Facebook pulls alt-media pages, dismisses as spam ahead of 2018 elections
RT | October 12, 2018
Facebook is again being called out for purging political accounts too far left and right of center, after it removed more than 800 pages just in time for the 2018 midterm elections. Some had millions of followers.
Many of the affected pages were supposedly sharing links between groups using fake accounts, which then clicked “Like” on the posts, artificially upping their engagement numbers. This “inauthentic behavior” violates Facebook’s anti-spam policies and goes against “what people expect” from Facebook, the company said.
While some of the deleted pages have been known to run content of questionable credibility at times, Facebook did not expressly accuse them of spreading “fake news” – or actually provide a list of names or examples of postings at all. However, under the platform’s new policies, simply spreading “news” is frowned upon: it has recently tweaked its algorithm to prevent users’ feeds from being dominated by news stories.
Twitter was in an uproar this afternoon as many voices on the left and right alike saw their pages removed without cause.
On the Left, AntiMedia and the Free Thought Project were among the victims. AntiMedia’s Twitter account was suspended shortly after they posted about their removal from Facebook.
Press For Truth was also dropped.
Right Wing News and Nation In Distress were some of the conservative pages that got the axe. Free Thought Project, AntiMedia, and Nation In Distress had millions of followers each, while many others had hundreds of thousands of followers.
Among those dragged under in the ‘inauthentic behavior’ purge is RT America correspondent Rachel Blevins, who says she took years to build up a following by posting her reports and articles – though RT content is probably not very popular with Facebook staff these days.
In August, the aggressively pro-NATO think tank Atlantic Council announced it was joining Facebook as a “fact-checking” partner. A press statement from the social media platform gushed that the think tank, which boasts such esteemed warmongers as Henry Kissinger and Michael Chertoff on its board, would serve as the “eyes and ears” of Facebook, so the platform could play a “positive role” in ensuring democracy was practiced correctly in the future.
Since the Atlantic Council arrived on the scene to protect Facebook users from themselves, accounts that post anti-establishment political content have noticed a massive drop in engagement on their posts – if they haven’t been kicked off the platform altogether. In August, Facebook deleted 652 accounts after cybersecurity firm FireEye claimed they were linked to Iran.
After it emerged that political research firm Cambridge Analytica had used publicly-available user data to target possible Trump voters, CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the idea that social media manipulation played a significant role in the 2016 US presidential election. Since then, however, the company has been playing catch-up, trying to preempt government regulation by banning and blocking any user who deviates from an increasingly narrow centrism.
Remembering the days when Facebook was all about cat videos and clickbaity headlines, one cannot help but link the sense of social responsibility it’s suddenly developing to how US lawmakers have set their sights on social media platforms. In April, Zuckerberg had to endure House and Senate hearings, taking cringe-worthy questions from politicians who at time seemed to barely know what a social network is and how it works.
Meanwhile, mainstream media fearmongering is already kicking in. The New York Times – an outlet Facebook is unlikely to delist for posting misleading content anytime soon – has cited “experts” to accuse these domestic US pages of “emulating the Russian strategy of 2016” by creating and amplifying clickbait.
‘Free Speech’: Trump Campaign Defends WikiLeaks’ Release of Hacked DNC Emails
Sputnik – 11.10.2018
A lawsuit filed in September by two donors and an ex-employee from the Democratic Party alleged that President Donald Trump’s team had purportedly conspired with Russia to release emails ostensibly stolen from the servers of the Democratic National Committee.
In a motion to dismiss a new lawsuit, the Trump campaign, represented by lawyers from the firm Jones Day, turned to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to state that WikiLeaks couldn’t be held “liable” for publishing Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails because the whistleblowing website served as an “intermediary” for other parties’ information.
“A website that provides a forum where ‘third parties can post information’ is not liable for the third party’s posted information. Since WikiLeaks provided a forum for a third party (the unnamed “Russian actors”) to publish content developed by that third party (the hacked emails), it cannot be held liable for the publication,” the motion read.
Presenting the 32-page legal filing, the lawyers also maintained that any alleged agreement between the website and the Trump campaign to leak those emails couldn’t be considered a “conspiracy” due to the fact that WikiLeaks’ posting of the messages was not a crime, while a “conspiracy is an agreement to commit an unlawful act,” the lawyers claimed.
