Biden Team Calls For Social Media “Disinformation” Censorship Action After G7 Mishap Goes Viral
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 16, 2024
The Biden administration is grappling with backlash as a video depicting President Joe Biden appearing vacant and wandering off, separating from his G7 peers circulated widely online. The footage, in which Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni directs President Biden back in the right direction for the planned photo opportunity, quickly gained traction and has spurred accusations from the media that conservative outlets are disseminating the clip without adequate context, suggesting a deliberate skewing of Biden’s actions.
In response to the spreading video, Adrienne Elrod, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign, labeled the footage “disinformation” and has called on social media platforms to remove or limit its distribution.
“Disinformation is alive and well,” she told MSNBC. “… And, look, we’re gonna see more of this. I mean, this is just the reality of campaigning in 2024. So we have to combat that disinformation. We have to hit it hard when it happens and make it clear that these are dirty tactics that MAGA Republicans are using because they can’t run on the issues.”
Elrod also said, “We’re going to do what we can to combat it but it does take the voices of surrogates across the country. It does take the media to call it out.” Elron also called on social media platforms to do something about it, “It does take social media platforms where a lot of Americans are getting their information to point it out as well.”
This move aligns with previous instances where the Biden team has sought to manage narratives, notably during the October 2020 pre-election period when allegations regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the censorship demands of the COVID era.
With Elon Musk’s platform X refusing to censor the content, the Biden camp’s concern has intensified, facing the challenge of countering the narrative without the aid of content suppression on this major social media outlet.
Critics argue that such attempts to control media narratives through censorship are detrimental to public discourse, emphasizing the importance of transparency and the free exchange of ideas, even if they are unfavorable to those in power.
Full video in context:
Cancelling “Controversial” Scholars
BY GLENN DIESEN | JUNE 16, 2024
In response to an article in Khrono, I want to challenge the label “controversial” that was used to describe me. Controversial means that there are strong and conflicting opinions to what I am arguing.
But academics should use scientific methods to challenge established truths. This is particularly important in international conflicts where consensus in society is to a large extent shaped by the human instinct to respond to threats with conformity and solidarity.
Every time there are attempts to censor and cancel me, it is based on the fact that I have “controversial” arguments about Russia and the war in Ukraine. If my arguments are based on hard facts that are important for understanding the war in Ukraine, then it can still be labeled as “controversial” if it contains information that has been left out of the public debate.
Let me give one example of how reality can become “controversial”. There is now a strong consensus in Norwegian society that Russia’s invasion was not a reaction to NATO expansionism, but motivated by territorial expansion. Was this established truth shaped through the scientific method where freedom of speech allowed us to present all the facts? Or has society been under enormous pressure to present this conflict as a battle between good and evil forces, where even explaining is condemned as defending? There is overwhelming evidence that Russia invaded to prevent NATO expansion, yet it is never reported in the media. How is it possible that none of our journalists report on facts that can be proven and are of the highest relevance to the public to understand this conflict?
In war, the human instinct to seek safety in the group is strengthened. We only discover in retrospect that the war narratives were full of errors, and that the poor analysis led to a bad policy that harmed our own security interests. Since the demand for conformity is great and we punish dissent and deviation from the group, academia is an important balance as ignoring reality undermines the possibilities for peace.
If we believe that Russia will continue to invade new countries, then it supports the argument that “weapons are the path to peace” – even if it could result in a major war. But if Russia wants limitations on NATO’s presence along their borders, then there are possibilities for peaceful solutions.
When the word “controversial” is combined with “pro-Russian”, it becomes impossible to discuss arguments. Suspicion of the person becomes the main focus. The term “pro-Russian” is a charged and tendentious term as it suggests that the person concerned has chosen a side against our country, that there is loyalty with the out-group against the in-group.
I argue that the West’s policy towards Russia over the past 30 years has put us on a collision course and undermined our own security. Should this be labeled as “pro-Russian” and “anti-Western” arguments? The point of departure for conflict resolution is understanding the other party’s security concerns. Is it possible to analyze international security with such restrictions on freedom of expression?
It is possible that I am wrong in my analysis of Russian intentions and there are obviously counter-arguments, but in academia and in an open society, arguments must be allowed to compete in order to get the best possible understanding of reality.
Labeling dissenters as “controversial” is a method of legitimizing censorship and cancellation. This is particularly problematic as the strong consensus in society was formed by leaving out very basic information.
Russian news photographer killed in Ukrainian drone strike
RT | June 16, 2024
Russian news photographer Nikita Tsitsagi has died from injuries sustained in a drone strike in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the portal News.ru reported on Sunday. According to the publication, the correspondent was killed in an attack by Ukrainian drones in the area of the Nikolsky Monastery near the Donbass city of Ugledar, where he was filming a report.
The tragedy was confirmed by Tsitsagi’s colleagues working in the area and local operational services. The details of the incident are unclear so far.
