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Anti-Trump groups fund ‘trust indicators’ to combat ‘fake news’ on social media

RT | November 17, 2017

Under pressure to stop the spread of false information, Facebook, Google and Twitter have turned to the Trust Project to inform users of the credibility of news sources. But the supposed nonpartisan effort is funded by deep-pocketed anti-Trump forces.

On Thursday, Facebook, Google and Twitter announced their participation in the initial phase of implementing the Trust Project’s “trust indicators,” notes attached to news posts to let the reader know if the post is an advertisement or to provide background information on the author or sources, including a publisher’s ethics policy and funding arrangements.

The Associated Press, the Washington Post, the Economist, Vox.com, and the Globe and Mail, and other outlets are among the select few currently permitted to use the indicators. Search engines and social media feeds are being improved to gravitate toward, not just what their users want to see, but also sources deemed respectable, and that’s what the indicators seek to influence.

The Trust Project is based at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, but is funded by craigslist.com founder and philanthropist Craig Newmark, as well as Google, the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Markkula Foundation.

Newmark, also a founder of the Trust Project, has poured millions of dollars into various vehicles aimed at restoring trust in the media. Earlier this year, he donated $1 million to ProPublica, saying, “As a news consumer, I won’t pay for news I can’t trust.”

The Trust Project, however, is not simply another way for Newmark to support news outlets with his own money. He has been looking to take stronger steps to boost the journalism he likes best since his favored candidate Hillary Clinton lost the presidential race to Donald Trump last year.

The 2016 election result stunned almost everyone, with many wondering if Americans had made a fully-informed choice. The influence of the internet had increased considerably since 2012 and 2008, just as trust in mass media declined to an all-time low. Gallup found that less than one-third of Americans held a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mainstream news. Meanwhile, people’s enchantment with social media has seen both solid alternative reporting and “fake news” disseminated widely.

For Newmark, the added element of alleged Russian meddling made the issue of trust in media all the more urgent to address. In recent weeks, during and following testimony by Facebook, Google and Twitter representatives to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Newmark tweeted that it was “a huge deal” that the committee kept referring to the matter of “fake news” in terms of war.

Last week, Newmark tweeted a 1970 quote by Canadian media theorist, professor and philosopher Marshall McLuhan: “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.”

Funding for the Trust Project also comes from the Democracy Fund, whose founder, Pierre Omidyar, also founded the online auction site eBay. Omidyar has contributed $1 million to the Clinton Foundation for HIV/AIDS treatment, but also donated $100,000 to the NeverTrump political action committee in April 2016.

Fact-checking news sources is not new to Omidyar. His Omidyar Network also funds projects of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalism that owns the Tampa Bay Times, the home of Politifact, which has been criticized for having a left-leaning bias. Omidyar once went as far as comparing Trump to “the personal and political styles of early Adolf Hitler” in a tweet.

Joe Goldman, president of the purportedly bipartisan Democracy Fund, retweeted a video of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) during the November 1 Senate hearings with social media representatives on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The video showed the ranking committee member admonishing the tech companies for “not getting it.”

“We’re talking about the beginning of cyberwarfare,” Feinstein said. “We’re talking about a major foreign power with the sophistication and ability to involve themselves in a presidential election and sow conflict and discontent all over this country.”

“You’ve created these platforms, and now they are being misused,” she added, “and you have to be the ones to do something, or we will.”

Read more:

Google & Soros-backed ‘fact-checkers’ join forces to control news search results

Twitter, Google & Facebook grilled by Senate, try hard to find ‘Russian influence’

‘Zero collusion’: Trump says Russia probe a disgrace, many ads ‘bad’ for him

November 17, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How The Deep State Controls Social Media and Digitally Assassinates Critics

By Robert David Steele | American Herald Tribune | November 7, 2017

This is a speculative account based on personal experience and broad reading. In no way is it a substitute for a proper legal discovery process – but it could be useful in guiding such a process.

The recent arbitrary deletion with no appeal by Twitter of two accounts – one belonging to my friend Alt-Right white male Roger Stone [1] and the other to an Alt-Left black female activist who goes by the name of “Charlie Peach” [2] and reminds me of my friend Cynthia McKinney, [3] should be the death rattle of #GoogleGestapo. If Roger Stone and “Charlie Peach” were to sue Twitter together, in combination with my own lawsuit against three apparatchiks and their many co-conspirators, [4] and the new potentially formidable case by Prager University against Google, YouTube, and DOES 1-25, [5] I believe these three cases and perhaps others might converge in a most constructive manner assuredly in the public interest. The above juxtaposition is important – the Deep State is seeking to censor and in some cases digitally assassinate both those on the right and those on the left who challenge official narratives. This is discrimination based on political affiliation or belief.

While I identify the Deep State as the ultimate antagonist, it is the Zionists who have refined the system that the Deep State now uses to control social media and digitally assassinate critics and those espousing conservative values or support for the US Constitution as well as opposition to the prevailing “Israel First” mantra at the federal, state, and local levels. [6] “Hate speech” and related filters are code for repressing those critical of the Zionist and Deep State narratives, known in the aggregate as “Alternative Media.” [7]

I have found it helpful to distinguish early on between a few very powerful extremist Zionists who serve a foreign agenda that calls for the complete subversion of the United States of America (USA) and other countries, and millions of loyal decent Jews world-wide, nine million of whom reside in the USA. My focus is on a limited number of extremists who are certain they are above all laws; they do not represent decent Jews – or the established religion of Judaism – as a whole. My focus is also only on social media control, not on other methods used by the Zionists to subvert entire countries. [8]

In combination with false flag [9] events that perpetuate a climate of fear and astronomic levels of spending on a militarized domestic total surveillance and control system in which police forces abandon community-based policing and go straight to treating the public as the enemy, with a complicit Mainstream Media (MSM), #GoogleGestapo has emerged as the social control mechanism of the 21st Century, not only blocking over 400 websites [10] (I suspect the number is much higher) but censoring millions and digitally assassinating tens of thousands of individuals, many of them in the USA. The intent of the Deep State has recently been made clear by one of its fronts, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): dissidents and those who question authority should be treated as “domestic terrorists.” [11]

I do not address the related issue of #GoogleGestapo as a global surveillance [12] enterprise violating all rights to anonymity, identity, privacy, and security – my focus here and now is on discrimination. [13]

It bears noting in passing that Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure do not apply to third party cloud holdings – this is yet another sucking chest wound in the GooglePlex waiting for the law to catch up.

The Prager University team includes Alan Dershowitz, who is both a celebrated scholar and defense lawyer and an Israel Firster [14] – a mixed blessing when one is suing a Zionist system that is relied upon by the Deep State. Having this enormous but conflicted talent on the team reminds me of the Warren Commission, where Allen Dulles, the mastermind of the John F. Kennedy (JFK) assassination, was put on the Commission by Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), the man who signed JFK’s death warrant, to ensure that the falsehoods being put forward by the government were adhered to. [15] The Plaintiffs may wish to consider adding someone like Judge Andrew Napolitano to their team, and be most wary of Dershowitz negotiating a pro forma settlement behind the scenes that results in a limited victory that forestalls the much larger Title 7 challenge to the entire #GoogleGestapo system administered for the Deep State by the Zionists. I predict You Tube will quickly restore the videos in question and apologize, so as to stop this case, potentially the Title 7 [16] case of the century, from going to discovery, trial, and logical expansion.

Here is a simple example of a discovery question that the Prager U team could ask, given that they have over fifty videos that have been banned from YouTube:

Provide a list of all banned videos in the past five years, the specific reasons why each video was banned; and the identity of and contact information for each of the related individuals or organizations for each of the banned videos.

This matters because no one, anywhere, has been able to compile a list of all banned videos. The legal discovery process is the only means by which we can compel the revelation of this vital information while assuring that the resulting information is of evidentiary quality.

Properly done, a larger challenge would also document through a legal discovery process – and then hold accountable – organizations such as Kaspersky, Rolling Stone, Slate, Mother Jones, and others that have been lazy and allowed Zionist trolls to “game” their reporting systems and digitally assassinate individuals critical of Zionist Israel (or skeptical of the Deep State narrative) by submitting false reports of bullying, spamming, hating, and even – the latest – “X-Rated Content” such that entire web sites are blocked from being accessed. As Congress has recently determined, the social media endeavors – which should be but are not regulated as public utilities [17] – have been cutting corners on screening content, and been severely remiss in both technical and human quality control. [18] As most cases against the #GoogleGestapo monolith should show if legal discovery is pursued, there is both a failure to be serious in terms of properly screening content, and a double standard – those that agree with the Deep State – or serve the needs of the Deep State – are allowed to threaten assassination, spew hateful language, and crowd-stalk at will. Those that do not agree with the Deep State are at the capricious mercy of an unregulated system that excels at censorship and crowd-stalking with impunity. [19]

#GoogleGestapo Overview

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and In-Q-Tel, both early sponsors of Google and other social media innovations, clearly understood the value of these enterprises to create a desired “total surveillance” architecture. [20] It was the Zionists, however, who appear to have perfected a pervasive blend of people, organizations, and technologies to achieve persistent and pervasive censorship and crowd-stalking that is now in the service of the Deep State, both in the USA and around the world.

Below are the key elements of #GoogleGestapo based on my broad reading and direct personal experience. Pending proper legal discovery, I speculate that all levels are connected – this is a system.

• Deep State – banking families including Vatican, City of London, Wall Street [21]
• Zionist Government of Israel/Benjamin Netanyahu/Mossad [22]
• American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Anti-Defamation League (ADL) [23]
• Eric Schmidt, Arnon Milchan, George Soros, Media Matters and many more
• Complicit Internet services companies including Facebook, MeetUp, Twitter
• Paid sub-contractors that do live-streaming defamation on command
• Paid trolls — Israeli reservists, ADL, Media Matters and others
• Volunteer trolls too stupid to know they are being lied to — sayonim
• Dumb algorithms and lack of investment in ethics, human oversight, etc. by design
• “Shadow banning” (demonetization), subscription list neutralization, service cancellation [24]
• Lack of government regulation, not holding social media to anti-discrimination standards

Not included in my own experience with #GoogleGestapo, but highly pertinent to YouTube’s lack of professionalism in both algorithms and human quality control and respect for customers given the ease with which false reports can destroy entire channels, is the entire matter of grand-fathered changed terms of service, moronic keyword and meta data restrictions, and malicious copyright strikes (to include the destruction of negative reviews of a product) and copyright extortion. [25]

My Personal Experience

Live-Streamed Defamation

On 13 June I did a live-streamed interview with George Webb, whom I respect very much. He was being “handled” at the time by one Jason Goodman with Patricia Negron as his partner. In the course of that interview, [26] I raised the prospect of Goodman himself being handled – perhaps unwittingly – by the Mossad. I speculate now that legal discovery will reveal both monthly payments to Goodman on the order of $3,000 a month, and a pattern of email and cellular contacts suggestive that Goodman has been taking direction, first toward undermining George Webb (who was getting too close to the truth about the Awan brothers being patsies for a Mossad operation via Debbie Wasserman Schultz, spying on and blackmailing Members of Congress) and then #UNRIG, Earth Intelligence Network, and me. [27]

From that day forward, Goodman began a campaign of defamation, video slander, crowd-stalking libelous commentary, and tortuous interference that I have carefully documented. I will not litigate this case in public. Goodman and his many co-conspirators will have their day in court – but I note with interest that YouTube, a surrogate of Google, has not – despite my repeated complaints – deleted any of the many slanderous videos by Goodman, Negon, and “Queen Tut” now known to be Susan Lutzky. Based on my personal experience, I speculate that #GoogleGestapo – the full list of elements yet to be defined through legal discovery – is a co-conspirator with those who seek to manipulate public perception with aggressive character assassination and discrimination, the “Alt Right” and pro-Trumpers being top targets at this time. [28]

YouTube appears to be the most prominent element within which slander and libel occur daily – those with pro-Zionist opinions who parrot the government party line are protected – they slander and libel with impunity – while those who challenge Zionist atrocities and improprieties and the government party line find themselves de-monetized (“shadow-banned”) or digitally assassinated – in many cases an entire life’s work destroyed – with no recourse.

