The United States of Fascism Hysteria
By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory | July 10, 2019
So it’s been an exciting few weeks for Antifa and the rest of the neoliberal Resistance. OK, they haven’t yet managed to overthrow the Putin-Nazi occupation government (hereinafter “POG”), but they’ve definitely got “the Fash” on the run. “Fascism” hysteria is spreading like wildfire. Liberal Twitter mobs are out for blood. At this point, it’s only a matter of time until the sleeping giant of normality awakens and purges America of the fascist filth that have Putin-Nazified this once great nation.
Antifa has been at the vanguard of the fight, smashing the Fash on both East and West Coasts. In Portland, where a gang of neo-fascist anti-masturbationists known as the “Proud Boys” had assembled for a self-promotional street fight they were billing as the “Battle of Portland 2,” Antifa militants positively identified and preventatively beat the living snot out of a journalist named Andy Ngo. To prevent him from snitching to the fascist cops (who are allegedly working hand in hand with POG), they self-defensively robbed him, sprayed him with silly string, and pelted him with vegan milkshakes.
Now, before you get all up in arms about Antifa assaulting and robbing journalists, you need to know a couple of things. First, according to Antifa spokespersons, and those bloodthirsty liberal Twitter mobs, Andy Ngo is a “fascist adjacent,” and possibly even a card carrying fascist. Antifa representative Alexander Reid Ross claims that Ngo is personally responsible for putting people’s names on a Nazi “kill-list” (or at least that Ngo’s writing has been published by Quillette, which published an article by someone else that some fascists read and copied people’s names from), so, basically, he deserves to die.
Also, assaulting and robbing Ngo was technically “preemptive self-defense” (you know, the same as when we invaded Iraq to defend ourselves from those WMDs). Despite their helmets and body armor, and the fact that Ngo is a doughy little gay guy, his presence among them on a public street was making Antifa feel “unsafe.” So, they had no choice but to beat him senseless, steal his camera, and vegan milkshake him. As Antifa expert Mark Bray explains, when you’re Antifa, “fighting back is always self-defense, even if [you] strike the first blow.” (This logic only applies to anti-fascists, of course, like Antifa and the U.S. military, and not to, you know, gangs of thugs, or the perpetrators of wars of aggression.)
Antifa’s self-defensive mugging of a journalist apparently scared the crap out of POG, because one week later, back in Washington, D.C., President Hitler called in the tanks, and the Luftwaffe, and announced that he was going to stage a reenactment of a Nuremberg Rally right in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The liberal intelligentsia went apeshit. This was really it this time! Putin had given Trump the green-light to declare martial law and pronounce himself Führer. The long-awaited Putin-Nazi Apocalypse was finally about to begin!
Unfortunately, Trump’s Fourth of July Jamboree turned out to be a rather tame affair. He even almost made it through his speech without making an ass of himself. This was extremely disappointing for liberals, who were hoping he would go full-Hitler, paint “death’s heads” on the turrets of the Bradleys and a Swastika on the tail of Air Force One, and order ICE to start rounding up the Jews.
The weekend wasn’t a total let-down, however. The Proud Boys (who are clearly gluttons for punishment), staged another self-promotional event, this one billed as “Defend Free Speech.” A few hundred people turned up to listen to speeches by a handful of alt-right clowns desperately trying to reignite their careers. They were outnumbered 2 to 1 by Antifa, Black Lives Matter, assorted drag queens, and an indigenous, two-spirited transperson of color, who reportedly “performed a spoken word” on the meaning of the term “latinx.”
The D.C. police (who are even more fascist than the Portland police who stood by and watched as Antifa beat up and robbed a journalist) fascistically prevented Antifa militants from storming into the Alt-right rally and beating the snot out of everyone in sight. So, the anti-fascists had no choice but to preemptively attack a newspaper dispenser, which was presumably making them feel “unsafe,” or disseminating POG propaganda, or something. One of them tried to burn a flag, but he couldn’t figure out how to operate his matches. Assorted other hilarious acts of revolutionary direct action followed. Apparently, Antifa’s strategy was to smash the Fash by amusing them to death.
Meanwhile, militant Resistance actions against the POG “concentration camps” continue. New York City, San Francisco, and other liberal metropolitan areas have almost completely emptied out as liberals flock to the southern border to liberate the surviving prisoners. Conditions in the camps are now beyond inhuman. According to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, migrants are being forced to drink out of toilets, and otherwise subjected to “systematic cruelty,” (so you can understand why liberals are physically putting their bodies on the line to bring an end to this horrifying sadism, and not just sitting around on the Internet shrieking about “concentration camps” as they travel to their summer holiday rentals on Martha’s Vineyard, or the Hamptons, or wherever).
No, these Putin-Nazi “concentration camps” are nothing at all like the “detention facilities” the Obama administration operated, even though they look exactly the same. Sure, thousands of migrant children were separated from their parents, in cages, and there were tens of thousands of incidents of rape, sexual abuse, beatings, and so on, but, otherwise, these Obama “detention facilities” were more like great big 2-star hotels, or like student dorms at a state university, so there was no need for liberals to get all worked up and start comparing them to places like Dachau and Buchenwald.
Plus, here’s a picture of dead people! Look at this picture! These people are dead! So just shut up about Obama already! Enough with history, and critical thinking, and the practical aspects of immigration policy! It’s time to abolish all national borders, issue everyone a U.S. passport, and transcend the whole concept of national sovereignty … or at least to provide the capitalist ruling classes with an endless supply of cheap, undocumented, extremely compliant unskilled labor. Those Bel Air lawns aren’t going to mow themselves!
Jesus, I can’t believe I just wrote that. Concentration camps and dead people are nothing to joke about. It’s OK, however, to cynically use them to whip people up into a paroxysm of manufactured mass fascism hysteria. Not that the neoliberal ruling classes and the corporate media would ever do that. No, they would never repeatedly attempt to evoke our hatred of the actual Nazis (and their actual concentration camps … which people were dragged out of their homes, loaded onto trains, and shipped away to, and which you could not voluntarily depart) in order to short circuit our critical thinking, or otherwise emotionally manipulate us into supporting their War on Populism.
No, the Putin-Nazi occupation government is not just manufactured mass hysteria concocted by the neoliberal ruling classes. Donald Trump is really a Nazi. There’s a portrait of Hitler in the Oval Office. Putin really controls America. Putin, and his cabal of Russian Nazis. They’re everywhere. They own the banks. They control the media. They control elections. They are the “International Invisible Government.” (Is any of this sounding vaguely familiar?) They are devising the Final Solution to the Immigrant Problem right this minute. They are doing this at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump has had a big “Black Sun” etched into the marble floor.
