Tag Archives: The Anti-Media

Social Media Censorship Intensifies

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By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Another Day in the Empire

Both the Free Thought Project and The Anti-Media lost their social media accounts in a coordinated attack today by Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook alone removed 559 pages and 251 accounts.

Facebook has unpublished our page

After 5 years of building fans Facebook has officially unpublished our page (3.1 million fans) so we can’t post on it anymore. This is truly an outrage and we are devastated. We will do everything we can to recover our page and fight back. pic.twitter.com/H3AmHTT8Qo

— Free Thought Project (@TFTPROJECT) October 11, 2018

Dan Dicks is another victim.

“The Press For Truth FaceBook Page with 350k followers has just been memory holed form the internet! 350k followers gone in the blink of an eye as we are right before our eyes witnessing the results of what happens when these big tech companies appoint themselves as the gatekeepers of political thought and opinion,” a headline story at Press For Truth reports today.

The midterm election is being used as an excuse to purge social media accounts and thus reduce traffic to websites on the target list.

First it was alt-right figures like Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich who had their accounts pulled for behavior that is an every day occurrence by others on social media.

Then Alex Jones was taken down. This was a landmark event that served notice on other websites diverging from the establishment narrative and spreading dangerous “alternative facts.”

Now the effort has moved on the the next level of targets, those with moderate to high social media traffic and successful websites with growing viewership. Not millions like Jones, but a couple hundred thousand all the way down to tens of thousands.

Numbers are way down for sites banished from the corporate social media kingdom. Traffic is drying up and thus support.

This is precisely what the establishment and its political class have in mind. It has nothing to do with “inauthentic” content as they claim. It is a concerted effort to wipe out for good entire segments of the alternative media.

If Democrats take control of Congress next month, watch out. They will make it impossible for another Donald Trump to get elected with the help of social media.

They leveraged the patently absurd and widely discredited Russian influence scam. The accusation Trump somehow colluded with the Russians has been used to tarnish his supporters, conservatives in general, and other groups not part of the establishment engineered political arrangement.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others are building an algorithmic filter. It will not permit entire segments of the population to weigh in on political issues during federal elections.

That model, most recently tested in Brazil, will be used. If successful in November, it will be further implemented after the election.

The European model (not based on constitutional liberties) will be adopted. This is a collectivist arrangement where certain groups are protected by the government while individual Germans and Swedes are singled out and prosecuted for criticizing the arrangement on social media.

Finally, I believe somewhere down the line many of us will barred access to the internet if were appear on a government list similar to the malfunctioning no-fly list. This will be easy to implement. Pass a law forbidding ISPs from selling service to Americans espousing political ideas considered racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, etc., by the government.

In the current political climate, it’s easy to fall into one of these categories. Others will be memory holed simply due to their political philosophy, most notably conservatives and libertarians, but also nonviolent radical leftists and progressives opposed to the military-industrial-surveillance complex and neoliberal globalism.

 

Pages purged by Facebook were on blacklist promoted by Washington Post

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By Andre Damon

Source: WSWS.org

Media outlets removed by Facebook on Thursday, in a massive purge of 800 accounts and pages, had previously been targeted in a blacklist of oppositional sites promoted by the Washington Post in November 2016.

The organizations censored by Facebook included The Anti-Media, with 2.1 million followers, The Free Thought Project, with 3.1 million followers, and Counter Current News, with 500,000 followers. All three of these groups had been on the blacklist.

In November 2016, the Washington Post published a puff-piece on a shadowy, and up to then largely unknown, organization called PropOrNot, which had compiled a list of organizations it claimed were part of a “sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign.”

The Post said the report “identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans.”

The publication of the blacklist drew widespread media condemnation, including from journalists Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, forcing the Post to publish a partial retraction. The newspaper declared that it “does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet.”

While the individuals behind PropOrNot have not identified themselves, the Washington Post said the group was a “collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.”

PropOrNot, which remains active on Twitter, publicly gloated about Facebook’s removal of the pages. “Russian propaganda is VERY VERY MAD about their various front outlets & fellow travellers getting suspended by @Facebook &/or @Twitter.” The tweet tagged The Anti Media and The Free Thought Project, and included a Russian flag emoji next to an emoji depicting feces.

PropOrNot did not attempt to reconcile its own narrative that the targeted organizations were front groups for the Kremlin with Facebook’s official claim that they operated independently of any government, but instead sought to “stir up political debate” for financial motives. This is because both accusations are hollow pretexts for political censorship.

In a separate post, Propornot added: “Well, look at that… @Facebook removed some of the most important gray/black Russian propaganda outlets from their platform! Bravo @Facebook – better late than never, so a BIG thank you for this.”

It added, ominously: “All of these [organizations] are cross platform & have websites, but one thing at a time.”