They further added that the campaign couldn’t be held legally responsible for the publication of the DNC emails on WikiLeaks.
The lawyers appealed to the First Amendment, which protects the right to “disclose information – even stolen information – so long as (1) the speaker did not participate in the theft and (2) the information deals with matters of public concern.”
“At a minimum, privacy cannot justify suppressing true speech during a political campaign. The First Amendment ‘has its fullest and most urgent application to speech uttered during a campaign for political office’. It leaves voters ‘free to obtain information from diverse sources in order to determine how to cast their votes,’” the filing read.
The motion was submitted in response to a civil lawsuit brought against the Trump campaign by one ex-employee from the Democratic Party and two donors, who alleged that the leaked emails had revealed “identifying information.”
While the Trump campaign’s lawyers leapt to the defense of the website in their brief, the current administration has previously blasted WikiLeaks for releasing classified documents, with then-CIA director Mike Pompeo – now the secretary of state – dismissing the platform as a “hostile non-state intelligence service” in 2017.
In July 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the investigation into the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, announced indictments against 12 Russian nationals, claiming that they were posing as Guccifer 2.0, the entity that took credit for the hack of the DNC.
According to the indictment, they used a website run by an organization, “that had previously posted documents stolen from US persons, entities, and the US government,” in an apparent allusion to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks, which was accused by Trump’s Democratic rival in the election, Hillary Clinton, of acting as a “fully owned subsidiary of Russian intelligence” after publishing emails leaked from the DNC servers during the campaign, has denied any efforts to meddle in the 2016 election in the United States, as well as conspiring with Russia.
Both Washington and Moscow have repeatedly dismissed claims of collusion to influence the outcome of the vote.
US professor urges release of student held in Israel
MEMO | October 10, 2018
A professor at the University of Florida appealed Tuesday for the release of a former student who has been held by Israeli authorities for a week, Anadolu reports.
Lara Alqasem, a US citizen, has been in Israeli custody since arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport last Tuesday with a valid student visa hoping to study law, human rights and freedom of travel at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Israeli officials are denying 22-year-old Alqasem entry based on allegations that she supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which urges businesses, educational institutions and celebrities to cut ties with Israel.
The movement has long been criticized by Israeli officials, and the Israeli parliament, known as the Knesset, passed a law in 2017 allowing authorities to deny entry to individuals who make public calls for a boycott of Israel.
Dror Abend-David, who taught Alqasem at the University of Florida, said he is “one of many people,” including her former professors, who think she should be released and allowed to study immediately.
“Everyone who taught her was very impressed with her,” he told Anadolu Agency. “There’s a very active group of professors here on campus who are working for her.”
One of the proposals being floated, Abend-David said, is a reevaluation of the university’s study abroad program in Israel.
That could effectively make Israel’s policy of denying entry to BDS supporters an own goal.
When asked if he thought Israeli officials could ironically be accomplishing BDS’ goals for the movement, Abend-David pointed to two works of Soviet-era Russian literature that he said, “made the point that bureaucrats don’t see irony”.
Hebrew University President Asher Cohen told Israel’s Army Radio that Israel’s actions could harm the university’s anti-BDS efforts and could end up serving the movement instead, according to the Times of Israel.
Israel earlier Tuesday conditioned Alqasem’s release on her issuing a public apology for her alleged support of the global boycott.
”If Alqasem comes forward tomorrow morning with her own voice, not with all sorts of lawyers’ wisecracking and statements that could be construed this way or another – and declares that supporting BDS, she thinks today, is illegitimate and she regrets what she did on this matter, we will consider our stance,” Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan said on Twitter on Tuesday.
Her first appeal against the Israeli decision to deny her entry was denied last week. A second appeal is expected to be heard in the coming days.
The US State Department on Tuesday punted on questions about Alqasem’s case, saying it is up to Israel to decide who it allows into the country.
Israeli officials and their supporters have regularly alleged the BDS movement is inherently anti-Semitic. But when asked if he thought Alqasem was anti-Semitic herself, Abend-David was unequivocal in his response.
“Lara was not anti-Semitic in any way, shape or form,” he said. “She has been kind and polite and helpful with no hint that she felt badly of Israel or anyone who is connected with that country.”
