Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Monday, December 9, 2019
Journalist: Newsweek Suppressed OPCW Scandal And Threatened Me With Legal Action
A Newsweek journalist has resigned after the publication reportedly suppressed his story about the ever-growing OPCW scandal, the revelation of immensely significant plot holes in the establishment Syria narrative that you can update yourself on by watching this short seven-minute video or this more detailed video here.
“Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason,” journalist Tareq Haddad reported today via Twitter.
“I have collected evidence of how they suppressed the story in addition to evidence from another case where info inconvenient to US government was removed, though it was factually correct,” Haddad said. “I plan on publishing these details in full shortly. However, after asking my editors for comment, as is journalistic practice, I received an email reminding me of confidentiality clauses in my contract. I.e. I was threatened with legal action.”
Haddad added that he is now seeking legal advice and looking into the possibility of whistleblower protections for himself, and said at the very least he will publish the information he has while omitting anything that could subject him to legal retaliation from his former employer.
“I could have kept silent and kept my job, but I would not have been able to continue with a clean conscience,” Haddad said. “I will have some instability now but the truth is more important.”
This is the first direct insider report we’re getting on the mass media’s conspiracy of silence on the OPCW scandal that I wrote about just the other day. In how many other newsrooms is this exact same sort of suppression happening, including threats of legal action, to journalists who don’t have the courage or ability to leave and speak out? There is no logical reason to assume that Haddad is the only one encountering such roadblocks from mass media editors; he’s just the only one going public about it.
Newsweek has long been a reliable guard dog and attack dog for the US-centralized empire, with examples of stories that its editors did permit to go to print including an article by an actual, current military intelligence officer explaining why US prosecution of Julian Assange is a good thing, fawning puff pieces on the White Helmets, and despicable smear jobs on Tulsi Gabbard. The outlet will occasionally print oppositional-looking articles like this one by Ian Wilkie questioning the establishment Syria narrative, but not without immediately turning around and publishing an attack on Wilkie’s piece by Eliot Higgins, a former Atlantic Council Senior Fellow who is the cofounder of the NED-funded imperial narrative management firm Bellingcat. Newsweek also recently published an article attacking Tucker Carlson for publicizing the OPCW scandal, basing its criticisms on a bogus Bellingcat article I debunked shortly after its publication.
Read the entire article
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
ADL & SACHA BARON COHEN BECOME CHINESE CENSORS
Just why a roomful of serious-minded people decided to be lectured to about freedom of expression by a comic is hard to fathom. It was sort of like watching a football player on “Dancing with the Stars” – Cohen had no real talent as a rhetor, but he’s famous, and even when he scribbles outside the lines — folks get to say they saw him live and in person.
Cohen doesn’t like Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. That’s fine. There are plenty of reasons not to like Zuckerberg. The fact that he won’t censor political advertising to suit the ADL is not one on those reasons.
Facebook gets immunity from suit for whatever it publishes, a privilege the press doesn’t enjoy. Facebook harvests data from users to sell to advertisers in a manner that is unaccountable. It pours its profits into the creation of proprietary algorithms that manipulate users, dividing people into silos it can target market at will. To add insult to injury, Facebook then decides on its own what content it will banish.
Because it is not a governmental entity, Facebook is not prohibited from engaging in content-based viewpoint discrimination. Thus, my client, Alex Jones is banned. The censors don’t like what he says. Want to listen to Mr. Jones or his show, Infowars? Then listen to Banned.Video. Facebook has shut Jones down.
Facebook’s power to shape desire, predict behavior and keep tabs of us is chilling.
This week, the BBC reported that China houses Uighur Moslems in indoctrination camps. You earn your way out of the camp by persuading your re-educators that you are reformed, that is, that you have learned Mandarin Chinese, lost your faith, and satisfied censors that you know how to behave. This is but an extreme version of what the Chinese are doing to their own people by means of social media – creating citizenship scores for its population. If you don’t satisfy the state-sponsored algorithm that your attitude is what the Chinese government want, you get less in terms of social services and access to goods.
