Facebook Gave CDC ‘Backdoor’ Access to Help Remove Millions of Social Media Posts
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 30, 2024
Facebook provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “backdoor” access to its platform so the CDC could submit requests to remove COVID-19 “misinformation,” according to an internal Facebook document made public for the first time as part of an ongoing legal case.
America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2021, after then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed the Biden administration was flagging purported “disinformation” on social media platforms, including content posted by members of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen.”
When the Biden administration didn’t comply with the FOIA request, America First Legal sued, leading to the release of the documents as part of the discovery process.
According to Reclaim the Net, in 2021, Facebook developed a “Content Request System” (see pages 54-72) — also called a “Government Reporting System” — accessible to CDC staff. The documents show Facebook “was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the US government’s thought control initiative.”
The Facebook-CDC partnership helped Facebook remove millions of posts, the documents show.
Gene Hamilton, executive director of America First Legal, told The Defender, “These documents show precisely how one of the social media platforms facilitated the federal government’s engagement in unconstitutional censorship activities.”
“The federal government cannot violate the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to the private sector, yet these documents clearly show that Facebook and the Biden-Harris administration collaborated and colluded on removing speech that did not comport with the federal government’s preferences,” Hamilton said.
Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, told The Defender that following the release of the “Twitter Files,” it should not come as a surprise “that the government has been actively trying to censor citizens through back doors and loopholes.”
“This censorship effort is yet another example of a public-private collaboration that fuses corporation and state,” Hinchliffe said. “Where the government can’t legally censor, it has the private sector to do its bidding. The question here is how much coercion was needed for Facebook to provide the backdoor?”
These latest revelations come as other entities ramp up their own efforts to target purported “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) and TikTok announced a new partnership to promote “science-based information.” Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a Big Pharma lobbying group, this month urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “expand drug manufacturers’ powers to correct misinformation about their products.”
‘Red-carpet treatment’ for government to ‘silence critics and manage dissent’
Calling it a “fast lane for speech suppression,” Reclaim the Net reported that Facebook “built a slick ‘end-to-end workflow’ tailored to the White House’s censorship needs,” which provided CDC staff with a four-step process to flag COVID-19 “misinformation” for removal.
“This was the red-carpet treatment for anyone in the Biden Administration looking to silence critics and manage dissent,” Reclaim the Net reported. “The system could handle up to twenty censorship requests simultaneously.”
The Facebook document stated, “We empower and safeguard users with policies that are: Principled, Operable, Explicable.” These policies were aligned with Facebook’s “community standards” and adopted “a multi-pronged approach to combating COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation.”
The policies — aimed at “bringing 50 million people a step closer to vaccinations” — included the removal of “false information that has been debunked by public health experts.”
Other types of content Facebook explicitly targeted include claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous to people than the common flu or cold, and content discouraging “good health practices” — such as wearing a face mask, social distancing, getting tested for COVID-19 and getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Claims about the COVID-19 vaccines’ safety, side effects and efficacy also were targeted for removal, as were “widely debunked vaccine hoaxes” — including claims that vaccines cause autism.
The document also revealed that as of 2021, Facebook and Instagram had removed “more than 16 million pieces of content … for violating our COVID-19 and vaccine policies.”
Repeat offenders faced restrictions, including (but not limited to) reduced distribution, removal from recommendations, or “removal from our site.”
The platform also allowed government officials to bypass federal transparency laws.
“By using this specialized portal, and not email, the government could skirt those pesky federal record-keeping laws. FOIA requests? Public oversight? Forget about it. The new system made sure government actions were neatly tucked away in proprietary software,” Reclaim the Net reported.
‘The closest thing to a Ministry of Truth’
According to Reclaim the Net, Robert Flaherty, then-White House director of Digital Strategy and now a member of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, was “barking orders at Facebook to tighten the leash.”
“Twitter Files” documents have shown that Flaherty pressured social media platforms to censor the accounts of public figures such Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then-chairman and chief litigation counsel of Children’s Health Defense (now chairman on leave). Kennedy was one of the figures named in “The Disinformation Dozen” report.
“The bureaucratic whims of entrenched CDC personnel and leadership determined what Americans could and could not say — the closest thing to a Ministry of Truth you can imagine in the United States,” Hamilton said.
Author Naomi Wolf, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of DailyClout, told The Defender, “This shocking new revelation of still more unlawful pressure by the U.S. government on social media companies to strip Americans of First Amendment rights, also fails to shock as it is evidence added to a mountain of documentation of such collusion.”
According to Hamilton, these and other documents may affect several ongoing lawsuits against the Biden administration on First Amendment grounds.
“As more records are uncovered through our lawsuit and other open records requests, as well as discovery in litigation, we are confident that courts will have the definitive links necessary to show the government’s facilitation of an unconstitutional censorship enterprise,” Hamilton said.
The latest revelations came just a month after Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta — parent company of Facebook and Instagram — admitted that Biden administration officials pressured Meta to censor content related to COVID-19 during the pandemic.
