlight Hall Yingjie International Center here at Peking University. Ms Mohn is the billionaire chairwoman and heir of the German Bertelsmann Dynasty, the 4th biggest Publishing Group on the planet. So maybe she knows more than we do. “Ms Mohn, how about publishing in China?” She laughed and shrugged: “Yes but in English!” The Peking talk, the event of 300 people, all was censored. Deleted. You can search for it all you want. It is no longer there. [If you want to know How so, BUY THIS BOOK.]
IMAGE 9 Looking Good Lizzy Sorry For Inconvenience I told You THEY Are Everywhere
[Sigh] It is a battle no nation, story, or person can win. I now have the power to erase any timeline or, presumably, to ground an airplane, just by showing up. The years passed and I was blacklisted by over 700 Western media. That is a world record, I think. I must have acquainted a thousand professors. Did I just imagine them? Well, what do you think? I told you about the Portals, and I am not the only one who knows.
Last month the erasers came for my Wikipedia entry, the Internet Encyclopedia. I am now labeled an antisemite, a transphobe, a misogynist, and a Chinese Communist spy. The German Wikipedia version of that article was removed, which I guess was some kind of benevolent mercy killing. The German deletion brigade—totally anonymous and convinced they had shot down an impostor and Nutsui—had apparently googled me on Google and come to the conclusion that 243 search results had to be less than 302 Twitter followers.
End? Not.
The author is a German writer and cultural critic. His books are protection collectibles. BUY ONE, ACT!
Filed under: EU, USA | Tagged: Facebook, Google, Google-blacklisting, LinkedIn, Online Censorship, Twitter, US Big Tech totalitarianism | Comments Off on The 10 Stages of US Internet Censorship (and Torture)
by Detlef Romatzki
The question of why the Western Punters seem to make such ridiculous statements, and seem to be totally misinformed, has come up in numerous discussion about the Western Leaders and commentators.
Let me try to present a theory in order to make some sense.
In a recent article by Larry Johnson, dated 23 November, “De-Constructing Western Delusions on Ukraine and Russia”, Larry quotes the comments of an unknown Western Commentator. However, Larry refuses to mention who it was for the sake of not embarrassing that person any more than necessary.
You can read the article here
Well, he should have, but that is not the point. But some context would have helped a lot. The rest of the article is basically on how Larry debunks this narrative and I am not going to discuss it.
One has to asks oneself why are these commentators spewing this nonsense when we in the more “enlightened group”, being more open minded and alleged to know the truth, know so much better and claim we live in the real world?
A possible answer is presented in the following arguments made.
The Internet
One of the biggest mistakes the “elite”, the “Illuminate”, the “Deep State”, or whoever you would like to call them, has done was to create the internet and the WWW. Whether they could prevent it, is a different debate because at time the dial up Bulletin Boards already existed at the time and was very popular.
The Internet, as per its inherent redundancy and design, can not be directly controlled nor destroyed and that is the core problem. This is even clear via the China internet model. Information can still escape China if one knows how.
So what is to be done?
You try to control the Big Tech companies, e.g. Google, Facebook, Twitter, DNS Servers and implement the necessary controls. However, control is still limited, since you can not prevent alternatives and competition and we see that in alternatives to Youtube such as Rumble, Oddesy, search engines such as Yandex, and social media apps such a VK, Telegram and We Chat.
You control the media and all narratives disseminated to the populations completely.
You enforce a specific narrative and degrade all and everybody that does not conform to the offical narrative.
You control and instruct leaders and influential people to constantly repeat the narrative.
You weaken the population and break down their “anchor” in life so that they loose the ability to exercise critical thinking and question the official narrative.
You deflect attention to matters away from the desired narrative that they would like to present and thus confuse the population by focusing on unimportant issues.
You present short versions of the narrative, such used in advertisement, television and films, that flashes before your eyes and which you have very little time to look at properly. You can study advertisements on television where you can clearly observe the technique.
What are their sources?
With the high level of censorship in the media, it is no wonder that the information available to these commentators is so limited. What else do they get to read? Every day they are bombarded with the same “false” narrative and, as Joseph Goebbels has said,
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
A friend of mine, who lives in Panama, has recently met some tourists from America. In their discussions it came out that their core complaint was that they got, or are, fed up with the constant bombardment of Fake News. As soon as they turn on their television it, it is one propaganda story after the other, whether it is foreign or domestic issues.
During the pandemic I have seen many people (friends) that first refused the jab and later succumbed to the constant propaganda … and then finally took the jab. It is sometimes very hard to resist this onslaught and you have to have very strong believes and values.
The Internet and Google
If you want to find, say, Larry Johnson, by googeling him, Larry’s website is not even listed in the first 10 search results pages. I have done it.
So I entered a phrase from the Quote that he listed: “Every day Russia makes more military blunders and Putin has just fired one of his top commanders, General Alexander Lapin.”
The Google result was a single entry from https://freerepublic.com, which contained a word for word copy of Larry’s article, but no link to Larry Johnson or his blog.
What I did get was Google’s message;
“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.“.
If I pressed on that link, the freerepublic.com link as well as Larry Johnson’s blog, https://sonar21.com/ comes up.
What is the obvious conclusion? Well, Larry is being censored (cancelled) by Google.
So how are these Western commentators suppose to get the information from “enlightened” people?
Wokeness
In recent years the term “Wokeness” has been created and made popular.
Wokeness basically means that you conform to the main narrative and are part of the new modern way of thinking. “You fit in the group” and therefor are considered to be popular and cool.
This type of label then provides you with support for various ventures, whether it is publicity, media, talk shows, university tenure, management positions, etc.
You talk the narrative and therefor you are invited and respected by the people that push the narrative so that you can spread the “word” and continue with the sanctioned story line.
You can call it the Carrot part of the “Carrot and stick” principle.
Cancel Culture
However, beware if you do not toe the line and express yourself against the official narrative. Then you are “Cancelled” and removed from any public forum, be its physical or in the web or in the media.
You can loose your tenure, your job, your social media accounts, and other media engagements, etc. Your are basically removed from society, made invisible and so called “cancelled”.
You can call it the Stick part of the “Carrot and stick” principle.
Creation and use of “strong” words
ZIN thwe 1950 the CIA created the word “Conspiracist” in order to discredit any person that tried to expose their secret dealings. It was found to be quiet effective.
In recent years this technique has been expanded and now includes very “strong” words, e.g. Anti semetist (to hide Israel’s crimes), anti-Feminist and sexist, Homophobic, Racist, Putin’s propagandists, rapist, Climate change denier, Transgender denialist, etc.
It does not matter if you are guilty or not. Once these slogan and accusation are hurled at you, your image is tarnished and doubt, even just a little bit, is injected into all people, even your friends and family. Only very strong people will resist this urge and unfounded doubt.
They always said that the pen is mightier than the sword. Well, in this case it is clearly true.
Media
It is essential to completely control the Mainstream Media in every aspect, from Reuters, the backbone of Media’s information source, to television, news programs and the published papers and magazines.
This has happened all over the Western Worlds and we can acknowledge that the media is fully controlled by the powers that be. News are repeated from channel to channel, using even the same words and sentences. This is the “Repeating” method used in establishing a memory, and thus the narrative, even in a very subtle way, thus being emphasised and engrained..
Media companies that try to be independent are threatened with advertisement withdrawal, demonetization, etc., and ultimate ruin. That is why there are no more ethics in the Main Stream Media, nor proper investigative journalists. They all might loose their jobs and thus fight for the own interest, bugger the truth.
Social media
With the advent of Social media platforms, the ultimate vehicle for dissemination of the official narrative has been created. It is also an ideal means to enforce cancel culture since a minimal number of people, and resources, can smear any dissident and start a propaganda campaign against anybody that deviated from the approved path.
It has lead to the effect that the minority (small group) can rule and control the masses.
Social media is also a form of gathering huge amounts of personal data for deeper analysis. This data can and will be used in the future to control people, maybe not yet but surely in the future. Currently methods are more restricted to feeding you news articles and other articles that support the official narrative, tailed to your personality, believes and habits.
Cellphones
With the widespread availability and use of Cellphones, everybody is connected to the internet, social media and news sources. We have seen how effective cellphones and social media was used during the Arab Spring. Like wild fire information was distributed.
Smart phones, with proper web browsing, social media apps, Whatsapp and Telegram, Youtube, etc., have become the tool of choice for distributing the official narrative and the ability to target anybody that goes against the grain, with a very very wide distribution network (friend of friends) that can instantly “cancel” anybody.
The biggest recent example was Elon Musk’s near cancellation when he proposed a peace deal in Ukraine, or the 40 Democrats that proposed peace negotiations in a letter to Biden and had to withdraw it within 24 hours.
Who can resist this pressure?
Reference is constantly made to WW2 , the Cuban Missile Crises, etc. However that was a different world and era where people and leaders still had Values, Religions was strong, Families were strong, where Integrity, Honour, Patriotism, etc. … had meaning ….. a proper culture.
This has all been destroyed. By whom? That is a debatable point, but it did happen. Society has been transformed and the Western Culture has been destroyed. There is now very little left of the original culture of the 1950/1960/1970/1980 and before.