Israel arrests 500 Palestinians over Facebook posts

Palestine Information Center – October 8, 2018
GAZA – Israel has arrested 500 Palestinians, including women, children and MPs, over their social media posts, the Palestine Center for Prisoners Studies reported.
The center’s spokesman Riyadh Al-Ashqar said that the Israeli authorities began arresting Palestinians for their social media posts since the start of the Jerusalem Intifada claiming such uploads incite terror against Israel.
Israel is using its recently formed “Cyber Unit” to monitor Palestinian social media posts, he said.
This unit, Al-Ashqar said, classifies any Facebook post that glorifies Palestinian martyrs, discloses Israeli crimes, and supports resistance as “incitement of terror”.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been sentenced over the past three years to different jail terms on the ground of incitement on social media, he charged.
Some others were placed under house arrest and denied from using social media platforms, he continued.
Al-Ashqar strongly condemned such arrests that “clearly violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention of Human Rights.”
He concluded by calling on the international community to protect the Palestinian people’s right of freedom of expression.
Smear and Shekels
By Gilad Atzmon | October 4, 2018
Haaretz reveals today that Canary Mission a Hasbara defamation outlet that was established to “spread fear among undergraduate activists, posting more than a thousand political dossiers on student supporters of Palestinian rights,” is funded by one of the largest Jewish charities in the U.S.
According to Haaretz ; the Forward, an American Jewish outlet, “has definitively identified a major donor to Canary Mission. It is a foundation controlled by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, a major Jewish charity with an annual budget of over $100 million.” We could have guessed the funding was from such an organisation. We somehow knew that it wasn’t the Iranian government or Hamas who sent shekels to the Zionist smear factory. Haaretz continues, “for three years, a website called Canary Mission has spread fear among undergraduate activists, posting more than a thousand political dossiers on student supporters of Palestinian rights. The dossiers are meant to harm students’ job prospects, and have been used in interrogations by Israeli security officials.”
Canary Mission is indeed a nasty operation and far from unique. We have seen similar efforts within the Jewish institutional universe for some time. It might be reasonable to opine that smear has become a new Jewish industry. Consistent with the rules of economics, many new Jewish bodies have entered the profitable business, and these outlets have competed mercilessly with each other for donations and funds.
This is precisely a variation on the battle we have seen in Britain in the last few years. Almost every British Jewish institution joined the ‘Corbyn defamation’ contest, competing over who could toss the most dirt on the Labour party and its leader. The outcome was magnificent. Last week at Labour’s annual conference, the party unanimously expressed its firm opposition to Israel and took the Palestinian’s side.
Badmouthing is not really a ‘Zionist symptom.’ Unfortunately, it is a Jewish political obsession. In between its fund raisers, it seems that Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) invests a lot of energy in smearing some of the more dedicated truth tellers. Mondoweiss, another Jewish outlet, practices this game as well.
I, myself, have been subjected to hundreds of such smear campaigns by so called ‘anti’ Zionist Jews who were desperate to stop the circulation of my work on Jewish ID politics. But these frantic efforts only served to support my thesis that the issues to do with Israel and Palestine extend far beyond the Zionist/anti debate. We had better dig into the meaning of Jewishness and its contemporary political implications.
Once again the question is, why do self-identified Jewish activists use these ugly tactics? Why do they insist upon smearing and terrorising instead of engaging in a proper scholarly and/or political debate?
Choseness is one possible answer. People who are convinced of their own exceptional nature often lack an understanding of the ‘other.’ This deficiency may well interfere with the ability to evolve a code of universal ethics.
The other answer may have something to do with the battle for funds. As we learned from Haaretz, the Canary Mission is funded by one of the richest Jewish American funds. Badmouthing has value. ‘You defame, we send money.’ Unfortunately this holds for Zionists and ‘anti’ alike.
Crucially, in this battle, Jews often oppose each other. Haaretz writes that the Canary Mission “has been controversial since it appeared in mid-2015, drawing comparisons to a McCarthyite blacklist.” And it seems that some Zionist Jews eventually gathered that the Canary smear factory gives Jews a bad name.