Below is a table of specific slanderous videos posted to YouTube (in red), and specific libelous crowd-stalking endeavors against third party videos (in black) in which I am interviewed, correlated with the collapse of our non-profit educational crowd-funding campaign at IndieGoGo (in green). [29]

Troll Armies – from Israel to Media Matters to the Sayonim

In my speculative view based on my direct experience, the Zionists have perfected the use of human trolls and automated bots; one overtly active Mossad collaborator can inspire a crowd-stalking campaign that mobilizes over 400 distinctly identifiable trolls and bots (my best guess is one third human, two thirds artificial). While I have no direct knowledge, my understanding from secondary sources is that there is a clear division of labor between Israeli Army reservists based in Israel, the primary Zionist agents in the USA, not only the ADL but also its parent organization AIPAC, and specific sympathetic organizations such as Media Matters, whose “troll army” has been widely publicized.

Then there are the sayonim. These are volunteers who buy the Zionist “party line” and dedicate themselves to destroying anyone they see as an “enemy” of the Zionists. I have dealt personally with many such individuals who have emailed me, and it is with great sadness that I report my impression that these people, while well-intentioned, are out of touch with reality and often poorly educated.

Below is a partial listing of specific trolls for whom I have in hand copies of defamatory statements suitable for submission to a Court, for YouTube only. I have another list and copies of defamatory statements for Facebook. Every single one of these individuals is discoverable in true name via legal discovery, and can be held to account as a crowd-stalker and co-conspirator.

In my direct personal experience, these troll armies are very capable at persistent pervasive crowd-stalking. Every YouTube channel I have appeared on has been attacked (not just current, but past), to the point that most of my hosts have been forced to disable all comments, depriving the honest viewers of the interaction that I take pains to provide when not being crowd-stalked. Many hosts have not invited me to return, perhaps influenced by the demonetization (“shadow-banning”) of any interview with me rather than the substance of my work that led to my being recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize in January 2017. [30]

These crowd-stalkers have also, on occasion, succeeded in getting videos deleted by marshalling multiple reports of “bullying” which is patently absurd in my case, but effective when YouTube is lazy (or complicit). Here is one case of a perfectly reasonable interview deleted by YouTube – there are others.

Steele, Robert, with Kenneth Ameduri, “Another False Flag? What Evidence Shows Us About The Las Vegas Shooting,” Crush the Street (Audio, 30:57), October 17, 2017.

In my direct personal experience, these crowd-stalkers are skilled at destroying fund-raising campaigns, to include pursuing all 1,500 Facebook shares (in the case of the #UNRIG IndieGoGo-Generosity campaign) such that a campaign raising $29,237.44 the month prior to the crowd-stalking, can quickly be brought down to $8,054.14, then $4,733.41, then $1,200 or so in two subsequent earnings. The most recent was $542.51.

In my direct personal experience, these crowd-stalkers engage in campaigns of defamation intended to make their target destitute. Apart from alienating all possible donors, funding channels such as IndieGoGo and PayPal appear to receive hundreds of emails claiming that a particular individual, organization, or campaign is a scam or a fraud. To their great credit, both IndieGoGo and PayPal have proven to be steady level-headed organizations able to discern such obvious defamation endeavors in my specific case, but I am troubled by some instances where they have closed accounts on the basis of what appear to me to be both illegal and often capricious discriminatory actions.

In my direct personal experience, these crowd-stalkers do not read. They worship at the altar of video and social media blurbs. They are so myopic that they are incapable of visiting my personal website where my life’s work is free online, including two books with Forewords by US Senators, and my recent recommendation for the Nobel Peace Prize. [31]

Media “Hit Jobs” On Demand

I appeared on Alex Jones’ InfoWars on 29 June 2017, speaking for two hours on the subject of pedophilia. [32] Few people know that I am both a Commissioner for the International Tribunal for International Justice (INTJ) [33] and its project on elite pedophilia led by Chief Justice Sir John Walsh of Brannaugh, and I am also nurturing a book by West Point graduate Joachim Hagopian, Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy, and the Deep State. [34] My remarks clearly scared at least one major pedophile in the media world. On the very same day, Ben Collins at The Daily Beast published a story intended to discredit me, “NASA Denies That It’s Running a Child Slave Colony on Mars,” that was quickly repeated by Peter Holley of The Washington Post and then a number of other international outlets. [35] This stuff does not happen by accident. This was a hit job.

During a two-hour interview with Alex Jones, I spoke in depth about pedophilia and the fatal exploitation of children (on Earth), including their murder and the harvesting of their blood, body parts, and bone marrow. Only at the very end, in answer to a caller who in retrospect may have been setting me up, did I address children sent into space on “20 year and out missions” to leverage growth while in transit; and an existing colony on Mars, established fifteen years ago, with 10,000 people there now. [36]

The Daily Beast conflated these three completely separate factual concepts to discredit me. I believe that legal discovery will determine that Ben Collins was “fed” the conflated false story and lacked the integrity to refuse the lead. Who, exactly, put Ben Collins on to this story and authorized the follow on by The Washington Post is discoverable by due legal process. If I had to guess, I would look to Media Matters, which is led by an individual with some serious issues, and “ruthlessly targets conservatives.” [37]

This aspect of #GoogleGestapo represents the total complicity between the MSM and the new social media control network – the larger “system” is comprehensive and includes – in addition to the ability to marshal public communications including Hollywood movies – the ability to interfere with commercial contracts.

Meet-Up Pro Account Termination

In early July 2017, when Cynthia McKinney agreed to join me in leading #UNRIG, [38] a non-violent fact-based alternative to #RESIST, I committed to a $77,300 per year paid professional MeetUp network of 435 fully-integrated MeetUps (one for each Congressional District). At the same time I published the below concept graphic for billboards and bumper stickers.

Almost immediately (with notification to me on 14 July via email), the CEO of MeetUp, Scott Heiferman, appears to have personally ordered the cancellation of our 435 MeetUps, giving up $77,300 in revenue. This is the same CEO who is collaborating with the ADL to sponsor 1,087 #RESIST MeetUps for whom the fees have been waived – hence MeetUp appears to be providing an illegal, undeclared, in-kind donation to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of over $195,000 dollars. The ADL is the co-sponsor of all 1,087 #RESIST MeetUps. I speculate – subject to legal discovery at the appropriate time and place – that the ADL directed Scott Heiferman to cancel our #UNRIG professional network. [39] This action was so outrageous it inspired the below cartoon by Robert Ocegueda.

I would not be at all surprised to learn that the ADL (or its higher master, AIPAC), provided $77,300 to Meet-Up as a covert substitute payment, and perhaps also paid the $195,000 in “waived” fees. All of this is discoverable by due process of law.

Denial of Service Attacks

When all else fails, do denial of service attacks. We have been shut down for as long as a week. Fortunately these brute force attacks – while demanding time and money to defeat – are moderately moronic. I have much more admiration for the manner in which the Zionists subvert otherwise well-intentioned institutions (including in my own experience, the various newspapers in the United Kingdom (UK) that very stupidly censor commentators reported by the Zionists to be spammers and haters, without bothering to actually read the content in question).

It has been amusing for me to trace some of these denial of service attacks to rogue elements of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as well as Delphi in Ashburn, Virginia. If and when a full legal discovery process can take place, specific chains of command can be identified.

X-Ratings Across Microsoft via Kaspersky

I don’t make this stuff up. A fan – we have millions of them – sent me the below graphic.

Kaspersky 6e1ce

Kaspersky is not stupid – they are just lazy, as are all others who rely on automated processes to filter out individuals and sites on the basis of what are largely false reports from Zionist trolls.

What the above really means is that the Zionists have successfully fooled Kaspersky – and perhaps Norton and others – into X-rating a non-profit educational website that sets the gold standard for truth in public service. This means that citizens in libraries, universities, and government agencies as well as corporations who have legitimate needs for access to truthful information are being blocked by Zionists who have mastered the art of censoring information critical of Zionist Israel or the larger Deep State.

As someone who has managed a false flag operation for the CIA, and who is a top published author on the topics of deep state, false flag operations, pedophilia, and fake news (and rarely but sometimes about the holocaust and Zionist subversion), I speculate that my non-profit educational website is triggering just about every flagword on the Deep State / Zionist watchlist – a watchlist that is “Top Secret” and not subject to any form of Congressional or judicial oversight. The First Amendment consequences are staggering, completely apart from a global conspiracy to commit tortuous interference against hundreds of thousands in not millions of individuals and organizations.

My Personal Conclusions

All Paths Lead to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) appears to be the Zionist social media spy service and enforcer. [40] In the early years of social media, the ADL and the Zionist Information Operations (IO) units – generally reservists is Israel – appear to have perfected the art of digital assassination. Anyone critical of Israel and Zionist atrocities (such as the genociding of the Palestinians) or calling for the boycott of Israel in social media was immediately “reported” by no fewer than twelve Zionist trolls as being a spammer, a hater, or – as has been used to successfully cause the deletion of three interviews of me at YouTube [41] – a “bully.” They seem to have perfected the art of gaming the system – from Kaspersky to Rolling Stone to Slate to Mother Jones and all other sites, the “system” is on automatic pilot and anytime twelve or more “reports” come in, they are assumed to be authentic and the person being reported is automatically assassinated – banned, blocked, deleted or in the case of Kaspersky, “X-Rated.” I experienced this personally and found that none of the organizations where this process works to the Zionists’ complete satisfaction are competent at detecting and neutralizing digital assassination – nor do they care – they are part of the system, with malice aforethought.

#GoogleGestapo: A Work in Progress

Eric Schmidt was hired by Larry Page and Sergei Brin to build Google after they stole Yahoo’s search engine, [42] received funding from Dr. Rick Steinheiser in CIA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), [43] and picked up the best and the brightest from Alta Vista that was suffering under Hewlett Packard (HP) dysfunctionality. [44] It was probably Schmidt that master-minded the illegal, undeclared in-kind contributions from Google to the Hillary Clinton campaign, manipulating search results so that “Hillary + Crime” become just Hillary, and “Trump” became Trump plus Hitler. [45] Schmidt went on to create a virtual Censorship Board that included Facebook and Twitter and others, and began actively manipulating, across all social media, not just searches, but polls and trending. Most recently Twitter has admitted that in the weeks leading up to Election Day it repressed substantial numbers of tweets critical of Hillary Clinton or referring to alleged pedophile John Podesta’s emails. [46] Today I see the Censorship Board actively demonetizing, [47] censoring, and assassinating – digitally assassinating – anyone who they judge to be a source of “fake news” which is to say, any source that disputes the MSM and USG narratives that are so obviously false themselves.

I have learned recently that Eric Schmidt is so proud of his Censorship Board [48] and his ability to control, censor, and manipulate social media, that he has offered this system to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – Communist China. Imagine the irony. Made in the USA by Zionists, totally satisfactory to Communist China. [49]

I must also observe that Google appears to have become an alternative to the CIA, a full-fledged covert operations organization where Zionist Jared Cohen is totally enamored of regime change operations and the digital assassination of dissidents [50] in every dictatorship the USA loves (which is to say, all of them less North Korea and Cuba), [51] and the active manipulation of information to serve his Deep State masters including the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) – the same organization that has recommended that US citizen dissidents be treated as “domestic terrorists.” [52]

The Zionist Double-Standard

What is quite clear to me is that no one is holding the Zionists (or other elements of the Deep State) accountable. For all of the misplaced focus on Russian efforts to “hack” the election – a pack of lies that I and others have compellingly challenged [53] – no one has raised the obvious point that the pernicious influence of Israel is everywhere and the Zionist attacks on all of us are carried out with impunity.