So, if you’re serious about your anti-fascism, now’s the time to load up on silly string, ski goggles, masks, hard knuckle gloves, and whatever you make those milkshakes with. POG might be on the run at the moment, but there’s an election season coming up, so we need to be prepared for anything. The important thing is to remain hysterical, and to be ready to respond to whatever emotional stimuli the ruling classes wave in our faces. The fate of democracy hangs in the balance.
Oh, and watch out for those fascist newspaper dispensers!
Google Promising Real-Time Censorship
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 5, 2019
Google has changed their algorithm so that it actively suppresses “misinformation” when “bad events” are taking place. This is pretty big news if you’re interested in free speech or the free flow of information. Nobody in the media treated it that way.
In fact, you probably didn’t see it at all. Almost no papers covered it – and the major one that did, The Guardian, buried back in the “science and technology” section.
The idea that Google suppresses “misinformation”, and boosts “authoritative voices” is not new. We already know they do that. The new part is that they will do it in real-time, they will respond to “tragic events” by focusing more on blocking “misinformation” at “criticial times”.
Pandu Nayak, the Google representative interviewed for the article, summed it up thus:
…we have developed algorithms that recognise that a bad event is taking place and that we should increase our notions of ‘authority’, increase the weight of ‘authority’ in our ranking so that we surface high quality content rather than misinformation in this critical time here.”
He is directly referencing mass shootings in the Sandy Hook vein, but he could just as well be talking about terrorist attacks, natural disasters, election results or war.
When he says “high quality content” (sic) he means corporate media. When he says “authority”, he means government sources.
Essentially, Google – the most powerful company on Earth – is going to be tightening its control on the flow of information when important news is breaking.
This is a step backwards for the internet, and the world. And it’s a direct response to challenges to state-backed narratives in multiple theatres of information warfare.
Take the Gulf of Oman incident. Compare and contrast: The Gulf of Oman, the USS Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin. The similarities are obvious, I won’t bother explaining.
The difference? Real-time flow of facts. Social media allowed people to comment on the flaws in the narrative instantly. The internet lets people see/hear Iran’s side of the narrative quickly and easily.
That open communication is the difference between a propagandised populace baying for blood, and an informed public asking the right questions. The difference between “historical realisation” decades after the fact, and instantaneous fact-checking. The difference between war and peace.
The almost-war with Iran is just the most recent example. Going back years now “official narratives” have faced a heretofore unknown level of challenge. The sheer number of people calling BS on the Skripal affair and the Douma chemical attack prevented a stronger reaction to both those false flags.
The war in Syria didn’t happen. The war in Iraq did. People believed babies were thrown out of incubators, but never bought that Assad had gassed his own people. All because of the direct channel of communication between people who know the truth and the people who want the truth.
That’s the channel Google are trying to close. Google, and Facebook, and Twitter and everyone else.
And, of course, the press cheers them on. Demanding we have our rights taken away for the sake of freedom, and applauding when some massive corporate conglomeration places yet another restriction on the liberty of the individual.
The Guardian has always been at the forefront of that push, with their absurd “Web We Want” section (which died a swift death, fortunately).
This article uses all the usual tricks, dressing the issue up in emotionally manipulative language – citing mass shootings and holocaust denial as if free speech precludes being wrong or offensive (it doesn’t).
The specifics don’t matter. Examples don’t matter. All that matters are the precedent and the future applications.
This is about what all “safeguards” on the internet are about – controlling the narrative. The old idiom still applies:
Knowledge IS power.
Right now WE have it, and THEY want to take it back.
Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he’s forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.
Internet users beware, GCHQ is trolling you
Press TV – July 3, 2019
Britain’s primary signals intelligence organization, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is actively recruiting for what it calls “Covert Online Operators”.
GCHQ recruiters are vague about the role, describing potential applicants as people who are “passionate” about the online world and are dedicated to using it to achieve “real world” results.
The successful applicant is expected to confront what is billed as Britain’s “adversaries” in an online setting with a view to delivering “end-to-end” results. The job description mentions “scoping” as well as working with “behavioural scientists” to achieve “operational objectives”.
Despite going to great lengths to present the job as high-end and sophisticated, nonetheless there are give-aways which reveal the real nature of the work.
Foremost, successful applicants only require A-levels or a university degree in any subject and then only at 2:2 level. The relatively low-level entry threshold is in stark contrast to the stringent entry requirements for mainstream national security-related jobs which typically require high level academic achievements.
The job description has led British political analysts to speculate on whether GCHQ is looking to employ trolls or social media disruptors whose job it is to identify and harass critics and opponents of British government policy online.
One such analyst is former British diplomat and ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan turned whistleblower, Craig Murray, who has long complained of online harassment at the hands of alleged British government trolls.
According to Murray the British government employs “a very large number” of people to shape the online political narrative in a manner consistent with British government positions and interests.
GCHQ’s large-scale recruitment of online trolls runs the risk of undermining the UK’s position in three important respects. Foremost, it undermines the myth of GCHQ as a cutting edge signals intelligence and cyber warfare organisation. By recruiting trolls, GCHQ is effectively admitting to online harassment and other low-level activities.
By implicitly admitting to deploying an army of trolls, the British government undermines its claims of strong commitment to media freedom and integrity on the world stage.
As critics of the British government have pointed out, if the establishment uses industrial-level trolling to silence dissidents and critics at home, it leaves little to the imagination as what it is capable of doing overseas to shape the debate in favour of Britain’s ruling elites.
To reinforce the message of cyber victimization, the British government set up the National Cyber Security Centre in 2016 ostensibly to combat cyber-based threats.
Despite the fact the UK likes to paint itself as a victim of cyber aggression, by most credible accounts Britain is more engaged in cyber offence than defence. Back in September it was reported that the Ministry of Defence and GCHQ are setting up a £250 million joint cyber warfare centre to take the fight to Britain’s adversaries.
Britain employs thousands of skilled personnel in cyber offensive roles and the government readily admits to a £1.9 billion national cyber security strategy.
Penguin, Rothschild and Zionist Pressure
By Gilad Atzmon | July 2, 2019
Penguin announced this week that in response to claims of ‘antisemitism’ it has stopped printing Col. Pedro Baños’ best selling book, “How They Rule the World.”
The scandal erupted when it was revealed that passages in the original Spanish edition of the book related to the Rothschild dynasty were omitted from the Penguin Random House English translation. The meaning of this deletion is in itself devastating. It suggests that Penguin attempted to kosherize a book by editing and deleting sections so it would not offend Jewish sensitivities.
The publisher initially rejected allegations that the book which claims to reveal “the 22 secret strategies of global power,” is antisemitic. But after continued pressure from various organisations including the Campaign Against Antisemitism, Penguin commissioned an “external review” led by Rabbi Julia Neuberger.
The Jewish Chronicle (JC) ‘reveals’ that Col. Baños’ original Spanish edition makes several references to the Rothschild family, including a passage accusing the banking family of holding “gigantic” economic power and influence which has “led to multiple speculations about their capacity to intervene in key global decisions”. Needless to say, this an historical description of the family and its role in history.