“If the government can exert that much pressure on one of the largest platforms and its CEO, then it can do it to anybody,” Hinchliffe said.
In an interview earlier this month on “The Kim Iversen Show,” former U.S. State Department official Mike Benz, founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said the U.S. government coerced social media platforms to use “weapons of mass deletion” to censor content and as a workaround to the First Amendment.
According to Benz, this includes government coercion obliging these platforms to adopt automated censorship tools which employ artificial intelligence to sweep platforms for specific keywords or narratives. Benz said many of these tools were initially developed a decade ago for the fight against ISIS.
Benz said the U.S. government urged authorities in the United Kingdom and European Union (EU) to pass censorship laws, in order to then sidestep the First Amendment at home by obliging social media platforms to comply with more restrictive foreign laws.
Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst told The Defender the EU uses legislation such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) “to stop free speech outside EU borders.”
“According to the EU, the DSA prevents illegal and harmful activities online and protects fundamental rights,” Terhorst said. This means that the EU Commission can decide what is right and what is wrong, including ‘harmful disinformation.’”
TikTok ‘a propaganda arm’ of the United Nations?
TikTok and the WHO on Sept. 26 announced a new collaboration targeting health-related “misinformation.” The year-long partnership is “aimed at providing people with reliable, science-based health information.”
According to the WHO, the new collaboration will promote “evidence-based content and encourage positive health dialogues.”
The WHO quoted Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar, who said, “This collaboration can prove to be an inflection point in how platforms can be more socially-responsible.”
Farrar collaborated with Dr. Anthony Fauci and key virologists to draft “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published March 2020 in Nature Medicine. The paper has been used by media and the U.S. government to debunk the lab-leak theory of the COVID-19 outbreak and accuse its proponents of being “conspiracy theorists.”
According to public health physician Dr. David Bell, partnerships like the one between the WHO and TikTok are inappropriate. He told The Defender :
“WHO, as an organization subject to member states and with no direct standing over their citizens, should not be involved in such direct messaging. This is a clear infringement of the rights, role and sovereignty of the states themselves.
“WHO acts increasingly like a tool of colonialist corporate interests as it pushes their messages over the top of legitimate authorities and interferes in the running of health systems within countries.”
According to Hinchliffe, this is not the first TikTok partnership with the United Nations (U.N.). As part of a previous project, Team Halo, “the U.N. trained scientists and doctors on TikTok and worked with TikTok to boost their profiles in an effort to combat ‘misinformation’ while promoting ‘authoritative sources’ during the pandemic.”
“This latest partnership shows that TikTok is honored to once again be a propaganda arm for the U.N.,” Hinchliffe said.
The WHO previously established similar partnerships with other social media platforms, including YouTube, which last year revised its “medical misinformation” policy to allow for the deletion of content that contradicts WHO guidance.
The announcement of the TikTok partnership with the WHO — a U.N. agency — comes just days after U.N. member states passed the Pact for the Future.
The pact’s “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms” policy brief addresses “threats to information integrity,” such as so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation,” calling for the promotion of “empirically-backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge” — without clarifying how this “consensus” would be determined.
The TikTok partnership with the WHO also comes before the January 2025 legislative deadline for TikTok to divest its U.S. operations or face shutdown in the U.S.
Pharma wants expanded powers to ‘correct misinformation’
In another related development lobbyists for Big Pharma earlier this month asked the FDA “to expand drug manufacturers’ powers to correct misinformation about their products, including by allowing them to respond to opinions, value judgments or personal experiences and communications made offline,” Fierce Pharma reported.
The call was a response to the FDA’s draft guidance on “Addressing Misinformation About Medical Devices and Prescription Drugs.” Released in July and now open for public comment, the guidance would allow pharmaceutical companies to issue “tailored” responses to internet-based posts about their products, and “general medical product communications” that would address “misinformation.”
According to Fierce Pharma, “The FDA proposed prohibiting companies from posting tailored responsive communications in response to misinformation spread offline and in response to an individual’s posts about their own experience, opinion and value judgments. PhRMA wants the FDA to lift those restrictions.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
UN Official’s Battle With “Toxic Information” Raises Censorship Fears Ahead of US Election
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 30, 2024
United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming’s focus is “disinformation” and “toxic information systems” – and she presents those as standing in the way of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
SDGs are the UN’s plan that opponents say is “toxic” in itself since it seeks to promote such controversial things as censorship and digital ID and, to make matters worse, that’s supported by major countries.
Now, Fleming seems to be keen to add to the avalanche of pressure on Big Tech – even though the term she no doubt carefully uses instead is “domination of public discourse” in places where this alleged disinformation is most present.
Coincidentally or not this is coming right before a US presidential election, but Fleming is framing her parroting of the “disinformation” narrative in terms of the social platforms, as purely an “SDGs and UN” issue.