These comments by PropOrNot make clear where the US government’s censorship measures are going. While these organizations still “have websites,” the authorities are handling “one thing at a time.”

The clear implication is that censorship will not end with Google’s search platform or the removal of accounts by Facebook and Twitter. The ultimate aim is the total banning of oppositional news web sites.

The publication of the PropOrNot blacklist and its promotion by the Washington Post helped trigger a wave of censorship measures against oppositional news sites by the major technology companies, working at the instigation of the US intelligence agencies and leading politicians.

Last Year, the World Socialist Web Site reported that many of the sites, including Global Research, Counterpunch, Consortium News, WikiLeaks, and Truth-out saw their search traffic plunge after search giant Google implemented a change to its search ranking algorithm.

In the subsequent period, search traffic to these sites has fallen even further. Search traffic to Counterpunch has fallen by 39 percent, and Consortium News has fallen by 51 percent.

These developments confirm the analysis made by the World Socialist Web Site in its open letter to Google alleging that it was censoring left-wing, anti-war and socialist websites.

“Censorship on this scale is political blacklisting,” the letter declared. “The obvious intent of Google’s censorship algorithm is to block news that your company does not want reported and to suppress opinions with which you do not agree. Political blacklisting is not a legitimate exercise of whatever may be Google’s prerogatives as a commercial enterprise. It is a gross abuse of monopolistic power. What you are doing is an attack on freedom of speech.”

On Tuesday, Google admitted that it and other technology companies had “gradually shifted away from unmediated free speech and towards censorship and moderation.” The document admitted that an aim of carrying out censorship was to “increase revenues” under conditions of growing government and commercial pressure.

The document acknowledged that such actions constitute a break with the “American tradition that prioritizes free speech for democracy.”

The Difference Between the Death Star and the Pentagon

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StarWarsPentagon

By Carey Wedler

Source: The Anti-Media

The Imperial Death Star from Star Wars and the Pentagon have much in common. It is not difficult to observe the similarities between the two behemoth structures and what they represent-especially in recent years.

For one, both used to be part of representative republics and both represent the military wings of the empires in power. In 2007, Alternet reported that the U.S. had 737 bases, 38 of which were “major,” and that

“…perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty.”

The desire of the military’s operatives to exert control over regions all over the world parallels the desire of the Emperor and Vader to rule the galaxy.

Another similarity is the desire of both the Death Star’s leaders and those at the Pentagon to weed out dissent. One of the main objectives of the dark side’s adherents is to find the rebels and eliminate them.

Though the Pentagon hasn’t quite started assassinating political dissidents (or entire planets, though Hiroshima and Nagasaki are an earthly comparison to Alderaan), it has made its views crystal clear: protesters are a form of terrorist and anyone deemed associated with terrorism may be denied his or her rights.

Still another commonality between the two ministries of war and destruction is the level of decadence afforded to the galactic and American agencies. The Death Star was a moon-sized, laser-clad behemoth for the Dark Side. The Pentagon employs 23,000 people in a floor space three times the size of the Empire state building and spawns doomsday technology. In both societies, the resources devoted to violence far outweigh those dedicated to promoting peace or the well-being of humanity (or alienhood).

It is easy to compare the Death Star and the Pentagon as manifestations of evil that seek power and rule by force. But there exists at least one stark difference:

In the Washington Post this week, it was revealed that the Pentagon is looking for someone to fill its “Yoda” position.

The job ad for “Director of the Office of Net Assessment” currently reads:

“The Director’s primary function is to develop assessments that compare the standings, trends and future prospects of U.S. military capability and military potential with that of other countries.”

The job was founded and held by longtime analyst Andrew W. Marshall, who recently retired. Because of his wisdom and knowledge throughout the years, he came to be known as “Yoda.”

And therein lies the difference between the rulers of the Death Star and the rulers of the Pentagon: at least Darth Vader, the emperor and their cohorts knew they were evil.

Vader repeatedly spoke of the powers of the Dark Side, of the great benefit of crossing over into evil. In the Empire Strikes Back, he tempted Luke to join the dark side to rule the galaxy with him:

“Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny, join me and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.”

He iterated the slavery of being on the dark side in Return of the Jedi:

“You don’t know the power of the dark side. I must obey my master.”

Considering the empire practices what is called the “dark side” of the force, its members knew exactly what they signed up for.

But to a clearly significant portion of employees at the Pentagon, the irony is lost. It has gone over their heads that working for the world’s biggest, arguably most vicious military, is not working on the side of morality, peace, or freedom.

By calling a man who works for the Pentagon “Yoda”-a virtuous practitioner of the force- it is clear that many who work for the Pentagon believe they are working for a “force” of good. It’s scary. It’s scarier that the Pentagon likely has employees who know of its evil and yet continue to work there.