The family concept is being destroyed. Fewer Children are born, people marry less, Feminism is pushed, Affirmative actions is pushed, Homosexuality is rampant and encouraged, Gender identity is driven to the absurd., Science is destroyed by money, etc. Religion has been destroyed by the introduction of other cultures and religions into society. Inter-race marriages have been promoted and encouraged. And then … Wokeness and Cancel Culture has become dominant.
With the loss in a stable anchor, derived from one’s family and culture, who can resist these dominant forces? People have become isolated and vulnerable and easy to manipulate. Integrity is thrown out of the window and now everybody is for himself. Gone are the days were one would stand up for his values and deny a job, money or position. All of it has now become monetised and self preservation is the order of the day. Money has played the corruptible factor.
Money and wokeness has become the driving forces of the population. Cancel Culture and Social media have become the tools.
Given the facts above, who can then NOT understand why the Western Commentators spew the fake news and ridiculous narratives?
In my assessment I believe it is Selfish Interests, Lack of strong Values, Money, Fear of being Cancelled and a lack of proper Information derived from reality, that drives the Western commentators to create such “devoid of reality” narratives. They are just towing the line, even selling their souls and reputations just to prevent their cancellation.
Pro NON Western commentators
I have watch and read a lot of “Pro Russian” or Anti-Western commentators and they sometimes use or cite Western Media Source to back up their story. This baffles me a bit ….
If we all acknowledge that the news spread by Western media, sources and commentators, is Fake News, then how can we sometimes use these sources to validate our own narratives? This means “Pro Russian” commentators are very selective in what information they use and thus the complete picture, as told by them, might also just be an opinion, and not always cast in concrete, and also not necessary true.
So here we have a paradox.
The narrative of Western Leaders
We know that western leaders have a false narrative and tell lies. However, “Pro Russian” and Anti-Western commentators still, sometimes, take them at their word and make conclusions based on what they say.
Take Stoltenberg…….. We know he lies and repeats the official narrative that he was instructed to present. We know he is a puppet. So how can anybody take whatever he says, seriously or at his word? Why to we even quote him if we know that … whatever he says …. he does not even believe himself?
We all know the Nuclear threat against Putin is bollocks but still we go on and on and make a big issue out of.
We know Mad is always valid and true and that any use of Nuclear Weapons is suicidal and the crossing of any and all red lines. NOBODY will start a nuclear war, except … except… maybe North Korea, because Kim Jong-un is mad enough.
But still we believe Biden and Stoltenberg when they spew their nonsense and then react to this.
Com’on ……
My Name is Detlef Romatzki, of German decent and I lived in South Africa all my life.
I have a Youtube video channel where you can watch my videos, talks and get the latest assessments and news. I present alternative views and even disagree with some Anti-Western Commentators, not to bad mouth or discredit them, but to disagree like normal friends disagree. Friends surely do not always agree about everything.
You can watch the videos at Youtube
Or if you prefer Rumble
This Youtube channel is very young (only 2 months old) and I post one, or more, videos nearly each day.
Please subscribe to the channel so that I can unlock more Youtube features and do Live Discussions.
Filed under: China, Russia, United Kingdom UK, Western Propaganda | Tagged: Cancel Culture, CIA, Deep State, Facebook, Fake News, Google, Online Censorship, Social Media Censorship, Twitter | Comments Off on Why does the Western Narrative sound so stupid and unrealistic?
Filed under: Face Book, Freedom of Speech, Ukraine, USA, Youtube | Tagged: Big Tech censorship, Fake NGOs, Gonzalo Lira, Online Censorship, The New YouTube Ban, Twitter, Western proxy Wars against Russia, Wikipedia | Comments Off on Gonzalo Lira: Notes On Being Unpersoned
MAY 31ST, 2022
By Alan Macleod
AUSTIN, TEXAS – Elon Musk’s proposed takeover of Twitter has ruffled many feathers among professional commentators. “Musk is the wrong leader for Twitter’s vital mission,” read one Bloomberg headline. The network also insisted, “Nothing in the Tesla CEO’s track record suggests he will be a careful steward of an important media property.” “Elon Musk is the last person who should take over Twitter,” wrote Max Boot in The Washington Post, explaining that “[h]e seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.” The irony of outlets owned by Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos warning of the dangers of permitting a billionaire oligarch to control our media was barely commented upon.
Added to this, a host of celebrities publicly left the social media platform in protest against the proposed $44 billion purchase. This only seemed to confirm to many free speech-minded individuals that the South African billionaire was a renegade outsider on a mission to save the internet from authoritarian elite control (despite the fact that he is borrowing money from the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia in order to do so).
Musk has deliberately cultivated this image of himself: a real life Tony Stark figure who thinks for himself and is not part of the established order. But behind this carefully constructed façade, Musk is intimately connected to the U.S. national security state, serving as one of its most important business partners. Elon, in short, is no threat to the powerful, entrenched elite: he is one of them.
Musk, whose estimated $230 billion fortune is more than twice the gross domestic product of Ukraine, has garnered a great deal of positive publicity for donating thousands of Starlink terminals to the country, helping its people come back online after fighting downed the internet in much of the country. Starlink is an internet service allowing those with terminals to connect to one of over 2,400 small satellites in low Earth orbit. Many of these satellites were launched by Musk’s SpaceX technologies company.
However, it soon transpired that there is far more than meets the eye with Musk’s extraordinary “donation.” In fact, the U.S. government quietly paid SpaceX top dollar to send their inventory to the warzone. USAID – a government anti-insurgency agency that has regularly functioned as a regime-change organization – is known to have put up the cash to purchase and deliver at least 1,330 of the terminals.
Starlink is not a mass-market solution. Each terminal – which is, in effect, a tiny, portable satellite dish – has a markedly limited range, and is useful only in hyper-local situations. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, estimated that the 10,000 Starlink terminals were allowing around 150,000 people to stay online.
Such a small number of people using the devices raises eyebrows. Who is important enough to be given such a device? Surely only high-value individuals such as spies or military operatives. That the Starlinks are serving a military purpose is now beyond clear. Indeed, in a matter of weeks, Starlink has become a cornerstone of the Ukrainian military, allowing it to continue to target Russian forces via drones and other high-tech machinery dependent on an internet connection. One official told The Times of London that he “must” use Starlink to target enemy forces via thermal imaging.
“Starlink is what changed the war in Ukraine’s favor. Russia went out of its way to blow up all our comms. Now they can’t. Starlink works under Katyusha fire, under artillery fire. It even works in Mariupol,” one Ukrainian soldier told journalist David Patrikarakos.
The reference to Mariupol alludes to the infamous Nazi group, the Azov Battalion, who have also reportedly been using Musk’s technology. Even in a subterranean cavern beneath Mariupol’s steelworks, Azov fighters were able to access the internet and communicate with the outside world, even doing video interviews from underground. In 2015, Congress attempted to add a provision to U.S. military aid to Ukraine stipulating that no support could go to Azov owing to their political ideology. That amendment was later removed at the behest of the Pentagon.
Dave Tremper, Director of Electronic Warfare at the Pentagon, sang SpaceX’s praises. “How they did that [keeping Ukrainian forces online] was eye-watering to me,” he said, adding that in the future the U.S. military “needs to be able to have that agility.”
Such a statement is bound to get the attention of SpaceX chiefs, who have long profited from their lucrative relationship with the U.S. military. SpaceX relies largely on government contracts, there being almost no civilian demand for many of its products, especially its rocket launches.
Musk’s company has been awarded billions of dollars in contracts to launch spy satellites for espionage, drone warfare and other military uses. For example, in 2018, SpaceX was chosen to blast a $500 million Lockheed Martin GPS system into orbit. While Air Force spokesmen played up the civilian benefits of the launch, such as increased accuracy for GPS devices, it is clear that these devices play a key role in global surveillance and ongoing drone wars. SpaceX has also won contracts with the Air Force to deliver its command satellite into orbit, with the Space Development Agency to send tracking devices into space, and with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to launch its spy satellites. These satellites are used by all of the “big five” surveillance agencies, including the CIA and the NSA.
Thus, in today’s world, where so much intelligence gathering and target acquisition is done via satellite technology, SpaceX has become every bit as important to the U.S. war machine as more well-known companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Without Musk’s company, the U.S. would not be able to carry out such an invasive program of spying and drone warfare around the world. Indeed, China is growing increasingly wary of this power, and is being advised to develop anti-satellite technologies to counter SpaceX’s all-seeing eye. Yet Musk himself continues to benefit from a general perception that he is not part of the system.
From its origins in 2002, SpaceX has always been extremely close to the national security state, particularly the CIA. Perhaps the most crucial link is Mike Griffin, who, at the time, was the president and COO of In-Q-Tel, a CIA-funded venture capital firm that seeks to nurture and sponsor new companies that will work with the CIA and other security services, equipping them with cutting edge technology. The “Q” in its name is a reference to “Q” from the James Bond series – a creative inventor who supplies the spy with the latest in futuristic tech.
Griffin was with Musk virtually from day one, accompanying him to Russia in February 2002, where they attempted to purchase cut-price intercontinental ballistic missiles to start Musk’s business. Musk felt that he could substantially undercut opponents by using second-hand material and off-the-shelf components for launches. The attempt failed, but the trip cemented a lasting partnership between the pair, with Griffin going to war for Musk, consistently backing him as a potential “Henry Ford” of the rocket industry. Three years later, Griffin would become head of NASA and later would hold a senior post at the Department of Defense.