She is even trying to link this with the UN’s purpose, which is (rather, should be) peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, but from which the world organization has been disconnecting for a while.
Responding to a question lumping disinformation, climate change, and conflict resolution into one, Fleming asserted that disinformation and “toxic information systems” are damaging humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts, not to mention SDGs (she doesn’t quite explain this assertion).
Fleming’s official UN bio says one of her roles is “far-reaching efforts to address mis- and disinformation, and hate speech,” while supposedly simultaneously promoting “free and independent media.”
However, she started her career with an outlet that’s anything but free and independent: Fleming used to work for “Radio Free Europe,” funded by the US authorities (originally through the CIA).
Now, no doubt thanks to Fleming, the UN has something called DG Media Zone and it is there and during this year’s UN General Assembly that Fleming sounded her alarm bells, going as far as to say that “every single one” of UN’s priorities is these days under threat due to disinformation. (“Climate change” is now proudly listed among those priorities, in case you missed that.)
Fleming’s solution: collusion. This time (and publicly) “merely” with “civil society and people” who need to “work on our information ecosystems together.”
A word of warning about “civil society,” though: it’s often a moniker behind which groups implementing censorship through “fact-checking” etc, like to hide.
Free speech makes US ‘hard to govern’ – John Kerry
RT | September 30, 2024
The freedom for individuals to choose their sources of information makes it difficult to govern effectively, former US Secretary of State John Kerry has said.
Speaking at a World Economic Forum (WEF) panel on Green Energy last week, Kerry criticized the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects freedom of speech and the press.
“It’s really hard to govern today,” he remarked, arguing that social media poses challenges for building consensus in democracies.
“The referees we used to have to determine what is fact and what isn’t have kind of been eviscerated,” Kerry stated, adding that individuals now decide where to get their news.
“If people go to only one source… and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to simply hammering it out of existence,” added Kerry, who served as secretary of state under Barack Obama.
As long as Democrats can “win ground” and “win the right to govern,” they will be “free to implement change,” the former senator stated.
“I think democracies are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to address the challenges we face. To me, that is part of what this race, this election, is all about,” he added.
At another WEF event earlier this year, Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker lamented the loss of the corporate media’s monopoly on information.
“We owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well,” she said, noting that customers now have access to a broader array of sources.
Amid increasingly divisive election rhetoric, research suggests that Americans trust the media even less than they are willing to publicly admit. While 24% of Americans claim to trust the media to tell the truth, only 7% believe it privately, according to a study completed in June by the think tank Populace, in cooperation with Gradient and YouGov.
Journalist Wafa al-Odaini and her family martyred in Israeli airstrike in Gaza
Palestinian Information Center – September 30, 2024
GAZA – Noted Palestinian journalist and activist Wafa al-Odaini was martyred along with her family following an Israeli airstrike on her home at dawn Monday in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, according to local media reports.
Her husband, Munir al-Odaini, and her two children, Balsam and Tamim, were also killed in the airstrike.
“The occupation forces assassinated journalist Wafa al-Odaini, a prominent activist in conveying the Palestinian narrative to the foreign media. She and her family (her husband and two children) were killed in a treacherous Israeli attack on their home in Deir al-Balah City in the central Gaza Strip,” the Forum of Palestinian Journalists (FPJ) said in a statement on Monday.
According to FPJ, journalist Odaini devoted her life and time to conveying the suffering of her oppressed people through international and Palestinian media, especially through her involvement in writing English articles, conducting interviews with foreign activists, and holding online conferences and different activities in English language.
“With her martyrdom, the Palestinian national media has lost a free voice full of love for Palestine and her people — who fight for freedom and self-determination,” the forum said.
Since the war on Gaza started, the Israeli occupation army has killed 174 journalists and media workers.
For its part, the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) mourned journalist Odaini, saying she wrote distinguished articles for its English website.
The following are links to articles she wrote recently for PIC :
There is no such thing as protective attire for journalists in Gaza
What does Back-To-School look like in battered Gaza?
A Lifeline in Starving Gaza: The role of Tekiyyah amidst the ongoing Israeli genocide
Israeli occupation authority razes seven commercial facilities in northern Jerusalem
Palestinian Information Center – September 30, 2024
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – The Israeli occupation authority demolished on Monday seven commercial facilities belonging to Palestinian citizens in Shuafat refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, at the pretext of unlicensed construction.
Eyewitnesses said that bulldozers escorted by police forces stormed at dawn Shuafat camp and embarked on knocking down seven commercial structures with no prior notice.
They added that the Israeli police did not allow the storekeepers to remove the contents of their facilities, which were four construction supply stores, one café, one restaurant and one grocery store.
Meanwhile, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Jerusalem said that the Israeli police closed the road barrier that connects Shuafat camp with the holy city and obstructed the movement of local residents as they tried to reach their workplaces and schools in the morning.
In a separate incident, employees from the Israeli municipality delivered demolition and stop-work orders against a number of Palestinian homes in the east Jerusalem district of Issawiya.