The hypocrisy displayed here by the Jewish media and pressure groups is mind blowing. Jews, themselves, do not hide their pride and admiration for the Rothschild Dynasty and its global political power. In the following video you can watch a Zionist bragging about the Balfour declaration that “changed the course of history” and the power and influence the Rothschild family exercised behind the scenes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsRuB-Qw1b0
Most English speakers are familiar with the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, but not many Brits or Americans are aware that in Hebrew and in Yiddish the musical’s greatest hit ‘If I were a Rich Man’ is sung “If I were a Rothschild.” In the following video you can listen to ‘If I Were a Rothschild’ (in Yiddish) while viewing the many estates of this influential family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUJcoWT_phQ
Penguin initially argued that while the book “clearly expresses robust opinions,” it was not anti-Semitic. However, persistent pressure from Jewish organisations led the publishing giant to commission a Rabbi to review the book. It came as no surprise that Rabbi Neuberger with the aid of two Spanish ‘antisemitism experts,’ reached the conclusion that the Spanish edition contains “echoes of Jewish conspiracy theories.” The phrase ‘Jewish conspiracy theories’ is confusing. It basically applies to events in the past which reflect badly on Jews in the present. It is there to suppress free discussion. Jewish power as I define it, is the power to silence criticism of Jewish power. Penguin Random House shamelessly succumbed to precisely this power last week.
In an attempt to justify his company’s decision, Penguin’s chief executive declared that “Penguin Random House UK publishes for readers of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities.”
One may wonder what Penguin’s next move will be. Is the compromised publishing house going to remove George Orwell from its catalogue because some Jews insist that deep inside, Orwell was a vile ‘anti-Semite’? Maybe Penguin should provide us with the list of titles that are fit for “all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities.” Out of interest, is Penguin planning to delete Deborah Lipsdat’s books because they may offend ‘Aryan sensitivities?’ Will Penguin delete Salman Rushdie’s titles because he once offended a few Muslims? For some reason, I‘m guessing that T. S. Eliot will be the first to go.
For my part, I welcome Penguin’s shameless decision. It affirms every warning I have produced for the last two decades. The fact that a publisher omitted innocent factual segments from a book simply to appease one Jewish group or another reveals a gross lack of intellectual integrity and commitment to truth. In the Britain of 2019, a leading publishing house doesn’t trust readers to think for themselves. This exposes how radically Britain has changed. It is no longer an open society. Britain is now an authoritarian society. It is, in effect, an occupied zone.
To buy How They Rule the World. on Amazon UK click here.
The Special Rules- Why Aren’t They A Form of Discrimination?
By Eve Mykytyn | June 29, 2019
Any Labour Party member bold or stupid enough to make or be associated with negative statements about Israel, the Zionist politics that support Israel or who questions any piece of the present Holocaust narrative has been disciplined by the Party. Ex, See or See.
England has Jewish citizens and Israel is a British ally, these two facts somehow get conflated. Israel is a separate sovereign state, has been so for seventy years, and is likely to remain a country, and a rich and powerful one at that, for the foreseeable future. Britain’s Jewish citizens, like all Brits, have rights to protection from discrimination, hate speech and the like that derive from their British citizenship and are wholly unrelated to Israel.
England and the US are also allies. When President Trump visited England he was met by huge protests and signs calling Trump a racist, a warmonger (in that I see little difference between Trump and other recent US presidents) dangerous and unAmerican and by large balloons portraying Trump on a toilet, in a diaper and as a penis. I’m an American, not a fan of Trump’s and it is fine with me if the British choose to protest his presence, although as far as I can tell such protests have no effect. Trump blithely misinterpreted the demonstrations as crowds greeting him, brilliantly diverting the media into a discussion about how that was not so.
Now imagine if the British held up similar signs insulting Netanyahu or Israel. Could they call Netanyahu a racist or ‘unIsraeli?’ Would anyone dare hold blimps of Netanyahu as a penis? Who would be kicked out of the Labour Party? Who would be prosecuted for hate speech or defamation? And what would this have to do with Britain’s Jewish citizens?
Why does Britain insist that there are certain ‘rules’ for criticizing Israel, as contained in the international holocaust definition of anti Semitism (the only racism that has its own special set of rules, apparently Blacks can go it on their own) but not for critics of Americans? Sadly, the US is close on England’s heels in implementing similar free speech penalties. Is there to be one rule for Jews and another rule for the rest of humanity?
The Labour party and alleged anti-Semitism: What’s really going on?
Press TV – June 29, 2019
It has been reported that Labour MP Chris Williamson has been suspended, yet again, on charges of anti-Semitism. The outspoken MP was last suspended in February after claiming that Labour had given “too much ground” over the issue.
A key ally of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Williamson’s latest suspension will re-ignite the debate over alleged anti-Semitism in the party, and will almost certainly be used by opponents of Corbyn within the party to undermine his leadership.
The anti-Semitism row erupted three years ago after the Labour party initially refused to adopt a controversial definition of anti-Semitism devised by a pro-Israel group, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The Labour party, specifically Jeremy Corbyn and his inner circle, subsequently came under intense pressure to adopt the definition, and a concerted campaign of intimidation, by pro-Israel groups, sought to undermine the left-wing ideologues and activists who spearheaded the resistance movement within Labour.
Labour activists and British political analysts generally viewed the pressure campaign as an attempt by the IHRA and allied groups to ban any criticism of Israel and its Apartheid-style policies, or failing that, to make such criticism prohibitively costly in political terms.
Consequently, several MPs and leading Labour party activists, notably Naz Shah, were named and shamed as part of the pressure campaign and forced to retract previous criticism of Israel.
But the pressure campaign claimed its biggest scalp in the form of ex-London mayor Ken Livingstone. A veteran Labour leader, Livingstone was suspended from the party against the wishes of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
To Labour party activists, in addition to a significant number of outside observers, it seemed that the pro-Israel pressure campaign had two core objectives. Firstly, to stifle criticism of Israel in the Labour party, and by extension, to oust key leaders and activists who adopted a balanced position on Middle Eastern politics. Secondly, the campaign sought to sabotage Corbyn’s leadership by way of restoring the Blairites’ hegemony.
Labour activists and independent political analysts pointed to Corbyn’s irreconcilable opponents within the party, notably deputy leader Tom Watson, to support their claims that the anti-Semitism issue is a contrived row designed to oust Corbyn.
This view is backed by authentic Jewish voices in the Labour movement, notably the Jewish Voice for Labour, who strenuously deny that the Labour party is institutionally anti-Semitic.
To underline the dishonesty and hypocrisy surrounding this issue, the same voices point to the Conservative party’s failure to address widespread Islamophobia within its ranks.