A double-standard appears to exist. It is “okay” for Zionists to call for the assassination of Barack Obama, or Donald Trump, or Roger Stone on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, but it is not “okay” for Prager University, [54] to take the most important case of our time, to espouse conservative values consistent with the US Constitution and all that it represents; nor is it “okay” for me to question the official narrative despite my unique qualifications for doing so as a former spy who has managed a false flag and covert media influence operations, and is in passing the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction who has also been recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Snap-Shot of the Zionist Attack Machine: Six Ways, Ninety Days

Using #UNRIG and myself as a case study, I speculate – subject to legal discovery – that I have seen #GoogleGestapo apply against #UNRIG, Earth Intelligence Network and me a total of six methods in ninety days (there may be more).

01 The ordering of a paid asset to begin a 90-day defamation campaign including many lies, mobilizing many others to do crowd-stalking and actively libel me, perhaps with some assurance of indemnity (coverage of the eventual award from a federal lawsuit).

02 The ordering of a Media Matters hit-job that reached over 25 million people

03 The ordering of Meet-Up to shut down a legitimate non-profit educational campaign, sacrificing $77,300 in revenue (perhaps paying the same amount covertly)

04 The mobilization of over 400 distinct trolls and bots to defame, slander, libel, and otherwise interfere with the legitimate election reform civics education campaign of my non-profit educational corporation, focused on censoring my public appearances and cutting off all donations.

05 The ordering of multiple denial of service attacks against my primary blog.

06 The mobilization of over 400 distinct trolls and bots to report http://phibetaiota.net as an X-rated website to be blocked across governments, corporations, libraries, and other institutions.

All of this is personal speculation pending a legal discovery process – I have written all of this down because I am worried that the emerging legal cases will be “gamed” through settlements that forego legal discovery documenting a much larger systemic conspiracy – a global racketeering network inimical to democracy, freedom, peace, and prosperity.

Conclusion

All of the social media enterprises appear to be vulnerable to a massive Title 7 discrimination lawsuit. I believe that Prager University is making a mistake in limiting its focus to YouTube, a Google surrogate, alone.

As my own experience suggests, there is a larger construct of control and I am quite certain that if Prager University and its superb legal team plan for a jury trial and discovery along the lines I have outlined above, they will find that this is a vaster conspiracy than they imagined (they are being attacked at multiple points, not just through the deletion of a few videos); that it has been deliberately constructed by Eric Schmidt and others serving Zion; and if they can legally discover and document this conspiracy in detail, then they are eligible for triple damages as well as a place of honor among those who defend the First Amendment specifically and the US Constitution generally.

The role of Alan Dershowitz within the Prager team is of some concern to me. Absent the lead lawyers understanding that he is an Israel Firster, it is possible they will allow him to gut their case down to a simple restoration of a few videos, rather than the systemic discovery of a conspiracy that must be exposed in detail, and eradicated, if we are to restore democracy and the rule of law in the USA while ending the scourge of predatory digital censorship and assassination world-wide.

There is a middle ground but I doubt that the social media mandarins are ready to consider the following accommodations to the public interest – if Alan Dershowitz can make this happen, he will have served us all very well and I will be the first to acknowledge his national service.

01 Restore all banned videos and posts going back in time except those that violate copyright or are defamatory – end false copyright strikes (e.g. against negative reviews) and end copyright extortion;

02 Establish a clear demonetization policy approved by advertisers and open to all for review;

03 Respect all providers of content without exception: create a 24/7 appeals process with real humans and maintain a publicly accessible list of every banned and demonetized video or post with a clear explanation of why it was banned or demonetized;

04 Respect all reports of defamation without exception: create a 24/7 delete and ban process with real humans and maintain a publicly accessible list of every instance of defamation that has been acted upon.

05 Require all subscribers to have one identity only; end trolls and end bots.

06 End the role of the ADL and others as preferred “fact-checkers” – reject Israel First and specifically protect all criticism of Israel and all calls for a boycott of Israel.

07 Agree that all Internet services providers are de facto public utilities and earnestly abide by Title 7.

All of this is my personal opinion, not a legal commentary. I believe we are beginning a 1,000 year cycle of peace and prosperity; #GoogleGestapo can reform itself, or it can be replaced. The collective is rising.

*(Image credit: Snapshout courtesy of The Alex Jones Channel/ YouTube)

Endnotes

[1] Sonam Sheth, “Roger Stone plans to sue Twitter for suspending his account,” BusinessInsider.com, 29 October 2017.

[2] Editors, “‘I’m looking to sue’: Black activist says Twitter banned her as ‘Russian bot’,” Newline.com, 26 October 2017.

[3] I founded #UNRIG and was pleased to have Dr. Cynthia McKinney agree to not only join the non-profit educational campaign, but assume total responsibility for the people side of the campaign – creating and nurturing civics “PowerCells” – while I pursue crypto solutions (Crypto-Value, Crypto-Voice, Crypto-Tools, and Crypto-Intelligence). Learn more at http://unrig.net.

[4] Jason Goodman, Patricia Negron, and “Queen Tut” now known to be Susan Lutzke, have been served. The original complaint, soon to be expanded and amended, can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/Steele-vs-Goodman. I will not litigate this case in social media or published articles – I trust the Court and Jury to render fair judgment on the basis of both my own evidence and evidence discovered through due process of the law.

[5] Prager University, “Prager University (PragerU) Takes Legal Action Against Google and YouTube for Discrimination,” Press Release, 24 October 2017. The Complaint for Damages, Injunctive Relief, and Declaratory Judgment demanding a Jury Trial was filed on 10/23 and served on 11/1. DOES 1-25 is probably an open-ended reference to 25 specific individuals to be identified as the case goes forward and discovery is undertaken. As of 5 November 21 of the banned videos are available for viewing via the following: Rachel del Guidice, “Watch the 21 PragerU Videos That YouTube Is Censoring,” The Daily Signal, 14 October 2016. The editors have been asked to update the post to include the 50+ banned videos as of today.

[6] Outrage is growing across the USA against the Zionists. From pedophilia to legislation that would make it felony to criticize Israel and call for a boycott of Israel, to the Las Vegas massacre and associated financial crimes, to the recent discovery that many state and local leaders are mandating that no one can receive disaster relief or even have a contract with their state or local government unless they swear to never boycott Israel, the Israel First versus America First confrontation has never been more obvious to so many.

[7] Arnold, Steve, “Revealing the Google Relevance Sins,” Beyond Search, 2 May 2017 and Arnold, Steve, “Google and Hate Speech: None of This I Know It When I See It,” Beyond Search, 7 June 2017. See also 21st Century Wire, “Google Is the Engine of Censorship,” GlobalResearch.ca, 11 August 2017; Andre Damon, “Google Turning into Censorship Engine,” GlobalReseach.ca, 5 August 2017 and Andre Damon, “Google’s chief search engineer legitimizes new censorship algorithm,” World Socialist Web Site, 31 July 2017; Susan Duclos, “Google-YouTube Goes Full Nazi Against Independent Media – Hiding ‘Controversial Content’ And ‘Redirecting’ Searches,” AllNewPipeline.com, 2 August 2017; Peter Hasson, “Anti-Corporate Voices On Both Right And Left Claim Google Censorship,” Daily Caller, 31 August 2017; David North, “An Open Letter to Google: Stop the Censorship of the Internet!GlobalResearch.ca, 25 August 2017; Michael Nunez, “Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News,” Gizmodo, 9 May 2016; Valentina Palladino, “YouTube clarifies “hate speech” definition and which videos won’t be monetized,” ArsTechnica.com, 2 June 2017; Bethania Palma, “Facebook Introduces Measure to Block Advertisements From Sites That Share Fake News,” Snopes.com, 28 August 2017.

Robert Parry, “NYT Cheers the Rise of Censorship Algorithms,” ConsoritumNews.com, 2 May 2017 and my favorite, Whitney Webb, “YouTube Moves To Censor “Controversial” Content – Brings ADL On Board As Flagger,” MintPressNews.com, 7 August 2017.

[8] Related but far beyond the scope of this carefully focused work are Zionist controls over banking, entertainment, and media; Zionist use of “crypto-Jews” who over generations remain deeply devout but penetrate other religious hierarchies as well as institutions inherent hostile to Zionists; and inter-marriage to include very calculated targeting of brides from prominent non-Jewish families that comprise the non-Zionist “establishment.”

[9] As a spy I managed a false flag event for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – no one died. Since leaving CIA and particularly since 9/11 I have published and spoken extensively on false flag events in which some people do die, and the budget-building nature of these events in which most domestic terrorists appear to be entrapment operations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Cf. Trevor Aaronson, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism (Ig Publishing, 2013). An excellent summary review of this book that studies 175 court cases across the USA can be read at Orange Alert!

[10] Thomas Dishaw, “Bookmark This: Over 400 Links Google Doesn’t Want You To Visit,” Government Slaves, 29 August 2017; Eric Sommer, “Google Censors Block Access to CounterPunch and Other Progressive Sites,” CounterPunch, 9 August 2017. The best over-all review is Robert Epstein, “The New Censorship: How did Google become the internet’s censor and master manipulator, blocking access to millions of websites?US News & World Report, 22 June 2016.

[11] David Byman, “Should We Treat Domestic Terrorists the Way We Treat ISIS? What Works—and What Doesn’t,” Foreign Affairs, 3 October 2017.

[12] Editors, “Facebook admits “oversight” after leak reveals internal research on vulnerable children,” CBS News, 1 May 2017; Editors, “Google Spying on Credit Card Spending to See if Ads Work Raises Privacy Concerns,” SputnikNews.com, 24 May 2017; Christopher Ketcham and Travis Kelly, “The Cloud Panopticon: Google, Cloud Computing and the Surveillance-Industrial-Complex,CounterPunch, 12 May 2017; John Naughton, “Google, not GCHQ, is the truly chilling spy network,” The Guardian, 18 June 2017.

[13] Christopher Ketcham and Travis Kelly, “The Cloud Panopticon: Google, Cloud Computing and the Surveillance-Industrial-Complex,” CounterPunch, 12 May 2017.  The following quotes are most helpful:

“’In legal terms, Google is in the Wild West,’ says Bankston. ‘The law hasn’t kept up.’

“But one of the big problems with the cloud, and the danger it presents, is that the Fourth Amendment’s protections against search and seizure do not apply. The caveats are buried deep in the text that users usually skip over, and click “I agree,” to install a new application. But the consequences are huge, says Bankston. ‘When private data is held by a third party like Google, the Supreme Court has ruled that you ‘assume the risk’ of disclosure of that data.’ When you store e-mail at Gmail – or, similarly, in the cloud at Yahoo or Hotmail – ‘you lose your constitutional protections immediately.’”

[14] Editors, “Alan Dershowitz,” Wikipedia, undated, accessed 3 November 2017.

[15] David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (Harper Perennial, 2016). My summary review, which is “shadow-banned” by Amazon – itself part of the #GoogleGestapo system that censors with impunity – can be seen at 6-Star Reference for President Donald Trump — John Brennan Using Allen Dulles Playbook.

