Twitter Refuses To Unlock NYPost Account Unless Paper Deletes Tweets About Hunter Biden
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/17/2020
By immediately condemning the Hunter Biden emails and photos published by the New York Post as the work of Russian hackers colluding with Rudy Giuliani, the MSM destroyed any credibility it might have had. As we pointed out earlier, more evidence has emerged to support Giuliani’s version of events – namely, that he was given a copy of the laptop’s hard drive and all of its contents by the owner of a Delaware computer-repair shop.
But despite apologizing and acknowledging “straight up blocking of URLs was wrong“, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has apparently not finished punishing the New York Post, because three days after the account was initially frozen, the New York Post hasn’t been able to tweet, and according to a NY Post report, Twitter has frozen the New York Post’s account until the paper’s social media managers agree to delete six tweets about Hunter Biden.
“Anyone who looks at The Post’s Twitter feed can’t even see the tweets about the Biden stories, which have been replaced by messages saying, ‘This Tweet is no longer available,'” the Post wrote on Friday.
Twitter previously said the Post’s Hunter Biden stories violated the website’s Hacked Media Policy which prohibits the display of “hacked” information, an allegation that the Post called “baseless.” However, on Friday, Twitter updated that policy, saying it will start labeling content that violates its rules rather than remove it altogether “unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them.”
Confusingly, though, the company said that these changes wouldn’t apply retroactively, meaning that the NYP still must delete the tweets if it wants to use its account again, even though readers can’t even see them.
Twitter confirmed in an interview with Fox Business that the NY Post “has been informed what is necessary to unlock their account.”
Facebook, meanwhile, is temporarily restricting circulation of the story until an independent team of fact checkers has had time to investigate the claims, and certify they are real.
While social media has been rife with speculation, in the days since the first NYP story was published, nobody has offered anything in the way of evidence – however circumstantial or unconvincing – that the materials were stolen by hackers. Beyond James Clapper’s ‘professional opinion‘, the MSM has nothing to support these claims.
‘We are in a truly Orwellian culture’: Amazon yanks Covid-19 skeptic’s book for ominously vague ’content violations’
By Helen Buyniski | RT | October 17, 2020
Amazon has joined its Big Tech fellows in ramping up censorship of any criticism of the “official” Covid-19 narrative, deploying obfuscatory excuses to justify removing journalist James Perloff’s latest book, he told RT.
After selling a respectable 3,500 copies over the last two months, Perloff’s book on the coronavirus pandemic and its weaponization by world governments, ‘Covid-19 and the Agendas to Come: Red-Pilled,’ was suddenly “banned” by Amazon.com, the writer revealed on Twitter on Thursday.
Perloff spoke to RT on Friday about the platform’s ominous act of censorship and how it seemed to validate his book’s conclusions, expressing concern that “the censorship on Covid has been getting progressively stronger, even as the death rate from Covid has been getting progressively lower.”
“We are in a truly Orwellian culture.”
The first sign of trouble came on Thursday when Amazon requested that he “clarify [his] rights to the book” – something he had already done upon putting it up for sale back in August. But before he could finish gathering the material required to prove once again that he owned the global rights to his own work, he received another email from Amazon, this time claiming they had removed his book “during a quality assurance review of [his] catalog” because it “violated content guidelines.”
While Perloff said he “asked them to specify what guidelines [he] had violated,” their reply merely restated that the “subject matter” of his book had been found to be “in violation of our content guidelines,” declaring the e-commerce behemoth “will not be offering this title for sale on Amazon.”
“We reserve the right to determine whether content provides a poor customer experience and remove the content from sale.”
With five other books already listed on the platform, Perloff has communicated with Amazon extensively over the years, but something was off about these latest messages. In previous communications, “they would usually at least give a first name,” he said. “This time I was dealing with persons – or a person – who was cowering behind total anonymity.”
The book traces how the Covid-19 pandemic has been used by governments around the world to force draconian social control measures upon a terrified populace, evaluates several theories regarding the virus’ origin, and offers some projections about what might lie ahead for humanity – including how populations might work together to avoid some of the most totalitarian outcomes.
Perloff insists the information within was meticulously sourced from medical professionals, academic publications, and frontline physicians, with hundreds of endnotes referencing scholarly journals and other unimpeachable sources. “There is nothing I say in the book that isn’t documented,” he said, pointing out that several other coronavirus dissenters are selling their books on the platform without incident.
The political analyst is far from the first to run afoul of Amazon’s increasingly stringent censorship. But while he is familiar with the trials and tribulations of former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who found his own corona-skeptic tome temporarily squelched until billionaire Elon Musk drew attention to the censorship on social media, Perloff cynically lamented that he himself lacks “friends among the rich and famous” to rescue his book from Amazon’s growing digital bonfire.
Ultimately, however, he has faith in the Streisand effect, in which heavy-handed censorship efforts backfire and draw attention to the content they seek to suppress. “If you say to people, ‘Don’t read this book,’ their instinct is to go and read it.”
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Facebook COO pledges $2.5 mill to Israel advocacy group, brushing off Palestinian complaints of censorship
If Americans Knew | October 17, 2020
In the midst of a campaign by Palestinian journalists accusing Facebook of suppressing their content, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, has pledged $2.5 million to the ADL, an organization that devotes much of its work to Israel advocacy.
We’ll first look at the complaints about censorship, then at the ADL, and then at Sandberg.
The current campaign is the latest in a long line of complaints that Facebook discriminates against Palestinian users.
A 2016 Fortune magazine article reported accusations that a Facebook agreement with the Israeli government had led to the closing of some Palestinian accounts.
A 2017 article in The Intercept reported: “Facebook has been on a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined by Israeli officials. Indeed, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders.”
In 2018 there were reports that Facebook had closed 500 Facebook pages of Palestinian activists, journalists and bloggers.
This month a campaign called “Facebook Blocks Palestine” was launched by Palestinian journalists and activists saying that Facebook restrictions against Palestinian pages had “dramatically increased,” including deleting pages and accounts, removing posts, banning comments sections, restricting pages, blocking live streaming, etc.
Mohammad Kareem’s Facebook page was suddenly taken down. Kareem tweeted: “Facebook has blocked my account after 8 years of using it. This is like deleting a history of someone for a weird reason. ‘Something you posted’! What is it?”
An organizer explained that one of the campaign’s goal is to expose the “double-standard policy of Facebook management” in dealing with Israeli and Palestinian content.
A day or two later Facebook deleted yet another Palestinian page: the Arabic account of the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC), a news organization founded in 1997 that had almost five million Facebook followers. According to PIC, Facebook provided no prior warning or justification for its action.