While at NASA, Griffin brought Musk in for meetings and secured SpaceX’s big break. In 2006, NASA awarded the company a $396 million rocket development contract – a remarkable “gamble” in Griffin’s words, especially as it had never launched a rocket before. As National Geographic put it, SpaceX, “never would have gotten to where it is today without NASA.” And Griffin was essential to this development. Still, by 2008, SpaceX was again in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll. The company was saved by an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract for commercial cargo services. Thus, from its earliest days, SpaceX was nurtured by government agencies that saw the company as a potentially important source of technology.
Like Henry Ford, Musk went into the automobile business, purchasing Tesla Motors in 2004. And also like Henry Ford, he has shared some rather controversial opinions. In 2019, for instance, he suggested that vaporizing Mars’ ice caps via a series of nuclear explosions could warm the planet sufficiently to support human life. If this was done, it would arguably not even be his worst crime against space. During a 2018 publicity stunt, he blasted a Tesla into outer space using a SpaceX rocket. However, he did not sterilize the vehicle before doing so, meaning it was covered in earthly bacteria – microorganisms that will likely be fatal to any alien life they encounter. In essence, the car is a biological weapon that could end life on any planet it encounters.
Musk also attracted attention when he appeared to admit that he worked with the U.S. government to overthrow Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2019. Bolivia is home to the world’s largest easy-to-extract lithium reserves, an element crucial in the production of electric-vehicle batteries. Morales had refused to open the country up to foreign corporations eager to exploit Bolivia for profit. Instead, he proposed developing sovereign technology to keep both the jobs and profits inside the country. He was overthrown by a U.S.-backed far-right coup in November 2019. The new government quickly invited Musk for talks. When asked on Twitter point blank whether he was involved in Morales’ ouster, Musk responded, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
The South African has a long history of trolling and making inflammatory statements, so this “confession” might not be as cast-iron as it seems. Nevertheless, any hope of Musk profiting from Bolivia was shot after Morales’ party returned to power in a resounding victory one year later.
In addition to the billions in government contracts Musk’s companies have secured, they also have received similar numbers in public subsidies and incentives. Chief among these is Tesla, which benefits greatly from complex international rules around electric vehicle production. In a push to reduce carbon emissions, governments around the world have introduced a system of credits for green vehicles, whereby a certain percentage of each manufacturer’s output must be zero-emission vehicles. Tesla only produces electric cars, so easily meets the mark.
However, the system also allows Tesla to sell their excess credits to manufacturers who cannot meet these quotas. In a competitive market where each manufacturer needs to hit certain targets, these credits are worth their weight in gold, and net Tesla billions in profit every year. For example, between 2019 and 2021 alone, Stellantis, which owns the Chrysler, Fiat, Citroen and Peugeot brands, forked out nearly $2.5 billion to acquire Tesla U.S. and European green credits.
This bizarre and self-defeating system goes some way to explaining why Tesla is worth more by market cap than Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, GM, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, and Volvo put together, despite not being even a top-15 car manufacturer in terms of units sold.
Musk’s company also received significant government backing in its early stages, receiving a $465 million low-interest loan from the Department of Energy in 2010, at a time when Tesla was on the rocks and its future was in doubt.
Like many giant companies, Tesla is able to play states off against each other, each job-hungry location bidding against the others to give the corporation as much free cash and tax incentives as possible. In 2020, for example, Austin gave Tesla more than $60 million in tax breaks to build a truck plant there.
This, however, was small fry in comparison to some of the deals Musk has signed. The State of New York handed Musk over $750 million, including $350 million in cash, in exchange for building a solar plant outside of Buffalo – a plant that Musk was bound to build somewhere in the United States. Meanwhile, Nevada signed an agreement with Tesla to build its Gigafactory near Reno. The included incentives mean that the car manufacturer could rake in nearly $1.3 billion in tax relief and tax credits. Between 2015 and 2018, Musk himself paid less than $70,000 in federal income taxes.
Therefore, while the 50-year-old businessman presents himself as a maverick science genius – an act that has garnered him legions of fans around the world – a closer inspection of his career shows he earned his fortune in a much more orthodox manner. First by being born rich, then by striking it big as a dot-com billionaire, and finally, like so many others, by feeding from the enormous government trough.
Perhaps more seriously though, SpaceX’s close proximity to both the military and the national security state marks it out as a key cog in the machine of U.S. empire, allowing Washington to spy, bomb or coup whoever it wants.
It is for this reason that so much of the hysteria, both positive and negative, over Musk’s ongoing purchase of Twitter is misplaced. Elon Musk is neither going to save nor destroy Twitter because he is not a crusading rebel challenging the establishment: he is an integral part of it.
Filed under: American Elite, Qatar, Russia, Ukraine, USA | Tagged: Elon Musk, KSA, Mariupol, Nazi Ukrainian "Azov battalion", Twitter | Comments Off on ELON MUSK IS NOT A RENEGADE OUTSIDER – HE’S A MASSIVE PENTAGON CONTRACTOR
MAY 17TH, 2022
By Jessica Buxbaum
OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM — On April 29, Inès Abdel Razek woke up to 80 new Twitter followers.
“These accounts were following the exact same people that were tweeting about Palestine, but from France or Francophone accounts that work on Palestine,” Razek said of her new followers.
The advocacy director of Rābet, the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy’s digital platform, became wary of the issue after Abier Khateb, a grants manager at Open Society Foundations, reported mass followings as well.
Razek told MintPress News that she began individually reporting each account as fake but kept her own account open — lest she let the alleged bots win. But after a few days, Razek made her profile private. At the peak of the mass following, Razek had accumulated 400 fake followers.
From the end of April through the first few weeks of May, more than 40 pro-Palestine Twitter accounts reported mass followings. Digital-rights experts say acquiring huge amounts of fake followers triggers Twitter’s algorithm and can lead to the tech giant suspending an account, effectively censoring users by forcing them to make their accounts private.
These accounts included those belonging to human rights and activist organizations Adalah, Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence, and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. They also included news publications and journalists, like The Palestine Chronicle, Ali Abunimah and Hind Al-Eryani; and politicians, such as Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom. Twitter did not respond to MintPress inquiries on the source of the suspicious accounts.
Dr. Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University, conducted an analysis that found more than 1,150 fake accounts. Twitter deleted approximately 1,090 of these accounts, according to Jones. His analysis determined that the average account-creation time was one to three per minute, suggesting these accounts were created using an automated process.
The profiles were in various languages, including French, Spanish, English and German, but usually had Arabic bios. They often had strange names — like Noble Betty Thomas — and zero followers.
“They had clearly made-up names,” Sarah Leah Whitson, who also experienced a large influx of new followers, told MintPress. “The vast majority of them had Israeli names and Israeli addresses. Some of them had made-up Arab names, which were mangled. It’s clear that they’re [using] stolen images of people.”
In response to the bulk followings, software developer Daniel Easterman created a free script to automatically report and block hundreds of these bots for users.
Easterman said the spamming problem has a censorship effect by forcing users to make their accounts private. “This means they won’t be able to distribute their messages widely as they would normally,” Easterman told MintPress News.
Another area of particular concern is how a flood of fake followers may cause Twitter to shut down an account. “When you see such a dramatic increase in followers, it’s usually somebody manipulating the system for commercial gain,” Easterman said. “So that could trigger Twitter to automatically flag that as suspicious activity and suspend the activist’s account.”
Using Twitter to target human rights defenders and journalists isn’t unusual. In 2017, journalist Iona Craig and others who report on Yemen were spammed with thousands of fake followers. Many speculated the culprits were state entities belonging to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The reason behind this particular mass following campaign remains unknown. Jones hypothesized it’s acting as a form of social media suppression, writing on Twitter:
Some suggest it’s a means to degrade the algorithmic quality of a Twitter account so that it possibly gets suspended; some suggest it’s others trying to boost popularity of an account. When it’s unsolicited, as in this case, I tend to think it’s more of a targeting operation. I am naturally cynical, but most people who get a sudden influx of fake followers feel unnerved and uncomfortable. If that fact is widely known, it functions as a tool of surveillance and potentially intimidation (e.g., you are being watched). It also makes many people mute their accounts for a bit which has a censorship effect.”
Razek, Whitson, and others told MintPress that the flood of fake followers appears to be diminishing for them. However, a new operation has emerged.
In the past week, Jones found around 2,800 fake accounts following pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist accounts who have recently been tweeting on the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh.
“This network is likely the same as the one found at [the] end of April, although now it is active,” Jones wrote on Twitter.
The accounts have between 0 to 20 followers, with the majority of bios written in English and simply stating the account location, which is Israel. Most accounts don’t have a banner picture and the profile pictures have purportedly been swiped from real people.
According to Jones, the accounts have begun liking and retweeting posts, without any real partisan regularity: they like both pro- and anti-Palestinian subject matter and follow both pro-Zionist and pro-Palestinian accounts but appear to target the pro-Palestinian side more. Accounts targeted include The Jerusalem Post; the government of Israel’s official state account; activist organization Jewish Voice for Peace; the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; Israeli journalist Ilan Pappe; and former Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi.