Tsitsagi collaborated with several Russian media outlets, including TASS and Lenta.ru. In June last year, he received the ‘Editorial Board’ journalistic award for a report he did on the Ukraine conflict and its repercussions in the Russian border town of Shebekino in Belgorod Region.
Earlier this week, another photojournalist, NTV crew member Valery Kozhin, died from wounds he suffered in a Ukrainian drone attack on Gorlovka, also in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Kozhin was filming in the area when a mortar round exploded on top of his crew. Journalist Aleksey Ivliev and an accompanying Russian military officer were also injured.
At least 30 Russian journalists have lost their lives in the Ukraine conflict since it began in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a press briefing during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) earlier this month. Among them are Boris Maksudov, who worked for Russia 24 TV, RIA Novosti’s Rostislav Zhuravlev, Tavria TV’s Oleg Klokov, and RuBaltic’s Aleksey Ilyashevich.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of deliberately targeting members of the Russian press who are reporting from the frontline. Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova lashed out at international human rights organizations, including the UN, for remaining silent in the face of Ukrainian attacks. She accused them of becoming Kiev’s accomplices in “this monstrous hunt for our correspondents” and encouraging further atrocities.
BRICS Members Reject Joint Declaration at Swiss Ukraine Conference
Sputnik – 16.06.2024
The BRICS countries, as well as several other states that attended the Swiss-hosted summit on Ukraine did not sign a joint declaration on the results of the talks on Sunday, according to the signatory list.
Earlier in the day, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that the text of the declaration had been finalized and that Kiev’s positions had been taken into account.
The list of countries that signed the final declaration was displayed by the organizers on the screens of the press center at the Buergenstock resort where the summit was held. The document was signed by 80 countries out of 92 present, but Armenia, Bahrain, Brazil, the Holy See, India, Indonesia, Libya, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates did not sign it.
The Ukraine conference is taking place this weekend at the Bürgenstock resort near Lucerne. It includes 92 countries and 55 heads of state, as well as eight organizations, including the EU, the Council of Europe, and the UN. However, US President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and leaders of many other countries did not attend. Some participants, such as US Vice President Kamala Harris and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, left early.
Russia was not invited to the summit. The Kremlin commented that trying to find solutions to the Ukrainian conflict without Moscow’s involvement is completely illogical and unpromising.
War on Gaza failed, war with Hezbollah ‘catastrophic’: Ex-Israeli Gen
Al Mayadeen | June 16, 2024
The war on Gaza has “lost its purpose” and its continuation for the past months has caused “Israel” losses on multiple fronts, Reserve Major General Yitzhak Brik underlined.
Brik has become a prominent critic of both the Israeli government and the military command’s performances, pointing to their failure in several sectors.
During an interview for 103 FM Radio, an affiliate of Israeli news outlet Maariv, Brik emphasized that the war on Gaza continues solely for the benefit of the occupation’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
As for the ongoing operation in the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip, Rafah, the former commander said that “Israeli objectives have not been achieved in the city, as in all of Gaza.”
He noted that the Israeli military is yet to reach or discover many of the Palestinian Resistance’s strategic tunnels. Moreover, Brik described the current proceedings in Rafah as “shameful”, explaining that Israeli occupation forces are not actually fighting Palestinian Resistance fighters, rather “they [Resistance fighters] are booby-trapping the roads and we [Israeli occupation forces] are being killed.”
“We have reduced the army’s capability over 20 years to the point where it cannot defeat Hamas,” he said in reference to the Palestinian Resistance.
War with Hezbollah to be catastrophic
As for the northern front with Lebanon, Brik stressed that any decision by the current Israeli government under the leadership of Netanyahu “will bring catastrophe to Israel.”
He said that the Israeli military cannot currently intercept Hezbollah’s missiles and drones. He then went on to question what would happen in occupied territories if thousands rather than dozens of rockets, drones, and missiles were fired at Israeli positions.
The Israeli occupation is currently suffering the ails of losses on multiple fronts, as its Brigades fail to contain Hezbollah’s responses and attacks in support of Palestine. At the same time, the Israeli occupation continues to admit to increasing losses across the Gaza Strip, where it was revealed that 10 officers and soldiers were killed in the Strip on Saturday.
With no plans for the day after the war being discussed within the coalition government, Israeli military defeat, inept attempts to replace the Resistance in the Gaza Strip, and the uncertainty of success on the Northern Front Israelis have once again slipped into anti-government protests.
On the other hand, the Palestinian Resistance and supporting factions across West Asia seem more united than ever in their fight against the Israeli occupiers.
How Hamas Defeated Israel
By Ted Rall – Sputnik – 16.06.2024
When residents of the Middle East woke up on the morning of October 7, 2023, the Palestinian cause was in a sorry state.