Photograph posted by Palestine Information Center, Aug. 31, 2019
Over the years it appears that Facebook has tried to develop strategies to make fair, rational decisions about which content to remove and which accounts to take down. These have included using content reviewers, instituting a review process, and writing algorithms to catch “hate speech” and “incitement.”
At the heart of of all this, however, are the human beings who review the content, who write the algorithms, and who are in charge of the process.
It is, therefore, problematic when Facebook executives work with the Israeli government to decide what content to remove, when Facebook collaborates with an Israel advocacy organization to “combat cyberhate,” and when top Facebook executives such as Mark Zuckerberg are connected to the top rung of the Israeli government.
And it is problematic when the number two person at Facebook – especially during a time period when Facebook is specifically being charged with anti-Palestinian, pro-Israeli bias – makes a large, very public donation to an organization devoted to advocating for Israel.
The ADL and Israel
On Oct. 16th Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced (on Facebook, of course) that she was making “a personal gift” to the ADL. Sandberg is considered one of the most powerful figures in the tech world.
While many people consider the ADL a benign, almost official organization–and news media virtually always repeat its claims without scrutiny–it is a highly political, private organization with no public accountability and with very clear agendas.
One of its main agendas is being a “a strong voice for Israel.”
While the ADL was allegedly formed to oppose discrimination, it actively supports a nation based on discrimination. Israel was established in 1948, in the words of an Israeli historian, through a war of ethnic cleansing, and continues this process today.
Numerous groups and individuals have documented Israel’s current systemic discrimination, its long record of human rights violations, as well as its violations of U.S. laws and damage to the U.S.
Nevertheless, the ADL devotes much of its effort to Israel, advocating on its behalf with American elected officials, U.S. media and on American campuses, including producing a guide about how to block campus events aimed at informing students about the Palestinian situation.
Screen shot of ADL page.
And while the ADL claims to oppose defamation, it often attacks groups and individuals its dislikes, particularly those who provide information on Israel-Palestine that the ADL doesn’t wish Americans to know.
While the ADL’s statements may at times constitute outright defamation, almost no one is able to take on the organization, given its assets of $145 million+. Rare exceptions were 1993 lawsuits over the ADL’s vast spying operation on Americans, which had gone on for decades. Eventually, the ADL was forced to settle the suits, paying out unknown sums of money. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’m among the ADL’s more recent targets, the organization having published false statements about me that it has refused to retract.)
In 2017 the ADL collaborated with an Israeli think tank to produce a 2017 strategy paper on how to counter the growing public awareness of Israeli violations of human rights. The Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, Brigadier General Sima Vaknin-Gil, said of the ADL-coauthored paper: “The correlation between the Ministry’s mode of operation and what comes out of this document is very high, and has already proven effective… ”
Among its recommendations, the 32-page document called for “industry engagement with corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter.”
That same year the ADL launched the “Center for Technology and Society,” whose advisory board contains a number of tech executives.
One is Facebook Vice President Guy Rosen, who studied in Israel and is a member of the TechAviv Community LinkedIn Group, formed “to help Israeli startup founders and their companies succeed by harnessing the collective energy, knowledge, and networks of the global Israeli startup community.”
ADL’s “educational materials”
The ADL considers many criticisms of Israel to be “anti-Semitism,” using a definition formulated by an Israeli minister. The materials it provides for schools are highly selective, often have clear agendas, and are glaring in the ADL’s “PEP” stance (Progressive Except Palestine). For example:
• There is a high school unit on the Rohingya people but nothing on the Palestinian people.
• The ADL provides a lesson plan on “Refugee Crisis in Europe” that makes no mention of Palestinian refugees, a major refugee group and one that began long before the current crisis.
• There is a teaching unit on nonviolent resistance that includes materials on The Holocaust, Civil Rights, sanctuary cities, opposition to the U.S. wall on the southern border, etc, but completely ignores the Israeli wall confiscating Palestinian land, the ongoing nonviolence movement in the Palestinian West Bank (including the killing of participants Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall), and the massive nonviolent movement launched in Gaza a year and a half ago that has continued for every week since.
• A unit on “Challenging AntiSemitism: Debunking the Myths and Responding with Facts” includes a number of references to Israel and uses as a reference the Jewish Virtual Library, a website managed by the American-Israeli Cooperative Project in order to “to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship.” (The unit includes derogatory references to Christianity, Islam, and Arabs.)
The ADL’s facebook posts periodically focus on Israel. For example, it “welcomed” the decision to remove Palestinian Zahra Biloo from the Women’s March over her criticism of Israel, announced that it would discuss “bias against Israel” with UN officials, and alerted its Facebook followers to a discussion about “how to fight” anti-Zionism.
Sheryl Sandberg and Israel
Sandberg has visited Israel periodically throughout her life.
In August, she went on another family visit to Israel, met with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and others, and inaugurated a new Facebook venture in Tel Aviv.
“I am so excited to be in Israel today.” she announced at the celebration. “This is a country that is deeply meaningful to me personally. But this country is also deeply meaningful for Facebook because… this is a country of startups and entrepreneurs.”
In her Facebook post, Sandberg described the importance to her of her Jewish identity. She said that her horror at the recent tragic “mass murder” of Jews in Pittsburgh (11) and Germany (2) inspired her to make the donation.
The timing of her announcement is startling in its lack of concern for the current Palestinian campaign against unfair treatment by Facebook, and of recent Palestinian deaths and injuries inflicted by the Jewish state.
In the past year and a half Israeli forces have killed at least 326 and injured over 28,000 men, women, and children taking part in demonstrations in Gaza.
Abdullah al-Anqar, 13, at a Gaza clinic, 10 June 2018. He was shot by an Israeli sniper during a demonstration along the Gaza-Israel border in May. (Photo from Medicins San Frontieres)
A search for donations that Sandberg may have dedicated on behalf of these victims turns up only an ambulance – which she presented to Israel, which has suffered massively fewer deaths and injuries.
Given Sandberg and the ADL’s opposition to “hate” and “bias,” they may wish to read the extensive documentation of widespread discrimination and hatred in Israel.
Israeli academic and author Nurit Peled-Elhanan has spent years documenting the pervasive anti-Palestinian bias in Israeli textbooks.
“One question that bothers many people,” she says, “is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform.”
Peled-Elhanan said: “I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians.” In studying hundreds of Israeli textbooks she did not find one photograph that depicted an Arab as a “normal person.”