Again, the reason for the bulk followers remains unclear. “Those who get followed understandably find it intimidating, as if a form of surveillance or a technique to try and degrade [the] quality of an account with low-quality follows,” Jones wrote on Twitter. “The fact remains, these are clearly fake accounts and ruin the experience of Twitter.”
Palestinian digital-rights experts have long decried the increasing censorship of Palestinian content online. During Israel’s assault on Gaza and the upticks in Israeli attacks at Al-Aqsa Compound and in Sheikh Jarrah in May 2021, Palestinian activists reported social media companies were removing their content on Israeli violence and ethnic cleansing for violating community guidelines.
The social media censorship didn’t stop when tensions died down over the summer, though. Last month, social media users in Jordan said their posts related to Israeli violence at Al-Aqsa were taken down and their accounts blocked. Additionally, accounts belonging to Palestinian news publications covering the violence in occupied East Jerusalem and at Al-Aqsa were deactivated by Facebook.
In their recent monthly report on social media violations, Palestinian NGO Sada Social stated the deletion of Palestinian content “is in line with and in response to Israeli requests to tighten the screws on Palestinians and their media.”
Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid also accused Instagram of shadow-banning (having content viewership limited) her pro-Palestinian content during Ramadan.
Razek suggested the swarm of fake followers on Twitter may be an extension of Instagram’s alleged shadow-banning. “The purpose is to pollute our algorithms and make our accounts less visible. So in the way that Instagram is shadow-banning some content, this could be a way that Twitter shadow-bans our content,” she said.
While the identities behind the fake followers haven’t been revealed, many have pointed to Israel. The Israeli government’s targeting of Palestinian digital content is well-documented. According to 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, the Israeli Ministry of Justice Cyber Unit sends content-removal requests aimed at Palestinian content to social media companies such as Facebook, Google, and YouTube. The Justice Ministry has boasted these corporations comply with 95% of their requests. And Israeli governmental organizations and NGOs also encourage their citizens to flag Palestinian content for removal.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s pending purchase of Twitter came with a promise of securing free speech on the digital platform. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” the self-declared free-speech advocate said in a statement about his Twitter deal.
While digital-rights experts like Jones are wary of Musk’s potential Twitter takeover, Whitson, who’s experienced targeted attacks, harassment, and censorship threats for decades for speaking out against Israeli abuses, views the buyout positively. For the executive director of nonprofit Democracy for the Arab World (DAWN), the risk of corporate censorship is a bigger issue than online hate speech. Whitson said:
I’m hopeful that Elon Musk will be true to his word to protect and promote free speech and to end concerted efforts to target and cancel speech that we don’t like. Seeing how Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have launched systematic efforts to silence pro-Palestine activist voices, I’m very wary of corporate moderators deciding what speech is and isn’t acceptable.”
Whitson doesn’t agree the bots are a form of censorship, but she does see them as an assault on free speech. “It’s a form of targeted harassment and bullying,” she said. “It’s a targeted attack on people who are speaking freely, including journalists and human rights activists.”
Filed under: Freedom of Speech, Nazi Israel, Palestinians, Social Media, United Arab Emirates UAE | Tagged: Censoring Palestinian Voices, Censorship, KSA, The Zio-temporary entity, Twitter | Comments Off on CENSORING PALESTINE: SWARMS OF ISRAELI BOTS ARE CRIPPLING PRO-PALESTINIAN TWITTER ACCOUNTS
29 APRIL 2022
By Andrew Korykbo
Siddiqui is a perfect example of what the US-led West truly thinks about terrorists in Pakistan. While their governments sometimes talk tough about them for political reasons, they secretly support their crimes whenever they target Chinese.
Twitter is known for its contentious moderation policies, but perhaps none are more controversial than its tolerance of Mainstream Media (MSM) journalists who glorify terrorism. Taha Siddiqui is one such journalist who just engaged in that shocking act on this platform earlier in the week. He describes himself on his account as a “Pakistani in exile” who’s reported for the New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and France 24. Accordingly, Twitter verified his account by giving him a blue check.
What he just did, however, should arguably get his account deactivated. Siddiqui went on a tweetstorm glorifying the suicide bomber who just blew up three Chinese teachers and their Pakistani driver in Karachi. Regardless of one’s position towards those separatists’ political cause, there’s never any justification for killing innocent people nor in blowing oneself up in order to do so. The female killer was a bonafide terrorist whose crime would have been universally condemned had she done it in the West.
Because she only killed Chinese and a Pakistani in Karachi, however, Siddiqui is able to glorify this suicide bomber with impunity. His partnership with the MSM, self-description as a “Pakistani in exile”, and blue check all mean that he’s untouchable by the platform. Siddiqui is a perfect example of what the US-led West truly thinks about terrorists in Pakistan. While their governments sometimes talk tough about them for political reasons, they secretly support their crimes whenever they target Chinese.
The “Balochistan Liberation Army” (BLA) that Siddiqui glorified in his tweetstorm was designated by the US as a terrorist group in 2019. Twitter is based in the US and must therefore comply with American law. It’s therefore of contentious legality for this platform to continue hosting Siddiqui’s tweetstorm. They’re arguably violating their own moderation policies and American law by keeping it up, though it’s unclear whether they’ll ultimately take it down, not to mention whether they’ll deplatform him as punishment.
One can only imagine the reaction if a Russian, Chinese, or Iranian journalist glorified a US-designated terrorist group that just carried out a suicide bombing attack in a Western country’s largest city. Not only would they be promptly deplatformed, but the MSM would turn their tweetstorm into a global scandal. They’d probably also speculate that the journalist in question was reflecting their homeland’s tacit support of whatever terrorist group it might be.
Nobody should expect that to happen with Siddiqui, however, since his tweetstorm reflects the West’s tacit support of the BLA’s anti-Chinese terrorist attacks. Twitter’s punishment of him would be the legally and morally right thing to do but the company remains close to the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) so it’s unlikely to do so unless activists across the world succeed in turning this into a global scandal.
Absent that scenario, the platform will likely keep Siddiqui’s tweetstorm up since it embodies the West’s undeclared support for the BLA’s Hybrid War on CPEC. Elon Musk, who just purchased Twitter, might even defend his new company’s decision if publicly challenged to do so as evidence of its support for free speech. The reality, however, is that Siddiqui’s tweetstorm is nothing but propaganda in support of a US-designated terrorist organization. It only remains up because of the West’s selective standards.
Filed under: China, Pakistan, Terrorism, USA | Tagged: Twitter, US Support for Terrorism, Western MSM lying machine. | Comments Off on Twitter Shouldn’t Tolerate Mainstream Media Journalists Glorifying Terrorism
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April 21, 2022
Cancel culture is inbuilt in the techno-feudalist project: conform to the hegemonic narrative, or else. Journalism that does not conform must be taken down.
By Pepe Escobar
Special to Consortium News
This month, several of us – Scott Ritter, myself, ASB Military News, among others – were canceled from Twitter. The – unstated – reason: we were debunking the officially approved narrative of the Russia/NATO/Ukraine war.
As with all things Big Tech, that was predictable. I lasted only seven months on Twitter. And that was long enough. Contacts in California had told me I was on their radar because the account grew too fast, and had enormous reach, especially after the start of Operation Z.
I celebrated the cancelation by experiencing an aesthetic illumination in front of the Aegean Sea, at the home of Herodotus, the Father of History. Additionally, it was heart-warming to be recognized by the great George Galloway in his moving tribute to targets of the new McCarthyism.
In parallel, comic relief of the “Mars Attacks” variety was provided by expectations of free speech on Twitter being saved by the benign intervention of Elon Musk.
Techno-feudalism is one of the overarching themes of my latest book, Raging Twenties – published in early 2021 and reviewed here in a very thoughtful and meticulous manner.
Cancel culture is inbuilt in the techno-feudalist project: conform to the hegemonic narrative, or else. In my own case regarding Twitter and Facebook – two of the guardians of the internet, alongside Google — I knew a day of reckoning was inevitable, because like other countless users I had previously been dispatched to those notorious “jails”.
On one Facebook occasion, I sent a sharp message highlighting that I was a columnist/analyst for an established Hong Kong-based media company. Some human, not an algorithm, must have read it, because the account was restored in less than 24 hours.
But then the account was simply disabled – with no warning. I requested the proverbial “review”. The response was a demand for proof of ID. Less than 24 hours later, came the verdict: “Your account has been disabled” because it had not followed those notoriously hazy “community standards.” The decision was “reviewed” and “it can’t be reversed”.
I celebrated with a Buddhist mini-requiem on Instagram.
My hit-by-a-Hellfire missile Facebook page clearly identified for the general public who I was, at the time: “Geopolitical analyst at Asia Times”. The fact of the matter is Facebook algorithms canceled a top columnist from Asia Times – with a proven record and a global profile. The algos would never have had the – digital – guts to do the same with a top columnist from The New York Times or the Financial Times.
Asia Times lawyers in Hong Kong sent a letter to Facebook management. Predictably, there was no response.
