Israel prevents foreign journalists from entering Gaza
MEMO | May 11, 2023
The Israeli occupation authorities have been preventing foreign journalists from entering Gaza since the start of its offensive on Tuesday night.
In a press release, Head of Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza, Salameh Maarouf, said: “The Israeli occupation has been closing Beit Hanoon Crossing and preventing foreign media crews from entering the strip to cover its offensive.”
Maarouf called on the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and all other bodies concerned with the freedom of the press and freedom of speech to take practical measures against the Israeli occupation so that it lifts its restrictions on the entry of media crews.
He considered the Israeli ban on the entry of foreign media as a “violation of the freedom of journalists to practice their work, as well as a violation of their right to free movement.”
At the same time, he pointed out that the Israeli occupation bans foreign journalists from entering Gaza during every offensive it carries out against the besieged coastal enclave.
Maarouf stressed that the “silence of the international bodies concerned with media is the reason that encourages the Israeli occupation to repeat and continue its oppressive and suppressive violations.”
NBC Host Worries No One Will Be Able to “Police” What Tucker Carlson Says if He Moves Show to Twitter
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 10, 2023
NBC host Tom Costello is worried that no one will be able to “police” what Tucker Carlson says if he moves his show to Twitter.
Oh no, the absolute horror.
The former Fox News host posted a video to Twitter yesterday announcing that he would move his content to the platform owned by Elon Musk.
“There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world is Twitter,” said Carlson, adding, “You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true.”
The legacy media reacted by panicking that Carlson will go uncensored.
NBC host Costello accused Twitter of peddling “misinformation, disinformation, all out lies” (information that doesn’t fortify regime narratives) before expressing his real fear.
“Will anybody be able to police what Carlson says, or is this the point, it’s just a free for all?” he asked former CNN host Brian Stelter.
Stelter responded by claiming that Tucker’s increased presence on Twitter will cement the platform as a “right-wing website.”
Because God forbid someone be allowed to speak freely without having their activity ‘policed’ by censors – we can’t have that!
Yesterday, CNN faced ridicule for describing Carlson, who at his peak enjoyed a viewership of over 5 million people, as a “right wing extremist.”
Carlson moving full time to Twitter might be a way to circumvent the fact that Fox is trying to keep him locked in a contract until 2025, preventing him from being signed up by other broadcasters and freezing him out of the 2024 election.
Elon Musk responded to the announcement by clarifying that Twitter and Carlson have not signed “a deal of any kind whatsoever,” and that the former Fox host will be supported by user subscriptions and advertising revenue.
Leaked Legal Analysis Of EU’s Private Message Snooping Plans Says It Interferes With “Fundamental Rights”
Undermining the EU’s self-described commitment to privacy
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 10, 2023
There are few things the EU Commission (the EU’s executive arm) would like to present more than the bloc and its institutions speaking with one voice, particularly on controversial topics, such as attempts to destroy encryption.
However, documents leaked from the EU Council Legal Service regarding the legality of a proposal known as “chat control” (formally, Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, CSAR), show that there may be “trouble in paradise.”
As digital rights advocate and European Parliament member (MEP) Patrick Breyer of Germany reports, the Service has warned the Commission that its idea probably runs contrary to the fundamental right to respect for private life – meaning that the European Court of Justice would likely annul it.
Summed up, the “chat control” scheme proposes forcing providers of chat, messaging, phone, and email services to screen all private messages in search for illegal content and then inform the police.
But the problem with this, as the Service has noticed, is that it very easily could be interpreted as general and indiscriminate, as well as permanent surveillance, given that the plan gives “generalized” access to every citizen, including those the analysis says are “not even remotely connected with child sexual exploitation.”
And with the high likelihood that CSAR’s “detection orders” would be considered a violation of the fundamental right to privacy and confidentiality of correspondence, the EU court is also highly likely to squash “chat control” as indiscriminate surveillance, the Service warns.