Peled-Elhanan says that as a result of the Israeli school system, Israeli children grow up to serve in the army and internalize the message that Palestinians are “people whose life is dispensable with impunity. And not only that, but people whose number has to be diminished.”
Perhaps Steinberg’s next anti-hate donation could go to Peled-Elhanan.
And perhaps instead of working with the Israeli government to remove Palestinian posts that document the results, Facebook executives could meet with the Palestinian journalists and activists they’re censoring and listen to what they have to say.
Twitter rolls out ‘DISPUTED’ warnings for users trying to post ‘misleading’ content after backlash over Biden emails censorship
RT | October 16, 2020
Twitter is cracking down on the spread of “misleading” content ahead of the US election, as users attempting to retweet anything similar to the NYPost’s Hunter Biden leaks will now get a warning the material is “disputed.”
Attempting to retweet offending content will trigger a prompt warning the user that the material they’re trying to post is “disputed,” Twitter revealed on Friday, posting an image of the new warning screen.
The user will be able to click a button to “find out more” about why Twitter doesn’t want the material shared, and then presumably post it anyway.
The new feature arrives in the aftermath of a major controversy arising from Twitter’s censorship of a series of stories critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, published by the New York Post based on emails supposedly extracted from his son Hunter’s laptop.
Conservative politicians, lawmakers and press have slammed Twitter for prohibiting users from even linking to the story, and some users who shared details of the stories found themselves locked out of their account for reasons that ranged from sharing “hacked material” to posting “personal information” without permission.
The social media giant’s guidelines for what is considered “misleading” are themselves somewhat nebulous, having grown since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic to encompass not just “disinformation” but also “disputed” content, a vague descriptor that could apply to most of what users post on the platform.
The Republican National Committee on Friday filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging Twitter had illegally meddled on behalf of the Biden campaign when it squelched the spread of the Biden-laptop stories. The platform had even briefly blocked a link to the US Congress website, when Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee attempted to skirt Twitter’s censorship by reposting one of the banned articles on their official .gov page.
Twitter also apologized to its users for a prolonged outage on Thursday night, which left many speculating about whether the platform was testing an intensified form of censorship ahead of November’s elections. The site blamed a “system change initiated earlier than planned” that had “affect[ed] most of our servers” – an explanation which likely did little to put conspiracy theories to rest.
Facebook subsidiary Instagram rolled out a feature similar to Twitter’s ‘wrongthink warning’ last year, which alerts users when they are about to post something “potentially offensive.” In April, Facebook began alerting users as to whether they’d shared, replied to, or otherwise interacted with posts that were later deemed to be “misinformation,” specifically content concerning the novel coronavirus that had been “debunked” by the World Health Organization.
In June, the platform further expanded its wrongthink-alert system, warning users when they attempted to share articles that were over 90 days old – regardless of whether they were true or not.
Facebook has also resorted to somewhat more subtle tactics of “shadowbanning” – which on Wednesday was once again confirmed by its communications chief Andy Stone, a former Democratic Party staffer. He tweeted that the platform was restricting the spread of the New York Post’s story until the platform’s fact-checkers could stamp their own judgment on the material.
Twitter, Biden and the New York Post – Social Media Censorship Kicks up a Gear
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 15, 2020
Yesterday, the New York Post published several articles claiming to show evidence of corruption on the part of Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The charges are varied but not really surprising. One article claims Hunter introduced his father to a Ukrainian energy magnate who asked the family to use their influence to shut down an investigation into his company.
Another story suggests Hunter Biden used his family name to secure a high-paid job and stock interests in a Chinese company.
The NYP evidence these claims with emails and documents allegedly retrieved from a laptop left at a computer repair store in Delaware. The owner of the store alerted the FBI to the computer’s existence when no one came forward to pay for the repairs and he could not contact the owner.
According to the NYP, both the hard drive and laptop were then seized by the FBI. They have a copy of the grand jury subpoena, which is certainly solid evidence, if genuine.
The owner of the store claims he, prior to it being seized, made a copy of the hard drive and sent it to Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer.
While this is potentially intriguing, if true, it’s not really “news”. Biden’s corruption in Ukraine has been evident since his son was appointed to the board of the largest energy company in Ukraine within weeks of the US-backed coup in 2014 (a decision so obviously dodgy even the Guardian made a joke out of it). Joe Biden himself has even admitted to applying financial pressure to get a Ukrainian State Prosecutor removed from office.
None of this is really “big news”. Corruption is rampant in the halls of power, that is as certain as death and taxes, and will continue to be so, whether or not these specific allegations are accurate.
The big news, the part of this story that should concern everyone, is that Twitter has completely blocked this material on their platform.
And we’re not talking a “soft block”, we at OffG are more than familiar with twitter’s use of “warnings”, no they literally made it impossible to share the links, even in DMs. If you try, you get his warning:
We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful. Visit our Help Center to learn more.”
We’ve talked about twitter’s “partners” before, and they are suspect. As for being “potentially harmful”, well isn’t that subjective? Fire is vital at times, but certainly “potentially harmful” at others. Water, in sufficient quantity, is “potentially harmful”.
If you’re a liar, the truth is “potentially harmful”.
Facebook has followed suit, if in less sweeping fashion. The social media giant’s spokesperson Andy Stone announced that they would be:
“… reducing its distribution on our platform. This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation.
This decision is pending approval by their “independent fact-checkers”, which we have also covered in detail before.
*
So what are the social media companies’ excuses reasons for blocking this content?
Well, it depends who you ask.
Twitter claims that since the emails are potentially “hacked”, posting them violates their policy regarding illegally gathered material. (Interestingly this policy was never applied to Trump’s leaked tax returns.)
Facebook, on the other hand, claim to have blocked these stories because they might be “misinformation”. A truly ludicrous precedent to set. You can’t block something that might not be true, because that applies to literally almost everything.
You do have to admire the strategy though. The pincer movement is brilliant.
You see, one site is blocking them because they might not be real, the other because if they are real then they’re stolen. It’s a win-win situation.
Essentially, real or not, the tech giants have all the bases covered and there’s no way they are going to let people read those emails, or even stories about the emails. Twitter even blocked the account of the Whitehouse Spokesperson Kayleigh MacEnany for sharing the links.
Of course, moving forward this will not just apply to these emails, but anything they want.
More and more precedents are rolling out that social media companies can stop anyone from saying anything by applying their absurdly vague and subjective rules.
They have essentially given themselves license to block anything they want on a totally ad hoc basis, and because it’s being done in the name of “orange man bad” or combatting “hate speech”, an army of useful idiots are happy to go along with it. Even calling it a win for progressive values.