The general consensus in the Labour party appears to be that the groundless anti-Semitic accusations is a ploy to forestall a re-adjustment of British foreign policy toward the Middle East once the Labour party achieves power.
Google’s Empire: The Science Fiction of Power
By Maximilian C. Forte | Zero Anthropology | June 28, 2019
“For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to make a film about libraries,” explains Ben Lewis, the director of Google and the World Brain (2013). About libraries, he says, “they are my favourite places to be. Serene, beautiful repositories of the best thoughts that men and women have ever had”. Political economy, and the rights of citizens in a democracy, also loom large in Lewis’ estimation of the importance of libraries. As he states, libraries are: “Free to use. Far from the din of modern capitalism, libraries are the epitome of the public institution. There is simply nothing bad about a library. It is my paradise”. While praising the value of the Internet, Lewis warns, “the Internet also takes things from us, without asking”. Marrying the Internet and libraries raises hugely problematic issues, especially in the case of Google’s book-scanning project—problems surrounding copyright, national cultures and surveillance.
The political economy of knowledge production is one of the central areas of research interest that constitute the Zero Anthropology Project. This documentary was a good match for that interest, especially as it provokes a number of “big questions”: What are the social and political consequences of knowledge centralization? How, or when, is the digitization of knowledge problematic, and for whom? What role do libraries play in contemporary society? Does copyright protect much more than just authors’ rights and publishers’ profit-making activities? How is the digitization of knowledge linked to surveillance and governance? Should private corporations play any part in creating and/or controlling a universal library? Is a universal library even possible?
Google and the World Brain (2013)
If you were looking for a documentary that was not just another evangelical tract about how “information wants to be free,” spoken by wide-eyed zealots of “open access,” then this is the film for you. While beginning with enthusiasm for open access, for nearly a decade now Zero Anthropology has been warning about the dangers of open access, especially when it comes to facilitating the flow of information to the imperialist military of the US, or bolstering US academic hegemony. Ben Lewis’ Google and the World Brain shows us that we are on the right track. Yet some will argue that there are questionable aspects of Lewis’ critiques and the way they are presented in the film.
Directed by Ben Lewis, Google and the World Brain (2013) runs for 89 minutes. A trailer is included below, but the film in its entirety can be seen online, for free, on Archive.org and on the website of Polar Star Films. If you have 89 minutes to spare, please view it and then let us know if the following analysis was either flawed or unfair.
A trailer for the film is available below:
Polar Star Films, which produced Google and the World Brain, provided a detailed synopsis of the film which forms the basis for the following overview of the film.
Overview
Google and the World Brain is the story of “the most ambitious project ever attempted on the Internet: Google’s project to scan every book in the world and create not just a giant digital global library, but a higher form of intelligence”. The film’s critique draws from the dystopian warnings of H.G. Wells who in his 1937 essay “World Brain” predicted the creation of a universal library that contained all of humanity’s written knowledge, and which would be accessible to all of humanity. However, this would not just be a library in the sense of a static holding of inventoried contents, rather it would form the foundation for an all-knowing entity that would eliminate the need for nation-states and governments. With every increase in the quantity of information that it possessed, the globalist World Brain would be better able to rule over all of humanity, and would thus monitor every human being on the planet.
Supposedly Wells’ dystopian vision of technological progress (has progress ever really produced anything other than a succession of dystopias?) was just science fiction. However, this film shows how a World Brain is being brought into existence on the Internet: “Wikipedia, Facebook, Baidu in China and other search engines around the world are all trying to build their own world brains—but none had a plan as bold, far-reaching and transformative as Google did with its Google Books project”.
Starting in 2002, Google began its project of scanning the world’s books. To do so, they entered into legal agreements with major university libraries in the US, most notably those of Harvard, Stanford, and Michigan, and then expanded to include deals with the Bodleian Library at Oxford in the UK and the Catalonian National Library in Spain. The goal was not simply the collection of all books—instead, as Lewis’ film argues, there was “a higher and more secretive purpose” which was to develop a new form of Artificial Intelligence.
Of the 10 million books scanned by Google by the time this documentary was made, six million of them were under copyright. This fact provoked authors, publishers, and some librarians around the world to not only protest Google, but also to take legal and political action against it. In the fall of 2005 the Authors Guild of America and the Association of American Publishers filed lawsuits against Google. That resulted in a 350-page agreement negotiated with Google, which was unveiled in October of 2008.
However, that agreement which involved Google paying a settlement of $125 million, also granted Google Books huge new powers. The result was that Google would become the world’s biggest bookstore and commercialized library. Google now had the exclusive right to sell scans of all out-of-print books that were still in copyright. What this meant is that Google had a monopoly over the majority of books published in the 20th-century.
Reacting against this settlement, Harvard University withdrew its support for Google’s project. Authors in Japan and China joined a worldwide opposition to Google’s book-scanning. The governments of France and Germany also condemned the agreement. In the US, the Department of Justice launched an anti-trust investigation. Starting in late 2009, US Judge Denny Chin held hearings in New York to assess the validity of the 2008 Google Book Settlement, and in March of 2011 he struck it down.
Google altered its plan in order to continue with a version of its book-scanning project. Google signed deals with many individual publishers that would allow Google to show parts of their books online. Google also continued to scan books out-of-copyright. What Google was not able to do was carry out its master plan for an exclusive library that it controlled alone. The Authors Guild also persevered with suing Google for up to $2 billion in damages for scanning copyrighted books.
In this documentary, Google occupies the spotlight. Issues of copyright, privacy, data-mining, downloading, surveillance, and freedom come to the fore as a result.
The key figures interviewed in this film include some of the leading Internet analysts such as Evgeny Morozov, Jaron Lanier, Kevin Kelly, Clay Shirky, and Pamela Samuelson. Librarians in charge of some of the world’s leading libraries are also interviewed, including Robert Darnton (Harvard), Reginald Carr and Richard Ovendon (Bodleian), Jean-Noel Jeanneney (French National Library). In addition, authors involved in the struggle against Google Books such as Charles Seife, Roland Reuss, and Mian Mian (a best-selling Chinese author), are also key figures in the film.
The filmmakers challenge utopian visions of the Internet as the hoped for means of spreading democracy, freedom, and culture around the globe. Instead, the film argues that the Internet has enabled practices contrary to those ideals by, “undermining our civil liberties, free markets and human rights, while concentrating power and wealth in the hands of powerful new monopolies over which we have little influence”.
Polar Star Films ends its synopsis with this very important warning and urgent call for action:
“Humanity now stands at a crossroads. We can either take action to ensure that all the information and knowledge that the Internet is providing serves us, or we can remain passive consumers, and wait for all that information to take control over us. Whatever we do in the next few years will shape society for centuries to come”.