Of course becoming a target of cancel culture – twice – does not even remotely compare to the fate of Julian Assange, imprisoned for over three years in Belmarsh under the most appalling circumstances, and about to be dispatched for “judgment” in the American gulag for the crime of committing journalism. Yet the same “logic” applies: journalism that does not conform to the hegemonic narrative must be taken down.
Conform, or Else
At the time, I discussed the matter with several Western analysts. As one of them succinctly put it, “You were ridiculing the U.S. president while pointing out the positives of Russia, China and Iran. That’s a deadly combination”.
Others were simply stunned: “I wonder why you were restricted as you work for a reputable publication.” Or made the obvious connections: “Facebook is a censorship machine. I did not know that they do not give reasons for what they do but then they are part of the Deep State.”
A banking source that usually places my columns on the desks of selected Masters of the Universe put it New York-style: “You severely p****d the Atlantic Council”. No question: the specimen who oversaw the canceling of my account was a former Atlantic Council hack.
Ron Unz in California had the account of his extremely popular website Unz Review purged by Facebook on April 2020. Subsequently, readers who tried to post their articles met with an “error” message describing the content as “abusive”.
When Unz mentioned my case to renowned economist James Galbraith, “he really was quite shocked, and thought it might signal a very negative censorship trend on the Internet.”
The “censorship trend” is a fact – for quite a while now. Take this U.S. State Department 2020 report identifying “pillars of Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem.”
State Dept. Directive
The late Pompeo-era report demonizes “fringe or conspiracy-minded” websites who happen to be extremely critical of U.S. foreign policy. They include Moscow-based Strategic Culture Foundation – where I’m a columnist – and Canada-based Global Research, which republishes most of my columns (but so does Consortium News, ZeroHedge and many other U.S. websites). I’m cited in the report by name, along with quite a few top columnists.
The report’s “research” states that Strategic Culture – which is blocked by Facebook and Twitter – is directed by the SVR, Russian foreign intel. This is ridiculous. I met the previous editors in Moscow – young, energetic, with enquiring minds. They had to quit their jobs because after the report they started to be severely threatened online.
So the directive comes straight from the State Department – and that has not changed under Biden-Harris: any analysis of U.S. foreign policy that deviates from the norm is a “conspiracy theory” – a terminology that was invented and perfected by the C.I.A.
Couple it with the partnership between Facebook and the Atlantic Council – which is a de facto NATO think tank – and now we have a real powerful ecosystem.
It’s a Wonderful Life
Every silicon fragment in the valley connects Facebook as a direct extension of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s LifeLog project, a Pentagon attempt to “build a database tracking a person’s entire existence.” Facebook launched its website exactly on the same day – Feb. 4, 2004 – that DARLA and the Pentagon shuttered LifeLog.
No explanation by DARPA was ever provided. The MIT’s David Karger, at the time, remarked, “I am sure that such research will continue to be funded under some other title. I can’t imagine DARPA ‘dropping out’ of such a key research area.”
Of course a smokin’ gun directly connecting Facebook to DARPA will never be allowed to surface. But occasionally some key players speak out, such as Douglas Gage, none other than LifeLog’s conceptualizer: “Facebook is the real face of pseudo-LifeLog at this point (…) We have ended up providing the same kind of detailed personal information to advertisers and data brokers and without arousing the kind of opposition that LifeLog provoked.”
So Facebook has absolutely nothing to do with journalism. Not to mention pontificating over a journalist’s work, or assuming it’s entitled to cancel him or her. Facebook is an “ecosystem” built to sell private data at a huge profit, offering a public service as a private enterprise, but most of all sharing the accumulated data of its billions of users with the U.S. national security state.
The resulting algorithmic stupidity, also shared by Twitter – incapable of recognizing nuance, metaphor, irony, critical thinking – is perfectly integrated into what former C.I.A. analyst Ray McGovern brilliantly coined as the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex).
In the U.S., at least the odd expert on monopoly power identified this neo-Orwellian push as accelerating “the collapse of journalism and democracy.”
Facebook “fact-checking professional journalists” does not even qualify as pathetic. Otherwise Facebook – and not analysts like McGovern – would have debunked Russiagate. It would not routinely cancel Palestinian journalists and analysts. It would not disable the account of University of Tehran professor Mohammad Marandi – who was actually born in the U.S.
I received quite a few messages stating that being canceled by Facebook – and now by Twitter – is a badge of honor. Well, everything is impermanent (Buddhism) and everything flows (Daoism). So being deleted – twice – by an algorithm qualifies at best as a cosmic joke.
Pepe Escobar’s latest book is Raging Twenties. He remains un-cancelled on VK, Telegram and Instagram.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Filed under: China, Freedom of Speech, Russia, USA | Tagged: Censorship, DAPRA, Facebook, Julian Assange, McCarthyism, Operation Z., Pepe Escobar, Scott Ritter, Twitter, US Deep State | Comments Off on Big Tech’s ‘Cancel Culture’ Love Affair
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It was just one day after the heroic operation carried out by a Palestinian teen against an ‘Israeli’ occupier of the land of her ancestors, that Twitter, pushed by the Zionist Mossad, took an unjust measure against one of the resistance media platforms.
In a shameful alliance with the devil, the social media giant is attempting to silence the voices of righteousness that are simply working to cover the truth as it is.
On Wednesday, December 8, 2021, a 15-year old Palestinian girl had the courage to frighten one member of the occupying community whose leaders have been killing her peers ever since they occupied the land of Palestine.
And as far as the freedom of expression is a fundamental human right as stated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, then:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
However, Twitter chose to side by the criminal and to turn a blind eye at its murders, while labelling those taking the act of resistance to restore their land, safety, and normal life as the faulty ones.
Al-Ahed News website promises its audience and all truth-seekers that it will continue its mission of being the voice of the voiceless, namely the oppressed ones in Palestine, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and every spot of the world where injustice is practiced.
Kindly follow our new Twitter account: @ahdonaeng
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Laith Marouf
Twitter supports the rights of Zionists to harass Palestinians on its platform and threaten their livelihood and their income.
My 11-year-old Twitter account has been permanently banned by the USA-based social media platform. In its email to me announcing the decision, Twitter quotes 4 of my tweets as evidence of the accusations that I am in violation of their rules against “hateful conduct”, and that I “promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.” Twitter further states: “Additionally, if we determine that the primary purpose of an account is to incite harm towards others on the basis of these categories, that account may be suspended without prior warning.”
There are many things that could be said about the legality of Twitter granting itself the power to judge speech or to levy accusations of crimes actionable under the Criminal Code of Canada and Title 18 of the US Code of Laws. By appointing itself judge, jury and executioner, and claiming the power to permanently sully the reputation of individuals, it usurps their rights under the basics of Natural Justice and Common Law, denying their right to the presumption of innocence, to knowing their accuser and the accusations against them, to cross-examine their accusers and present a defense, and finally to be judged by their peers.
But in my opinion, the most flagrant violation of rights in the decision to ban me lies in equating the political ideology of Zionism with a race, ethnicity, or a national origin; and, more importantly, to imply that opposing the Settler Colonial ideology of Zionism, and the violence, genocide, and infanticide that are results of its quest to create an exclusively “Jewish” State; is in itself an act that “promotes violence against” or “directly attack or threaten” other people.
Let us unpack this for a minute. Zionism is a political ideology, like Capitalism or Communism, etc. Those who adhere to Zionism come from all walks of life. Therefore, criticizing Zionism is not targeting anyone based on their “Race”, as there is no such thing as a Zionist race; all kinds of abhorrable people pronounce that they are Zionist, from Irish-American President Biden to Brazilian President Bolsanario. Criticizing Zionism is not targeting anyone based on their “ethnicity”; there are Zionist Germans, Zionist Anglos, Zionist French, etc. Criticizing Zionism is not a hateful conduct based on someone’s national origin, as there are many “Israeli” Palestinian citizens and a plurality of other Israelis who are not Zionist. And finally, criticizing Zionism is not targeting anyone based on its religious affiliation, for the largest numbers of those who call themselves Zionists are Christian North Americans and Europeans, and there are many followers of the Jewish faith that reject Zionism.
So, if there is no “other” as defined by Twitter, how can its accusations of “hateful conduct” that “promote[s] violence” or “direct attacks” or “threaten” be accepted? Although there are no valid “victims” in the accusations by Twitter, let us nevertheless take a look at the language it finds threatening and hateful.
Twitter objects to my use of the following terms:
– Zionism is Jewish White Supremacy, Genocide and Infanticide.
– Apartheid Canada and Apartheid “Israel”.
Zionism is a Settler project to Colonize Palestine with European citizens some of which professed Judaism and to create an Imperialist beachhead colony that perpetually causes war in Western Asia and North Africa, and physically fractures the geographic continuity of the Arab world. To create and maintain the Colony, Zionism and its followers committed and continue to perpetrate Genocide against the Indigenous population of Palestine and Infanticide against the Palestinian children. Zionism works to maintain the White Supremacist Imperialist structures that oppress the Arabic-speaking people; i.e. Zionism is Jewish White Supremacy. Since the Balfour Declaration by the British Empire, and the official launching of the Zionist Colony, more than a million Palestinians were murdered, and since only the beginning of 2021, Apartheid Israel killed at least 200 Palestinian children.