700,000 radical Israeli settler-colonists and sealed-off “military zones” occupied 60% of the occupied West Bank, which was blockaded by a Berlin-style border wall, so much that the United Nations human rights chief no longer believed that Palestinian sovereignty was even theoretically possible. The occupied Gaza Strip was subject to an Israeli blockade that destroyed the economy and drove the unemployment rate to 80%. President Donald Trump had moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem—a strong signal to Palestinians that the world would never allow them their own State—and Joe Biden had let it stay there. Muslim nations that had previously supported the Palestinian struggle (Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan) normalized diplomatic relations with the hard-right government of Israel; Oman, Indonesia, Somalia and Saudi Arabia were expected to follow.
The world, including numerous Arab governments, had forgotten the Palestinians.
By the end of the day, everyone remembered them.
It had been necessary, Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership told The New York Times two weeks after the attack, to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash. We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”
Whether you call it terrorism, asymmetric warfare, guerrilla warfare or resistance, an action like the October 7th raid on an Israeli music festival and nearby kibbutzim is a disadvantaged, underarmed and poorly-situated group’s attempt to flip the game table, catch an adversary by surprise and scramble the positions of the players in order to create a different situation.
It’s also a test of their adversary. More about that below.
Hamas has accomplished its objectives. Israel’s saturation bombing and starvation campaign launched after October 7th, which military analysts call the most brutal and systemic assault against a civilian population since World War II, shocked Muslims (and many other people) around the world. Under pressure from their subjects, the Saudis now say they will only consider a normalization deal that explicitly guarantees Palestinian statehood—something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to consider. Biden, a self-declared Zionist and faithful supporter of the Jewish state throughout his career, now says he wants a two-state solution. He has also threatened to withhold arms, though using weasel words to justify redefining his “red line.” 61% of voters in the United States, to which Israel owes its creation and its closest military ally by far, now say the U.S. should stop supplying all weapons to Israel.
The long-ignored Palestinian issue is so “back on the table” that Democrats worry that they might lose the battleground state of Michigan and the presidency due to the state’s substantial Arab population.
Many Israelis and their supporters fail to grasp the reality of the current situation. How can Hamas be winning? they ask. Israelis support the war effort and the IDF has only lost a few hundred troops, a fifth of them to friendly fire and accidents. Gaza, on the other hand, has been flattened. The IDF has killed at least 37,000 Palestinians, though Ralph Nader is surely closer to the truth when he estimates the total number, including the bodies buried under tens of millions of tons of rubble, at 200,000. Israel’s obvious objective, the expulsion of the surviving population and annexation of Gaza into Israel, appears tantalizingly close.
Yet, the Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar was right when he told his close associates recently: “We have the Israelis right where we want them.”
The Israelis have committed the cardinal error of warfare: underestimating the intelligence of your enemy. Of course Hamas’ leaders knew exactly what Israel would do in response to October 7th. They have studied Israel’s behavior repeatedly over decades: when attacked, Israel always responds with overpowering force, much of it directed against civilians. And they don’t care how it looks. “Hamas knew Israel would strike back hard. That was the point,” Rita Katz of the SITE Intelligence Group told The Washington Post. “To Hamas, Palestinian suffering is a critical component in bringing about the instability and global outrage it seeks to exploit.”
The IDF always tortures civilians and demolishes homes and other infrastructure at an extravagant scale. So, like a chess player, Hamas goaded its aggressive adversary into a fierce attack because it was willing to make sacrifices—Hamas fighters, Palestinian civilians, Gazan infrastructure—in order to obtain something even more valuable.
As we’ve seen recently in northern Gaza, Hamas remains a potent military force able to engage the IDF in street combat. But survival isn’t Hamas’ primary objective. Making Israel look evil is—and Israel has fallen into their trap.
The test Israel faced on October 7th was: can we exercise restraint? Like the United States, which faced a similar test on 9/11, Israel failed miserably. Israel’s over-the-top craziness has fulfilled Hamas’ main goal, which was to expose the Israeli government as bloodthirsty, oppressive monsters unworthy of the support of the world upon which it depends.
As a result, most of the world now recognizes Palestinian sovereignty. The International Criminal Court has ordered Israel to stop its military actions in southern Gaza. The International Court of Justice is preparing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. And the United Nations expressly states that Israel is morally and ethically the same as Hamas, a terrorist organization guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Never mind the two-state solution — it’s dead, and not only because of Netanyahu. The globe is moving toward a new consensus: an end to the Israeli ethnostate from a bygone colonial era, replaced by a one person-one vote post-apartheid democracy.
Looking back to October, the only way Israel could have won at war with Hamas was to learn the lesson of the classic 1980s movie “War Games”: don’t play. Imagine, if you can, how Hamas’ leadership would have felt had Israel refused to take the bait on October 7th, responding only with pinpoint raids to try to rescue hostages, or negotiating for them, while playing the weeping victim for the cameras. It would have been a devastating moral and political defeat and the beginning of the end for the cause of Palestinian liberation.
Israel wanted Gaza. They may not even keep Israel.
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From the Archives
The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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