Israeli occupation forces attack Palestinian family, arrest foreign activists in al-Khalil
Palestinian Information Center – September 29, 2024
WEST BANK – The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) assaulted a Palestinian family and arrested foreign peace activists in Masafer Yatta, south of al-Khalil, in the southern West Bank on Sunday.
Activist Osama Makhamreh reported that the IOF stormed Al-Tuwani village in Masafer Yatta, and assaulted the Al-Harini family.
He added that the IOF arrested foreign peace activists after preventing them from filming and documenting settlers’ violations and attacks against local citizens.
In August 2024, the Israeli army and settlers carried out 1,228 attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank.
These attacks included field executions, armed attacks on Palestinian villages, vandalism, bulldozing of land, uprooting of trees, property confiscation, movement restrictions, and the erection of military checkpoints.
Big Brother Banking? UK’s New “Fraud Bill” Sparks Fears of Financial Snooping
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 26, 2024
A considerable scandal broke out in the UK under the previous government over a practice dubbed, “debanking” – which saw various public, but not only, figures cut off from financial services as a way of punishing them for their political views.
That also faced a considerable backlash, but the Labor government that took over earlier in the year doesn’t seem to be willing to give up on the core postulates: it appears to be just trying to go about achieving the same end goal in a more “subtle” manner.
The policy is this: give banks spying powers over everybody, but call that a requirement for banks and financial institutions to “share data that may show indications of potential benefit overpayments.”
In order to achieve the stated goal, the whole population’s bank accounts are likely to be monitored.
So one can think of this as the financial sector version of the “online age verification” push. In that scenario everybody (“the whole population”) loses their right to anonymity for no good reason – but a reason, nonetheless. Opponents say it’s to surveil and control as many people, in as many ways possible, at one time.
The UK government naturally keeps its messaging on this legislative initiative as “clean” as possible – it’s to crack down on fraud in the social security system, they say.
Remember what it’s called, because it is sure to crop up in the future, and not in a good way: “Fraud, Error and Debt Bill.”
The government plays not only on people’s natural aversion to fraud but also on sensibilities around spending taxpayer money – the sponsors promise not to waste £1.6 billion ($2.1 billion) of public money over the next five years, just thanks to this bill.
But, to get there, they need to “extend and modernize DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) powers.”
Like this: “Better investigate suspected fraud and new powers of search and seizure so DWP can take greater control investigations into criminal gangs defrauding the taxpayer. (…) Require banks and financial institutions to share data that may show indications of potential benefit overpayments.”
Hold the phone, rights groups are basically saying at this point. And then some are blasting this as (PM) Keir Starmer’s “benefits bank spying plans.”
“A financial snoopers’ charter targeted to automate suspicion of our country’s poorest is intrusive, unjustified, and risks Horizon-style injustice on a mass scale,” said Big Brother Watch, adding that his was “an assault on the presumption of innocence.”
EU country firing ‘pro-Russia’ civil servants – media
Lithuanian soldiers at the presidential palace in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 12, 2024. © SOPA Images / Getty Images
RT | September 29, 2024
Lithuania is actively investigating and dismissing “disloyal” officials who are reportedly being accused of having pro-Russian views, local broadcaster TV3 has reported.
According to a report aired on Saturday, several police officers and firefighters have been dismissed from their posts or warned about their views and labeled ‘vatniks’ – a derogatory term used to insult supporters of the Russian government, which derives from a jacket once worn by Red Army soldiers.
The report claimed that “pro-Russian statements lead to job losses,” warning that public servants “should think carefully” before openly expressing their views on social media.
“After the start of the war in Ukraine… nine police officers were identified as possibly pro-Russian,” Ramunas Matonis, the head of the police communication division, told TV3, adding that while most of the officers denied holding these views during “preventative talks” conducted by the department, one of them “was not granted an extension to work with classified information.”
It quoted the minister of internal affairs, Agne Bilotaite, as saying that the authorities “are closely monitoring the situation,” adding that only “loyal officials” who hold Lithuania’s official pro-Kiev position are suitable to serve the state.
“We certainly do not tolerate cases where officials demonstrate disloyalty through their actions and behavior,” Bilotaite told the outlet, warning that these “individuals lose the right to work in service, and this is understandable, as officials must be loyal to their country.”
The TV channel highlighted the case of Genadijus Rogacius, a former Lithuanian army soldier who was investigated by the prosecutor’s office after he “criticized Lithuania and glorified Russia” on the internet.
It also claimed that pro-Russian sentiments were revealed in the former Soviet republic when people laid flowers by a Russian tank that was hit during the Ukraine conflict last year and later displayed in Vilnius. The significant support for anti-establishment candidate Eduard Vaitkus in the presidential election also indicated pro-Russian sentiments, according to TV3.
Lithuania has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022. It has pursued a number of hardline anti-Russia policies and advocated for increased military aid to Kiev by NATO and the EU.