The analysis also notes that while if the justification for “communications metadata screening” is national security, the court allows it – the drastic measures proposed in the CSAR would probably not be considered proportional to their stated purpose.
There’s also the issue of the EU Commission making the dubious claim that the process, rather than generalized, is somehow “targeted” (it does target everyone – so perhaps that’s the sophistry those behind the CSAR chose to go with.)
But the Legal Service’s analysis fears this is actually a “contradiction” between what the Commission is saying, and what the proposal actually spells out.
The Service’s logical suggestion then is to actually target detection orders so that they apply to people “in respect of whom there are reasonable grounds to believe that they are in some way involved in, committing or have committed a child sexual abuse offense.”
Observers have noted that the analysis of the CSAR – whose UK counterpart is the Online Safety Bill, represents serious criticism of similar, encryption-undermining proposals on both sides of the Atlantic.
New Federal Disinformation Offices Created
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | May 9, 2023
The Intercept recently reported the creation of two new federal offices to combat disinformation. The Pentagon will oversee the “Influence and Perception Management Office,” which is consistent with the fact that “Perception Management” is an old DoD euphemism for psychological warfare and deception. According to the investigative journalist Robert Parry, who covered the Iran-Contra Affair, the Reagan and first Bush Administrations adopted the techniques of “Perception Management” for the objective of overcoming the American public’s “Vietnam Syndrome”—that is, its reluctance to get involved in foreign military adventures that were widely perceived as fruitless and likely to end badly.
Given that the federal government is already a Leviathan of agencies for conducting propaganda, influence, and surveillance operations, one wonders why it is necessary to create new offices for these activities. The new Biden Administration offices are purportedly to keep the homeland and its people safe from dangerous foreign adversaries. More likely they will work round the clock to keep our people insulated from outside sources of information that would serve to counterbalance U.S. government and MSM propaganda.
US developed AI tool to battle ‘Russian disinformation’ – Blinken
RT | May 10, 2023
Washington has developed an artificial intelligence-based system to detect and gather ‘Russian’ disinformation online, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed on Tuesday at the Freedom House 2023 Annual Awards Ceremony.
The State Department has created “an AI-enabled online Ukraine Content Aggregator to collect verifiable Russian disinformation and then to share that with partners around the world,” the US top diplomat said.
The government is cooperating with scholars to be able to “reliably detect fake text generated by Russian chatbots,” he added.
Last year, social media analytics company Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory said hundreds of accounts disseminating pro-Western narratives over the past five were likely being run by the Pentagon’s Centcom unit. In March, news website The Intercept reported on federal contract documents, which suggest that the US Special Operations Command is planning to conduct propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake technology.
Last month, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the US of waging “an unprecedented information campaign” against Russia since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. Washington and its allies “need war at any cost, and their favorite method of solving their own problems is provocations, disinformation and threats,” Zakharova argued.
Speaking about artificial intelligence in general, Blinken warned that the technology can backfire and “amplify discrimination and enable abuses.”
“It also runs the risk of strengthening autocratic governments, including by enabling them to exploit social media even more effectively to manipulate their people and sow division among and within their adversaries,” he said.
Since the release of the artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT last November, the debate over the dangers posed by AI has intensified in the industry and in academic circles. Geoffrey Hinton, who is known as one of the ‘godfathers’ of AI, warned last week that the technology could present a “more urgent” threat than climate change.
In March, several tech industry leaders, including Elon Musk, co-signed an open letter, urging a six-month pause in the development of AI technology more powerful than ChatGPT, and the appointment of an independent regulator to provide oversight in the field.
Paris to Block Websites Sharing News Content of Sputnik, RT France
Sputnik – 10.05.2023
PARIS – France will block websites that share information of sanctioned media, including RT France and Sputnik, under a new law on security of digital space, French Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications Jean-Noel Barrot said on Wednesday.