[16] Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, covers discriminatory practices and redress. While the language refers only to employees it appears to be applicable in practice to customers and the general public. One Department of Labor online notice entitled “Discrimination Is Against the Law,” undated, accessed 3 November 2017, says  this: “These types of discrimination are against the law[:] A program that is covered by one of the laws mentioned at the top of this poster is not allowed to discriminate on any of the following bases (types of discrimination): For customers, applicants, employees, and the general public: • race • color • national origin • religion• sex • age • disability • political affiliation or belief.” It is the latter – political affiliation or belief – that applies to Roger Stone, “Charlie Peach,” Prager University, and those of us who oppose the pernicious influence of Zionists within the USA. The matter of how “fake news” can be arbitrated and moderated, and who has the authority to censor anyone exercising their First Amendment rights including the right to put forward beliefs and opinions contrary to all evidence if evidence is considered, does not appear to be adequately addressed by existing law in as much as the US Constitution, as amended, has been thrown out by the Deep State and is not being respected – from power of the purse to the power to declare war, Congress appears to be in enemy hands. What we do know is that both the USG and MSM lie to the public (and to the Courts) on a regular basis, and it is most difficult for “Alternative Media” to get treated fairly by the social media counterparts – including fund-raising channels – to the MSM.

[17] Ryan Brim, “Steve Bannon Wants Facebook and Google Regulated Like Utilities,” The Intercept, 27 July 2017.

[18] Cf. Philip Ewing, “Tough Questions, Hours Of Hearings But No Silver Bullet On Russian Tech Interference,” NPR.org, 2 November 2017. Both Congress and the social media enterprises continue to be hypocritical in pursuing the Russians as the primary offenders. The only person that hacked the US elections was Hillary Clinton, who stole 13 primary elections from Bernie Sanders (who knew it and went along) and was then blocked from doing the same thing to Donald Trump in the general election. Cf. Editors, “Graphic: How Hillary Clinton Stole the Democratic Nomination from Bernie Sanders — and Did Not Legally Win the Popular Vote,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 16 November 2017, with link to Axel Geijsel and Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, “Are we witnessing a dishonest election? A between state comparison based on the used voting procedures of the 2016 Democratic Party Primary for the Presidency of the United States of America,” White Paper, 7 June 2016 and other sources. My own two best analytic products are Steele, Robert. The Soft Coup Collapses – Blackmail Revealed – What Next?: CIA was bluffing, produced no evidence – Russians did not “hack” the election. Is this the beginning of the end of the Deep State in the USA? (Trump Revolution Series Book 6), Amazon Kindle, 7 January 2017 and Steele, Robert. Donald Trump, The Accidental President, Under Siege! (Trump Revolution Series Book 5), Amazon Kindle, 11 November, 2016. It is the Zionists – the Debbie Wasserman Schultz Awan Brothers case and of course Jeffrey Epstein’s covert operations – and our own CIA and FBI as well as National Security Agency (NSA) – that are spying on and blackmailing politicians, judges, celebrities, and selected bankers. These hearings are “fake news” and we can only hope that the Prager University case is not settled in a fake way – restoring 50+ videos and a quit claim when in fact the entire system could be exposed and dismantled.

[19] A really excellent contrast is provided by Michelle Malkin, “YouTube Banned Me, But Not the Hate Imams,” CNSNews.com, 7 June 2017.

[20] Nafeez Ahmed, “How the CIA made Google: Inside the secret network behind mass surveillance, endless war, and Skynet—part 1,” Medium.com, 22 January 2015; Deidre Fulton, “Revealed: CIA Funding Companies that Specialize in Social Media Spying,” CommonDreams.org, 15 April 2016.

[21] This work is not focusing on political enablers such as the “two-party tyranny” that legalizes high crimes by the Deep State, nor covert operations by elements of the USG. As unconstitutional as both of those may be, the primary focus here is on the private sector “system” known as #GoogleGestapo. On the two-party tyranny legalizing Deep State crime, see Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History (Spiegel & Grau, 2011) and Matt Taibbi, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap (Spiegel & Grau, 2014). For an excellent article about covert government operations, using a British case, see Glenn Greenwald, “How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations,” The Intercept, 24 February 2014. I feel personally blessed to have always been supported by CIA in my post-government authorship, to include rapid approval of major books on intelligence reform by the Publications Review Board (PRB). I have the impression that most of the “dirty tricks” of this sort in the USA are based at Fort Meade and done by a mix of NSA contractors and US Army reservists. I do believe that CIA, the FBI, and NSA are actively spying on and blackmailing Members of Congress, but that is another story for another day.

[22] The Mossad was among the first of the national intelligence agencies to understand that software was the next frontier for spying.  From the mid-1980’s they excelled at both penetrating national, state, and local governments and law enforcement agencies with compromised software, and also overtly bidding for contracts to provide software and hardware services that enabled them to easily compromise the content of every client they served – the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency (NSA) are in my view totally compromised by the Zionists. A classic book on this subject is Martin Dillon and Gordon Thomas, Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul (Carroll & Graf, 2002). My summary review, “shadow-banned” by Amazon, can be seen here: Riveting, Shocking, Eye-Opening, and Credible.

[23] Both of these are easily classified as unregistered agents of a foreign power but they have successfully avoided being held to account for failing to register, easily one of the reasons Israel supported the assassination of John F. Kennedy (the other was Kennedy’s insistence that CIA stop providing Israel with clandestine delivery of nuclear weapons components). Yitzhak  Rabin was in Dallas for the assassination and appears to have been Israel’s official representation to the assassination cabal led by Allen Dulles and protected by Lyndon Baines Johnson. See among multiple other sources Michael Collins Piper, “Israel’s Central Role in JFK Assassination,” Rense.com, 1 August 2010; and Phil Giraldi, “Should AIPAC Register as a Foreign Agent?The American Conservative, 29 July 2017.

[24] In my direct experience, YouTube is “neutralizing” the subscription lists of leading Alternative Truth channels such as those of Jordan Sather and Sarah Westall, the latter a business professor. I know people who have had their MailChimp and other accounts arbitrarily suspended. This along with “shadow banning” through de-monetization are the primary “light” censorship protocols. There is some evidence Google and YouTube are rethinking their blatant censorship – videos of Cynthia McKinney that were once demonetized have suddenly been remonetized, and many of the interviews with me are being allowed to earn ad revenue. Some of the demonetization is very legitimate – advertisers have a right to appear only in relation to content they favor – but a legal discovery process will probably find that YouTube has been weaponized against both the left and the right.

[25] The single best summary I have found to date, including many case studies with links, is Maximillian Laumeister, “Google is Deleting Your Favorite YouTube Channels, And They Won’t Say Why,” MaxLaumeister.com, 12 May 2016.

[26] Jason Goodman, Patricia Negron, and George Webb with Robert Steele, “Robert David Steele,” Crowd Source the Truth (YouTube, 51:30), 13 June 2017.

[27] Mongoose, “AWANGATE – Joint CIA-Mossad Operations to Spy on US Congress? Debbie Wasserman Schultz Indictable? Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 28 August 2017.  As a former spy familiar with how our system works, I speculate that the CIA and perhaps the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been complicit in both Mossad spying on Congress directly, and the use of Jeffrey Epstein to entrap politicians, judges, and others through the “Lolita Island” and “no-name hotel” pedophilia complex. Learn more at Epstein @ Phi Beta Iota.

[28] Adi Robertson, “Two months ago, the internet tried to banish Nazis. No one knows if it worked,” The Verge, 9 October 2017 has provided a superb overview of recent discrimination against the Alt-Right while failing to observe that Charlottesville was a contrived false flag event intended to make the Alt Right vulnerable. The article also provides a useful review of “Alt Tech” endeavors to create a post-Google Internet, with BitChute being notable as an alternative to YouTube. Several evaluations of Charlottesville are provided by Owl, “Charlottesville False Flag — Professional Hit, Paid Protesters? UPDATE 9 Jim Fetzer Outlines False Flag Anomalies,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 14 August 2017.

[29] #UNRIG: Summer of Peace, Generosity, from June 2017. Donations from those who wish to resist Zionist exploitation of US social media are especially invited.

[30] Jan Kalvik, “Intelligence & the Nobel Peace Prize,” Defence and Intelligence Norway, 6 February 2017; and Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize: Robert David Steele, undated, accessed 4 November 2017.

[31] http://robertdavidsteele.com.

[32] Steele, Robert, with Alex Jones, “Alex Jones (FULL SHOW Commercial Free) Thursday 6/29/17: Today’s News, Robert David Steele #UNRIG,” InfoWars (YouTube, 3:01:12), June 29, 2017. Steele starts at 48:00. The ITNJ of which I am a Commissioner was so dismayed by the media hit job (next note) that they immediately published an extract from the two-hour interview to showcase the statements about pedophilia that appear to have frightened the pedophiles in positions of media power, Steele, Robert, with Alex Jones, “#UNRIG – Robert David Steele on the Alex Jones Show 6/29/17 – excerpts,” Committee to Support the International Tribunal, July 1, 2017.

[33] https://www.itnj.org/.

[34] Joachim Hagopian, Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy, and the Deep State (Joachim Hagopian, on-going 2017). My Foreword and the first nine chapters are both free online and available as Kindle Shorts for 99 cents each. Access both via “Joachim Hagopian: Pedophilia & Empire – Satan, Sodomy, & the Deep State UPDATE 10 Kindles Up,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 2 July 2017. A memorable short url is http://tinyurl.com/pedoempire.

[35] The two links below contain both a link to the original articles and my open letter to each author. “Ben Collins: NASA Denies It Kidnaps Children for 20-Year+ Missions to Mars UPDATE 1,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 1 July 2017; and “Robert Steele with Peter Holley: NASA, Kidnapped Children, Mars — Open Letter,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 3 July 2017.

[36] I was briefed on this personally by a retired PhD from NASA in July 2017, in the presence of other international figures, and I absolutely believe what I was told.

[37] Rachel Alexander, “Astroturf ‘Outrage Machine’ of Paid Trolls Floods Social Media to Counteract Negative News About Hillary Clinton,” The Stream, 9 October 2017. . In an earlier article the same author outlines Media Matters partners, “American Bridge 21st Century will provide research. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, is an ethics watchdog group similar to Judicial Watch. Shareblue is a social media firm.” Rachael Alexander, “LEAKED: Media Matters’ Secret Plan to Destroy Conservatives,” The Stream, 22 August 2017. See also Jerome R. Corsi, “Leaked Docs: David Brock Conspires with Facebook, Google to Shut Down Conservative Media,” NotionalValueBlogspot.com, 9 February 2017. For a direct source, see Media Matters, “Donor Pitch,” Freebeacon.com, January 2017. Articles that focus on foreign troll armies, such as Leo Benedictus, “Invasion of the troll armies: from Russian Trump supporters to Turkish state stooges,” The Guardian, 6 November 2016, are very deliberately avoiding the “third rail” in banking, entertainment, government, and media: the Zionist “machine.”

[38] http://unrig.net and also http://tinyurl.com/IndieGoGo-UNRIG.

[39] MeetUp @ Phi Beta Iota.

[40] The ADL is the front end for the B’Nai Brith, the oldest Jewish service organization in the world, established in 1843. According to Wikipedia, 95% of its membership is in the USA, leading me to speculate the various agents of Israel (a foreign power) see the USA as the single most important nation-state to be subverted, controlled, and exploited (e.g. by instigating wars that serve Israel on the basis of false flag operations and other lies).

[41] Steele, Robert, with Kenneth Ameduri, “Another False Flag? What Evidence Shows Us About The Las Vegas Shooting,” Crush the Street (Audio, 30:57), October 17, 2017; Steele, Robert, with Sarah Westfall, “Robert David Steele: Las Vegas Massacre False Flag Case Study,” Business Game Changers (You Tube, 54:48), October 7, 2017. New: BitChute to overcome #GoogleGestapo deletion by YouTube; Steele, Robert. “MGM Execs Made $190M On Insider Trading -Las Vegas Update,” Victurus Libertas, October 6, 2017. Note: new spreadsheet shows $297M in insider trading. YouTube (a Google surrogate) has restored the second reference two times now – there is clearly a business discussion going on within YouTube – the more they discriminate, the more people are moving to DTube, BitChute, Steemit and other alternatives. There is growing demand for a post-Google Internet that cannot be censored or manipulated.

[42] Saul Hansell, “TECHNOLOGY; Google and Yahoo Settle Dispute Over Search Patent,” New York Times, 10 August 2004.