May all Pentagon employees recognize its evil, quit their jobs at the American Death Star, and work to promote the true meaning of the “force” (the same goes for soldiers of governments around the world). As the real Yoda said:

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

This is exactly how violent governments keep their people and foot soldiers under control and realizing this is the first step to achieving freedom and peace.

 

 

 

The US Government Thinks it Can Fool Us into a War with Russia

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By Nick Bernabe

Source: The Anti-Media

It seems like only a few months ago (because it was) when the government that rules America was condemning the brutal crackdown against protesters by the Ukrainian government. The then-Russian backed regime was fending off large crowds of protesters who were angry about the Ukrainian government’s close ties with Russia, resorting to violence and anti-riot tactics to disperse the crowds.

In a statement issued by the White House on January 19th, before the new Western backed ‘legitimate’ government of Ukraine took power, US officials condemned the violence against protesters:

“We are deeply concerned by the violence taking place today on the streets of Kyiv and urge all sides to immediately de-escalate the situation. The increasing tension in Ukraine is a direct consequence of the government failing to acknowledge the legitimate grievances of its people.

Instead, it has moved to weaken the foundations of Ukraine’s democracy by criminalizing peaceful protest and stripping civil society and political opponents of key democratic protections under the law. We urge the government of Ukraine to take steps that represent a better way forward for Ukraine, including repeal of the anti-democratic legislation signed into law in recent days, withdrawing the riot police from downtown Kyiv, and beginning a dialogue with the political opposition.

From its first days, the Maidan movement has been defined by a spirit of non-violence and we support today’s call by opposition political leaders to reestablish that principle. The U.S. will continue to consider additional steps — including sanctions — in response to the use of violence.”

In a noble yet ironic –selective at best– attempt to stand up for human rights, what the US government said in the above statement made sense. Kind of.

While fighting for freedom of speech is a good thing, it should be stood up for even when it’s inconvenient. Now, as the US and allies in the West deliver billions in loans, tech and intel to the new central-banker-run government in Ukraine, Kiev is fully engaging (and killing) pro-Russian protesters in the East of Ukraine and even in the Southwestern port city of Odessa. Ahh yes, the sweet smell of selective humanitarianism.

Then –lockstep with American political talking heads– US media outlets immediately began referring to these pro-Russian (former)protesters as insurgents, militants, militiamen, radicals, separatists and terrorists just before the killing started a few months ago. They knew it was coming. 40 pro-Russians were burned alive in a building on Friday and there was hardly a mention of it in the news. You see, now the protesters are called terrorists so it’s okay to kill them. When did the media stop calling them protesters and start calling them terrorists? When it became politically convenient. Iraq remembers.

The US government (and citizen by default through taxes) is actively supporting the crony, human rights abusing, unelected Ukrainian regime through billions in loans, military training and equipment of which we can only speculate about.

As an American citizen, I do not consent to this insane foreign policy. And, according to a recent survey by the Wall Street Journal, it seems that at least 47% of Americans agree with me:

Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine preoccupies Washington, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of those surveyed want the U.S. to be less active on the global stage, with fewer than one-fifth calling for more active engagement—an anti-interventionist current that sweeps across party lines.

…The poll findings, combined with the results of prior Journal/NBC surveys this year, portray a public weary of foreign entanglements and disenchanted with a U.S. economic system that many believe is stacked against them. The 47% of respondents who called for a less-active role in world affairs marked a larger share than in similar polling in 2001, 1997 and 1995. 

Good! So the propaganda isn’t working, but the government doesn’t really care about public opinion anymore. After all, how many Americans would actually support sending billions of US dollars to an oppressive Ukrainian puppet regime while our own schools and infrastructure dwindle into a bureaucratic wasteland and the country falls $16+ Trillion into debt? Not me.

Another small detail to remember as the US government escalates tensions in Ukraine under the banner of de-escalation (I know it’s Orwellian, but what isn’t nowadays) is that the American government likely helped overthrow the democratically elected, Russian-aligned former government of Ukraine. As this leaked tape of a conversation between diplomats proves, the US government hand picked central banker Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the new ‘legitimate’ leader of Ukraine long before the coup took place. Oh yeah, “Fuck the EU” while we’re at it!

Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, later haphazardly apologized for her remarks that were recorded and leaked anonymously when she appeared at a press conference, clearly shaken up and taken back by the leak:

So while the US government and their media cohorts continue to push for the West’s version of “stability, democracy and self-determination” in Ukraine, the truth is that they were and continue to be part of the driving force causing these very problems they seek to fix. But hey, what’s new?

In no way do I seek to condone Putin or Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Russia is also a large oppressor in the region and is an oligarchy which is structured and governed much like America, for the rich. The Russian-American proxy war in Ukraine will have one guaranteed loser, the innocent Ukrainian civilians who are caught in the crossfire of this banker resource conflict. Both American and Russian citizens must regain control over their governments or these injustices will continue. Please share this article if you think WWIII is a bad idea.