“As part of measures to protect democracy we will also begin blocking websites that share content of media under international sanctions like the ones the EU imposed against RT France and Sputnik. This measure will complement our existing tools to fight the propaganda of the enemies of democracy,” Barrot told a briefing after a cabinet meeting.
The French ministry has claimed the measure will allow the authorities to protect people from disinformation by expanding the powers of Arcom, the country’s media regulator, which will be authorized to impose restrictive measures against media.
The draft law will be submitted to the Senate in early July, Barrot stated.
Since the start of Russia’s special military operation, a number of jurisdictions, including the European Commission, have decided to censor Russian media and affiliated journalists. In early March 2022, the EU banned the broadcasting and distribution of content by RT and Sputnik as part of the sanctions against Russia, applying the restrictions to all means of content transmission and distribution, such as cable, satellite, IPTV, platforms, websites and apps. All relevant RT, Sputnik licenses and agreements are suspended.
Anger spreads in Pakistan as govt arrests nearly 1,000 Imran Khan supporters
The Cradle | May 10, 2023
Pakistani police have detained at least 945 supporters of ousted prime minister Imran Khan in Punjab, the country’s most populous province, since protests erupted on 9 May following Khan’s arrest.
At least one protester was shot dead by security forces in the southwestern city of Quetta on Tuesday, according to a CNN reporter present at the scene.
“Police teams arrested 945 lawbreakers and miscreants from across the province,” officials said in a statement to the media, adding that 130 security officers were injured, 25 police and government vehicles were burnt, and 14 government buildings were attacked during the protests.
In the face of popular discontent, the interior ministry on 10 May requisitioned the help of the army to “maintain law and order” in Punjab.
On Tuesday, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) deployed dozens of paramilitary troops to dramatically detain Khan under alleged charges of “corruption and corrupt practices.”
The former premier was presented in an Islamabad court on Wednesday morning to face the charges. During the hearing, the NAB requested the court approve Khan be kept under police custody for 14 days, a move his lawyers opposed.
Khan’s lawyers also insisted that the court investigate the irregular manner in which the 70-year old politician was arrested from the premises of the Islamabad High Court.
In a pre-recorded statement released on YouTube by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party after his arrest, the former premier said he was “detained on incorrect charges” and told his supporters, “the time has come for all of you to come and struggle for your rights.”
“I have always followed the law. I am being apprehended so that I can’t follow my political path for this country’s fundamental rights and for me to obey this corrupt government of crooks which has been hoisted on us,” Khan added.
Following his arrest, his supporters broke into the military’s headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi, just outside the capital.
Protesters also blocked one of the main thoroughfares into Islamabad, throwing stones and pulling down street signs.
Authorities responded by deploying internet jammers and disrupting access to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in the nation of 270 million.
Khan’s arrest came just a few months before crucial elections in October, where many expect the ousted premier to win the largest democratic mandate ever secured by any politician in the 75-year history of Pakistan.
The former cricket star was ousted from government last year in a US-backed parliamentary coup that saw Shehbaz Sharif – a protégé of the Sharif business dynasty that has governed Pakistan for much of the last three decades – come to power.
Khan previously saw his relationship with the US sour after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. They were also at odds over Afghan state assets frozen by Washington and about US flights over Pakistan.
More pressure started to build against Khan after he criticized western powers for pressuring Islamabad into condemning Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.
“What do you think of us? Are we your slaves … that whatever you say, we will do?” Khan said at a political rally early last year.
Since his ousting, he has been arrested, charged with “terrorism,” banned from running for office, and even survived an assassination attempt.
They’re Coming To Take You Away
By Michael Lesher | Brownstone Institute | May 9, 2023
Suppose I tell you in advance that the essay you are reading is meant to startle you. And suppose I suggest, by way of demonstration, that two people as loosely connected as the leader of the “COVID Crisis Group” and Joe Biden’s “Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Antisemitism” – both of whom have recently offered recommendations for improving political life in the United States – are in fact determined to unravel American freedoms.
Would you be surprised?