Facebook is habituating us to accept the level of social control China takes for granted. That is what is terrifying about Facebook.
What is terrifying about Cohen and the ADL is that they are happy with this form of social control so long as they get to set the agenda.
Here, in condensed form, is Cohen’s argument:
1. People are free (sort of) to say hateful things on Facebook.
2. People like us – Cohen and the ADL – don’t like those hateful things said.
3. Therefore, we ought to be given the means to place limits on what can be said on Facebook.
Put bluntly – Cohen wants to be a censor. So does the ADL.
A better argument is to require that Facebook and other social media companies enjoying immunity from suit for what they publish be held to first amendment standards in deciding what they can and cannot publish. There is a body of first amendment law, principles that can be decided by jurists and that provide litigants with fair notice of what is and is not permitted. The first amendment is transparent in a way a stand-up comic and his cronies are not.
These are dangerous times from freedom of speech. The danger isn’t hate speech, whatever that is. We’ve always had vituperative speech in the United States. Hell, if someone were tarred and feathered or burned in effigy today, we’d probably declare a national emergency.
The danger is that social media creates an enormous capacity for social control. Zuckerberg misuses that ability now. Giving Cohen and the ADL the same power won’t make the world safe for freedom of expression, it will merely exchange one set of blinders for another.
I’m guessing the overlords in China watched the Cohen speech with approval. “He gets it,” they muttered. I wonder if his next gig will be in Beijing.
Read the entire article
Cohen doesn’t like Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. That’s fine. There are plenty of reasons not to like Zuckerberg. The fact that he won’t censor political advertising to suit the ADL is not one on those reasons.
Facebook gets immunity from suit for whatever it publishes, a privilege the press doesn’t enjoy. Facebook harvests data from users to sell to advertisers in a manner that is unaccountable. It pours its profits into the creation of proprietary algorithms that manipulate users, dividing people into silos it can target market at will. To add insult to injury, Facebook then decides on its own what content it will banish.
Because it is not a governmental entity, Facebook is not prohibited from engaging in content-based viewpoint discrimination. Thus, my client, Alex Jones is banned. The censors don’t like what he says. Want to listen to Mr. Jones or his show, Infowars? Then listen to Banned.Video. Facebook has shut Jones down.
Facebook’s power to shape desire, predict behavior and keep tabs of us is chilling.
This week, the BBC reported that China houses Uighur Moslems in indoctrination camps. You earn your way out of the camp by persuading your re-educators that you are reformed, that is, that you have learned Mandarin Chinese, lost your faith, and satisfied censors that you know how to behave. This is but an extreme version of what the Chinese are doing to their own people by means of social media – creating citizenship scores for its population. If you don’t satisfy the state-sponsored algorithm that your attitude is what the Chinese government want, you get less in terms of social services and access to goods.
Facebook is habituating us to accept the level of social control China takes for granted. That is what is terrifying about Facebook.
What is terrifying about Cohen and the ADL is that they are happy with this form of social control so long as they get to set the agenda.
Here, in condensed form, is Cohen’s argument:
1. People are free (sort of) to say hateful things on Facebook.
2. People like us – Cohen and the ADL – don’t like those hateful things said.
3. Therefore, we ought to be given the means to place limits on what can be said on Facebook.
Put bluntly – Cohen wants to be a censor. So does the ADL.
A better argument is to require that Facebook and other social media companies enjoying immunity from suit for what they publish be held to first amendment standards in deciding what they can and cannot publish. There is a body of first amendment law, principles that can be decided by jurists and that provide litigants with fair notice of what is and is not permitted. The first amendment is transparent in a way a stand-up comic and his cronies are not.
These are dangerous times from freedom of speech. The danger isn’t hate speech, whatever that is. We’ve always had vituperative speech in the United States. Hell, if someone were tarred and feathered or burned in effigy today, we’d probably declare a national emergency.
The danger is that social media creates an enormous capacity for social control. Zuckerberg misuses that ability now. Giving Cohen and the ADL the same power won’t make the world safe for freedom of expression, it will merely exchange one set of blinders for another.