As for Apartheid “Israel” and Apartheid Canada, not much needs to be said when every major human rights organization on the planet – and in historic Palestine – have labeled the Colony as Apartheid, and when thousands of Indigenous children are being excavated from mass graves in Apartheid Canada, and the whole world knows about the Infanticide Camps nefariously named Residential Schools.
In any case, whether you agree with my opinion or not, they all fall under fair and free speech and do not target, harass or advocate violence against a group of people based on their religion, ethnicity or national origin. Looking at the tweets in question, it is clear the complaint against me came from a man named Mark Goldberg. I’ll explain a few things below.
I work as a Consultant for Broadcasting Law and Policy, specifically the rights of Indigenous Nations, Racialized communities and/or those who are living with disabilities; communities granted Protections with laws and policies, i.e. Protected Groups. My work can be viewed here.
Part of my work is testifying at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in Canada on files like the license renewal of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, and its compliance with its license conditions and Broadcasting Act provisions, in regards to the rights of Protected Groups to Access, Reflection and Employment at the network.
My work naturally attracts the attention of individuals who support the Zionist ideology. To them, it is very angering to see a Palestinian citizen of Apartheid Canada appearing at the Commission speaking about these important issues.
In that light, Mr. @Marc_Goldberg, who himself is very involved in the Broadcasting sector and hosts an annual conference for the industry, began harassing me online; first in a general manner, and then specifically in regards to my comments at the CRTC during the CBC hearing.
On the 22nd of January, 2021, Goldberg tweeted attacking CMAC’s presentation at the hearing, targeting our suggestion that CBC reporters have a duty to point out when the Canadian state violates its treaty obligations with Indigenous Nations.
Later in the day, Goldberg tweeted a second attack on CMAC, in regards to the CBC administration banning the use of the word ‘Palestine’ on its platforms, and attached a link stating “Palestine doesn’t exist”.
Because we are both involved in Journalism and Media Production and Policy, and are Public persons and have no private life as such, I did not make a Twitter complaint against him.
Unfortunately, my policy of respecting his right to free speech led Goldberg to increase his harassment. As the most recent war in Palestine raged two months ago, Goldberg posted a link to a funding grant I received from the CRTC. The file was related to a CRTC call for comments on how the Commission can deliver on its duties as laid out in the Accessible Canada Act (ACA). CMAC, where I work as a Senior Policy Consultant, helped Indigenous and Racialized Communities living with disabilities to participate and produce interventions on the record that would address their rights as prescribed by the ACA.
Mr. Goldberg was asking how someone like me (a Palestinian) would get funding for this work at the CRTC. He was putting my livelihood and income at risk, and, therefore, bullying me in my workspace that he is also present in. Hence, he was crossing the threshold between Verbal Harassment to Physical Harassment that causes financial harm. Even then, I believed that I could just respond through the exercise of free speech, pointing out how his opinions, which I disagree with and find racist, don’t seem to be stopping the CRTC from participating in his annual industry conference.
Mr. Goldberg harassed me for months publicly on Twitter, on Hearings I participated in at the CRTC, all relating to the rights of Indigenous and Racialized peoples and/or living with disabilities. Mr. Goldberg attempted to harm my livelihood because he disagreed with my opinions that are protected under the law at the Commission; a Tribunal with powers superseding a Federal Superior Court, where I am held legally responsible under the law for what I say. Because Mr. Goldberg knew he could not challenge my work at the CRTC because it was legally sound, he chose to harass me on Twitter. And when he lost the public debate online after I engaged him, he had the audacity to complain to Twitter about my replies to his harassing posts regarding my work and income.
I hope this lays out the Legal Obligations of Twitter in regards to these specific tweets. The posts Mr. Goldberg complained about, are related to work and speech I presented at a Tribunal of the Canadian Government, where I was/am legally liable for my work. My interventions were accepted on the record of the CRTC. Therefore, in deeming my tweets violent and discriminatory, Twitter is assuming powers by superseding those of the CRTC and usurping the legitimate appeal process that requires complaints to be presented to a Federal Court of Appeal in Canada or to the Governor in Council (the Cabinet of Ministers). (You can watch/listen to CMAC’s oral presentation at the hearing, where we open with “Apartheid Canada” and speak of Palestine, at this link.
My assessment of why Mr. Goldberg targeted my account is confirmed by his latest tweet on the subject, where he gloats about having my account suspended and seems to suggest he is also targeting Carleton University professor, Dwayne Winseck.
Finally, Twitter quotes a fourth tweet I made in its email, outlining its decision to suspend my account. In that tweet, I stated: “if you come to my home and try to steal it or harm my children, it will lead to a bullet in your head.”
Obviously, there is no promotion of violence against any “Protected Groups” in this statement, except if you consider House Thieves or Children Killers are protected groups. What is ironic about this tweet is the fact that I wrote it, while visiting my wife’s family in Louisiana, a “Stand your grounds” state, where by law a person has the right to shoot and kill anyone who invades their home and harms their children. Of course, we know that “Stand your grounds” doesn’t apply to Black/Brown/Arab peoples, and is a privilege reserved for White Colonists in the USA or Apartheid “Israel”. By dictating that my post was promoting violence, Twitter is asserting that Colonists have the full right of looting, pillaging and murdering children; considering that the settler’s behavior supersedes the rights of the Colonized populations to defend themselves.
Twitter usurped the powers of Courts and accused innocents of legally actionable crimes under the criminal laws of Canada and the USA. It denies the basic rights guaranteed under Natural and Common Law, including the presumption of innocence, the right to cross-examines the accuser, and the right to be judged by equal peers. It appoints itself as judge, jury and executioner; and shields Supremacy, Genocide, Infanticide and Apartheid from criticism. It supports the rights of Zionists to harass Palestinians on its platform and threaten their livelihood and their income. Furthermore, it asserts that any fight back against this behavior is threatening, violent and itself a form of harassment.
In my 20 years of activism for the liberation of Palestine, I have faced many injustices similar to this Twitter Ban, and almost all stem from the same speech. In 2001, I was the first Arab candidate to be elected to a student union executive in Canada; at Concordia University in Montreal. Within months I was expelled summarily through a Dictate from the President of the University for writing that “Zionism is Jewish Supremacy”. During our 6-month court battle, Concordia argued that it is not a public institution but, rather, a private corporation that can refuse service to any “customer” (not student?!?). This is the same argument that Twitter makes. Although the judge erroneously agreed that Concordia is a private corporation, he nevertheless ruled that it cannot expel a customer without affording them the basics of Natural Justice and Common Law when it accuses them of crimes prescribed in the Criminal Code and that if it did not do so, it then would be violating the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms (Constitution). Concordia had no choice but to reinstate me as a student and then afford me an internal hearing that abides by the minimums of Common Law. Naturally, I won in the tribunal under these conditions.
A year later, the Chair of the Department of History at Concordia, who was also the Chair of the Zionist lobby group, the Human Rights League of B’nai B’rith, decided to accuse me of promoting hate because I said Zionism is Jewish Supremacy and that “Israel” is an Apartheid state. The internal Concordia tribunal that was convened to rule over these accusations, after months of deliberations, also found that my statements are covered under fair speech and cannot be considered hate speech no matter how appalled and angered my critics were.
Given that none of the Tweets quoted in the decision to suspend my account can be construed as promoting hate or violence against a Protected Group; given that it is clear my accuser is actually harassing me online; given that the grave accusations leveled against me are actual crimes in the Criminal Code of Canada; given that my basic rights under Natural Justice and Common Law dictate that I must have a fair trial before being found guilty of such crimes; the only legal and ethical thing Twitter can do is to remove the suspension on my account and restore my tweets.
I urge all readers to tweet this article at @Twitter @TwitterSuppport and @Jack and ask for my account to be reinstated.
Filed under: Canada, Palestine, Palestinians, Western Zionists, Zionism | Tagged: Apartheid Israel, Twitter, Western Support for Apartheid Israel | Comments Off on Twitter Suspended My Account to Appease the Zionist Lobby; Help Me Get It Back!
August 21, 2021
By Larry Romanoff for The Saker Blog
What do the following people have in common? George Soros, Elon Musk, Jeffery Epstein, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Sanger, Jimmy Wales.
Two things. One, they are Jewish. Two, they condensed from a spiritual mist to almost suddenly become household names, men of immense wealth whose companies exert huge influence on Western society – but men who apparently achieved these enviable heights without the usual necessities of intelligence, education, experience or native talent or, for the most part, good judgment. Have you ever wondered how these men quietly rose to such eminence in spite of their lack of credentials? Let’s see what we know to be true.
Jeffrey Epstein
Let’s begin with Jeffrey Epstein, who is perhaps more representative of this group than you might imagine. Epstein’s credentials consist of his being a psychopath, sociopath, and oversexed pedophile with a bit of charm. Little else. By all accounts, Epstein had never held a real job because he was unqualified for any. He did at one point hold a teaching position – for which he possessed no qualifications whatever, but that seems to be the list. Yet he progressed from that to being a quasi-billionaire director of one of the greatest sexual-entrapment schemes in the history of the world, replete with private aircraft, very expensive mansions, a private “pedophile island” in the Caribbean and much more. A man who kept company with the world’s rich and famous (and especially British royalty), to whom he treated with his underage treasures.