Well, if so, that is exactly the startling fact I am trying to bring to your attention. True, you may not have heard that the 34 COVID-19 “experts” headed by one Philip Zelikow (last seen justifying the concealment of information about the 9/11 attacks) and anti-Semitism “ambassador” Deborah Lipstadt – perhaps best known for slandering scads of Jewish survivors of the Nazis as “soft-core” Holocaust deniers because they objected to the massacre of 1,462 of Gaza’s civilians nine years ago – are both out to dismantle the Bill of Rights. But if you haven’t, it isn’t because they’ve been coy about their objectives.
Take the Zelikow panel. Its new book on “the lessons learned from COVID-19” openly conflates the federal government’s management of a respiratory virus with “wartime” – thus rationalizing the executive branch’s preemption of democratic government. Not only that, Zelikow and his band of “experts” explicitly call for the consolidation of power in the hands of an unelected “health security enterprise” that would control, among other things, a “systematic biomedical surveillance network.” And in case you can’t guess who is likely to benefit from the snooping, the panel goes on to praise the coercive experimental drug program that gave us the COVID-19 “vaccines” – “a bargain at $30 billion,” according to the editors of the Washington Post – signaling at one stroke the experts’ contempt for the Nuremberg Code and their subservience to Big Pharma.
As for Lipstadt, she has launched her attack on the First Amendment by redefining “anti-Semitism” so as to include an extraordinary range of political speech. Her first step in that transformation is the familiar trick of confusing criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Jewish bigotry. But her second step is newer and, arguably, even more disturbing: she tars all denigration of Jews with the hot-button label “conspiracy theory.”
Let’s be clear: however noble the pretext of opposing Jew-hatred, it should be obvious that once you characterize anti-Semitism as a “conspiracy theory” you have made a case for censorship. As Lipstadt herself explained to Jane Eisner of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism (in an interview printed in the latest AARP Magazine but not available online): “[I]t’s a conspiracy theory that Jews control the media, the banks, the election process, etc. If you believe that there is a group controlling these things, then essentially you’re saying that you don’t believe in democracy.”
And there’s the trouble. After all, an overt attack on democracy isn’t a viewpoint; it isn’t even an expression of run-of-the-mill bigotry. It’s a threat to the state. And it follows, if you accept Lipstadt’s formulation, that anyone the government can label an “anti-Semite” may now be punished in the same way the Biden administration is already punishing people who protested the presidential election results of November 2020. Note, too, the selective parameters of the offense: blaming Donald Trump’s election on the Russians is presumably “legitimate” speech; but accusing a “group” of controlling “the election process” can land you in jail – that is, when the “group” is not an official enemy but a favored minority, and when that “process” has reached results endorsed by those in power.
So the Zelikow panel and Ambassador Lipstadt can’t be accused of hiding their illiberal goals. Like the Democratic lynch mob that denounced Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger on the floor of Congress last March for revealing the extent of government censorship of Twitter, these propagandists quite openly assert that surveillance is good for us, while free speech is entirely too dangerous to be entrusted to mere citizens.
“Ordinary folks and national security agencies responsible for our security,” Congressman Colin Allred lectured Taibbi, “are trying their best to find a way to make sure that our online discourse doesn’t get people hurt, or see our democracy undermined.” It’s pretty breathtaking to watch an African-American liberal solemnly declare that the CIA and the FBI are the true guardians of democracy – not to mention his defense of the security state’s behind-the-scenes censorship of political speech. But what’s even more ominous is that not a single prominent Democratic politician nor a single pundit in mainstream liberal media has repudiated anything the congressman said.
Is it any wonder, then, that no one in mainstream media has mentioned the totalitarian tendencies implicit in the COVID Crisis Group’s recommendations for “pandemic” regulation via dismantling democracy, or in Ambassador Lipstadt’s appeals to the public to “discredit” anti-Semitism by recasting it as a criminal conspiracy?