The authorities have previously ordered the demolition of Soviet war memorials and stripped several Russian-born celebrities living in the country of their citizenship for alleged pro-Kremlin views.
As the West tries to silence RT, the Global South speaks out
The US-led “diplomatic campaign” to suppress RT worldwide is not getting the warm reception Washington hoped for
By Anna Belkina | RT | September 28, 2024
The United States government has recently issued new sanctions against RT, with the State Department announcing a new “diplomatic campaign” whereby – via US, Canadian, and UK diplomats – they promise to “rally allies and partners around the world to join us in addressing the threat posed by RT.”
In other words, the plan is to bully countries outside of the Collective West into shutting off their populations’ access to RT content in order to restore the West’s almost global monopoly on information. Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa appear to be of particular concern to the State Department’s James Rubin, as it is in those regions where US foreign policy has failed to find universal purchase.
As Rubin said during a press conference, “one of the reasons… why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be… is because of the broad scope and reach of RT.”
Clearly not trusting anyone outside of the Western elite circles to think and decide for themselves which news sources people should or should not have access to, Rubin promised that the US will be “helping other governments come to their own decisions about how to treat” RT.
The statement reeks of patronizing and neo-colonialist attitudes, especially when you consider the countries that are being targeted.
Therefore, it has been reassuring to observe over the past couple of weeks the diversity of voices that have spoken out against this latest US-led crusade.
The Hindu, one of India’s newspapers of record, was among the first, reporting that while “US officials have spoken to [India’s] Ministry of External Affairs about joining their actions” against RT, “government officials said that the debate on sanctions is not relevant to India, while a former diplomat said that banning media organizations showed ‘double standards’ by Western countries.”
This position was seconded by Indian business newspaper Financial Express : “India is unlikely to act on this request [to ban RT], given its longstanding friendly relations with Russia and its own position on media censorship… In India, RT enjoys significant viewership, with its content reaching a large number of English-speaking audiences and also expanding its reach through a Hindi-language social media platform. RT has grown in popularity in India and other parts of the world, claiming that its main mission is to counter the Western narrative and offer Russia’s perspective on global affairs.”
In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s Okaz paper said, “it is paradoxical, that when [free] speech becomes a threat to the US and the West, they impose restrictions on it, as it happened with the ban on RT under the pretext of lack of transparency, spreading false information, interfering in internal affairs and inciting hatred – something that Washington and the West themselves do in relation to other countries.”
Leading Lebanese daily Al Akhbar wrote: “despite all the attempts to ban it… RT continues to broadcast and causes concern among supporters of imperial wars. These efforts also demonstrate the hypocrisy of their authors and their false claims about ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘freedom of the press,’ among their other loud proclamations. They claim that RT is a ‘mouthpiece of disinformation,’ but if this is so, then why is there such fear of it? If the channel really is spreading lies, won’t the viewers be able to notice? [This only works] if Western rulers view their citizens as simple-minded and easily deceived, which in turn explains the misinformation coming from every side of the Western media.”
It is safe to say that “Western rulers” view with such disregard and distrust not only their own citizens, but most of the world’s population… But I digress.
In Latin America, Uruguay-based current affairs magazine Caras y Caretas praised RT for “maintain[ing] a truthful editorial line, beyond being a state media outlet, and [it] has increased its popularity and credibility by exposing a perspective that makes it creative, original and authentic… RT has helped open the eyes of a very large part of the world’s population and of increasingly numerous governments and countries. That is the reason for the sanctions that the US and hegemonic media conglomerates such as Meta and Facebook have imposed on RT and its directors, adjudicating against them with the charges that are not believable, and are ridiculous. The statements of top US administration officials claiming to be defenders of press freedom and accusing RT of being a front for Russian intelligence is only an expression of impotence in the face of an alternative narrative to the hegemonic imperialist story.”
Rosario Murillo, the vice president of Nicaragua, sent RT a letter of support. In it, she berated the US authorities for their actions against the network, asking when they will “learn that the aggressions that they shamelessly call Sanctions, (as if they had divine powers to dispense punishments)… have no more sense than establishing their claims to the position [of] dictators of the World.” She praised RT’s “work and the creative, thoughtful, illustrative, sensitive and moving way” that RT “manage[s] to communicate.”
A number of African outlets have also spoken out about the hypocrisy of America’s global censorship. Nigerian newspaper The Whistler summarized the latest Western media diktat and its colonialist undertones thusly: “The Americans got into some quarrel with Russia and then shut down this Russian news channel. An order signed by some American politician in Washington got the European company supplying Multichoice to stop streaming RT… The result? We in Nigeria woke up one day to find we could no longer watch RT on TV or stream them on Facebook because of some drama happening in Washington and Moscow. Imagine the audacity! It was a decision made by Americans and Europeans without asking anybody here in Africa how we felt about it. They decided what we could and could not watch on our own TVs.”