How did such a thing happen? Epstein promulgated a myth that he was an investment manager, accepting clients with available cash of a minimum of one billion dollars. It was a good story, but there is no evidence – no evidence – that Epstein ever made a stock trade. As one market expert said with perfect understatement, “It’s unusual for an animal that big to not leave footprints in the snow”. And Epstein left no footprints. In fact, there was no plausible source of his apparent wealth, no source of income to support his “Lolita Express” flying underage girls all over the world to entrap politicians and royalty from most Western nations, nor to support the immense expense of his mansions and the construction of his pedophile island in the Caribbean.
The public naturally became curious about Epstein’s funding sources and, right on cue, the NYT and WSJ informed us that Les Wexner (also Jewish), the principal of Victoria’s Secret, had been defrauded by Epstein to the extent of $400 or $500 million dollars. So now we know the source of his money. Jeffrey was not only a pedophile running a massive sexual entrapment enterprise, but was also a con-man and thief. Interestingly, Victoria’s Secret seems to not have been harmed financially by this massive loss, its revenues and profits continuing happily. And how did Wexner deal with this enormous fraud? Apparently by simply ignoring it. Many people have filed lawsuits against Epstein’s estate to obtain compensation for damages, but Wexner doesn’t appear to be one of them. We can legitimately wonder why not.
How to explain all of this? As in all the examples we will study, easier than you might imagine. Jeffrey Epstein did indeed have a job, that of creating and managing the most far-reaching sexual entrapment scheme in history. He was recruited for that job because he possessed all the natural qualifications as listed above. The persons who recruited him were the same group of Jewish European bankers and industrialists – our International Cabal of Gangsters (ICG), and they financed him to the tune of at least several hundred millions of dollars, a pittance when compared to the rewards to be vacuumed from captive politicians.
Epstein was simply a ‘front man’ doing the bidding of his masters who, as always, hide in the shadows and cannot easily be connected to the execution of their plans. The job paid well. Epstein enjoyed the life of a billionaire and all its trappings, enormous perquisites for performing a service of almost infinite value to his masters.
Larry Page and Sergei Brin (Google)
This one reads like a fairy tale: two young Jewish kids, raised in Russia, polluted with Communism and a corrupted form of democracy, unthinking robots of a dictatorial state, emigrated to the US and, in only six weeks more or less, created a behemoth corporation with a market value of nearly $2 trillion and with a search engine that provides 80% of all internet searches worldwide. Either the Jews really are God’s Chosen People, or there is something very wrong with this story.
In fact, Page and Brin were ‘front men’ in a way similar to Jeffrey Epstein, but with far less influence on execution. All you need to do is think. Before the appearance of Google, we had multiple search engines each with its own algorithms and all useful. But a search engine contains enormous potential for the control of information. By amending the algorithm, I can decide which items or articles appear on a search and which are consigned to the dustbin. I can literally control the information you see, and I can ensure there is much that you will never see. I can make all the negative articles about China or Russia appear in the first page of a search, and I can ensure you will never see information about the Jewish atrocities in Palestine. My search engine has the power to almost single-handedly control the available information for the great majority of populations. And thus the attraction.
But in fact, Google was a child of the CIA, funded, planned and financed initially through In-Q-tel, a brainchild of our European Jewish ICG always searching for more and total information control. Eric Schmidt was mostly in charge from the outset; our two students being irrelevant. Again, all we need to do is think. How could two young kids create a search engine – entirely on their own – that would be so perfect, so efficient, as to virtually exterminate all competition in a short time while milking billions from advertisers.
Like Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Page and Sergei Brin were hired for a job, in this case to serve as the front men for a massive (and so far very successful) effort at total information control. They are held up publicly as the stars, are gratuitously made very wealthy, all as part of the plan to disguise the purpose and intent.
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Once again, how does a young Jewish kid steal a group networking idea from his friends and, again within six weeks more or less, create a world-leading communication platform? The power behind Facebook that propelled it to its present position, did not come from him. As with Google, Twitter, and other such platforms, an enormous amount of knowledge, influence and financing are necessary for such a result, far beyond the capacity of any one person.
As with the others, Zuckerberg is merely a figurehead, a ‘front man’, deflecting attention from the originators of the project. He was offered a job with excellent pay, the opportunity to appear very wealthy, to further the impression of Jews being geniuses, but has done nothing of import or consequence. All this was financed and stage-managed behind the scenes by his masters, Zuckerberg merely along for the ride. But it works; this little shit is so heavily promoted that he rated a personal audience with Xi Jinping. Confucius must be screaming in his grave.
Elon Musk
If Google was a fairy tale, Tesla motors is a Cinderella delusion. Looking through the man’s record – and blowing away all the smoke – Musk went from sleeping in his car and eating leaves from trees to (again within six weeks more or less) being the CEO of “the world’s most valuable car company” and sending spacecraft to the moon. How do you suppose that happened?
Almost everyone in the last century attempting to design and market a new brand of automobile has failed miserably. Except for China and Russia, everyone – most especially including the USA and NASA – has failed in space missions or haven’t the money to do it. But along comes Elon Musk who can do all of these and more. Tesla’s aim is to sell more electric cars than all other manufacturers combined, and to become America’s default space agency.
There is no evidence that Musk has any executive or management abilities of consequence; his staff hate him, his Board of Directors despises him, the SEC believe he is a menace, and shareholders panic at his presence. The available information states freely that Musk plays no active part in the management of Tesla, nor in anything to do with outer space. I do not deny that the man may have some abilities; I claim only that they are not yet evident. Why is he there, with his apparent $200 billion bank account? As with all the others, Elon Musk is a figurehead, a ‘front’, someone hired for a job with great pay, much publicity, and perfect obedience.
George Soros
By one measure, Soros is unique among the subjects of this essay since there exists a huge international movement to have him burned at the stake as a witch. Other than this, nothing separates him from the other members of this clan. One need speak to Soros for only a few minutes to realise he hasn’t the knowledge to “bankrupt the Bank of England” or perform the other financial crimes attributed to him. Once again, Soros was hired for a job with good pay, lots of publicity, and a totally undeserved reputation for ability. Once again, a front man, given an opportunity to accumulate wealth which is then used to further the agenda of the ICG, primarily by funding seditious organisations all around the world, helping to destroy nations and economies according to the current agenda.
I do not know the selection process for people such as these. Perhaps they simply come to the attention of the right persons at the right time. Perhaps their mothers are mistresses of various members of the ICG and can give their offspring an unfair advantage. I see no pattern in the selection, which means the process is ad hoc and perhaps capricious, but it exists nonetheless. There is no other explanation, because these current heroes are typically mediocre at best, none exhibiting management ability beyond that of a 7-11, and none being exceptional in any identifiable way. Yet they appear from nowhere and are instantly propelled to galactic stardom, and that occurs only when a very wealthy and experienced puppet-master is pulling the strings.
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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons). His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/ and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
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Filed under: Face Book | Tagged: American Pedophiles, Choseness, Elon Musk, George Soros, Google, Google and Zionism, Jeffery Epstein, Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter | Comments Off on Today’s Cardboard Cutout Corporate Heroes – Virgin Births All
April 30, 2021, RT.com
-by Eva K Bartlett
It’s one thing to have policies against violence, abuse, and harassment. But in “protecting” users, Twitter is hell-bent on censoring voices that rock the boat, even when all they have tweeted is a peer-reviewed scientific paper.
Twitter censorship victim #?…@goddeketal cites a scientific paper on masks, get put in Twitter slammer.
In his Telegram group, he wrote:
“I was put into Twitter jail for citing a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Cancel science is real.
“What’s especially concerning is that I didn’t make any personal comment on the paper’s content. I only said that regarding that paper, masks CAN lead to massive health damages. It’s the conclusion of a scientific piece of work that has been peer-reviewed by at least 2 experts in the field.”
According to Twitter, Goddek violated their policy on, “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19.”
The article in question wasn’t even as risqué as others and merely addressed undesirable side effects of mask wearing. How is that “misinformation”?
I spoke with Goddek to learn more about what happened. Turns out, it’s not the first time.
“The first time I got censored because I cited a scientific, peer-reviewed paper on masks. I was just citing their work, and I got put into Twitter jail. In that tweet, I was saying, ‘Look, it seems masks don’t work.’ So, I also said my opinion.
“This time, I found another study on masks, which says there are adverse effects if you wear masks. So, I was citing the paper without putting my own opinion, and they censored me again, made me delete it and put me into Twitter jail again.”
On April 17, Naomi Wolf tweeted she had been locked out of Twitter for the fourth time for sharing a Stanford study, “proving the lack of efficacy of masks.” That study was also peer-reviewed.
This isn’t merely a case of Twitter deciding that Goddek and Wolf were not in the position to be discussing the efficacy or dangers of masks. Twitter is censoring pretty much anything about Covid that doesn’t match the narrative promoted by the WHO, CDC, and other such bodies.
Even a well-known epidemiologist has faced Twitter’s wrath. An article in the American Institute for Economic Research noted:
“Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff and co-creator of the Great Barrington Declaration, one of the most cited epidemiologists and infectious -disease experts in the world has been censored by Twitter. His tweet on how not everyone needs a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 was not taken down. He had a warning slapped on it and users have been prevented from liking or retweeting the post.”