Of course it isn’t. And that is my point. That is my motive in writing in tandem about these two apparently disparate subjects, connected only by the facts that both of them involve recent public declarations and that both of them represent attacks on fundamental liberties.
Because the truth is that condemning freedom is now so entirely respectable that it’s happening practically everywhere – under every possible pretext, almost any day, from just about any left-liberal institution that claims to care about the public good. Close your eyes, and you can hardly tell whether what you’re hearing is coming from a Democratic Party stalwart or from an old-line Soviet apologist explaining why Andrei Sakharov or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Yuri Orlov is really, notwithstanding the accuracy of what he’s been saying, a threat to the state who deserves to be muzzled or jailed.
And the media’s silence about it all is as ominous as the Orwellian nattering of the freedom-haters themselves.
Take another look at the Zelikow panel’s assessment of the US government’s performance during the “COVID crisis.” Writing about what the “experts” praise or blame in their report, the Washington Post never once mentions the crippling of the US working-class economy due to arbitrary confinements and business shutdowns, the educational damage done to a whole generation of children through needless school closures, the reckless suspension of representative democracy in four-fifths of our states, the medically unjustifiable trauma caused by “mask mandates,” or the undermining of the national healthcare system through an obsessive focus on one respiratory virus while more serious issues were sidelined for over a year. As far as the Post is concerned, the real outrages of the COVID coup never happened at all.
Even when the experts and the editors do manage to notice something sinister, they go out of their way to miss the point. The Zelikow panel specifically notes the “four pandemic planning exercises” staged by the US government barely a year before the announcement of the COVID-19 outbreak. And it offers a few technical criticisms of the proceedings.
But neither the panel nor the Post editors’ congratulatory summary of its conclusions addresses the fact that the exercises – which omitted any suggestion for using repurposed drugs as early treatment for a novel virus, as in all previous influenza-like outbreaks – made a point of discussing the importance of thought-policing social media. That prescription for censorship became a grim reality after March 2020. But you’d never know it from reading the Zelikow panel’s assessment of the government’s mistakes in addressing the “pandemic.”
And Lipstadt? She claims to be a passionate defender of free speech. But that didn’t stop her from smearing Senator Ron Johnson as a “white nationalist sympathizer” because of his politically incorrect comments about Black Lives Matter. And when that issue made it to the op-ed page of the New York Times, it was only to further demonize Johnson; Lipstadt’s slander got a pass.
Why do I worry so much about this? Well, first of all because an attack on freedom is an attack on all of us.
But I think there is a special reason for alarm. It’s not just that our ruling elites believe that we, the people, need to be stripped of our right to free expression. I’m afraid that the freedom-haters clustered around our figurehead President are not even aware just how thin the ice is onto which they’re propelling us. Their position (taking the most charitable possible view of it) runs something like this: if the public isn’t exposed to views of which the censors disapprove, hoi polloi will meekly accept whatever policies are imposed on them (for their own good, of course).
But the censors are wrong. The fabric of American political life has been strained to such tautness that a single acute crisis might rupture it altogether. And if that happens, people who have been deprived of reasonable dissent will not shrink from violent opposition; on the contrary, they will embrace it. When the monolithic narrative that is all they have been taught lies in ruins, they will replace it not with a rational, informed alternative – for they will know of none – but with whatever satisfies the rage of a population that realizes, too late, that it has been hoodwinked.
Woe to the freedom-haters when the lion they think they have tamed turns its fury on the liberal society that soothsayers like Zelikow and Lipstadt still imagine they are defending!
Serbian president reveals what West wants him to do
RT | May 9, 2023
The West has not given up on steamrolling Serbia into imposing sanctions on Russia, the country’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, has revealed. However, he said Belgrade has so far been able to resist the pressure.
Speaking to Serbia’s Happy TV channel on Monday, Vucic said that “whoever comes [to Belgrade feels their] first obligation is to explain to me that I am a jerk who did not introduce sanctions.”