I’m guessing the overlords in China watched the Cohen speech with approval. “He gets it,” they muttered. I wonder if his next gig will be in Beijing.
Read the entire article
Thursday, November 21, 2019
With Assange Safely Locked up, Sweden Drops ‘Investigation’
Now that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is safely locked up in Belmarsh prison awaiting a U.S. extradition hearing, Sweden has, for a third time, dropped its rape investigation.
“After conducting a comprehensive assessment of what has emerged during the course of the preliminary investigation I then make the assessment that the evidence is not strong enough to form the basis for filing an indictment,” said Deputy Chief Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson at a press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday.
This decision comes days after the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer began making noise about the Swedish government’s refusal to answer his questions on the many enormous, glaring plot holes in the investigation, which began in 2010. These plot holes include “proactive manipulation of evidence” with the testimony of the alleged victim, a condom provided as evidence that had neither the DNA of Assange nor of the alleged victim on it, complete disregard for confidentiality rules and normal investigative protocol from the earliest moments of the investigation onward, disregard for conflicts of interest, Sweden’s refusal to provide assurance that Assange would not be extradited to the U.S. if he went there to answer questions, statements made by the alleged victims which contradict the allegations, unexplained correspondence between Swedish prosecutors and the FBI, and many others.
None of which matters anymore. He is caged, and public support for him has been deliberately demolished. The Swedish parody of an “investigation” did its job. Assange took political asylum with the government of Ecuador out of fear of U.S. extradition and was slowly squeezed off from the outside world, his own reputation, and his own physical health while the empire prepared its case against him, keeping him increasingly immobilized, silenced and smeared until he could be forcibly pried from the embassy in April of this year.
Once this was accomplished, all the feigned concern for alleged victims of sexual assault suddenly vanished, lining up perfectly with a 2010 article authored in the early days of the investigation by feminist writer Naomi Wolf who said, “How do I know that Interpol, Britain and Sweden’s treatment of Julian Assange is a form of theater? Because I know what happens in rape accusations against men that don’t involve the embarrassing of powerful governments.”
Read the entire article
“After conducting a comprehensive assessment of what has emerged during the course of the preliminary investigation I then make the assessment that the evidence is not strong enough to form the basis for filing an indictment,” said Deputy Chief Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson at a press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday.
This decision comes days after the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer began making noise about the Swedish government’s refusal to answer his questions on the many enormous, glaring plot holes in the investigation, which began in 2010. These plot holes include “proactive manipulation of evidence” with the testimony of the alleged victim, a condom provided as evidence that had neither the DNA of Assange nor of the alleged victim on it, complete disregard for confidentiality rules and normal investigative protocol from the earliest moments of the investigation onward, disregard for conflicts of interest, Sweden’s refusal to provide assurance that Assange would not be extradited to the U.S. if he went there to answer questions, statements made by the alleged victims which contradict the allegations, unexplained correspondence between Swedish prosecutors and the FBI, and many others.
None of which matters anymore. He is caged, and public support for him has been deliberately demolished. The Swedish parody of an “investigation” did its job. Assange took political asylum with the government of Ecuador out of fear of U.S. extradition and was slowly squeezed off from the outside world, his own reputation, and his own physical health while the empire prepared its case against him, keeping him increasingly immobilized, silenced and smeared until he could be forcibly pried from the embassy in April of this year.
Once this was accomplished, all the feigned concern for alleged victims of sexual assault suddenly vanished, lining up perfectly with a 2010 article authored in the early days of the investigation by feminist writer Naomi Wolf who said, “How do I know that Interpol, Britain and Sweden’s treatment of Julian Assange is a form of theater? Because I know what happens in rape accusations against men that don’t involve the embarrassing of powerful governments.”
Read the entire article
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Friday, July 26, 2019
End Forever War? Divest Zionism. US Congress Passes Resolution which Violates Constitution
BREAKING: 398 House members just voted for H.Res.246 in a powerful statement opposing the global BDS campaign and its deliberate discrimination of Israel. This overwhelming vote is representative of the breadth, depth and diversity of bipartisan support for Israel in Congress.