The mainstream cheered on twitter earlier this year when they started (incorrectly) “fact-checking” Donald Trump’s tweets concerning postal voting. We wrote then that it was a scary and potentially damaging idea. This is why.
We now have mega-corporations, who possess neither democratic mandate nor public accountability, controlling what elected officials can and cannot say in public. The political discourse of our society has become subject to the approval of “independent fact-checkers” created by billionaires and staffed by the Deep State.
Which is exactly what we’ve been warning about, for years.
*
It all makes you wonder – what exactly is the point of this story?
Are we just witnessing surface tremors of the deeper internal conflict in the Deep State, just as we saw in 2016?
Or is it meant to distract everyone with salacious details of a corruption scandal we all already knew about, while ever-more of our online freedoms are taken away?
This story probably isn’t going away any time soon. For one thing, we can expect that someone is going to accuse Russia of somehow being involved in the very near future.
… oh, they already did. I guess we’re in for Russiagate II then. Fun times.
YouTube to remove videos containing Covid-19 vaccine ‘misinformation’
RT | October 14, 2020
Video sharing platform YouTube has said it is banning videos containing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines, in an expansion of the service’s current rules regarding falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the pandemic.
“A Covid-19 vaccine may be imminent, therefore we’re ensuring we have the right policies in place to be able to remove [related] misinformation,” YouTube said in a statement on Wednesday.
Any content featuring claims about Covid-19 vaccines that contradict the consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization will now be banned on the Google-owned video platform.
This includes any suggestions that the vaccine “would kill people, cause infertility or involve microchips being implanted in people,” YouTube said.
General discussions in YouTube videos about “broad concerns” over the vaccine would remain on the platform, a spokesman told Reuters.
In February this year, YouTube removed ads on channels that promoted anti-vaccine content, warning that it would prevent future advertising on any videos that endorse those views.
Then in April, YouTube banned conspiracy theories falsely linking Covid-19 to 5G networks. That move was in turn followed by the ban on any coronavirus-related content that “directly contradicts” World Health Organization (WHO) advice and is “medically unsubstantiated.”
Wednesday’s decision to prevent “misinformation” about Covid-19 vaccines came after another social media giant, Facebook, banned anti-vaccine ads and said it would encourage users of the platform to get the flu jab.
Zionist War on Palestinian Festival in Rome is Ominous Sign of Things to Come
A book reading at the Falastin Festival in Rome
By Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo | Palestine Chronicle | October 12, 2020
A Zionist-led war on a Palestinian cultural festival in Rome has exposed the fragility of the Italian political system when it comes to the conversation on Palestine and Israel. The sad truth is that, although Italy is not often associated with a ‘powerful’ pro-Israel lobby as is the case in Washington, the pro-Israel influence in Italy is just as dangerous.
The latest episode began on September 24, when the Palestinian community in Rome announced plans to hold ‘Falastin – Festival della Palestina’, a cultural event that aims at illustrating the richness of Palestinian culture in all of its grandeur. The idea behind it is not to simply humanize Palestinians in the eyes of ordinary Italians, but to explore commonalities, to cement bonds and to build bridges. However, for Israel’s allies in Italy, even such unthreatening objectives were too much to bear.
The festival, sponsored by II Municipio of Rome – one of the administrative subdivisions of Rome central municipality – found itself at the center of a major – and ludicrous – controversy.
On September 25, an odd pro-Israel post appeared on the Partito Democratico II Municipio – the center-left Italian political party that controls that particular subdivision. Without any context or marking any specific occasion, the post, which displayed the Israeli flag, celebrated the friendship between the Democratic Party and Israel while condemning the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS).
The haphazardness of the post and the strange timing suggested that the Democratic Party is under attack for its sponsorship of the Palestinian festival. Overwhelmed by angry comments on social media, the Party’s Facebook page abruptly removed the anti-Palestinian post without much explanation.
But clarity followed soon when, on September 30, the Jewish Community of Rome issued a statement expressing outrage at the II Municipio for allegedly sponsoring ‘an anti-Semitic festival’. Taking advantage of the deliberate distortion between anti-Semitism and the legitimate criticism of apartheid Israel, the Community’s representatives raged on about BDS and the alleged boycott of Jewish businesses.
The statement, part of which we translate here, claimed that “… the BDS Movement will attend the initiative (The Festival), and this is unacceptable and dangerous (because) the boycott movement denies the very existence of the state of Israel and it is linked to the terrorist groups of Hamas and Fatah.”
Aside from the unsubstantiated – more accurately, completely fallacious – claims, the statement referenced the ‘IHRA definition of anti-Semitism’, further explained below, which was accepted by the Italian government as well as the French and Austrian parliaments. Based on that logic, the statement concluded that, one, “the BDS movement is anti-Semitic” and, two, “the II Municipio is legitimizing anti-Jewish hatred”.
In a clearly coordinated move, the Wiesenthal Center, which often poses as a progressive organization, also went on the attack. On the same day that the Jewish Community of Rome released its statement, the Center dispatched a letter to Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, also recounting the same false claims of BDS’ alleged anti-Semitism, the IHRA definition and so on.
The Center stooped so low as to compare the BDS movement to Germany’s Nazi program. It claimed that the Palestinian boycott movement was, in fact, inspired by the Nazis’ boycott of Jews, referencing the slogan “Kaufen nicht bei Juden” (Do not buy from Jews).
The fallout was quick and, judging by the typical gutlessness of European politicians, predictable as well. II Municipio councilor, one Lucrezia Colmayer, abruptly declared her resignation, “distancing” herself from the decision of II Municipio President, Francesca Del Bello, for sponsoring the Festival.
“With this gesture, I want to renew my closeness to the Jewish Community of Rome, with which I shared this important cultural and administrative path,” Colmayer wrote.
Del Bello soon followed with her own statement. “I apologize if the sponsorship of the II Municipio to ‘Falastin – Festival della Palestina’ … offended the Jewish community and led a councilor to resign,” she wrote, rejecting Colmayer’s resignation and inviting her to return to the Council.
Fortunately, despite all obstacles, “the Festival was a great success,” Maya Issa, a member of the Palestinian Community of Rome and Lazio, told us.
The Festival “was a way for people to learn about Palestine and to see Palestine under a different light. The atmosphere was magic – Palestinian colors, scents, food, Dabkah, art and literature”.
The good news is that, despite the well-coordinated Italian Zionist campaign, the Palestinian Festival still went ahead and, according to Issa, “many Italian politicians understood our message and they decided to participate”.
Now that the Festival is over, the pro-Palestinian groups in Italy are ready to counter the false accusations and the defamatory language lobbed at them by the pro-Israel camp.