That article also emphasized: “Dr. Kulldorff serves on the Covid-19 vaccine safety subgroup that the CDC, NIH, and FDA rely upon for technical expertise on this very subject.”
On April 10, a group called Drs4CovidEthics tweeted:
“Not a month on Twitter & we were locked out of our account, forced to delete our pinned tweet. We must self-censor or be banned says Twitter (paraphrasing) We mustn’t contradict official sources. But our letters contradict official sources. With good reason. Which we can’t tweet.”
What do they know better than Twitter censors? They’re merely “doctors & scientists from 25+ countries, including heads of ICU, world leading immunologists, experts in public health, drug safety, respiratory illness, GPs, researchers in vaccines, pharmacology, virology, biochemistry…”
I searched for more examples of extreme Twitter censorship and found further censorship of vaccine related information, and one person’s hypothesis on why vaccine talk is so particularly taboo: “$157 billion buys a lot of Facebook and Twitter bans.”
The popular independent website Off Guardian recently was locked out of Twitter for sharing one of its own articles on Covid vaccines, they told me.
In fact, Twitter has been censoring Off Guardian for at least a year. When users try to open a tweet to an Off Guardian article, they are met with a warning that the link could be potentially spammy or unsafe.
The warning continues with a large blue button advising to return to the previous page, and a teeny tiny “continue” on to the article option. Same thing for the independent Canadian website Global Research.
Last year, I tried to tweet an article written by respected journalist F. William Engdahl for New Eastern Outlook (NEO). Twitter wouldn’t allow me to even tweet it, instead giving me an error message about the link being “potentially harmful.”
And it’s not only matters of Covid. Just now, I tried to tweet another NEO article, not related to Covid, and was again met with the same message.
A Twitter account focusing on the propaganda around Xinjiang had his account suspended.
And when the New York Post wrote exposés about Hunter Biden’s emails, Twitter locked the Post’s account.
Which makes it all the more clear this isn’t about “facts” or “safety” but blatant censorship.
Whether or not you agree with a point or comment being made by one of the people censored by Twitter, we should be allowed to access their perspective, research for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. We don’t need Twitter to hold our hands and spoon-feed us establishment narratives.
Twitter’s “rules” page reads:
“Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”
If you believe that, as the saying goes, I have a bridge to sell you.
Filed under: Freedom of Speech | Tagged: Censorship, Eva Bartlett, Twitter | Comments Off on Twitter isn’t censoring accounts to keep users ‘safe’, it is using its power to spoon-feed the world establishment narratives
By Raul Diego
On January 6, as the events unfolding at the U.S. Capitol were discussed on Twitter, the barrage of opinions predictably accumulated on one side of the political spectrum. Outrage over what mainstream pundits characterized as the desecration of the symbols of democracy and similar bleeding heart liberal rhetoric was far more prevalent than the opposing camp’s tendency to side with the so-called “insurrectionists” or tweets in support of the made-for-social media putsch.
Evidence of straight forward collusion between elements of law enforcement and the Trump loyalists who stormed the Congressional building began to emerge throughout the evening, giving a measure of credence to the emerging narrative of a purported “coup” attempt by the sitting president. Simultaneously, members of Congress with large followings started calling for impeachment and other retaliatory measures against fellow members of Congress, who seemed to be implicated in the tawdry affair.
On January 6, as the events unfolding at the U.S. Capitol were discussed on Twitter, the barrage of opinions predictably accumulated on one side of the political spectrum. Outrage over what mainstream pundits characterized as the desecration of the symbols of democracy and similar bleeding heart liberal rhetoric was far more prevalent than the opposing camp’s tendency to side with the so-called “insurrectionists” or tweets in support of the made-for-social media putsch.
Evidence of straight forward collusion between elements of law enforcement and the Trump loyalists who stormed the Congressional building began to emerge throughout the evening, giving a measure of credence to the emerging narrative of a purported “coup” attempt by the sitting president. Simultaneously, members of Congress with large followings started calling for impeachment and other retaliatory measures against fellow members of Congress, who seemed to be implicated in the tawdry affair.
Predictably, conservative publications like Fox News decried the measures as a power grab by Big Tech and protestations came as far away from Europe, where German Chancellor, Angela Merkel – whose disdain for Donald Trump has never been a secret – called the decision to deplatform a head of state “problematic,” an opinion shared by France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Marie, who warned of a “digital oligarchy” usurping the powers of the state.
Missing in the salacious back-and-forth conversation between ideological factions and absent from the argument that they are private corporations, which have the legal authority to ban or deplatform anybody they wish, is the fact that Twitter, Facebook, and all the other major social media platforms are organs of the state to begin with, and that nothing they do falls outside of the ultimate designs of the powers they serve.
Examples abound of how these platforms regularly engage in cyber reconnaissance missions for American and Atlanticist interests in violation of their own terms of service, such as when NATO commanders made use of coordinates provided by Twitter users in order to select missile strike targets in their war against Libya in 2011.
Facebook’s recently created oversight board includes Emi Palmor, who was directly responsible for the removal of thousands of Palestinian posts from the social media giant during her tenure as Director of Israel’s Ministry of Justice. She, along with other individuals with clear sympathies to American interests, now sit on an official body tasked with emitting the last word on any disputes regarding issues of deplatforming on the global social network.
In Yasha Levine’s seminal work, “Surveillance Valley,” the military origins of the Internet and the close relationship of social media companies to federal and local law enforcement are made patently clear. Since their creation, Twitter, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley behemoths have worked hand in hand with law enforcement agencies to augment their capacity for mass tracking and surveillance.
From facial recognition technologies to aggregated user post history, these platforms have been a crucial component in the development of the pervasive surveillance state we now live in. In the book’s prologue, Levine details the attempted creation of a citywide police surveillance hub in Oakland, California called the “Domain Awareness Center” (DAC), which drew intense opposition from the local citizenry and privacy advocates who were quick to undress city officials who were trying to hide the proposed center’s insidious links to the NSA, CIA and military contractors.
Among other capabilities, the control hub would be able to “plug in” social media feeds to track individuals or groups that posed any kind of threat to the establishment. While the DAC project was successfully defeated by an engaged public, similar initiatives were quickly implemented throughout law enforcement agencies across the country and continue to be perfected in order to not only track, but infiltrate political groups deemed problematic.
From the early 1970s, when the Internet’s precursor ARPANET was used to spy on anti-war protestors, the vast machinery that constitutes our present-day technological ecosystem has not deviated from the original intentions of its creators and has reached a level of sophistication most of us can barely comprehend.
The seemingly innocuous ad-targeting algorithms that generate bespoke advertisements based on our surveilled lives via social media conceals a far more sinister architecture of control, which includes direct influence over people’s political opinions through micro-targeted messaging and even more insidious methods that are powerful enough to influence people’s actual behavior.
One of the biggest misconceptions we have about social media is that platforms like Twitter and Facebook represent the voice of the people and that they are the new “public square” where anybody can get on and voice their opinion. While this perception holds some water on the surface, a closer examination reveals that – on the contrary – these platforms are simply propaganda tools brilliantly disguised as vox populi.
According to a Pew Research study from 2019, 80% of all tweets are created by just 10% of Twitter users. Most people who have an account on the ostensibly left-leaning social media platform rarely tweet at all. In addition, a majority of the content is created by accounts with very large followings and, in most cases, verified accounts that mainly represent established mainstream media personalities.
Given that the politics espoused by this minuscule portion of the social network’s user base are amplified by the platform’s own algorithms, which have been shown to contain biases as all algorithms do, the perception that these platforms represent some kind of public opinion is revealed to be a very dangerous assumption.
A case in point is disturbingly reflected in a meme that ostensibly developed in yet another social media platform and rapidly spread on Twitter as a result of the incident on Capitol Hill. A tweet posted the day after on January 7 claimed that a woman in Washington D.C. was changing her profile preference on the Bumble dating app to “conservative” in order to entrap “insurrectionists” looking to hook up while visiting the nation’s capital by forwarding their photos to the FBI.
The tweet received hundreds of thousands of ‘likes’ and was retweeted thousands of times. The comments expressed overwhelming support for what amounts to an ostensibly spontaneous snitching operation by regular American citizens against other American citizens. In such a case, whether the meme itself is true has no bearing on the fact that Twitter, Facebook and any other platform where it was disseminated has the ultimate effect of normalizing and generating consent for the idea of self-monitoring and bringing the designs of the surveillance state full circle.
Filed under: America, American Politics, Freedom of Speech, Social Media | Tagged: Capitol Hill Seige, Facebook, Social Media Surveillance, Twitter | Comments Off on Birth of the Digital Oligarchy: The Trump Ban and the Social Media Ruse
January 06, 2021
Found this on RT: https://www.rt.com/usa/511748-trump-peace-capitol-censored/
This is the tweet Twitter removed:
Actually, Twitter admits to removing TWO tweets:
Does anybody happen to know what the other one was?
Related
Filed under: USA | Tagged: Donald Trump, Twitter, US Election 2020 | Comments Off on Twitter wipes Trump’s latest message
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UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 