The Serbian head of state acknowledged that he had already gotten used to constant “pressure [and] ultimatums” from Western representatives.
Last month, the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee slammed Serbia for its failure to join the EU sanctions against Russia, and urged Belgrade to shut down Russian “disinformation” outlets, including RT Balkans.
The US State Department also called for a ban on the media outlet, which began broadcasting in November 2022.
Speaking in mid-March, President Vucic reiterated that his government’s “position is to not impose sanctions” on Moscow over its actions in Ukraine. He made it clear that this could be changed only in “circumstances when there is no way out.”
His remark came in response to calls made earlier that month by the country’s Economy Minister Rade Basta on social media. Basta argued that Belgrade should impose punitive measures because Western pressure was becoming unbearable.
The minister quickly came under fire from within his own party for his comments.
Serbia has resisted pressure from the EU and the US to sanction Russia, citing, among other things, the apparent discrepancy between Western demands that Belgrade recognize the independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo and their simultaneous insistence on Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
World Economic Forum-Affiliated Pro-Censorship Group Is Hit With House Panel Subpoena
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 7, 2023
The House Judiciary Committee has issued subpoenas to executives at a group often affiliated with the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Chair of the committee, Rep. Jim Jordan said the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and the organization that created it, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), might be allowing the violation of US antitrust law.
“To advance our oversight and inform potential legislation related to these collusive practices, the Committee must understand whether, how, and to what extent GARM and WFA facilitate collusion to prevent certain content from benefiting from advertising dollars and to reduce that content’s presence online,” Jordan wrote.
According to the letters, the House Judiciary Committee has attempted to get communications and documents “related to how GARM and WFA act to demonetize and eliminate disfavored content online, in addition to other information” since March.
However, both the WFA and GARM did not provide the documents requested.
The subpoenas addressed to GARM’s co-founder Robert Rakowitz and WFA president Raja Rajamannar, demand communications and documents from January 2019 to date. The organizations have until May 26 to respond.
Read the letter here.
Canada Liberal’s Assault on Press Freedom: The Plot To Censor ‘Untraceable Sources’
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 7, 2023
During the Party National Convention, the Canadian Liberals discussed a proposal for online news publications whose sources cannot be verified to be censored. The proposal was titled “Combatting Disinformation in Canada.”
A section of the proposal read, “BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Liberal Party of Canada: Request the Government explore options to hold on-line information services accountable for the veracity of material published on their platforms and to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced.”
We obtained a copy of the proposals for you here.
The relevant section is here:
It also suggested that the government “provide additional public funds to support advertisement-free news and information reporting by Canadian media through an arm’s-length non-partisan mechanism.”
The chair of the internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, Michael Geist, warned that the proposal is an attempt by the government to restrict “freedom of expression.”
“Liberal Party policy proposal calls for online information services ‘to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced.’ An obvious violation of freedom of expression was voted as one of the top 20 policy resolutions for party discussion,” Geist wrote in a tweet.
In a blog post, he explained that while it is unclear what the Liberal Party means by “online information services,” the resulting “outcome is dangerous no matter the scope.”
“Is this all news outlets with a focus on their online presence? Is it online-only news sources? Is this far broader and designed to encompass Internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok (note the reference to “platforms”) with requirements that they be held accountable for posts without traceable sources,” Geist said.
“The implications of the government engaging in this form of heavy-handed speech regulation are dangerous in all of these circumstances. Sourcing is an important issue in the media and the government cannot claim to support press freedom and simultaneously back policies that intervene in sourcing.”
More:
An Open Letter to Ella Irwin, Head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety (and Censorship) Department
By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory, Inc. | May 7, 2023
The following is an open letter to Ella G. Irwin, Head of Twitter Trust and Safety, and Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, and anyone else at Twitter, Inc. who is responsible for censoring political speech and defaming people with fake “advisory” labels, among other such “visibility-filtering” tactics.