The AIPAC servitors in Congress believe the ability to confront Israel’s apartheid must be criminalized, even at the expense of the Constitution they supposedly swore an oath to uphold (and this has been a joke for some time).
More than 250 million Americans, some 78 percent of the population, live in states with anti-boycott laws or policies.
Three members of Congress are fighting back to defend the First Amendment. https://www.aclu.org/blog/right-boycott-under-attack-some-members-congress-are-pushing-back …
But never mind the Constitution, which is close to being a dead letter. As a free human, you have a natural right to oppose and refuse to do business with any individual or entity you so please, and also encourage others to do likewise, so long as that opposition is not violent or coercive.
Read the entire article
The AIPAC servitors in Congress believe the ability to confront Israel’s apartheid must be criminalized, even at the expense of the Constitution they supposedly swore an oath to uphold (and this has been a joke for some time).
More than 250 million Americans, some 78 percent of the population, live in states with anti-boycott laws or policies.
Three members of Congress are fighting back to defend the First Amendment. https://www.aclu.org/blog/right-boycott-under-attack-some-members-congress-are-pushing-back …
But never mind the Constitution, which is close to being a dead letter. As a free human, you have a natural right to oppose and refuse to do business with any individual or entity you so please, and also encourage others to do likewise, so long as that opposition is not violent or coercive.
Read the entire article
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Monday, June 10, 2019
Monday, April 15, 2019
Friday, April 12, 2019
Read the Julian Assange indictment
Soon after Assange’s arrest on Thursday, the Justice Department unsealed court documents of charges related to WikiLeaks’ publication of videos and documents leaked by US Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning starting in 2010. The indictment alleges that Assange engaged in a conspiracy with Manning to crack a password on a Defense Department computer network for classified documents and communications to download classified records and transmit them to WikiLeaks.
In a statement, the department called the incident “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
Read the entire article
In a statement, the department called the incident “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
Read the entire article
Monday, March 4, 2019
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
The Movement to Suppress and Impoverish Critics of Israel is Racist
Marc Lamont Hill, Tim Anderson, Steven Salaita, Rabab Abdulhadi, Hatem Bazian, Ahlam Muhtasib, Norman Finkelstein and other academics have all been targets of the movement to silence their criticisms of Israel and their defense of Palestinians. This includes threats and legal actions to try to deny them employment, in violation of their free speech rights, one of the most hallowed and ancient principles of academia. Salaita and Finkelstein were, in fact, denied employment, to the great detriment of their entire career. Hill and Anderson are currently defending themselves from this threat.
It is central to our understanding of these threats that the accusers are invariably Zionist or pro-Zionist individuals and institutions. Their backers include the Israeli government, which co-ordinates the movement through its Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the Israel lobbies in the US, UK, France, Australia and other countries, and the major Jewish Zionist billionaire funders, such as Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, Bernard Marcus and others. They emphatically do not include non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews, but almost always include non-Jewish Zionists.
This is already enough to conclude that there is a fundamental difference between Jews and Zionists and that many are one without being the other, including some ultra-orthodox Jews, like the Neturei Karta. The relevance of this is that the accusations against the critics of Israel are always that they are racist anti-Jews; i.e., “anti-Semitic”. The evidence consists of testimony from Jewish students and Jewish organizations that the criticisms make them feel “unsafe” or that they find them offensive.
Read the entire article
It is central to our understanding of these threats that the accusers are invariably Zionist or pro-Zionist individuals and institutions. Their backers include the Israeli government, which co-ordinates the movement through its Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the Israel lobbies in the US, UK, France, Australia and other countries, and the major Jewish Zionist billionaire funders, such as Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, Bernard Marcus and others. They emphatically do not include non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews, but almost always include non-Jewish Zionists.
This is already enough to conclude that there is a fundamental difference between Jews and Zionists and that many are one without being the other, including some ultra-orthodox Jews, like the Neturei Karta. The relevance of this is that the accusations against the critics of Israel are always that they are racist anti-Jews; i.e., “anti-Semitic”. The evidence consists of testimony from Jewish students and Jewish organizations that the criticisms make them feel “unsafe” or that they find them offensive.