It is heartening to see that so many different countries, with incredibly varied politics, societies, and cultures, speaking out against Washington’s imposing its world order on them. They prove that RT’s voice continues to be not just necessary, but welcomed and sought after.
Last night, as part of RT’s response to the actions of the US government, the bright green RT logo lit up the facade of the US Embassy building in Moscow with the message: “We’re not going away.”
Not in the US, not in the West at large, not in other parts of the world.
See you around!
Germany’s BfV intelligence agency includes Remix News on list of websites tied to Russian propaganda campaign
Remix News | September 25, 2024
Remix News has been included on a list of websites accused of being used in a Russian propaganda operations, according to a controversial report from the powerful Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), although Remix News has no ties to Russia.
The report, labeled “Doppelgänger,” made headlines across Germany due to its claims that certain media outlets were pushing Russian narratives or producing news reports that the Russians could use to promote propaganda campaigns. As a result, many of these media outlets, including Der Freitag, Junge Freiheit, and Berliner Zeitung successfully sued the BfV concerning a passage in the report which stated that “from the perspective of the actor, the content in question supports the Russian narrative.” The Bavarian BfV further wrote, “For this purpose, some of the articles were deliberately taken out of context.”
The report describes how Russia was allegedly using a number of news websites to promote its own narrative on social media platforms, and even in some cases, created duplicate news websites that appeared to be authentic to end users.
The lawsuit was successful and the secret service was forced to change part of the report, which then was updated to read: The BayLfV does not explicitly assume that those responsible for the websites listed here are spreading Russian propaganda or are aware of it or approve of their content being disseminated as part of the ‘doppelgänger’ campaign. Furthermore, the BayLfV does not make any assessment of the content of the websites in question.”
While Remix News is not among the websites mentioned in the actual main body of the report, it is instead included in a table at the end of the report along with about 350 news websites. Many of the news website are smaller, but Reuters, Zerohedge, Newsweek, and top German news outlets, such as Welt, Berliner Zeitung, and Junge Freiheit, are also included.
Many of these websites may not even be aware they are included in this report, as they are too large to be concerned about what a German intelligence agency operating from a single German state is publishing. However, the inclusion of Remix News on this list is problematic. For one, malicious journalists or activists may attempt to smear Remix News for being included on such a list from the German intelligence services, as the list tangentially ties our site to so-called Russian propaganda efforts. Without the proper context, such a list could be deemed extremely harmful to Remix News.
Second, there are no examples given of how Remix News was used by the Russians in their campaign. We are simply left to speculate how our website may have been allegedly used by these “Russian actors.”
For the record, Remix News has no ties to Russia in any form whatsoever.
The entire report appears to be somewhat of a debacle for the German intelligence services and has been heaped with criticism.
Speaking to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Vice President of the Bundestag and FDP politician Wolfgang Kubicki said it was a good thing that the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution had been forced to correct its report.
“This correction should also give food for thought to all those who believe that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s assessments are sacrosanct per se. We must continue to be careful that authorities do not restrict the right to freedom of expression for political reasons — not just in Bavaria, but throughout Germany,” he stated.
Media lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel criticized the Bavarian BfV’s failure to act without the threat of a lawsuit, which he said was “certainly one of the most blatant examples of how state bodies try to disparage the media.”
Notably, many of the media outlets listed in the report are seen as critical of the German government. It is unclear how Remix News landed on this list, but it is concerning that we were included with no context whatsoever. Our publication does not have the resources at this time to take legal action against the BfV, and the report remains part of the public record, albeit with an updated correction thanks to the legal battle waged by German media outlets.
Some commentary pieces Remix has published from Poland are strongly critical of Russia and the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, some content we have published that conveys arguments from a Hungarian perspective, simply state the official position, which has never condoned Russia’s invasion. These pieces have simply stated Hungary will not send weapons to Ukraine and has consistently called for a ceasefire. However, in both media markets, there is a broad range of opinions, and Remix News has endeavored to publish a wide range of perspectives on this complex issue.
The report is also concerning due to the fact that Remix News has reported a number of times in a critical manner in relation to the BfV. As Remix News has previously reported, the BfV is a highly politicized agency, with a special focus on targeting critics of the government, perhaps most notably the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The BfV is focused on Germany’s domestic sphere and is tasked with ensuring Germany’s constitution is protected. This role has increasingly morphed into fighting parties deemed outside the mainstream, with many analysts viewing the agency as a growing threat to democracy.
It features incredible spying powers, which enable it to monitor political activists and even people who have done nothing wrong besides being members of political parties deemed a threat by the ruling class. The AfD, for instance, is labeled in some states as a “suspected threat” to democracy and a “confirmed right-wing extremist” party, which enables security forces in the BfV to monitor all communications, including email, phone and text messages of all its members.
Democrat Senators Urge Platforms To Share Plans for Addressing “Disinformation” (Even Inside Encrypted Apps)
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 24, 2024
US Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have joined those currently publicly pressuring companies behind social media platforms and encrypted messages – they have identified 11 of the most widely used ones – to make sure they “combat election disinformation.”