Contemporary Globalization as Science Fiction
H.G. Wells has to be one of the most prescient thinkers of the past two centuries. It is astounding just how far his supposed science “fiction” was in fact an outline discerning what would soon become reality. He had a particularly keen sense of the patterns taking shape around him, and just as keen a vision of the direction in which forces would move the world.
This is not the first time that we resort to the work of H.G. Wells which, under the guise of “fiction,” seemed to provide what global leaders would then adopt as a plan of action. In “The Shape of Things to Come in Libya,” we witnessed the applicability of Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come with its domineering figures, the “United Airmen”—progressivist autocrats who proclaimed themselves “freemasons of science”. Precursors to the neoliberal globalist mode of governance, the United Airmen came to vanquish local warlords and end all national governments, declaring independent sovereign states at an end, even if it meant war to erase them from the face of the earth.
Google and the World Brain opens with these words from the 1937 essay, “World Brain,” by H.G. Wells:
“There is no practical obstacle whatever now to the creation of an efficient index to all human knowledge, ideas and achievements. To the creation, that is, of a complete planetary memory for all mankind”.
Wells’ depiction of the World Brain was of a new kind of empire: a global dictatorship of technologists and intellectuals. Managers would become the new de facto politicians. This tyranny of expertise sits very well with the current neoliberal world order which sees its future in jeopardy.
It is a peculiar way to start, accompanied by an eerie soundtrack, since one might think that there is nothing especially scary about an “index,” about efficient organization of information, or a complete memory. However, given the mood of the film’s opening, we are immediately invited by the filmmaker to consider these aims in a different light—a much dimmer one.
The film also ends with Wells—all is bad that ends Wells. Quoting from his 1945 book, Mind at the End of its Tether, Wells predicted that this progressivist new world order would come crashing down:
“It is like a convoy lost in darkness along an unknown rocky coast with quarrelling pirates in the chart room and savages clambering up the sides of the ship to plunder and do evil as the whim may take them. That is the rough outline of the more and more jumbled movie on the screen before us. There is no way out. Or round. Or through”.
What is at Stake?
Wells also seemed to predict the Internet as making this world brain possible—this complete database of all human knowledge, past and present, could “be reproduced exactly and fully in Peru, China, Iceland, Central Africa or wherever else”. One of the analysts interviewed in the film, Kevin Kelly, is of the opinion that having instantaneous access to all human knowledge, “changes your idea of who you are”. Some will inevitably ask: “Is that a bad thing?” Kelly himself seems to think not, and he appears in this film as an evangelist for AI, the Internet, and the wonders of the screen.
The film thus turns its attention to the Google book-scanning operation, described by one analyst as, “clearly the most ambitious World Brain scheme that has ever been invented”. Still, some will wonder, what is the problem? How is the scanning of books something that should alarm anyone?
The film focuses further, and becomes a story about Google trying to achieve a monopoly over the digitization of books. Some will ask: “Is the real problem the total digitization of printed knowledge (which is quite distinct, and often separate from all knowledge as such, since not all human knowledge is published), or is the problem that of corporate monopoly?” In its early minutes, the documentary can be confusing about its intended aims.
The third focus comes next: the argument becomes that Google could track everything, and as Pamela Samuelson (law professor, Berkeley) explains, Google “could hold the whole world hostage”. Some viewers might balk: “this is just alarmism”.
Robert Darnton, Director, Harvard Library
What are the stakes? Speaking of the continued importance of libraries, Robert Darnton (Director, Harvard University Library) says in the film that libraries are, “nerve centres, centres of intellectual energy”. Lewis Hyde adds: “Libraries stand for an ideal, which is an educated public. And to the degree that knowledge is power, they also stand there for the idea that power should be disseminated and not centralised”. Are centralization and dissemination opposed and mutually exclusive? Even as he calls for dissemination, Darnton himself utilizes the concept of “centres”.
(Ironically, Darnton calls for the knowledge held by libraries to be opened up and shared—yet when I tried to gain access to some of Harvard’s library collections myself during research visits in 2004 and 2005, I required special written permission just to gain entry into the buildings.)
Expanding and Centralizing the Control of Knowledge
Google was initially successful in seducing a few of the world’s largest libraries, including those of Harvard and Oxford, whose chief librarians interpreted Google’s book-scanning project as a logical extension of a long history of attempts at centralizing knowledge. Among the earlier attempts were encyclopaedias; plans for a catalogue of all knowledge; and, microfilming.
More recently, and since the advent of the World Wide Web, Project Gutenberg became the first digital library, one which scholars have used and will continue to use regularly. Project Gutenberg, founded by Michael Hart, actually started in the early 1970s with the simple act of typing and distributing the Declaration of Independence.
Ray Kurzweil’s invention of the scanner clearly represented the one key advance needed to proceed towards digitizing knowledge. In 1975, Kurzweil created the first omni-font optical character recognition device, which went commercial in 1978. As Kurzweil admits, “we talked about how you could ultimately scan all books and all printed material”.
In the late 1990s the book, the scanner, and the Internet were combined in an effort to create what was hoped would be gigantic digital libraries. The Internet Archive, an indispensable tool for both myself and likely many readers of this review, was established in 1996. Significantly, the director of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, speaks in this film and indicates that he refused collaboration with Google because of the secrecy surrounding the nature of its agreements with libraries, and the fact that Google appeared to be on track to create something exclusive and separate.
Wikipedia, and arguably YouTube, are also massive attempts at acquiring and centralizing knowledge.
Google = Hegemony
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google with Larry Page, says that Page first conceived of Google Books in 1999. Google Books was then initiated in 2004. In “A Library to Last Forever,” published in The New York Times on October 9, 2009, Brin explained that Google’s digitization effort would be history’s largest-scale effort, primarily because Google invested significantly in the resources needed for the project. In that article, Brin also is clear that Google was zeroing in on out-of-print but in-copyright books, and commercializing them, while also seeking to create new regulations that would allegedly serve the interests of rights holders. Brin argues that Google’s motivation was to preserve “orphan books” against physical destruction and disappearance. Commenting on Google’s supposedly lofty goals, Evgeny Morozov says the following in this film:
“I don’t think that Google is aware of the fact that it’s a corporation. I think Google does think of itself as an NGO that just happens to make a lot of money. And they think of themselves as social reformers who just happen to have their stock traded on stock exchanges and who just happen to have investors and shareholders, but they do think of themselves as ultimately being in the business of making the world better”.
Google, while claiming to be laying the path for others to follow and which says it has aided other digitization efforts, is highly secretive about its scanning operation. It refused the filmmakers access to any of its (secret) scanning locations, and the film thus relies on six seconds of footage—the only such footage in existence—that was leaked out. Google’s secrecy extends to the total number of books it has scanned, and to how much it costs to scan them on average (one estimate is between $30 and $100 per book). Google also worked to prevent any one of its partner libraries from communicating with other partner libraries about the nature of their individual contracts with Google. According to Sidney Verba, former director of Harvard Library, Google “bent over backwards” to make sure that each library would not tell the others what kind of contract they had and how they were working with Google.