Read the entire article
Friday, October 12, 2018
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
The Coming Military Vision of State Censorship
At TruePublica, we have continually warned that in Britain the government is becoming ever more authoritarian with its underhand attack on civil liberty and human rights. We have warned about the illegality of mass surveillance and state intrusion into the privacy of every citizen. We have warned about sweeping new police powers, the use of secret courts and new laws designed to protect the state and corporations from the scrutiny and criticisms of the people and we have warned that democracy in Britain is being eroded in favour of a political elite whose power they want entrenched. This is demonstrated no better than recent events in a meeting held in Austalia of new state censorship rules.
A key meeting of cabinet members from the US-led Five Eyes (UK,US, Aus, Can, NZ) global spying network was held in Australia in late August, which went totally unreported by the mainstream media, mainly because Britain’s representative used the cloak of Brexit to disguise it, ironically via social media.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton hosted the summit. Leading the other delegations were US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid, along with Canada’s Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and New Zealand Justice Minister Andrew Little.
On the agenda, these ‘Five-Eyes’ officials castigated the major tech transnationals for not meeting with them. An accompanying “Joint Statement on Countering the Illicit Use of Online Spaces” demanded that these internet corporations toe the line and clamp down on social media and algorithms producing results, not in the state interest.
Read the entire article
A key meeting of cabinet members from the US-led Five Eyes (UK,US, Aus, Can, NZ) global spying network was held in Australia in late August, which went totally unreported by the mainstream media, mainly because Britain’s representative used the cloak of Brexit to disguise it, ironically via social media.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton hosted the summit. Leading the other delegations were US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid, along with Canada’s Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and New Zealand Justice Minister Andrew Little.
On the agenda, these ‘Five-Eyes’ officials castigated the major tech transnationals for not meeting with them. An accompanying “Joint Statement on Countering the Illicit Use of Online Spaces” demanded that these internet corporations toe the line and clamp down on social media and algorithms producing results, not in the state interest.
Read the entire article
Friday, October 5, 2018
PayPal Dumps Alex Jones; Still Handles SPLC
PayPal finally joined other Big Tech giants in attacking Alex Jones and his Infowars empire, dumping the conservative conspiracy theorist from its site.
The leftist Internet purchasing platform, which handles buying and selling goods online, targeted Jones because he retails “hate speech.” This, we are told, violates PayPal’s policies.
The money-changing giant joined Apple, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter in waging war against Jones. The generalissimo in charge of the campaign was CNN’s senior media writer, Oliver Darcy.
No Policy Violation
PayPal’s notice gave Jones 10 days to find a new vendor to handle payments, The New York Times reported. “PayPal handles all transactions, including credit cards, for the Infowars online store.”
Yet Paypal admitted Jones did nothing wrong. “PayPal said it had made its decision not because of any policy violation but because Infowars’ ‘promotion of hate and discrimination runs counter to our core value of inclusion.’”
Said PayPal, “Our values are the foundation for the decision we made this week.”
PayPal, it seems, has joined the other tech giants in a war to destroy Jones.
Read the entire article
The leftist Internet purchasing platform, which handles buying and selling goods online, targeted Jones because he retails “hate speech.” This, we are told, violates PayPal’s policies.
The money-changing giant joined Apple, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter in waging war against Jones. The generalissimo in charge of the campaign was CNN’s senior media writer, Oliver Darcy.
No Policy Violation
PayPal’s notice gave Jones 10 days to find a new vendor to handle payments, The New York Times reported. “PayPal handles all transactions, including credit cards, for the Infowars online store.”
Yet Paypal admitted Jones did nothing wrong. “PayPal said it had made its decision not because of any policy violation but because Infowars’ ‘promotion of hate and discrimination runs counter to our core value of inclusion.’”
Said PayPal, “Our values are the foundation for the decision we made this week.”
PayPal, it seems, has joined the other tech giants in a war to destroy Jones.
Read the entire article
Monday, September 24, 2018
Thursday, September 13, 2018
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