Specifically, four Democrats (the letter was also signed by Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren) want to know what these companies’ censorship plans are: the senators phrase it as the need to discover what measures will be taken to “de-amplify” (and that includes removal) content and accounts seen as spreading the said type of disinformation.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
How will the tech companies know this is happening on their platforms? They will, the senators write if that content or accounts violate their policies. (That is, those same vague and restrictive policies that have been used and abused over the years.)
As far as Wyden and Merkley and others are concerned, it doesn’t matter if this content they consider to be election disinformation is AI-generated or not.
On the encrypted chat apps front, they want the companies operating them to “explain whether they have a reporting system for their users to flag unwanted election disinformation and what enforcement measures are in place.”
To cover all this the way the senators see fit, the companies and their platforms – Meta, Google (YouTube), TikTok, X, Reddit, Snapchat, Amazon (Twitch), Discord, Signal, Telegram, and Apple (Messages) – are urged to “increase resources” needed to fight what the US lawmakers describe in terms presented as a national-level crisis.
They warn that disinformation that is allegedly now more present than ever could suppress voter participation, but also “sow doubt in US democracy and incite political violence.”
The many times repeated references are made in the senators’ letter about alleged foreign disinformation campaigns during the 2020 and 2022 elections in the US, and a note is made that this “disinformation” would at that time remain online longer if it was in Spanish.
Essentially, what Wyden and Merkley now want from the tech giants – but also companies like Signal, that bill themselves as the ultimate privacy-friendly choice – is a report, to keep them on the straight and narrow, at least the way that is perceived by four Democrat senators at the height of a presidential campaign.
“Share information about the size and capacity of their 2024 US elections safety resourcing – including personnel and technologies – broken down by language,” is the opening demand aimed at social platforms.
Mystery of Andrew Bridgen’s vanishing votes
By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | September 23, 2024
After 14 years as MP for North West Leicestershire, former Conservative Andrew Bridgen lost his seat in spectacular fashion at the general election in July with an implausible 95 per cent decrease in votes. This made no sense as he enjoyed more than 95 per cent recognition on the doorstep, an endorsement from US politician Robert F Kennedy Jr, and a positive response from his constituents, many of whom had received justice because of his interventions.
A popular MP, fighting David-and-Goliath causes considered taboo by the government but essential by the electorate, he had become a thorn in the Conservative government’s side, and he was expelled in April 2023. Facing ferocious opposition from his own party, he exposed the Horizon Post Office scandal, fought for recognition for the covid vaccine injured and bereaved, and highlighted the iniquity for those facing compulsory house purchases to make way for the HS2 rail link. He was forced to sell his family home to HS2 and personally lost £500,000.
Bridgen was first elected in 2010, in what was then a Labour stronghold considered ‘unwinnable’ by David Cameron, overturning a Labour majority of 4,477 to win with a majority of 7,511, 45 per cent of the vote. In the 2015 and 2017 general elections, he kept his seat and increased his margins to 11,373 (49 per cent) and then 13,286 (54 per cent). In 2019, his majority increased again to 20,400, 63 per cent of the vote, with 33,811 voters.
To drop from 63 per cent of the vote to 3.2 per cent with just 1,568 votes seems implausible. Bridgen said: ‘After the election people were coming up to me, and still are, saying, “I voted for you, my whole family voted for you. What happened?”’
Compare Bridgen’s 2024 result with that of former Labour MP George Galloway, now leader of the Workers Party of Britain. In 2003, Galloway left Labour to become independent and in March 2024 won a landslide by-election in Rochdale with 12,335 votes, almost 6,000 more than any other candidate. He lost the general election four months later to Labour’s Paul Waugh, by just 1,539 votes – Waugh 13,047 and Galloway 11,508, a 15 per cent decrease.
Bridgen’s competitors were virtually unknown in the area too, although Conservative candidate Craig Smith (who came second) does live locally. Both have a tiny social media presence compared with his own. Labour’s Amanda Hack, who won the seat, has just 840 followers on Facebook, Craig Smith who came second, fares marginally better with 2,200 followers, but nothing in comparison with Bridgen who currently has 28,000 Facebook followers. His rival MPs’ X presence is just as pitiful; just 2,431 follow Hack, a measly 1,366 follow Smith while 261,900 follow Bridgen.
So what happened? Bridgen thinks that the vote could have been tampered with, a suggestion strenuously denied by North West Leicestershire District Council (NWLDC) which has responsibility for collecting and counting the votes, and has highlighted what he sees as anomalies. A council spokesman said: ‘With the exception of the exit poll being cancelled, the allegations being made have no factual basis and are based on inaccurate assumptions.’
The contentious issues for Bridgen surround the exit poll, the opening of the ballot boxes and new electoral services staff. Is there any evidence to support him or are the inconsistencies coincidence or misinterpretation?