“We will respond with the truth and we will refute all the false claims, especially the lies about the BDS Movement,” Issa said, adding “we, the Palestinian community, must resist, along with all those who support true democracy and freedom”.
There is no doubt that the Palestinian community of Italy is more than capable of achieving this crucial task. However, two important points must be kept in mind:
First, the “IHRA definition of anti-Semitism”, also known as EUMC, has been deliberately misused by Zionists to the point that a genuine attempt at curbing anti-Jewish racism has been transformed as a tool to defend Israeli war crimes in Palestine, and to silence critics who dare, not only to censure Israel’s illegal actions, but to even celebrate Palestinian culture.
Of particular significance is that the very person who drafted that ‘definition’, US attorney Kenneth S. Stern, has condemned the misuse of the initiative.
In a written statement submitted to the US Congress in 2017, Stern argued that the original definition has been greatly misused, and that it was never intended to be manipulated as a political tool.
“The EUMC ‘working definition’ was recently adopted in the United Kingdom, and applied to campus. An ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ event was cancelled as violating the definition. A Holocaust survivor was required to change the title of a campus talk, and the University (of Manchester) mandated it be recorded, after an Israeli diplomat complained that the title violated the definition,” he wrote.
“Perhaps most egregious,” Stern continued, “an off-campus group citing the definition called on a university to conduct an inquiry of a professor (who received her PhD from Columbia) for anti-Semitism, based on an article she had written years before. The University (of Bristol) then conducted the inquiry. While it ultimately found no basis to discipline the professor, the exercise itself was chilling and McCarthy-like.”
A second point to also consider is that Italian politics has reached the point that, on many issues, it has become difficult to easily distinguish between supposedly progressive parties and the populist ones. Palestine, in the new Italian political discourse, especially that of the Democratic Party is, perhaps, the most obvious case in point.
This is particularly disturbing, considering that Partito Democratico was, itself, the ideological culmination of parties that existed during the era of Italy’s First Republic (1948-1992), which were known for their strong stances in favor of Palestinian rights and self-determination and strong opposition to Israel’s violations of international law.
This is no longer the case, as the party’s stance on Palestine now hardly deviates from the stifling mantra, “Due popoli due stati” – “Two people two states”.
The new era of Italian politics makes it possible for the likes of Lia Quartapelle – a Democratic Party MP – to pose as a human rights defender on the global stage while referring to Israel as “an extraordinary exception, a plural democracy in a region that fed sectarian and fundamentalist policies”. Her statement is not only wrong and deluding, it also embodies a deep-seated form of anti-Arab sentiment, if not, arguably, outright racism.
The attempt at shutting down the Palestinian Festival is a microcosm of Italy’s foreign policy agenda in Palestine and Israel, where Rome offers Palestinians nothing but empty rhetoric, while practically remaining subservient to the chauvinistic and racist right-wing agenda of Tel Aviv.
Italians must understand that this is no longer just a conversation on Palestine and Israel, but one that directly affects them and their democracy, as well. Italy is a country that brought, then fought and defeated fascism; allied with, then fought and defeated Nazism. Once more, they are presented with the same stark options: siding with Israeli racism and apartheid or upholding the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom.
– Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appear in many online newspapers and academic journals. She holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature, and specializes in audio-visual and journalism translation.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
More on the Anti-Semitism Scam: Jewish Students Get Protected Status
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | October 10, 2020
In both the United States and Europe there has been an increase in the passage of laws that are intended to protect Jews. Indeed, one might say that one of the few growth industries in Donald Trump’s United States has been the protection of Jewish citizens and their property from a largely contrived wave of anti-Semitism that is allegedly sweeping the nation. Even while potentially catastrophic developments both in the Middle East and the United States continue to unfold, the threat of anti-Semitism continues to find its way into much of the news cycle in the mainstream media.
A survey conducted last month in all fifty states was released with the headline “First-Ever 50-State Survey On Holocaust Knowledge Of American Millennials And Gen Z Reveals Shocking Results. Disturbing Findings Reveal Significant Number Of Millennials And Gen Z Can’t Name A Single Concentration Camp Or Ghetto, Believe That Two Million Or Fewer Jews Were Killed And A Concerning Percentage Believe That Jews Caused The Holocaust.”
The survey is based on the premise that detailed knowledge of the so-called holocaust should be an essential part of everyone’s education. Currently, 12 states already require holocaust instruction in their public school curricula, though that includes five of the six biggest states, and recently passed federal legislation will eventually fund holocaust education everywhere in the U.S. But, of course, the real back story that one must not mention is that the standard holocaust narrative is at least as much fiction as fact and it is employed regularly to create special benefits and protections for both Jews in general and also for the State of Israel. That is why the usual sources in the media become outraged whenever it seems that the propaganda is not effective.
The ignorance of the holocaust story inevitably received wide play in the mainstream media but there are a number of things that all Americans should know about the anti-Semitism hysteria that drives the process. First of all, the extent to which there is actual anti-Semitism and the background to many of the incidents has been deliberately distorted or even ignored by the press and by the government at all levels. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews for either their religion or their ethnicity, but many of the so-called anti-Semitic incidents are actually related to the policies advanced by the state of Israel. Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which have a vested interest in keeping the number of anti-Semitic incidents high, deliberately conflate the two issues in their reports.
In its 2018 report, ADL reported “1,879 acts,” in the United States during the course of the year. It is not a particularly large number given the size and population of the U.S. and also with respect to what is included. There were certainly some physical attacks, including two shooting incidents at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, but most of the incidents were much less kinetic, including shouting and name calling on university campuses between groups supportive of and opposed to Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.
Europe is way ahead of the game when it comes to punishing so-called holocaust denial or anti-Semitism, which now includes any criticism of Jews and/or of Israel. As one critic put it, Europeans generally can exercise something like free speech, but the speech is limited by certain rules that must be observed. Three weeks ago, the French nationalist writer and critic of Jewish power Hervé Ryssen was jailed for the fifth time for the crime of “hate speech.” He faces up to 17 months in prison for having been found guilty of “…insult, provocation, and public defamation due to origin, ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion.” In 2016 he was imprisoned for 5 months, in 2017 for 6 months and in 2018 for one year on similar charges. He also had to pay a 2000 Euros fine to the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism. In January 2020, Ryssen was found guilty of “contesting the existence of crimes against humanity,” i.e. questioning the so-called holocaust which labels him as a négationniste, a “holocaust denier.”