[43] Supra Note 13, Ketcham and Kelly. This was announced at my Open Source Solutions Conference in 2006 by Stephen E. Arnold himself author of The Google Trilogy.

[44] As I recollect the situation from various conversations with others Alta Vista was a demo project for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) which was acquired by Compaq and then Compaq was acquired by HP.  Neglected by HP and saddled with DEC “ovens” many but not all of the best and the brightest from Alta Vista quit and went to work for Google – these hires were the primary reason Google search worked as it did. Had HP understood the potential of Alta Vista, they would own it still today and Google would not exist – Alta Vista would be Google Plus.

[45] Jack Hadfield, “Report: Google Search Bias Protecting Hillary Clinton Confirmed in Experiment,” Breitbart.com, 13 September 2016, and Robert Epstein, “Research Proves Google Manipulates Millions to Favor Clinton,” Sputniknews.com, 12 September 2016. By its very nature #GoogleGestapo is designed to produce refutations of such accusations, see for example Don Evon, “Collusion Confusion: A viral video accused the search engine of manipulating results in favor of Hillary Clinton,” Snopes.com, 10 June 2016, declaring this to be FALSE. Whom are we to believe? It is the absence of integrity across the system that needs to be addressed, the persistence and pervasiveness of #GoogleGestapo – and the Zionist’s exploitation of the system – are merely symptoms of the disease. A prolonged legal discovery process, perhaps led by a convergence of multiple lawsuits, could move beyond speculation and informed but unproven accusations, and actually document the inter-locking personalities, tools, and techniques used to achieve both deliberate and casual discrimination against individuals and organizations across the spectrum. New law is needed, starting with the determination that social media services are public utilities subject to the most rigorous enforcement of existing laws against discrimination.

[46] Jerome Corsi, “Twitter Admits to Blocking Anti-Hillary Tweets During 2016 Campaign,” InfoWars.com, 2 November 2017; and Tyler Durden, “Twitter Admits It Buried “Podesta Email”, DNC Tweets Ahead Of The Presidential Election,” ZeroHedge.com, 2 November 2017. And then there are those allegedly out-of-control employees: Lucas Tolan, “Disgruntled Twitter Employee Temporarily Deletes President Trump’s Personal Account,” Breitbart, 2 November 2017.

[47] The most famous and blatant case of demonetization was that of Alex Jones and InfoWars. AdSense, a Google surrogate, declared InfoWars a purveyor of “fake news” and deprived his organization of $3.5 million dollars in advertising earnings in relation to his coverage of the PizzaGate story based on John Podesta emails suggestive of a major pedophilia network involving both political and media personalities, one of whom is known to have been James Alefantis’ gay lover. The speed with which Alex Jones backed down on a perfectly legitimate story is suggestive of the coercive power of #GoogleGestapo. See Roberto Villalpando, “Infowars’ Alex Jones apologizes for spreading fake ‘Pizzagate’ story,” Austin American-Statesman, 26 March 2017. I reject the notion that PizzaGate was fake news – the panic that it inspired among the elite – many of them pedophiles – is sufficient to suggest that this was close to the mark. PizzaGate played a major role in opening the public mind to the reality that pedophilia is “the last veil” that once removed, will destroy the 1%.  PizzaGate was also the first major test of the Internet as a battleground between citizen investigators and #GoogleGestapo. Cf. Jasun Horsley, “David Brock, Invasion 4Chan, the Alt-Right, & Pizzagate,” Auticulture, 4 December 2016.

“David Brock and Correct the Record played a central role in a massive and long-term covert campaign of perception management that spans both Republican and Democratic parties. It involves the “infiltration” of 4chan and the illegitimate use of more mainstream social networking sites (reddit, twitter) in order to redirect and undermine public political debate, polarize opinion, and help “populate and co-opt” an alt-“Alt-right” movement to be associated with racism, misogyny, fascism, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories, and ‘fake news.’ Many of the agendas, and even players, involved in this can now be seen to congregate in or around the viral memeplex known as Pizzagate.’”

[48] Poynter’s International “fact-checking network” includes Snopes, Factcheck.org, ABC News, and Politifact, but behind the scenes the primary “aggressive” fact-checker is the ADL. Its funders are the enemies of democracy, including the Gates Foundation, Google, the Omidyar Network, and the Open Source Foundation (OSF).

[49] #GoogleGestapo @ Phi Beta Iota.

[50] Julian Assange, “Google Is Not What It Seems,” Wikileaks.org, 2014. The below is a quote from Assange:

“Cohen’s directorate appeared to cross over from public relations and “corporate responsibility” work into active corporate intervention in foreign affairs at a level that is normally reserved for states. Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s ‘director of regime change.’”

[51] (Ambassador) Mark Palmer, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). My summary review can be read at Single Most Important Work of the Century for American Moral Diplomacy.

[52] Supra Note 11, David Byman.

[53] Supra Note 18, Soft Coup. The CIA report, on page A-13, actually states in black and white that its findings are not based on evidence. See also many posts with linked sources under Russians @ Phi Beta Iota.

[54] Prager University, “Prager University (PragerU) Takes Legal Action Against Google and YouTube for Discrimination,” Press Release, 24 October 2017.

November 7, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook, Google could help US ‘retaliate’ against Russia, other nations – Senator McConnell

RT | November 5, 2017

Days after tech giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google were grilled on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested using the companies to attack other nations.

On Tuesday, senior executives from the trio of major tech firms went before the US Congress to discuss an alleged ‘disinformation’ campaign supposedly designed to influence the election.

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has since suggested that social media and other internet services could provide the US with an opportunity to “retaliate” against adversaries such as Russia.

Speaking to MSNBC, McConnell expressed his disappointment that key figures like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had not provided answers at Tuesday’s hearing.

He then mooted the idea of weaponizing their services. Big tech could be used, he said, to “retaliate” against Russia, whose government has repeatedly denied any allegations of attempts to influence US voters.

“What we ought to do with regard to the Russians is retaliate. Seriously retaliate against the Russians and these tech firms could be helpful in giving us a way to do that,” McConnell told MSNBC host Hugh Hewitt.

McConnell added that he wasn’t sure if it’s a good idea for a special committee to assess the relationship between US security agencies and tech companies. He said the challenge facing US authorities is balancing security with First Amendment rights, which he believes should not extend to “foreigners.”

“It certainly would help if the CEOs were willing to testify [at Congress]. But I think the big, big subject with a lot of national security implications… [is] trying to figure out how to balance national security versus the First Amendment.”

November 5, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The “European Values” think-tank and their list of “Useful Idiots”

By Kit | OffGuardian | October 24, 2017

Just when you think that the Russo-phobic hysteria of the Western world couldn’t possibly make itself any more ridiculous… something like this comes along. This is the europeanvalues.net list of “useful idiots”.

The list is very long, over 2300 names, because it contains the name of every person to ever appear on either Sputnik or RT. Hosts or guests, hostile or friendly, it doesn’t matter. If you’re on the list, you are a useful idiot.

They’ve highlighted some names in yellow, to denote they’re “particularly noteworthy”. Names receiving the yellow highlight – the Russian agent equivalent of twitter’s blue tick – include Harrison Ford, Stephen Fry and Senator John McCain. All noted for their pro-Russian public stance on important political issues.

Also on the list are Boris Johnson’s dad, Barack Obama’s wife and John McCain’s daughter. And while all three of them may well be idiots, I’m struggling to see how they’ve ever been useful to anyone.

It’s honestly beyond a joke at this point. But let’s take a look behind the scenes anyway.

The Think-Tank

The not-at-all Orwellian sounding “European Values” think-tank is a Czech based NGO focusing on fighting…

… aggressive regimes, radicalisation within the society, the spread of authoritarian tendencies and extremist ideologies including Islamism.

Their about page goes into a lot of (vaguely creepy) detail about their logo, in case you were interested, but much less detail about their funding. If you want to know that, you have to read their annual reports.

In 2015, for example, you can see that they received funding from disappointingly predictable list of sources. The European Union, the US Embassy, the UK Embassy and (of course) the Open Society Foundation.

One day, it would be really nice to read the “Our Funding” section of an NGO’s website, and NOT see George Soros’ name.

The Author

The author of the list and accompanying report is one Dr. Monika Richter, a first generation British citizen and child of Czech immigrants. She’s a new face at the programme, having recently graduated from Oxford, where she studied at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The Reuters Institute receives funding from various sources, including Google, the BBC and…*sigh*… George Soros.

Interestingly enough, when Richter was at Oxford she spoke at the Free Speech Debate, arguing against the “no-platforming” of certain speakers because it could be used to censor unpalatable views.

Quite when she changed her mind on this issue, I do not know.

The Report

The fifty-three page long report that accompanies the list is both terrifying and hilarious, with some beautiful paranoid language that reads like the journal of Jack D. Ripper. I have read it, so you don’t have to (you’re welcome)… but if you really feel the need then here it is. It is a masterpiece of doublethink.

In one paragraph she smoothly segues between three points: 1. That Russia illegally “invaded” Georgia; 2. That RT’s “biased coverage” blamed the war on Georgia; 3. That the EU’s own report stated Georgian aggression was a prime factor in causing the conflict. Apparently she is totally unaware that her third point completely undermines points 1 and 2.

Later, she claims that RT employs “conspiracism” to spread insidious messages that undermine public faith in Western government.

For example, RT is accused of spreading the “conspiracy” that the US and UK started the Iraq war under false pretenses – when, far from being a “conspiracy theory”, the WMD-related lies are now an historically accepted truth. Only neocon diehards even try to deny that any longer.

The report also claims that RT spread conspiracy theories about “false flags” which, again, are a point of historical fact. And that RT reports, stating that the US and their allies are supporting ISIS in Syria, were untrue. In fact, these reports have since been shown to be absolutely correct.

She also rails against RT’s reporting of the Ferguson riots, in which they apparently:

revealed a consistent refrain: “the oppression of blacks in the US has become so unbearable that the eruption of violence was inevitable”, and that the US therefore lacks “the moral high ground to discuss human rights””

Now, personally, I’m struggling to see how that statement is inaccurate, but maybe I’m just indoctrinated beyond all hope at this point.

The best parts of the report come when the author is forced, by the unbending hand of reality, to make concessions. These include:

RT does not (typically) lie outright in its reporting, it presents facts in a way that distorts the reality of the situation and leads viewers to certain conclusions”.

And:

For the sake of fairness, it must be acknowledged that despite these malign intentions, RT has enjoyed a small handful of journalistic accomplishments. For example, its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Guantanamo Bay hunger strikes, and the 2010 WikiLeaks scandal was incisive, with the former two earning RT International Emmy Award nominations

Which, in a beautiful demonstration of intellectual dishonesty, is quickly followed up with:

However, the critical point here is that RT’s treatment of these events is not motivated by a genuine commitment to principled, balanced journalism, but rather by opportunism to demonise the US government for its apparent contradictions and democratic shortcomings.

You see? Even when their news coverage is good, and nominated for international awards, and tells important truths, none of that counts because they’re doing it for the wrong reason.

She apparently wants us to believe that telling the truth for the wrong reason is just as bad lying. Worse even, when you think about it, because your unabashed use of fact-based arguments lends a seeming legitimacy to your incorrect world view.

It is absolutely bonkers.

Some of the other highlights include:

RT disguises the malicious objectives of this editorial strategy by claiming to uphold traditional liberal-democratic ideals like free speech, critical journalism, and independent thought. RT’s shrewd perversion of these principles through rhetorical ploys like the ‘Question More’ ad campaign – which appears to advocate media literacy, critical thinking, and reasonable scepticism about media content – can seem highly convincing to the untrained eye.

By saying the wrong things RT is “perverting” free speech. The principle of free speech only applies to those with state-approved motives who say state-approved things. By disagreeing with that state-approved consensus you are, actually, perverting your freedom and therefore should have it taken away from you.