I am publishing it as an open letter, not to bore everyone to death with my personal problems, but because the censorship and defamation I have suffered at the hands of Twitter for at least two years is an example of how the decentralized network of global corporations, Intelligence agencies, governments, non-governmental governing entities, “anti-disinformation” outfits, and other parties that together comprise what Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi have dubbed the “Censorship Industrial Complex” are evolving into an Orwellian Ministry-of-Truth-type apparatus “with the power to control the information environment in ways that determine what people believe to be true and what is false.”
Twitter, Inc. has been censoring my political commentary and maliciously defaming me (i.e., damaging my reputation and income as an author) for approximately two years. Twitter has been doing this by concealing the Tweets of my “Consent Factory” account with fake “age-restricted adult content” labels, deceiving Twitter users into believing I have been tweeting content depicting “adult nudity and sexual behavior,” or “excessively gory content, sexual violence and/or assault, bestiality or necrophilia.” Twitter’s actions have damaged both my book sales and my reputation, globally. Defamation is a tort. I could sue the corporation for damages in several jurisdictions.
I have no interest in doing that, currently. What I do want, however, is a real explanation of why and exactly how Twitter, Inc. censored and defamed me for approximately two years. I want this explanation — a real explanation with documentation, not self-serving corporate-speak — not for personal reasons, primarily, but because I believe people need to be able to understand how powerful corporations like Twitter (and Facebook, and Google, and all the other entities and parties I mentioned above) are “visibility filtering” our collective reality.
The fact that these powerful corporations (and other entities) are doing this, not just on the macro level, but also on the micro level, to writers like me, who, let’s face it, are not exactly world-famous “influencers,” and to “non-public persons” who are basically just using social media to talk to their friends, does not bode well for the future of our societies. This kind of micro-perception-manipulation, this “visibility filtering” of our collective reality, goes way beyond traditional censorship. It is a hallmark of all totalitarian systems, which attempt to control, not only what people say, but what they think, how they think, how they perceive events, and facts, and each other.
Totalitarian systems do not spring into being fully formed. They develop slowly, gradually, unrecognized at first, and then ignored, usually until it is too late. We do not recognize the formation of new totalitarian systems because we are forever looking backwards instead of forwards, preparing for the storm that has passed, expecting history to repeat, rather than rhyme. Blinded by hindsight, we do not recognize the monster that is taking shape right in front of us. We glimpse a claw here, a tooth there, the flash of a pitiless blue eye, but fail to assemble the bits into an image of the beast entire, until it is inexorably upon us.
Anyway, here’s my open letter … one more bit, for the record.
To: Ella G. Irwin, Head of Trust and Safety, Twitter, Inc.
cc: Elon Musk
Dear Ms. Irwin,
This open letter is further to our brief correspondence on May 3, 2023 (on Twitter) regarding Twitter’s censorship and defamation of my @consent_factory Twitter account with fake “age-restricted adult content” labels for approximately two years.
First, thank you for taking action to cease and desist from further censorship and defamation. From what I can tell, it appears that Twitter is removing or has removed the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels from the @consent_factory Twitter account’s Tweets (or at least going back to late 2021). I trust that these fake “age-restricted adult content” labels will be removed from all of the account’s Tweets in due course, and I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Please accept my apology for claiming that you had lied about taking action on this. I admit, after two years of being censored and defamed, and having my complaints ignored by Twitter, I have become rather skeptical regarding your company’s behavior and statements. That said, it is clear now that you were not lying, and that you have taken action to have the fake, defamatory labels in question removed, and I apologize for publicly claiming otherwise.