Ryssen has written numerous books on Jewish power in Europe and on Israel. His scholarship has rarely been questioned, but his willingness to speak out sometimes boldly on issues that are forbidden has put him in prison more often than not. Curiously, the French law against vilifying ethnic groups and religions has de facto only rarely been applied to protecting either Christians or Muslims. Satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo continues to “blaspheme” against both religions without any intervention from the authorities, but it is careful not to make fun of Jews.
The United States is clearly moving in the direction of France, at least insofar as the Jewish community and Israel are concerned. But it is also refreshing to note that a revived progressive wing of the Democratic Party is engaging in a bit of pushback. Three weeks ago, 162 Democratic congressmen plus one Republican and one independent actually voted against an amendment intended to “Protect Jewish Students from Antisemitism at School.”
The vote took place on Sept. 16th, and was over a Republican proposed amendment to the Equity and Inclusion Enforcement Act (H.R.2574). The amendment designated anti-Semitism to be a form of discrimination included in the bill and would allow private citizens to file lawsuits claiming damages under the Civil Rights Act’s Title VI, focusing particularly on education programs. In spite of the considerable level of opposition, unfortunately the amendment still passed by a vote of 255 to 164.
According to the Concerned Women for America (CWA), a group that lobbied for the added language, “The amendment ensures that recipients of federal education funding act against anti-Semitism in our communities. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) on college campuses is one of the ways such discrimination is being displayed.” The bill allows suits directed against any program receiving federal money if it can be claimed that one is the victim of discriminatory practices that negatively affect a protected class more than another class. Previously, the protected classes were identified as “race, color, or national origin,” but Jews and, by extension, Israel are now also protected. The specific additional language that was inserted was: “In carrying out the responsibilities of the recipient under this title, the employee or employees designated under this section shall consider antisemitism to be discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin as prohibited by this title.”
In practice, the new legislation will mean that Jewish students or their families or proxies can use Civil Rights legislation to sue educational institutions if they are made uncomfortable by the presence of critics of Israel. The real targets are groups like BDS, which have obtained some traction on university campuses and have been targeted by both the Israeli government and domestic Israel Lobby organizations. But, of course, the real danger is that once protected status is granted to one chosen group that promotes the interests of a foreign government there is no control over how “hate speech” will be defined and the consequences for American fundamental liberties will be catastrophic, moving far closer to the European model of freedom limited by “rules.”
Battlefield Social Media: The West’s Growing Censorship
By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 08.10.2020
Censorship in the West flourishes as tech giants turn social media back into traditional programmed media.
The United States, United Kingdom and the European Union are fond of passing judgement on nations around the globe regarding “free speech.”
While it is increasingly clear to a growing number of people that this “concern” is disingenuous and aimed at merely defending agitators funded and directed by Western special interests in these targeted nations, the West still likes to fashion itself as a sort of champion of free speech.
Yet back home the Internet has been taken over by social media and tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Their platforms clearly serve as online public squares where everything is discussed and even election campaigns play out. Yet these companies have, over the years, begun to eliminate voices of dissent against a notion known as “consensus.”
If you are speaking out against “consensus” you are in real danger of disappearing from these platforms. Some of these platforms, like Google-owned YouTube, serve as the livelihood to people who have for years built up their audiences, produced hundreds of videos and when their accounts are deleted for speaking out against the “consensus,” they have their livelihoods destroyed.
In the wake of these incremental “purges” is a chilling effect with content creators self-censoring or even withdrawing entirely from Western social media.
It is the sort of very real censorship the West has crusaded against in fiction around the globe for decades.
Consensus or Else
A more recent example is Google’s decision to ban ad revenue for those going against the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) “consensus.”
CNBC in their story “Google will ban ads from running on stories spreading debunked coronavirus conspiracy theories,” would claim:
Google next month will ban publishers from using its ad platform to show advertisements next to content that promotes conspiracy theories about COVID-19. It will also ban ads that promote those theories. In cases where a particular site publishes a certain threshold of material that violates these policies, it will ban the entire site from using its ad platforms.
Those “conspiracy theories” might include questioning the official death rates of COVID-19. Yet even the British government itself has been recently forced to investigate its statistics regarding death rates, vindicating the very sort of people who would have been either forced into silence or forced to give up ad revenue.
The London Guardian in its article, “Matt Hancock orders urgent review of PHE Covid-19 death figures,” would admit:
The UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, is ordering an urgent review of the daily COVID-19 death statistics produced by Public Health England, after it emerged that they may include recovered former sufferers who could have died of other causes.
False reporting over deaths to hype COVID-19, induce greater public panic and pave the way for billions in government handouts to pharmaceutical giants is at the very core of many of these so-called “conspiracy theories” Google seeks to silence through its campaign of financial coercion.
Imagine if this chilling effect was achieved sooner. Would the British government have even bothered investigating its faulty statistics if there weren’t people suspicious of them?
The chilling effect this has over openly discussing something as serious as COVID-19 considering its socioeconomic impact is truly alarming and much more so because it is happening in the so-called “free world” overseen by its self-appointed arbitrators in the US, UK and EU.
A similar campaign was carried out to purge Google, Twitter and Facebook of anyone allegedly connected with “Russia” who also so happened to be anti-war and anti-NATO for waging those wars.
Entire lists are compiled by Western government-funded organizations which are then submitted to these tech giants for purging. The Western media writes accompanying articles announcing, justifying and spinning the purges… but also sending a warning to those left about what is and isn’t going to be tolerated on these platforms.
Social Media Transforming Back into Programmed Media
Content creators are faced with two decisions; to either self-censor themselves to protect their work, their audiences and their livelihood, or to accept the possibility they will eventually be “purged” (censored) and need to rebuild their audiences from scratch on platforms with far fewer potential readers, viewers and patrons.
Social media, of course, is no longer social media in this sort of environment, but more akin to the sort of programmed media giant Western special interests built their power on over the course of the 20th and early 21st century.
Private Public Squares?
Of course the defense is that Google, Facebook and Twitter are “private companies”and can do as they please with their platforms. In reality, these companies work in tandem with Western governments whether it is fomenting political destabilization abroad or creating “concensus” at home.
The notion that censorship is “OK” because the US, UK and EU governments launder it through private companies ignores the close relationship these companies have with the government and how their platforms have been transformed into de facto public squares and critical channels of public communication and participation.
The West’s growing overt censorship leaves it with a choice; to either accept that it is in reality as guilty of censorship and manipulating the public as it has claimed its opponents are, or continue pretending it isn’t but at the continued cost of its legitimacy upon the global stage.