If the arguments that multiple points of view are important, and that journalistic integrity and free-speech demand the broadcasting of unpopular opinions, sound convicing, it’s only because you’re not well trained in picking up sedition and propaganda.

Not only that but:

RT uses guest appearances by Western politicians, journalists and writers, academics, and other influential public personalities to boost its credibility. Regardless of their intent, these appearances amount to complicity with the Russian propaganda machine, and thereby render its influence that much harder to counter. RT is not a neutral media platform; per point 1, its raison d’être is to disparage and demoralise the West at all costs, and all content it airs is calibrated to serve this purpose. Thus, even guest appearances made in good faith – e.g., motivated by the desire to offset some of RT’s more toxic and hyperbolic narratives – are counterproductive.

This explains the presence of John McCain on the idiot list, I suppose. Ms Richter seems to think that, even if you go on RT to criticise Russian foreign policy, or call RT biased, or defend the US viewpoint, your very presence reinforces the illusion that RT is a TV news channel, when it’s just a Kremlin disinformation centre. By airing contrasting points of view from every side, RT is able to maintain a pretence of impartiality.

You see, RT are not objective, so they have to pretend to be objective by allowing people to disagree with them on air. CNN and the BBC et al ARE objective, so they don’t need to pretend to be, so they DON’T have to allow people to disagree with them on air. By extension, the more differing opinions they broadcast, and the wider variation of opinions they broadcast, the more show themselves to be unobjective.

The logic is flawless.

None of this matters anyway because:

While the security hazard of the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign and influence operations should not be taken lightly, it is imperative to not overinflate the threat of individual influence agents like RT and Sputnik. Such a reaction is counterproductive: it further empowers these agents, allowing them to claim excessive success and consequently obtain more funding from the Kremlin to expand their operations.

So there you go, even if RT appears to be seriously undermining or our society and values, they actually have no real power and shouldn’t be overestimated. The important conclusion of this 53 page report that an NGO spent $100,000s on, is that we shouldn’t over-react.

One wonders how long the report would be if she had over-reacted.

If I was George Soros, I’d want my money back.

October 24, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Facespook! Social media giant becomes arm of US intel

By Finian Cunningham | RT | October 18, 2017

Facebook, the world’s top social media platform, is reportedly seeking to hire hundreds of employees with US national security clearance licenses.

Purportedly with the aim of weeding out “fake news” and “foreign meddling” in elections.

If that plan, reported by Bloomberg, sounds sinister, that’s because it is. For what it means is that people who share the same worldview as US intelligence agencies, the agencies who formulate classified information, will have a direct bearing on what millions of consumers on Facebook are permitted to access.

It’s as close to outright US government censorship on the internet as one can dare to imagine, and this on a nominally independent global communication network. Your fun-loving place “where friends meet.”

Welcome to Facespook!

As Bloomberg reports: “Workers with such [national security] clearances can access information classified by the US government. Facebook plans to use these people – and their ability to receive government information about potential threats – in the company’s attempt to search more proactively for questionable social media campaigns ahead of elections.”

A Facebook spokesman declined to comment, but the report sounds credible, especially given the context of anti-Russia hysteria.

Over the past year, since the election of Donald Trump as US president, the political discourse has been dominated by “Russia-gate” – the notion that somehow Kremlin-controlled hackers and news media meddled in the election. The media angst in the US is comparable to the Red Scare paranoia of the 1950s during the Cold War.

Facebook and other US internet companies have been hauled in front of Congressional committees to declare what they know about alleged “Russian influence campaigns.” Chief executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter, are due to be questioned again next month by the same panels.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 33-year-old CEO of Facebook, initially rebuffed claims his company had unwittingly assisted Russian interference in the last US election in November. But after months of non-stop allegations by politicians and prominent news media outlets vilifying Russia, Zuckerberg and the other social media giants are buckling.

Led, perhaps unwittingly, by US intelligence fingering of Russian meddling, Facebook, Google, and Twitter are now saying they have discovered postings and advertisements “linked to the Russian government.” Notably, the sources impugning the “offending ads” are the intelligence agencies and members of Congress who are hawkish on the Russia-gate narrative.

One glaring weakness in this narrative is that the alleged “Russian ads” involved a spend of $100,000 on Facebook. Twitter identified $274,000 worth of “Russian-linked ads.” Some of the information being promoted appears to be entirely innocuous, such as pet-lovers sharing cute photos of puppies.

It is far from clear how these ads are connected to Russian state agencies allegedly attempting to subvert the US elections. Moscow has dismissed the allegations.

Much of it is assumed and taken on face value from claims made by American intelligence and their political and media associates. But what is clear – albeit overlooked in much US media coverage – is the sheer implausibility that the Russian government intended to warp the US presidential election with a few hundred thousand dollars.

Facebook alone earns billions of dollars from advertising. The alleged Russian ads represent a drop in the bucket. The expenditure and presumed impact on public opinion is also negligible compared to the billions of dollars American corporations donated to the election campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Facebook are among the top 50 biggest US corporate donors in lobbying the Federal government and Congress. Last year, the top 50 corporations reportedly spent over $700 million, of which Alphabet and Facebook contributed $15 million and $8.7 million, respectively. This expenditure is explicitly intended to influence policy and legislation. So, what’s that about Russia allegedly swaying the presidential election with a fraction of the financial muscle?

Despite the irrational focus on Russian meddling, internet companies like Facebook have become willing participants in the official efforts to clamp down on this illusory “enemy of democracy.”

What’s more is the complete oversight on how the US media environment is increasingly dominated and controlled by vested powerful corporate interests.

While the mainstream media and politicians fret over alleged Russian influence on American citizens, there is an absurd absence in the public debate about the disproportionate power of just six US media conglomerates dominating all major American news services.

Social media and internet companies are vying with the traditional news channels. In a recent article, New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote about the “Frightful Five” – Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet (Google). He writes: “The Five elicit worries of total social control.”

The influence these US-owned media giants exert cuts across all cultural sectors, from the news received, to books, film and other entertainment. In effect, these companies are molding citizens into the consumers that they want to maximize their profits.

Facebook’s reported plans to employ US government-validated people who can use their intelligence contacts and prejudices to control what millions of ordinary people will read, watch or listen to is another manifestation of the larger drift into a corporate matrix.

Under the preposterous guise of “protecting” from “fake news” and “foreign meddling in elections,” Facebook is turning into a government censor.

This disturbing trend has accelerated over the last year. Far from Russia or some other foreign impostor tampering with freedom of information and free speech – supposed bedrocks of democracy – it is increasingly American companies that are the very real and formidable constraint.

Robert Bridge, a fellow Op-Edge contributor, said Facebook appears to be deliberately blocking links disseminating particular news stories carried by the channel.

Bridge concurs with the experience of many other ordinary people around the world who also have noticed how US internet companies have substantially curbed the search freedom previously enjoyed on the internet.

“It’s really incredible how Google and YouTube have earnestly started manipulating their algorithms and censoring news, ” says Bridge. “I was researching a story recently, and it was so difficult to pull up any relevant information that was not critical of Putin or Russia.”

A similar finding was reported by the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), which carried out a study on how search traffic to that site and other left-wing, anti-war online journals has plummeted by over 50 percent since Google announced new search engines to curtail “fake news” back in April.

Facebook and the other big US internet companies are instead directing users to what they call “authoritative” news organizations, which by and large are corporate-controlled entities aligned with government interests. Ironically, these news outlets have peddled some of the biggest fake news stories, such as the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which launched a decade-long US war killing over a million Iraqis.

“Russia-gate” is another fabricated narrative which is being used to crush critical alternative sources.

The infernal paradox is that genuinely alternative, critical news sources are now at risk of being censored by internet companies working in league with nefarious US government intelligence.

Read more:

Welcome to 1984: Big Brother Google now watching your every political move

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.

October 18, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

So You’ve Decided To Boycott Google…

corbettreport | October 13, 2017

You’ve decided to boycott Google? Congratulations! That’s a great idea! But now, where do you go for alternatives? Are there any other search engines? Join The Corbett Report’s open source investigation into search alternatives as we explore the good the bad and the ugly of online filter bubbles.

JOIN THE OPEN SOURCE INVESTIGATION: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=24412

October 13, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | | Leave a comment

US Needs to Probe Facebook, Google Abuse of Mega-Data for Profit – Analyst

Sputnik – October 12, 2017

Wall Street Analyst Charles Ortel believes that the US authorities have to investigate the alleged use of mega-data gathered by social media corporations for business profit.

The US government needs to launch a serious inquiry into how the social media giant corporations led by Facebook and Google use the mega-data they gather on hundreds of millions of people for business gain, financial analyst Charles Ortel said in an interview on Wednesday.

“Google and Facebook in the main what they are doing is convincing people around the world to give away very valuable information and then they’re monetizing this for their investors,” Ortel told RT on Wednesday. “There should be some serious inquiry into that.”

Ortel was commenting on the close cooperation between the major US media outlets led by the New York Times and the social media giant corporations in distorting search results and boosting stories overwhelmingly hostile to President Donald Trump.

“What we’ve seen so far is shocking,” he said. “Over 90 percent of the news was negative (on Trump). “I think that kind of stuff happens all the time.”

The Google search engine suppressed conservatives financial analysts and others who were critical of the left-wing and progressive beliefs of most of the billionaires who ran Silicon Valley, Ortel said.

“On the question of Google I have noticed what I believe to be suppression of Google search results… When someone is identified as being conservative economically they go into the question file… These people in Silicon Valley they all lean to the left,” he said.

Trump has publicly accused the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS of presenting fake news.Ortel told RT that Trump had been correct in his criticisms as major US media outlets, especially The New York Times, openly and repeatedly slanted the news according to their preferred bias.

“The New York Times certainly has had an anti-conservative bent for a long, long time… The New York Times has a decided bias and it needs to reform itself or it will indeed fail as Donald Trump in fact suggests it is [already failing],” he said.

Ortel also said the New York Times during the 2016 presidential election campaign had refused to report the fact that the Clinton Foundation charity was under investigation.

“In August 2016 the New York Times knew the Clinton Foundation was under investigation. That is incredibly relevant information that they spiked,” he said.

Charles Ortel, a former executive at the financial firms Chart Group and Dillon, Read & Company, exposed financial fraud at General Electric back in 2007 and is proceeding with his private investigation into the alleged fraud of the Clinton Foundation.

Ortel discussed the issue of media bias at RT after Project Veritas released hidden camera footage of conversations with New York Times editor Nick Dudich. The video showed Dudich admitting to using connections at YouTube to get New York Times videos on the front page of the platform.

October 12, 2017 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Google’s New Search Engine Bias is No Accident

By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | October 1, 2017

Alternet has gone public with concerns about the way Google and Facebook have limited traffic to its website and, more generally, undermined access to progressive and independent media.

Its traffic from web searches has dropped precipitously – by 40 per cent – since Google introduced new algorithms in the summer. Other big progressive sites have reported similar, or worse, falls. More anecdotally, and less significantly, I have noticed on both my own website and Facebook page a sharp drop in views and shares in recent weeks.

Alternet is appealing for financial help, justifiably afraid that the drop in traffic will impact its revenues and threaten its future.

Nonetheless, there is something deeply misguided, even dangerous, about its description of what is happening. Here is how its executive editor, Don Hazen, describes Alternet’s problems:

Little did we know that Google had decided, perhaps with bad advice or wrong-headed thinking, that media like AlterNet—dedicated to fighting white supremacy, misogyny, racism, Donald Trump, and fake news—would be clobbered by Google in its clumsy attempt to address hate speech and fake news. …

So the reality we face is that two companies, Google and Facebook—which are not media companies, do not have editors or fact-checkers, and do no investigative reporting—are deciding what people should read, based on a failure to understand how media and journalism function.