The market research company Ipsos-MORI conduct exit polls on behalf of the BBC, Sky Television and ITV. Just two weeks before the election, they cancelled the North West Leicestershire exit poll with no explanation, removing any chance to check voters’ candidate preference.
Political scientist John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, curates the information for Ipsos-MORI and confirmed that North West Leicestershire (and Rochdale for that matter) had no exit poll. He said: ‘The only exit poll was an exercise conducted at 134 locations across the UK and designed to estimate the outcome across the country in seats.’ There are 650 seats in the UK.
NWLDC also admitted the poll was cancelled and their spokesman said: ‘We were only informed at the very last minute.’
Bridgen questioned the time it took to count the vote. The ballot boxes took around 25 minutes to reach Whitwick and Coalville Leisure Centre, a central location in the constituency, where the ballot papers were counted.
Polling stations closed at 10pm and Allison Thomas, CEO of the council and returning officer for the constituency, said they would not begin the count until 2am – a four-hour time lag. ‘There was no explanation,’ Bridgen said. ‘The election officers were unnaturally nervous too. You’d have thought they were the ones standing for election. None of it stacked up. I’ve been through around 20 elections locally and I’ve never seen anything like that.’
Bridgen’s manager David Baggett confirmed: ‘The ballot boxes were slow to come in. They were still validating the ballot papers when the final count was called in Newcastle.’
Validation means election staff check the number of ballots received against voter roll lists that are checked at each polling station.
NWLDC appointed Ms Thomas as CEO in August 2022. In April 2023, after he had been expelled from the Conservative Party, Bridgen said: ‘I was informed that the whole of the election services department had resigned en masse, on a Friday, and they’d been replaced by a new team. That was amazing because I can’t remember anybody leaving since I became the candidate in 2006. There were three people in the department, they weren’t relatives, so I can’t understand why they all left on the same day. I think that’s very, very unusual.
‘I spoke to Allison Thomas to ask what was going on. And her answer was that it was the right time for them to move on, whatever that means. Before the election I wanted to have a meeting with the new team. I was very uncomfortable about it. It took a long time to get a meeting.’
The council have denied that the whole team left but admitted Bridgen and Baggett met election services staff before the general election. Their spokesman said that two staff retired in 2022, no staff left or retired in 2023 or 2024, and two original staff remained: Democratic Services Manager Clare Hammond and Electoral Services Officer Chris Colvin. Both met Bridgen and Baggett.
Bridgen was concerned that electoral services staff were on their own in Stenson House, a council building in Coalville, while all other departments had been relocated to other buildings. Part of the council’s offices were due to be demolished, hence the mass exodus.
Bridgen said: ‘We had the meeting four weeks before the election in the old premises. Clare Hammond joined, saying “I thought you’d like to see a familiar face.” It turned out that the whole of the council had decamped, leaving electoral services in that big old building on their own. There was no oversight of them, so no one knew what they were doing.’
The council said: ‘This is not the case. Our entire staff moved to new administration offices in April 2023. For the purposes of administering and managing all elections, the elections team book rooms at Stenson House. This is to enable all members of the team to work in the same office, and to allow the team the space they need to receive postal votes, organise ballot boxes and other work that requires space. This work takes place at Stenson House for every election and has done for many years.’
Bridgen was always popular with his constituents, and his 2024 election address has had 24,231 views on YouTube.
‘Michael and Susan Rudkin from Ibstock were my constituents,’ Bridgen said. ‘Michael was chairman of the National Federation of Subpostmasters. He appeared in ITV’s drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office about the Horizon scandal, and witnessed Fujitsu’s engineers altering sub-postmasters’ accounts remotely at their HQ. The day after he visited Fujitsu, his wife was accused of stealing £44,000 from the post office and wrongly convicted. I helped get that conviction overturned.’
By contrast many in the Conservative Party hated him, and the government refused 20 requests to debate excess deaths after the UK saw a 9 per cent increase in 2022, a year after the covid vaccine rollout.
Bridgen also challenged the World Health Organization’s power grab, continued to highlight the government’s gross ineptitude and handling of the covid pandemic, and they finally kicked him out after Matt Hancock accused him of anti-Semitism, clearly twisting his words. Discussing the horrendous rise in post covid vaccination heart issues, Bridgen tweeted: ‘As one consultant cardiologist said to me, this is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust.’
On alleged vote rigging he said: ‘If there was any skulduggery relating to the vote, it would have had to have been before the ballot boxes got to the leisure centre. I have no idea who would have been behind it. I tell constituents who ask that I’m trying to get to the bottom of it but without a whistleblower, I’m not sure I ever will.’
If anyone has any information about the vote, please email: sally@sallybeck.co.uk
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From the Archives
Is Israel to blame for the Iraq War?
American Goy | March 10, 2008
I am so tired of this old canard that “Israel had nothing to do with USA’s war with Iraq – in fact, it officially advised America against it”.
Bullshit. … continue
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