How did Google benefit from book-scanning? Five explanations are offered by interviewees in the film.
(1) Lawrence Lessig introduces the point that one of the benefits of massive book-scanning, is that it pumps information into Google’s core, allowing it to develop more sophisticated algorithms that depend on knowing more and more.
(2) Sidney Verba offers a different explanation: by having lots of information in Google, more people would use Google, which would increase the prospective advertising landscape, thus enriching Google by selling advertising space.
(3) Pamela Samuelson, narrowing Google down to a search engine, offers a third viewpoint: having more data (from books, for example), allows Google to perfect its search technology.
(4) Jaron Lanier argues that there is a competition between all sectors of the modern economy (whether healthcare, information and communications technology, finance, criminality, etc.) for more and more data, because data—and specifically data differentials—is a measure of power. Then the data hoarders can in some cases claim that their work is for the common good, by increasing efficiency.
(5) Lanier, Lessig, and Kevin Kelly together make the point that feeding all these books into Google’s servers leads to the creation of something akin to a life-form, a transformative force, a mass of memories that empowers an artificial intelligence system. As the reader will have noted, there is nothing about these five theories that renders them mutually exclusive—they can all be true, at the same time.
The head of Google Books Spain, Luis Collado, the only company official willing to speak to the filmmakers about Google Books, offered a comparatively milder and more innocent explanation. Collado says that Google’s motivation was to amplify the richness of online knowledge. Until it started adding books to the Internet’s offerings, the Internet only consisted of materials that were specifically created for it. For example, in late 1994 in the SUNY-Cortland library I surfed the entire World Wide Web as it then existed, in just one afternoon (at the time I rushed to the conclusion that the Internet was “useless”). For a few years, it was actually practical for me to print everything I found interesting online, because there was so little worth printing. So Collado has a point, even if it does not exhaust the range of plausible explanations.
For Father Damià Roure, Library Director at the Monastery of Montserrat in Spain, Google’s book-scanning was a means of “diffusing our culture” to the rest of the world, while helping to preserve the knowledge contained in its vast library. What he was simply unable to answer was why the monastery had not asked Google to pay for the privilege of scanning the monastery’s collection. As Google turned its operation into a business, from which it would profit, was it fair to get the materials for free? Father Roure went completely silent at this point in the film, in one of the longest, most awkward silences I have ever seen on the screen. He brought it to an end by saying that he was not in a position to comment on anything other than digitization. Reginald Carr, former director of the Oxford’s Bodleian Library, simply downplayed the point: Google, in his view, was fully entitled to make a profit—having invested so much in the scanning—even if the Bodleian’s ethos was to make knowledge available for free.
These two library directors serve a useful purpose: they are a reminder to us that willing collaboration on the part of intermediary local elites is often essential to any grant project of hegemony-building. When it comes to the Internet, and Google in particular, readers of this article are also collaborators—collaborators that, at a minimum, feed Google with content with each search they perform. By continuing to use Google, you make it more powerful.
Assisted Intelligence or Artificial Intelligence?
Jaron Lanier
Speaking of collaboration, the film specifically addresses how Internet users are themselves used. To the extent that this is done unknowingly, unthinkingly, and without compensation, we move from collaboration to exploitation. Jaron Lanier makes this argument forcefully:
“AI is just a religion. It doesn’t matter. What’s really happening is real world examples from real people who entered their answers, their trivia, their experiences into some online database. It’s actually just a giant puppet theatre repackaging inputs from real people who are forgotten. We are pretending they aren’t there. This is something I really want people to see. The insane structure of modern finance is exactly the same as the insane structure of modern culture on the Internet. They’re precisely the same. It’s an attempt to gather all the information into a high castle, optimise the world and pretend that all the people the information came from don’t deserve anything. It’s all the same mistake”.
An absolutely unctuous and all too precious spokesperson for Google, Amit Singhal, actually confirms Lanier’s point when he says the following in the film:
“Google Search is going to be assisted intelligence and not artificial intelligence. In my mind I think of Search as this beautiful symphony between the user and the search engine and we make music together”.
Singhal confirms what Lanier argued, that Google is powered by its users, but then makes the false analogy to a symphony. Musicians performing in an orchestra are clearly instructed on their roles, they perform willingly, and they perform in accordance with known rules and by reading codified music sheets. In other words, the musicians are willing, aware, and informed. Most of Google’s users do not know they are performing in any “symphony”. Google emphasizes harmony where there is in fact concealment, deceit, and exploitation. If there is any music, it is music only to Google’s ears.
Google and Copyright: The Essence of the Confrontation
The film takes a turn into questions of copyright at this stage, when Harvard’s library director, Robert Darnton, points out that its agreement with Google only allowed for the scanning of books in the public domain. However, Google’s agreements with other libraries allowed it to scan all books, including those in copyright. Mary Sue Coleman, president of Michigan University, openly stated that her university allowed Google to scan copyrighted books, claiming that it was “legal, ethical, and noble” to do so (meanwhile universities warn students not to photocopy more than 10% of any given work). Copyright violation is where the legal problems exploded in Google’s face.
However, one of the outcomes of the lawsuits against Google was that the settlement agreement allowed Google to become the world’s biggest bookstore, specializing in out-of-print but in-copyright books. The settlement in fact granted Google an exclusive right to sell such books, without sharing the profits with authors. Google would also not respect the privacy of readers: the company would instead track what readers read, and for how long they read it.
One of the features of copyright that stands out in this film, is that copyright on the Internet takes the place of national borders. Thus we hear from Angela Merkel in this film, asserting that the German government would defend the rights of German authors, by making sure that copyright had a place on the Internet. Likewise, the former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, declares in footage shown in this film that France would not allow a large private corporation to seize control of French national heritage, “no matter how nice, important, or American it may be”. Standing against the imperial ambitions of Google therefore was the seemingly old-fashioned principle of copyright. It reached the extent that when the Google book settlement was taken to court in 2009, representatives of foreign authors and foreign governments, accused the US of violating various treaty obligations which could force foreign parties to go to the WTO—and in the likely event of the US losing a case before the WTO, other nations would then have a right to impose trade sanctions on the US.
The outcome is that Google remains the target of publishers’ and authors’ lawsuits, while it continues to scan both out-of-copyright books as well as in-copyright books (in agreement with major libraries, and then offering only “snippets” of the book online). Rivalling Google, various governments and major libraries have undertaken their own library digitization, thus defeating Google’s attempt at becoming an exclusive monopoly. The Digital Public Library of America is one such example of a project that took off in response to the threat posed by Google, as is the case of Europeana.