“Bad advice”, “wrong-headed”, “clumsy”, “failure to understand”. Alternet itself is the one that has misunderstood what is going on. There is nothing accidental or clumsy about what Google and Facebook are doing. In fact, what has happened was entirely predictable as soon as western political and media elites started raising their voices against “fake news”.

That was something I and others warned about at the time. Here is what I wrote on this blog late last year:

But the claim of “fake news” does usefully offer western security agencies, establishment politicians and the corporate media a powerful weapon to silence their critics. After all, these critics have no platform other than independent websites and social media. Shut down the sites and you shut up your opponents.

Google and Facebook have been coming under relentless and well-documented pressure from traditional media corporations and the political establishment to curb access to independent news and analysis sites, especially those offering highly critical perspectives on the policies and behaviour of western corporations and state bureaucracies. These moves are intimately tied to ongoing efforts to spread the dishonest claim that progressive sites are working in the service of Russia’s Vladimir Putin in his alleged attempts to subvert western democracies.

Shadowy groups like PropOrNot have been springing up to make such wildly unsubstantiated claims, which have then been taken up as authoritative by traditional corporate media like the Washington Post. It is noticeable that the list of sites suffering sudden downturns in traffic closely correlates with the progressive websites defamed as Putin propaganda outfits by PropOrNot.

The pressure on Google and Facebook is not going to ease. And the two new-media giants are not likely to put up any more resistance than is absolutely necessary to suggest they are still committed to some abstract notion of free speech. Given that their algorithms and distribution systems are completely secret, they can say one thing in public and do something else entirely in private.

Other comments by Hazen further suggest that Alternet does not really understand the new environment it finds itself in. He writes:

Ben Gomes, the company’s vice president for engineering, stated in April that Google’s update of its search engine would block access to ‘offensive’ sites, while working to surface more ‘authoritative content’. This seemed like a good idea. Fighting fake news, which Trump often uses to advance his interests and rally his supporters, is an important goal that AlterNet shares.

Fake news can be found across much of the media spectrum: in the New York Times, CNN, BBC, Guardian, as well in Donald Trump’s tweets. It has existed for as long as powerful interests have dominated the media and its news agenda – which is since the invention of print. Fake news cannot be defeated by giving greater powers to huge media conglomerations to decide what people should hear. It is defeated by true media pluralism – something we have barely experienced even now, in this brief heady period of relative online freedom.

Alternet is treating Google and Facebook, and the powerful corporate interests behind them, as though they can be tamed and made to see sense, and persuaded that they should support progressive media. That is not going to happen.

Like the media barons of old, who alone could afford the economies of scale necessary to distribute newspapers through delivery trucks and corner shops, Google and Facebook are the monopolistic distribution platforms for new and social media. They have enormous power to decide what you will see and read, and they will use that power in their interests – not yours.

They will continue to refine and tighten their restrictions so that access to dissident media becomes harder and harder. It will happen so subtly and incrementally that there is a real danger few will notice how they have been gradually herded back into the arms of the media corporations.

Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

October 1, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Russia-gate’s Shaky Foundation

By Daniel Herman | Consortium News | September 29, 2107

Anyone who watches the news knows that Russian hackers gave Democratic National Committee documents to WikiLeaks and hacked voter databases in 21 states. Prominent Democrats call these shenanigans “a political Pearl Harbor.”

On the blog Daily Kos, one contributor cries “we were robbed!” (arguing that somehow Russian meddling gave Trump a victory in North Carolina, where his margin was 180,000, and where no evidence whatsoever indicates a successful hack of voter databases).

In a new video propamentary, er, docuganda, or something like that, Morgan Freeman declares “we have been attacked. We are at war. This is no movie script.”

Before we hop on the Morgan Freeman train, we might want to consider some history. In 1898, the American press — taking the word of naval investigators — reported that a Spanish mine had destroyed the battleship, U.S.S. Maine. Leading newspapers promptly called for war, and the U.S. government obliged.

Finally, the U.S. became an imperial power with the acquisition of Cuba and the Philippines and a few other odds and ends, at the bargain cost of 2,500 American soldiers dead, plus another 4,000 lost in the Filipino rebellion that followed, not to mention the lives of tens of thousands of Filipino opposition fighters. Only later did it come to light that the Maine was destroyed by a boiler explosion.

In 1915, leading newspapers again whipped up the American public by announcing that a German submarine had sunk the unarmed passenger ship, Lusitania. Two years later — and in part due to lingering outrage over the Lusitania — the U.S. went to war, this time costing 116,000 American lives and over 200,000 wounded, not to mention creating a patriotic frenzy at home that led to beatings, lynchings, and attacks on civil liberties. Decades later, divers proved that the Lusitania was carrying arms to Britain — contrary to government assurances — thus violating international law. German naval intelligence had proved correct.

In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had a list of men in the State Department who were communists. A credulous press played up his accusations, despite the fact that the numbers on his supposed list kept shifting. McCarthy and his allies in Congress recklessly charged Americans in Hollywood and in government with being either communists or “fellow travelers,” often ruining their careers.

Congress meanwhile passed the McCarran Internal Security Act, which required suspected “subversives” to register with the government. It also permitted the government to round up and hold those same suspected “subversives” on the order of the President. McCarthy, of course, had no real list, and finally ruined his own reputation by accusing Army brass of communist sympathies. McCarthy’s many allies, however, paid no penalty for overreach.

Fake Intelligence

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced that the North Vietnamese had attempted a second torpedo attack on an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin, then used the incident to get Congress to give him the power to make war.

Thanks to the press endorsing the war effort and cheerleading on the nightly news (at least until the Tet Offensive four years later), the Vietnam War led to 58,000 American deaths and over a million war deaths altogether. Covert U.S. forces, meanwhile, kick-started a civil war in Cambodia that ended in genocide after the Khmer Rouge took power. Cambodia lost over half of its population of 7 million between 1970 and 1980.

It later became clear that there had been no second attack on the destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin; its crew had misread radar signals.

In 2002, U.S. intelligence, via George W. Bush’s administration, told the American public that Iraq had a hand in planning the 9/11 attacks and, moreover, that Iraq secretly maintained an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that might be shared with Al Qaeda. Both claims were utterly false, yet the American press — particularly the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN — led Americans to believe they were true. Far from questioning authority, the press became its servant. The result: 4,500 American war deaths; at least 110,000 Iraqi deaths (some estimates put the figure at over a million); and a destabilized Middle East, wherein both Iran and ISIS (who are bitter enemies) were empowered. In all likelihood, moreover, there would have been no Syrian war had there been no Iraq War.

When the American press and American political leaders loudly accuse another country of “an act of war,” in short, the American public needs to be on the alert. Rather than marginalizing and belittling skeptics, the press and public should give them a fair hearing. Far better to have a spirited debate now than to come to the realization in the future that groupthink created catastrophe.

Hack or Leak? It’s Worth Asking

With all that history in mind, we should be grateful that William Binney, the National Security Agency’s former technical director, is shouting with everything he can muster that the U.S. intelligence community has no solid evidence that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee. The NSA, he says, would have a record of any overseas exfiltration and could release that data without danger to national security; yet the NSA hasn’t. Though Binney left the NSA 16 years ago, he should know: he created the powerful cyber-vacuum that the NSA still uses.

Binney’s organization, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), has produced a report in which they argue that forensic evidence from documents produced by Guccifer 2.0 (G2) suggests — strongly — that G2 was a hoaxer. Skip Folden, a VIPS associate and a former elite tech executive with IBM, has issued his own report that buttresses the VIPS report. Adam Carter (a pseudonymous investigator) and Forensicator (another pseudonymous investigator) have also buttressed the VIPS Report, as have cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr and former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter (Ritter disagrees with VIPS in part but not on the basic charge of insufficient evidence).

To the extent they mention the skeptics, American journalists dismiss them as fringe. Yet the skeptics deserve a hearing. Among the important points they make is that U.S. intelligence has only identified the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups (APT 28 and 29 to be precise) associated with the hacking, and not the hackers themselves. An APT is a set of common parameters — tools, modes of operation, target patterns — used by hackers. But how certain are our intelligence agencies that Russians stand behind APT 28/29?

It happens that Dimitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike — the cybersecurity entity that analyzed DNC servers — was asked that question in June 2016. His answer: “medium-level of confidence that FancyBear is [Russian intelligence agency] GRU… low-level of confidence that CozyBear is [Russian intelligence agency] FSB.”

Skip Folden suggests that Alperovitch’s estimates equal a 37-38 percent probability that Russian intelligence stands behind APT 28/29. It’s not clear how Folden came up with that figure. We should note here that Alperovitch subsequently raised his confidence levels to “high,” but then had to reduce them again in March 2017 after realizing that his new assessment was based on phony data published by a Russian blogger. Meanwhile, in January, Director of National of Intelligence James Clapper’s hand-picked team had used Alperovitch’s “high confidence” assessment of Russian hacking of the DNC, which every major network reported dutifully without so much as a blink.

It’s hard to say what additional evidence the NSA/CIA team might have had — or whether there was any — though there are rumors that a Kremlin mole working for Latvia confirmed that Putin ordered his cyber-warriors into action. The NSA, however, didn’t consider the source fully trustworthy (remember Curveball, the wonderful gift of German intelligence?), hence it committed itself to only “moderate confidence” even as the CIA stated “high confidence.” At any rate, the January report lacked both solid technical evidence and more traditional evidence confirming Russian hacking.

Not Making Sense

Several other oddities stand out: first, why would G2 announce himself two days after the DNC reported being hacked, brag he was the hacker, and add that he had given his material to WikiLeaks? WikiLeaks exists for one reason: to give whistleblowers deniability. Normally, people don’t give material to WikiLeaks and then brag about it publicly.

Least of all would Russian intelligence do such a thing, assuming — as some allege — that they routinely use WikiLeaks to disseminate hacked data. Why would Russia implicate its proxy? Why, indeed, would Russia not only cast aspersions on Julian Assange’s honesty, but also cast doubt on the authenticity of the DNC data, given that intelligence services are known to doctor hacked documents? Why, moreover, would G2 give information to WikiLeaks in the first place, given that he had the ability to curate it and disseminate it on his own, as he showed by distributing “choice” (but actually innocuous) data to journalists?

Then there’s the forensic evidence, which shows that (1) G2 put DNC documents into a Russian template; and (2) G2 made those changes on the computer in an East Coast U.S. time zone. Plus, linguistic evidence suggests that G2 showed none of the typical speech idiosyncrasies of a native Russian speaker.

Metadata can be fudged, so it’s possible that (1) and (2) don’t matter. If that is the case, however, one must explain why G2 would drop deliberate clues indicating that he’s Russian — including leaving the name of the founder of the Soviet secret police in one document, along with Cyrillic error messages in another — while also dropping deliberate clues indicating he’s an American leaker. Tricky indeed.

Then there’s another important piece of forensic evidence: the transfer speed, which corresponds to the speed of a download to a local thumb drive rather than to an overseas exfiltration. Critics — including a few VIPS dissenters — promptly insisted that the VIPS report was wrong to assume that such speeds could not be attained in an overseas exfiltration in 2016. Signers of the original VIPS report, however, subsequently conducted multiple experiments to prove or disprove that hypothesis; not once did they achieve a transfer speed anywhere close to that indicated in the DNC metadata.

Critics have also argued that the DNC documents transfer speed may refer to a download to a thumb drive after the initial hack, yet the download would nevertheless have had to have been done on the East Coast of the U.S., since transfer speed metadata correlate to time stamp data. Why would a hacker exfiltrate data to Romania or Russia, then return to the U.S. to download the material to a thumb drive?