Assuming the process is eventually completed and all of the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels that Twitter has been censoring the @consent_factory Twitter account with are in fact removed, I would appreciate substantive answers to the following questions:
(1) Why and exactly how did Twitter start censoring and defaming my Consent Factory account with these fake, defamatory “adult content” labels? When I asked you to explain that in our correspondence, you replied:
Clearly, the account did not “post multiple tweets containing sensitive content (nazi imagery) that resulted in the sensitive content label being applied,” because Twitter has now removed the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels from those Tweets, which contain the same “Nazi imagery” they originally contained. As I am sure you have noted, the so-called “Nazi imagery” contained in those Tweets was simply historical photos of the Nazi Germany era, which were used to illustrate critical points I was making in opposition to totalitarianism, and not at all any type of celebration or approval of totalitarianism or fascism. Any rational adult, seeing those Tweets, could not possibly mistake the anti-fascist/totalitarian intent behind them. Also, the fact that the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels are being removed gradually, in stages, rather than all at once, suggests that the application of the fake labels (or “interstitials”) in question was not the result of a blanket algorithm applied to the account. Additionally, not every Tweet (or every Tweet containing an image) by this account was censored with a fake “interstitial,” which suggests that something other than a blanket algorithm was at work.
In any event, having been censored and defamed for two years by Twitter, Inc., I think I am entitled to an actual explanation of how this started, including documentation of any intra-company discussions or “log” notes in connection with the decision to begin censoring and defaming the account. Your substantive response to this request will demonstrate that the “new” Twitter is, in fact, committed to transparency, and free speech, and not just another element of the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” as Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi dubbed it, before Mr. Musk cut off access to the “Twitter Files.”
(2) What, if any, other restrictions/visibility filtering tactics have been applied to my @consent_factory Twitter account from 2020 to the present? Again, I would appreciate documentation of any such “visibility filtering” or other “restrictions” and/or the removal thereof. Having been censored and maliciously defamed by Twitter for years, I believe I am entitled to know how my “visibility” is being and/or has been “filtered.”
(3) What steps is Twitter, Inc. now taking to cease and desist from the type of malicious defamation the company has been engaging in to suppress political speech and damage the reputation and income of writers, like me, and independent media outlets, like, for example, OffGuardian? Twitter blocks links to all OffGuardian articles with a different fake, defamatory “interstitial” warning.
There is nothing “unsafe” about OffGuardian, or any content published on the website that could possibly “lead to real-world harm.” It is a small, independent news and commentary outlet. Twitter, Inc. is using the fake “interstitial” warning above to discourage users from visiting the site, and thus damaging OffGuardian’s reputation and income. This is just one further example (i.e., in addition to my case). Twitter’s continued use of fake, defamatory, “interstitial” labels to suppress political views is relatively widespread, as far as I can tell. Moreover, recent updates to Twitter’s Platform Use Guidelines make it clear that Twitter intends to continue using these “interstitials,” which is worrying, given the fact that the company has been using them to deceive people, and to suppress political speech, and to damage the reputations and incomes of small businesses and sole proprietors.
That’s it for my questions, for now.
Again, thank you for finally putting an end to the defamation that Twitter, Inc. has been subjecting me to, for the last two years. I must say, it is a bit disappointing that it took a happenstance encounter on Twitter to connect with someone with the power to do that. Frankly, given Mr. Musk’s initial and ongoing publicity campaign to portray himself as a champion of free speech, and a stalwart opponent of censorship, and Twitter under his leadership as the antipode of “old, bad, censorship-happy Twitter,” I had expected that immediate steps would be taken to … you know, stop deceiving people, and maliciously defaming people, and manipulating the “visibility” of political views according to some unarticulated ideological schema, but I guess these things take time.
I look forward to your substantive response to the above questions.
Very truly yours,
C. J. Hopkins
P.S. Should you happen to run into Mr. Musk there at Twitter HQ, you might also want to suggest that he resume providing access to the “Twitter Files” to reporters like Matt and Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag (if I can put a word in for her). Doing so would demonstrate that the “Twitter Files” thing was not just a limited hangout, and a PR stunt designed to whitewash the company and kill public interest in the nefarious activities of Twitter, Inc., and other powerful global corporations, and their partners at the FBI, DHS, whatever that CIS or CISA acronym stands for, and … well, you know, “other agencies.”
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
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