There is a very good reason the West is in decline around the globe and why its attempts to leverage notions like “human rights” and “free speech” against nations like China or Russia are increasingly impotent. That reason can be found, at least in part, among the growing number of purge lists, censorship campaigns and calls for “consensus” across Western social media.
Finally, the increasingly overt nature of censorship and controlled narratives promoted by tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter should have them facing restrictions and bans around the globe. Why should any nation host a “public square” where discourse is entirely controlled by interests oceans away? Why shouldn’t a local alternative be created instead where the revenue is kept locally and if narratives are to be controlled, controlled in a way that best suits people locally?
It is ironic that, China for example, is condemned for not allowing Google, Facebook and Twitter to operate freely within their information space because it is a violation of “free speech,” even as Google, Facebook and Twitter cudgel free speech on their own respective platforms.
How much longer will the world tolerate these double standards? How long until individuals, organizations and even entire nations begin creating alternatives to Google, Facebook and Twitter to at the very least balance out the lopsided power and influence they have collectively accrued and abused?
WSJ ‘investigation’ of aggregator that dared include RT scares other members into ditching the network
By Helen Buyniski | RT | October 8, 2020
After social media censorship failed to zero out RT’s web traffic, an establishment US media outlet has revealed it reached out to sites in the same link-exchange network as RT, spooking them into backing out.
The Wall Street Journal has launched an investigation into a link aggregator that includes RT.com, publishing the names of participants and the network itself in an effort to shame them into kicking the site off, in a hit piece on Wednesday. If this thinly-veiled intimidation is the behavior of a democratic country’s media, one shudders to imagine what an authoritarian nation might have done.
RealClearPolitics – a mostly-nonpartisan site that reports poll results and political news – is held up as an example, guilty of wrongthink through its association with Mixi.Media, a web-ring that links to headlines from news sites of various political persuasions (including RT) at the bottom of partners’ webpages. Mixi doesn’t show the source of the headlines right away, no matter where they come from, which –in the eyes of the Journal– proves it’s up to something nefarious.
The pearl-clutching pseudo-exposé made it clear that even unwitting association with RT is beyond the pale in this paranoid day and age. “If [readers] see RT, they are going to freak out,” Mixi founder Alex Baron is quoted as saying. Asked whether he agrees with RT’s “politics,” he answers in the negative, of course. However, the implication is made that he’s a Kremlin agent at heart through his past association with a Russian private equity firm – never mind that he’s suing that firm after being fired in 2018. Merely working for a company owned by a Russian executive initiates an irrevocable cootie-transfer.
The Journal doesn’t illustrate exactly how they approached the web-ring participants for the piece, but at least five sites were sufficiently intimidated –including The Blaze, Newser, and AccuWeather– that they fled Mixi’s network after being asked about the Russian intruder in their midst. Presumably the dialogue went something like “Gee, that’s a nice news outlet you’ve got there, sure would be a shame if it got shut down for Russian collusion.”
If that sounds like an exaggeration, one need only refer to the New York Times’ warning that merely reporting a story RT has covered is actually “sowing discord” and “creating division.” As far back as 2016, the Washington Post was accusing US-based, US-run alt-media websites of being Russian “useful idiots” merely for disdaining to go along with Washington’s neoliberal warmongering agenda, laundering its smears through the anonymous Ukrainian front “PropOrNot.”
The WSJ’s “don’t click that link – there might be Russians in it” scare story is just the latest in a long string of efforts to pressure friendly networks into giving RT the cold shoulder. The same outlet bemoaned RT’s seeming invincibility to TV censorship back in January 2017 as part of a multi-pronged media blitz ginned up by the US intelligence community’s attempt to implicate RT in “meddling” in the 2016 election – an allegation that has never been remotely substantiated yet has become part of the narrative wallpaper for the American establishment, assumed to be true even in the absence of evidence.
The dubious allegations of hacking the Democratic National Committee were followed by a lengthy screed against programs RT no longer even aired – but that was enough for the New York Times and other “papers of record” to pile on a competitor they didn’t know they had, treating the uninspired smear like a smoking gun. Breaking precedent set by other state-owned foreign media, the Justice Department forced RT to register as a “foreign agent.” The designation was subsequently held up, bizarrely, as “proof” it was foreign propaganda, as officials insisted it was voluntary, even though the network was threatened with criminal charges if it refused.
And the UK Sunday Times pulled a similar stunt to the WSJ’s back in 2017, phoning up RT’s British advertisers – many of whom were spooked by the probing questions into pulling their ads – and misrepresenting their vanishing act as motivated by the channel’s “propaganda and fake news.”
Efforts to sideline RT have only increased since then, with first YouTube and more recently Facebook and Twitter labeling it as state-run foreign media and burying its content. WSJ’s report glossed over the obvious follow-on effect from such a move, crowing gleefully that social media traffic to the site dropped 22 percent from 2018 to July and web traffic in general dropped 14 percent.
But until it drops to zero, the US’ propaganda mill will never be satisfied. Having coasted for decades with a virtual monopoly on viewers’ eyeballs, its quality declined accordingly, and the rise of the internet saw Americans hungrily lapping up any alternative source of information. When they’re presented with the sight of rioters burning businesses, bibles, or people and told these are peaceful democratic protesters who must be supported, they recoil not because they are propagandized by RT or some other outlet, but because they’re aware they’re being lied to.
With the 2020 election looming on the horizon, social media platforms and news outlets alike are renewing their fatwa against all things Russian. That reliable “enemy” ensures they will never have to answer for the many holes in their own one-sided coverage, the flagrant falsehoods regularly passed off as gospel, and the unrelenting fear porn that keeps too many Americans glued to their TV set. Heaven forbid they change the channel – they might trip over the truth.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Russia slams ‘disgraceful’ ban on founding OPCW chief speaking at UN Security Council on Syria
RT | October 6, 2020
An ex-OPCW chief, sacked under US pressure, has been barred from briefing the UN Security Council about a controversial probe into an alleged 2018 chemical attack in Syria. Russia called it a “shame” and published his speech.
Jose Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat who led the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from 1997 until 2002, was invited by Moscow to speak at a UN Security Council meeting about the so-called “Syrian chemical dossier,” but his appearance was blocked at the last minute by Belgium, Germany, Estonia, France, the US and the UK.
“What has happened now is yet more sad proof that Western delegations fear the uncomfortable truth,” Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, stressed while addressing the UN global body on Monday.
He said the six countries had “made history” because the Security Council has never voted “on the presence or absence of a briefer proposed by the [UNSC] president.” Prohibiting the former OPCW director general from speaking was a “shame and disgrace,” Nebenzia concluded, promising to publish Bustani’s statement after the meeting.