Tilly Shames, who runs the campus Hillel at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, told the Forward that “the tactics of the organisation are troubling, both from a moral standpoint, but have also proven to be ineffective and counterproductive,”
Shames said that Canary Mission’s publication of dossiers on students on her campus had led to greater support for the targeted students and their beliefs, and had spread mistrust of pro-Israel students, who were suspected of spying for Canary Mission.
This dynamic can be explained. My study of Jewish controlled opposition postulates that self-identified Jewish activists always attempt to dominate both poles of any debate that is relevant to Jewish interests. Once it was accepted that Palestine was becoming a ‘Jewish problem,’ a number of Jewish bodies became increasingly involved in steering the Palestinian solidarity movement. We then saw that they diluted the call for the Palestinian Right of Return and replaced it with watery notions that, de facto, legitimise Israel.
When it was evident that the Neocon school was, in practice, a Ziocon war machine, we saw bodies on the Jewish Left steer the anti-war call. When some British Jews realised that the Jewish campaign against Corbyn might backfire, they were astonishingly quick to form Jews for Jeremy that rapidly evolved into Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). The battle over the next British PM became an internal Jewish debate. The rule is simple: every public dispute that is somehow relevant to Jewish interests will quickly become an exclusive internal Jewish debate.
Hillel activists see that Canary Mission is starting to backfire. Together with Forward and Haaretz, they have quickly positioned themselves at the forefront of the opposition.
France Raids Anti-Zionist Islamic Center in North
Al-Manar | October 2, 2018
A so-called “counter-terror” operation, involving around 200 policemen, is underway on Tuesday in France, with the police forces raiding the headquarters of Islamic organization Centre Zahra France in the country’s north, France Info radio station reported, citing the prefecture of the department.
Centre Zahra France is a Shiite organization, known for its anti-Zionist rhetoric, namely, in social media.
Eleven people were detained in the raid in the commune of Grande-Synthe, a suburb of the port city of Dunkirk, local media reported on Tuesday.
“This morning, starting from 6 a.m. [local time, 04:00 GMT], the national police has been carrying out an operation in the Grande-Synthe commune, Nord department. The operation is being conducted within counter-terrorism efforts… Centre Zahra France’s activity has been followed up closely due to the fact that its leaders grant support to a number of terror organizations,” France Info radio station reported, citing the Nord prefecture’s statement.
The police have also raided 12 homes of the Centre Zahra France’s major leaders.
New Israel report exposes role of NGO Monitor in defaming rights activists
MEMO | October 1, 2018
A new Israeli report has accused right-wing pressure group NGO Monitor of “spearheading the shrinking of space for Israeli and Palestinian human rights NGOs”.
The “Shrinking Space” report – “NGO Monitor: Defaming human rights organisations that criticize the Israeli occupation” – is the work of a collective of Israeli ex-diplomats, academics and others, known as the Policy Working Group (PWG), that supports a two-state solution.
NGO Monitor was established in 2002 under the auspices of right-wing think tank the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, and has been independent since 2007.
Its declared goal of promoting “transparency and accountability of NGOs claiming human rights agendas” is described by the PWG report as “disingenuous”.
“In fact,” the report claims, “years of experience show that NGO Monitor’s overarching objective is to defend and sustain government policies that help uphold Israel’s occupation of, and control over, the Palestinian territories.”
The new, in-depth report “concludes and argues that NGO Monitor is a government-affiliated organisation that selectively targets human rights organisations, relies almost entirely on funding from donors in the US, shirks the transparency it demands of others and disseminates misleading and tendentious information, which it presents as factual in-depth research.”
“As an organisation whose purpose is to scrutinise others, NGO Monitor itself has so far received little scrutiny of its own. After years of evasion, it is time to monitor NGO Monitor,” PWG adds.
Among the areas of critique found in the PWG report, NGO Monitor is accused of a selective focus, a right-wing political agenda, and of “close ties with the [Israeli] government”.
NGO Monitor plays a key role in providing Israeli ministries and diplomatic missions with misleading information to defame Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations
PWG states, “and mobilises the government to pressure European counterparts to stop funding them”.
“In Israel,” meanwhile, “it acts as a catalyst for anti-democratic legislation that selectively targets such NGOs.”