Google as Empire
The film quotes from William Gibson’s 2010 article in The New York Times, “Google’s Earth,” as part of its argument that Google is building an artificial intelligence entity of a grander scale and sophistication than was even imagined in science fiction. As Gibson explains in that article, Google is “a central and evolving structural unit not only of the architecture of cyberspace, but of the world,” and he adds that this was, “the sort of thing that empires and nation-states did, before,” only now Google’s empire is one that also becomes an organ of “global human perception”. In Google, we are citizens, but without rights.
French National Library
Jean-Noël Jeanneney
Jean-Noël Jeanneney, the former director of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (the French National Library), represents the voice of the library of the nation-state, that which Google ultimately seeks to erase. He recounts in the film his first encounter with two young Google representatives who came to meet him—he points out that what struck him was their “arrogance” and “brutal commercialism”. These “salesmen,” as he calls them, badly miscalculated his psychology when they brought as a gift a thermo-flask, for which he had no use and which he cast aside. Following his meeting with Google’s representatives, and the company’s announcement that it alone would build a universal digital library, Jeanneney announced to his staff a plan for what he emphatically calls a “counter-offensive”. He criticized the Google book-scanning project as incorporating an Anglo-American cultural bias, and in a noteworthy critique published by Le Monde in 2005 titled “When Google Challenges Europe,” he argued that, “what I don’t want is everything reflected in an American mirror. When it comes to presenting digitized books on the Web, we want to make our choice with our own criteria”. Jeanneney pointed to “the risk of a crushing domination by America in the definition of the idea that future generations will have of the world”. Google suddenly appears not so much as a “new” empire, as in Gibson’s piece, but rather a part of the American empire in a new extension of itself. We are thus back to the familiar problems of Americanization and cultural imperialism.
As Sidney Verba explains in the film, there were two additional sides to the French critique of Google: one had to with the dominant language of Google search results—English—which thus acted as a force undermining French, and the second had to do with who got to decide what would be digitized, its order of priority, and who would get to do the digitization. Who are the Americans at Google who get to digitize France’s books?
Conclusion
While sometimes striking an alarmist tone that was not warranted by the empirical substance that was presented, one could also conclude that the film is only guilty of erring on the side of caution. When dealing with Google in particular, we are well past the point of being cautious: it is a monopolistic entity that for years had a large revolving door between itself and the State Department and the Democratic Party, while also striking deals with the Pentagon and engaging in political censorship. There is nothing innocent about Google, and to the extent that it swallows the Internet, there is little about the Internet that is innocent.
One of the possible lapses of the film is that it does not direct as much attention to China’s Baidu, which has its own extensive book-scanning project that might even rival Google’s. The film presents an interview with Baidu’s communications director, and provides some useful statistics from Baidu employees about the extent of its own book-scanning project—but the bulk of the criticism is reserved for Google.
A book scanning unit in China
However, it has to be said that Ben Lewis does us all an essential service with this film that, ostensibly, appears to be about the simple act of scanning library books, and becomes instead a much larger story about democracy, rights, nation-states, cultures, corporatization, political economy, international law, and the future of globalization.
It was not surprising to see that, once again, one of the top documentaries we have had the privilege of reviewing was produced by Europe’s Arte television company.
This documentary, with all of its thought-provoking questions and careful detail, would be suitable for a wide range of courses in fields such as Information and Communication Studies, Librarianship, Media Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, and Political Science. The film earns a score of 8.75/10.
(This documentary review forms part of the cyberwar series of reviews on Zero Anthropology. This film was viewed four times before the written review was published.)
Orwell’s 1984 no longer reads like fiction. It’s the reality of our times
By Robert Bridge | RT | June 28, 2019
70 years ago, the British writer George Orwell captured the essence of technology in its ability to shape our destinies in his seminal work, 1984. The tragedy of our times is that we have failed to heed his warning.
No matter how many times I read 1984, the feeling of total helplessness and despair that weaves itself throughout Orwell’s masterpiece never fails to take me by surprise. Although usually referred to as a ‘dystopian futuristic novel’, it is actually a horror story on a scale far greater than anything that has emerged from the minds of prolific writers like Stephen King or Dean Koontz. The reason is simple. The nightmare world that the protagonist Winston Smith inhabits, a place called Oceania, is all too easily imaginable. Man, as opposed to some imaginary clown or demon, is the evil monster.
In the very first pages of the book, Orwell demonstrates an uncanny ability to foresee future trends in technology. Describing the protagonist Winston Smith’s frugal London flat, he mentions an instrument called a ‘telescreen’, which sounds strikingly similar to the handheld ‘smartphone’ that is enthusiastically used by billions of people around the world today.
Orwell describes the ubiquitous device as an “oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror” affixed to the wall that “could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.” Sound familiar? It is through this gadget that the rulers of Oceania are able to monitor the actions of its citizens every minute of every day. At the same time, the denizens of 1984 were never allowed to forget they were living in a totalitarian surveillance state, under the control of the much-feared Thought Police. Massive posters with the slogan ‘Big Brother is Watching You’ were as prevalent as our modern-day advertising billboards. Today, however, such polite warnings about surveillance would seem redundant, as reports of unauthorized spying still gets the occasional lazy nod in the media now and then.
In fact, just in time for 1984’s anniversary, it has been reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) has once again been illicitly collecting records on telephone calls and text messages placed by US citizens. This latest invasion of privacy has been casually dismissed as an “error” after an unnamed telecommunications firm handed over call records the NSA allegedly “hadn’t requested” and “weren’t approved” by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2013, former CIA employee Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA’s intrusive surveillance operations, yet somehow the government agency is able to continue – with the help of the corporate sector – vacuuming up the private information of regular citizens.
Another method of control alluded to in 1984 fell under a system of speech known as ‘Newspeak’, which attempted to reduce the language to ‘doublethink’, with the ulterior motive of controlling ideas and thoughts. For example, the term ‘joycamp’, a truncated term every bit as euphemistic as the ‘PATRIOT Act’, was used to describe a forced labor camp, whereas a ‘doubleplusgood duckspeaker’ was used to praise an orator who ‘quacked’ correctly with regards to the political situation.
Another Newspeak term, known as ‘facecrime’, provides yet another striking parallel to our modern situation. Defined as “to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense.” It would be difficult for the modern reader to hear the term ‘facecrime’ and not connect it with ‘Facebook’, the social media platform that regularly censors content creators for expressing thoughts it finds ‘hateful’ or inappropriate. What social media users need is an Orwellian lesson in ‘crimestop’, which Orwell defined as “the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.” Those so-called unacceptable ‘dangerous thoughts’ were determined not by the will of the people, of course, but by their rulers.
And yes, it gets worse. Just this week, Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘private company’ agreed to give French authorities the “identification data” of Facebook users suspected of spreading ‘hate speech’ on the platform, in what would be an unprecedented move on the part of Silicon Valley.