UK envoy Jonathan Allen said that Bustani is not in a position to “provide relevant knowledge or information.”
Shortly afterwards, the undelivered speech appeared on the website of the Russian mission to the UN. In it, the sacked OPCW chief raised “serious questions” over “whether the independence, impartiality, and professionalism of some of the organization’s work is being severely compromised, possibly under pressure from some member states.”
As a major example, Bustani cited an OPCW investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Syrian city of Douma on April 7, 2018. Western governments, and media outlets, maintain that forces loyal to Damascus dropped two gas cylinders as part of an offensive against jihadist forces, killing scores of civilians.
The allegations were used as a pretext for a major US-led airstrike against Syrian government forces later that year. The OPCW launched a probe into the “chemical attack,” and in early March of 2019, the final report by the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the OPCW stated that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that canisters filled with “molecular chlorine” were dropped from Syrian aircraft in Douma.
The final report gave credence to the Western show of force by implicating the Syrian government of Bashar Assad in conducting the attack, which the Syrian authorities vehemently deny.
Shortly after the release of the OPCW report, an internal memo by OPCW engineers was leaked, suggesting the canisters were likely just placed at the site of the “attack,” and did not come from the skies. Still, the final report did not include such information, and a senior OPCW official reportedly ordered the removal of “all traces” of the dissenting opinion, according to WikiLeaks.
Months later, Bustani noted that he was invited to an expert panel which heard the testimony of an unnamed OPCW investigator, who came forward with damning evidence that his own organization had engineered a report based on a flawed conclusion and likely deliberately steered toward the outcome favored by the West.
That expert provided “compelling and documentary evidence of highly questionable, and potentially fraudulent conduct in the investigative process,” Bustani’s statement recalled. The Brazilian diplomat had been so stunned by the testimony that he personally called on the OPCW to be “resurrected to become the independent and non-discriminatory body it used to be.”
However, he continued, the chemical weapons watchdog did not respond to any calls for greater transparency about the controversial Douma investigation. The probe was “hidden behind an impenetrable wall of silence and opacity, making any meaningful dialogue impossible.”
In conclusion, Bustani called on Fernando Arias, the current OPCW chief, to hear the grievances of OPCW inspectors who voiced dissenting opinions on the Douma incident. They “have dared to speak out against possible irregular behavior in your organization,” Bustani argued, adding that it is “in the world’s interest that you hear them out.”
Bustani noted that he had been removed from his OPCW position “following a US-orchestrated campaign in 2002.” Back then, he was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Iraq prior to the 2003 US invasion there. A UN tribunal ruled that his sacking was unlawful.
Twitter is Blocking Access to OffGuardian’s Content
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 3, 2020
Twitter is blocking all links to OffGuardian with an incredibly vague and highly dishonest “warning”, they have been doing it for weeks and we have never received any notice or explanation. It is a blatant attempt at censorship, and it needs to stop.
Any of you who follow us on social media have probably become more than familiar with this screen:
… it appears every time you click on any of our articles on twitter.
Note the vague language – “potentially spammy”, “could fall into”. They don’t even definitely say there is anything wrong, let alone what it actually is.
Since we can obviously rule out malicious software, phishing, spam and “violent content”, the only thing we can concluded is that we supposedly “violated” one of twitter’s rules. Since they don’t see fit to tells us which of their rules we’ve broken, let’s just inspect them all. They are right here in black and white and are fairly predictable:
- No child exploitation or child pornography
- No promotion of illegal practices
- No violence or promotion of violence
- No hate speech or threats
- No posting private information without consent
- No abuse or harassment
- No hacking, spam or fraud
- No plagiarism or copyright infringement
It’s all very basic stuff, and anyone even passingly familiar with our site could tell you we have never come close to breaking any of those rules. (We would be happy to argue this with anyone who comes forward to accuse us of anything specific).
Of course, none of this is accidental – the vagueness is entirely intentional. They don’t accuse us of anything specific, because then we cannot give a specific refutation (youtube does the same thing all the time, they will say your video “violated our community guidelines”, but they will never say how.)
This is actually even more dishonest than youtube – which is a hell of a thing to say – because twitter is going further, implying we have engaged in borderline illegal behaviour.
The most revealing details here are actually buried deep with the rabbit-warren of “help pages” on twitter.
First, there’s the way they “surface links” (meaning identify URLs which might be “dangerous”). Their methods include [our emphasis]:
Collaborative information sharing with industry peers and trusted NGO partners
They don’t say who their “trusted NGO partners” are, but we can probably guess…and we really don’t need to know the specifics to see how potentially corrupt that is.
Second, there’s this quote from the section headed “about links that have warning notices” [again, our emphasis]:
In some instances, Twitter will introduce a warning that the link may be unsafe. The warning notice can be clicked through if you wish to proceed to the third-party site. When a link has been categorized by Twitter as meeting the criteria for a warning notice, it will also have limited visibility on Twitter.
“Limited visibility” means twitter is actively hiding our content. Specifically – they are concealing it on people’s timelines and suppressing in search results.
To sum up:
- Twitter is suppressing our content in searches and blocking links to our articles.
- This decision was informed by unnamed third party “partners” – perhaps including unknown NGOs – and based on unspecified criteria.
- They have been doing it for months, without ever notifying us, or giving us any option for appeal or review.
- We don’t know of what we are accused and we have been given no method or avenue for defending ourselves.
This is authoritarian censorship, pure and simple.
But, as the saying goes, “When you’re taking flak you know you’re over the target”
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Clash of Civilization, Iran Part II
By Jamal Kanj – Intifada-Palestine.com – January 14, 2011
Israel’s survival kit is: perpetuate conflict, insecurity to rationalize collective hate and finally playing victim.
Devoid of conflict, Israel implodes internally; without hate, Zionism loses its justification; and playing eternal victim to continue blackmailing the West. Absence of this holy trinity, Israel ceases to exist.
From its inception, the house of Zion has mastered exploiting adversarial powers to advance Israel’s cause. For instance, their influence over the Democratic Party in the US began with President Truman’s bid for 2nd term election in 1948.
Responding to strong opposition from Secretary of State General George Marshall and Department experts urging against recognition of Israel, President Truman replied: “I’m sorry gentlemen but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands [Jewish voters] who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of [voting] Arabs among my constituents”
Zionists influence over liberal American politics was matched with the doctrinal school of Conservative theoreticians aligning the Republican Party’s platform with Israel’s objectives. The Neoconservative Zionists, coined Zioncons, invented the “Clash of Civilization” concept to fight Israel’s wars. … continue
Blog Roll
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