The PWG report also accuses of NGO Monitor of publishing articles and reports containing “baseless claims and factual inaccuracies”, while also “fram[ing] the occupation of the Palestinian territories as an internal Israeli affair in which other countries must not interfere”.
Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists stand at nearly 640: Committee
Press TV – September 25, 2018
The Committee to Support Palestinian Journalists says the Israeli military’s violations against Palestinian journalists since the beginning of the current year stands at 637 as the Tel Aviv regime continues its repressive measures against members of the press in the occupied territories.
The New York-based committee, in a statement released on Tuesday, said Palestinian journalists Ahmed Abu Hussein and Yasser Murtaja succumbed to Israeli-inflicted gunshot wounds earlier this year, while covering anti-occupation protests along the border between the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied lands.
The committee further noted that the month of August witnessed the highest number of Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists, and the number hit 129.
It added that most of last month’s violations were recorded in the Gaza Strip, where reporters were targeted by live bullets and tear gas canisters as they were reporting on “The Great March of Return” protests.
The committee stated that it has recorded 82 cases of arrests and summonses since the beginning of the current year, besides 53 cases of extension of detention, adjournment and trial of Palestinian journalists being held in Israeli jails.
It highlighted that it has documented more than 83 cases of denial of coverage and obstruction of information, 31 cases of confiscation of media equipment, cameras and press cards plus six travel ban cases.
The committee also recorded 7 cases of incitement, and 35 cases of closure of media institutions and news websites.
It later expressed deep regret and condemnation of the Israeli forces’ targeting of Palestinian reporters, who conduct their “noble” mission by conveying the truth and exposing the ugliness of crimes being committed against the Palestinian nation.
The Committee to Support Palestinian Journalists also censured the Israeli regime’s bans on the broadcast of Arabic-language Palestinian al-Quds television network.
Israeli authorities have on occasion accused al-Quds television channel of being a “propaganda tool” for the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas.
The committee finally warned against the rising number of Israeli crimes against Palestinian journalists, calling on the International Federation of Journalists and the Union of Arab Journalists in addition to all human rights organizations to voice solidarity with Palestinian journalists, condemn Israel’s barbaric practices against members of the press and devise measures to stop the deliberate Israeli violations against them.
‘Violating our right to inform’: Twitter suspends Venezuelan Presidential Press account
RT | September 26, 2018
Twitter has suspended the official account of the Venezuelan government’s press team, reportedly without giving any explanation. The suspension is the latest in a series of social media strikes against Venezuelan media outlets.
“They blocked our Twitter account of the Presidential Press, they flagrantly violate our right to inform, we demand immediate reinstatement,” Minister for Communication Jorge Rodriguez tweeted on Tuesday.
The Presidential Press profile has more than one million followers. Monday’s suspension is not the first such event: in October 2017, President Maduro denounced an apparent campaign to limit the reach of his posts on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, TeleSUR reported.
While it is unclear if the events are connected, the suspension comes amid a wider clampdown by social media companies on anti-Western and alternative media. In August, Facebook abruptly removed the page of TeleSUR English, a Latin-American news network part-funded by the Venezuelan government. The removal was accompanied by the vague explanation that TeleSUR had breached Facebook’s terms of use.
The apparent censorship of TeleSUR came less than a week after the social media giant deleted the page of Venezuelanalysis, an outlet that offered leftist commentary on Latin American affairs. Though Facebook reinstated the page, Venezuelanalysis received no apology or explanation for its removal.
While accusations of bias and censorship by Silicon Valley tech companies have mostly come from conservatives in the US, a growing number of left-wing sites have felt the squeeze too. Journalist Abby Martin, who hosted ‘The Empire Files’ on TeleSUR told RT that big tech’s censorship efforts are “literally curating our reality and trying to paint anything that challenges this establishment narrative as conspiracy theories, as disinformation, as Russian trolls.”
Meet James Corbett, Political Extremist!!! #PropagandaWatch
corbettreport | September 25, 2018
Imagine you’re a high school student doing a homework assignment on the Federal Reserve. You go to YouTube and type in “Federal Reserve” in the search bar and find “Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve.”
The horror!
Luckily, you don’t have to worry about that, because now that MSNBC and Mother Jones have ganged up, it’s being scrubbed from the search results! Welcome to the world of soft censorship, folks!
SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=28238