‘Hate speech’ is precisely one of those delightfully vague, subjective terms with no real meaning that one would expect to find in the Newspeak style guide. Short of threatening the life of a person or persons, individuals should be free to criticize others without fear of reprisal, least of all from the state, which should be in the business of protecting free speech at all cost.
Another modern phenomenon that would be right at home in Orwell’s Oceania is the obsession with political correctness, which is defined as “the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” But since so many people today identify with some marginalized group, this has made the intelligent discussion of controversial ideas – not least of all on US college campuses, of all places – exceedingly difficult, if not downright dangerous. Orwell must be looking down on all of this madness with much surprise, since he provided the world with the best possible warning to prevent it.
For anyone who entertains expectations for a happy ending in 1984, be prepared for serious disappointment (spoiler alert, for the few who have somehow not read this book). Although Winston Smith manages to finally experience love, the brief romance – like a delicate flower that was able to take root amid a field of asphalt – is crushed by the authorities with shocking brutality. Not satisfied with merely destroying the relationship, however, Smith is forced to betray his ‘Julia’ after undergoing the worst imaginable torture at the ‘Ministry of Love’.
The book ends with the words, “He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” Will we too declare, like Winston Smith, our love for ‘Big Brother’ above all else, or will we emerge victorious against the forces of a technological tyranny that appears to be just over the horizon? Or is Orwell’s 1984 just really good fiction and not the instruction manual for tyrants many have come to fear it is?
An awful lot is riding on our answers to those questions, and time is running out.
Facebook to give French courts data on hate speech suspects, says minister
RT | June 25, 2019
Facebook has agreed to give French courts the identification data of users suspected of spreading hate speech on the platform, according to a French minister, in what is being described as a world first.
France’s minister for digital affairs and former top advisor to President Emmanuel Macron, Cedric O, confirmed the agreement on Tuesday, but suggested the courtesy would not be extended to other nations.
“This is huge news, it means that the judicial process will be able to run normally,” O told Reuters. “It’s really very important, they’re only doing it for France.”
The deal between the world’s largest social media network and France came after a series of meetings between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Macron.
The social network had already been giving French authorities IP addresses and identifying data of suspected terrorists after judges demanded their cooperation, but this is the first time the agreement has extended to hate speech.
Macron has made no secret of his interest in regulating online hate speech and fake news. Recently, parliament has been considering implementing a fine of 4 percent of a tech company’s global revenue if they are found to not have done enough to remove certain content from their network.
Egypt’s NileSat halts broadcast of Press TV, other Iranian channels: Saudi media
Press TV – June 25, 2019
Saudi media say Egyptian-owned satellite firm NileSat has halted the broadcast of three Iranian TV channels, including English-language Press TV news network, in yet another attack on media freedom.
The Arabic-language Saudi daily newspaper Okaz, citing an informed source, said Sunday that the regional satellite provider halted the broadcast of Press TV as well as entertainment and movie channels of iFilm in English and Arabic languages.
Earlier, some informed sources had reported that Arab satellite companies had agreed to cancel their contracts with Iranian media outlets in the region.
The move by the Arab alliance was claimed to be a response to the networks’ “spread of rumors and creation of division.”
It is not the first time that Iranian television channels come under attacks by Arab and European satellite firms.
Egypt — a close Saudi ally — is party to a Riyadh-led coalition waging a bloody military campaign against Yemen. The Saudi regime and its allies are especially outraged by Iranian media’s wide coverage of the crimes being committed against Yemeni people, among other issues.
Since its launch in 2007, Press TV has been using a wide range of platforms, from TV broadcast and website to social media, to offer its audience a fresh view of world news, with a focus on developments in the Middle East’s conflict zones.
In April, Press TV’s verified YouTube account — along with the page of Iran’s Spanish-language Hispan TV — was blocked with no prior notice by tech giant Google.
The move came as the US stepped up its pressure campaign against Iran with the backing of Saudi Arabia and other repressive Persian Gulf Arab regimes. Washington is the main sponsor of the Saudi-led war on Yemen.
Google Executive Allegedly Says Only Big Tech Can Prevent 2020 ‘Trump Situation’
Sputnik – June 25, 2019
While Big Tech has consistently brushed off accusations of discrimination and political bias, a new investigative report by Project Veritas provides new insight into Google’s alleged internal practices.
Project Veritas has published a new report on Google along with an undercover video of the company’s head of Responsible Innovation, Jen Gennai, and leaked docs by an alleged insider that purportedly expose the tech giant’s plans to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections in the United States and “prevent the next Trump situation”.
“Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that”, she appears to be saying in the footage, which was filmed at a restaurant on a hidden camera.
Gennai was referring to a statement by Massachusetts Senator Warren to break up tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook as the companies face mounting backlash ahead of the 2020 vote.
The executive, whose “Responsible Innovation” sector monitors and evaluates the implementation of AI technologies, said in the video that Google has been working to reprogramme its systems and algorithms.
“We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again. We’re also training our algorithms, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?”
According to Project Veritas, Gennai as well addressed the anti-conservative bias accusations the company has recently faced and explained that “conservative sources” and “credible sources” didn’t always overlap in line with Google’s editorial practices.
“We have gotten accusations of around fairness is that we’re unfair to conservatives because we’re choosing what we find as credible news sources and those sources don’t necessarily overlap with conservative sources…”
As part of the report, the video also contains snippets of an interview with an alleged Google whistleblower, who provided information on the alleged “algorithmic unfairness” and Machine Learning Fairness, which he claimed was “one of the many tools the company uses to advance a political agenda”.
“They are going to redefine a reality based on what they think is fair and based upon what they want, and what and is part of their agenda”.
Gennai has already read the Project Veritas report and penned a Medium post to explain what happened, claiming that the outlet had edited the video “to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election”.
She dismissed the report as an “unadulterated nonsense” and reiterated that the company “works to be a trustworthy source of information, without regard to political viewpoint”.
“In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. I was having a casual chat with someone at a restaurant and used some imprecise language. Project Veritas got me. Well done”, she wrote.
YouTube has already removed the video of the interview with Gennai from the platform, while Reddit has suspended Project Veritas’ account following the release of the report.
This isn’t the first time Project Veritas has had its accounts or content removed after publishing an investigative report which exposes the internal practices of big tech firms. One of its reports, which shed light on Pinterest’s internal blacklists, was censored heavily as a result of questionable privacy complaints.
Aside from being taken down from YouTube, Project Veritas was also suspended on Twitter and other journalists who talked about the report in their videos had them removed.
In the past few weeks, Google and its video-sharing platform YouTube have faced multiple accusations of political bias against conservative views and independent media sites, as well as suppression of free speech.
The tech giants have, however, always denied the allegations.
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From the Archives
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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