Inconsistencies and Uncertainties

The above inconsistencies, I should add, apply to the DNC data, not the Podesta emails. No one, so far as I know, has cast doubt on the theory that the Podesta emails were phished via APT 28. Still, the same rules of caution apply. As Alperovitch himself testified in June 2016, APT 28 does not necessarily prove Russia involvement, and even if it did, no one has proven that Russians gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks. There are many other possibilities.

The Wall Street Journal, for instance, reported that Republican operatives were desperately reaching out to the hacking community to locate Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 missing emails. They made contact with several hacking groups including some that claimed to have the emails and even sent samples. The Republicans told the hackers to turn over the emails to WikiLeaks, but — supposedly — offered no payment. It’s not inconceivable, however, that the same Republican dirt-diggers — or others — indeed did pay hackers to turn over materials to WikiLeaks. Even if that occurred, however, the hackers might well have been non-state actors who occasionally work with Russian intelligence, but who otherwise work independently (more on that later), and who were not under orders from Putin. Or, they may have been hackers who have no connection to Russia whatsoever.

Regarding Roger Stone’s infamous remark that “it will soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel,” which has been cited as proof that Stone had foreknowledge of WikiLeaks’ publication of Podesta’s emails, Stone explained on Tuesday that he was referring to his own research on Podesta’s consulting work for foreign governments in the context of similar complaints being lodged against Stone’s friend and Trump’s erstwhile campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Questioning the Investigation

There are worrisome implications here. First, if we are “at war with Russia”; if the hacking was “the crime of the century”; if it’s “bigger than Watergate”; why didn’t the FBI examine the DNC server, given that James Comey admitted that was “best practice”? Why did he rely on CrowdStrike’s analysis, especially given CrowdStrike’s strong ties to the Atlantic Council (created solely to support NATO and heavily funded by foreign entities) and CrowdStrike’s grossly mistaken charges of Russian hacking in other contexts?

Second, why has there been no comprehensive or coordinated Intelligence Community Assessment or a full-scale National Intelligence Estimate — weighing evidence of Russian culpability against contrary theories — by the U.S. intelligence community, given that it has known about alleged Russian election hacking of both the DNC and state voter databases for well over a year?

What we got in January was a hurried intelligence assessment put together by a “hand-picked” team from three agencies, not a consensus of “17 agencies,” as the U.S. press wrongly blared for months. If Russia had committed an “act of war,” then surely President Obama would have ordered the fullest assessment of intelligence that the U.S. is capable of producing; yet he didn’t.

Third, why would Putin order an enormous campaign against Hillary Clinton, knowing that she would very likely win anyway (and did win the popular vote). Would Putin risk the likelihood of President Hillary Clinton finding out about his shenanigans? What implications would that have for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act, for additional sanctions, for Syria, for Ukraine, for NATO funding, for the possibility of renewed Cold War? Perhaps — as James Comey contends — Putin hated Clinton so much that he was willing to play “Russian roulette.” Yet one wonders.

Has the Press Fed Hysteria?

Why, moreover, has the U.S. press barely mentioned the fact that U.S. intelligence services — and the press itself — wrongly accused Russia of the Macron hack? France’s head of cyber intelligence, after finding no evidence of Russian hacking, said this: “Why did [NSA Director Michael] Rogers say that, like that, at that time? It really surprised me. It really surprised my European allies. And to be totally frank, when I spoke about it to my NSA counterparts and asked why did he say that, they didn’t really know how to reply either.”

Think about those words for a moment; they were not meant to be diplomatic. They were unabashedly chastening.

Why, too, has the U.S. press barely mentioned the fact that German intelligence, after a months-long investigation, found no Russian meddling in its recent election (and moreover, found that the supposed Russian hack of the Bundestag in 2015 was likely a leak after all), despite U.S. intelligence agencies’ insistence that Germany was Russia’s next target?

Why do we not hear that Britain found no evidence of Russian efforts to influence Brexit, despite allegations to that effect? Why has the U.S. press wrongly reported a Russian hack of a Vermont utility; a Russian hack of an Illinois water pump; a Russian hack of north Texas voter rolls; a Russian hack of Qatari news media? Add to those examples the latest round of debunkings: there was no Russian attempt to hack Wisconsin voter rolls, nor any Russian attempt to hack California’s. Despite all the debunked stories, the U.S. press eagerly reports new Russia-done-it stories every time some anonymous source breathes a leak.

Here’s a test you can do at home:  Type “Germany Russia hacking” into your search engine and see what comes up. Then type “Brexit Russia hacking.” Then try “France Russia hacking.” You’ll get an absolute barrage of stories — hundreds of links — that melodramatically attest to Russian hacking and/or meddling in all three situations, but you’ll struggle mightily to find stories refuting those charges.

One can readily see why some curious soul sitting at home who takes it upon himself to do a little internet research would come away utterly convinced of Russian perfidy. Google here becomes an instrument not of truth-finding, but of algorithmic fake news.

Why, too, did former Assistant Secretary of Department of Homeland Security for Cybersecurity, Andy Ozment, insist in September 2016 that hacking attempts on voter rolls were not of Russian origin, but rather were criminal attempts to steal identification data for sale on the dark net? Why did DHS say as late as October that they lacked evidence to blame Russians? Were they simply protecting the nation against mass hysteria that could cast doubt on the presidential vote?

And yet the basic evidence pattern for attributing the attempted hacks to Russia (or anyone else) hasn’t changed; it’s not as if some new damning piece of evidence emerged after September. Even Reality Winner’s leaked NSA document from June 2017 notes uncertainty about the identity of the hackers. If one looks at the leaked chart showing details of the flow of hacked information, one notes that the final arrow on the left pointing to Russian intelligence (GRU) is marked “probably.” Click here and scroll down to see the blown-up chart.

Incidentally, if you think the case of Reality Winner is a bit suspect — i.e., a cleverish ruse to undermine The Intercept (publisher of the “Winner leak”) and puff up the Russia hysteria — you might want to check out this story. I withhold judgment, personally.

What I Am Arguing

Am I implicating Obama in a conspiracy? No way. Am I suggesting that G2 was a DNC actor seeking to blame Russia for a damaging insider leak to Assange? Not necessarily, but not “not necessarily,” either. There is reason for suspicion at least.

Am I suggesting that U.S. intelligence agencies are lying in order to protect massive U.S. funding for NATO and to force Russia to loosen its ties to Iran and Syria, not to mention lay off Ukraine? No, I am not suggesting any deliberate lie, though yes, wishes can father thoughts. Certainly Trump’s campaign talk of defunding NATO, friendship with Russia, and leaving Syria to Assad ruffled feathers in the intelligence community.

I am far from being a cyber-security expert, let alone knowledgeable about IT, so I write all this in modesty. And yet I find myself agreeing with experts who say that APT associations are not grounds for “high confidence” intelligence assessments, and that the American public deserves to see strong evidence not just of hacking — but of actual Russian hacking — given the magnitude of the issue.

I also find myself agreeing with cyber-security experts who tell us that U.S. intelligence agencies — as well as private cyber-security firms like CrowdStrike — tend to build the evidence around hypotheses, rather than letting the evidence lead to its own conclusions.

I don’t think there’s a conspiracy; I think there’s bias, groupthink, and boss-pleasing — in both the press and the intelligence agencies — just as there was in the Iraq WMD fiasco.

As Folden points out, there are numerous international crime organizations (an $800 billion industry last year) that might well stand behind APT 28/29. Given the sloppiness of the DNC and Podesta hacks (assuming they were hacks), what’s probable is that Russia isn’t doing the work directly, but might be paying a third party that sells its wares to bidders. Or, perhaps Russia isn’t involved.

As Folden notes, numerous states and international crime organizations have strong economic and/or strategic interests in both internal U.S. campaign information and in U.S. elections outcomes. The same observation goes for allegations of hacked voter databases. Any number of entities have both the wherewithal to employ APT 28/29 and an economic interest in harvesting voter identification data.

We should pause to note here that almost all the state database attacks were just that — attacks — not breaches. Unsuccessful attacks cannot be traced to APT groups, only to IP addresses, which are highly unreliable evidence. What few confirmed breaches there were (e.g., Illinois), moreover, did not change election results, and — as with the alleged DNC hack — can only be traced to APTs, not to actual hackers.

Here’s an aside just for fun: why would Russian hackers imagine for a second they could turn Illinois into a Trump state? Clinton won that state by a million votes. Sure, one can understand why Russians might want to meddle with voter roles in a swing state, but Illinois? More likely the hackers were criminals seeking voter identification info, which is precisely why they downloaded 90,000 registration records. The FBI absurdly claimed that Russians needed all those records to figure out precisely how Illinois voter registration works, thus to improve their dirty work. Really? They needed 90,000 records for that?

Pressuring Facebook

Of course, if the voter database attacks turn out to be no-big-deal, the press still will find some new way to exploit the Russia hysteria. The Washington Post and the New York Times — along with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees — are now investigating Russian attempts to use Facebook ads and posts to help Trump win the election. Facebook — thanks to subpoenas from Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and pressure from congressional Democrats — has turned up $100,000 of suspicious ad buys from phony accounts.

Think of that for a moment: Russians (supposedly) mustered fully $100,000 for ads in a presidential campaign that cost $2.4 billion. Talk about bang for your buck! The current allegation is that over the past three years, a few hundred Russian trolls armed with $100,000 and 470 Facebook accounts (compared to Facebook’s $27 billion in annual revenue and 2 billion monthly users) deployed issues ads (not primarily attack ads against specific candidates) to out-brigade millions of ordinary Americans who posted campaign pieces on Facebook every day, not to mention Clinton’s public relations army.

Poor David Brock paid a million dollars for his own pro-Clinton troll brigade, but they were children compared to these nefarious Russians. It’s a feat right up there with Xenophon’s Anabasis … a tiny force of foreigners, slashing their way through the Persian hordes! Someone get an epic poet!

Of course Sen. Mark Warner, a hawkish vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, informs us that the $100,000 is just the “tip of the iceberg.” Who knows, maybe the Russians spent $200,000.

Even if these propaganda charges turn out to be 100 percent true — and even if the Russians were clever enough to target voters in the Upper Midwest — it is highly unlikely that they had more influence on the election than a host of other factors, ranging from Clinton’s bad campaign decisions to emailgate to anti-establishment fervor to Trump’s 4-Chan volunteers (did he really need several hundred Russians? Surely he had plenty of home-grown trolls).

Silencing Dissent

So, maybe the Russians did play some small role on Facebook — though I suspect this suspicion, too, will be challenged — but should we therefore conclude that we’re at war, as Morgan Freeman declares? Should we demand that Facebook and Google continue to rework algorithms to shut down posts or ads deemed pro-Russian? Doesn’t that remind anyone of the anti-German hysteria — and censorship — during World War I?

Should we demand, moreover, that the tiny Russian-owned media outlet RT register as a foreign agent — as the Atlantic Council has insisted, and as the Justice Department is now demanding — but not require the same of the BBC and CBC, which are financed by the British and Canadian governments respectively?

What about the Atlantic Council itself, which, receives much of its funding from foreign nations that seek to strengthen NATO? Should the Atlantic Council be required to register as a foreign agent? Does anyone seriously think the Atlantic Council doesn’t propagandize for NATO and for hawkish policies more generally? Or what about the hawkish Brookings Institution, or a host of other think tanks that welcome money from foreign powers?

The unspoken assumption here is that only Russia propagandizes; no other nation is so shifty. Surely Saudi Arabia wouldn’t do such a thing, nor Israel, nor Ukraine, nor countless other nations that seek to influence American policy. After all, they have their paid lobbyists and press buddies working for them every day; they don’t need several hundred trolls.

Let’s be honest, we live in a world in which foreign powers seek to influence American public opinion, just as we seek to influence public opinion in other nations. Which brings to mind a bill that President Obama signed in December, at the outset of the Russia hysteria: “The Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act,” which created the State Department’s “Global Engagement Center,” which seeks to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United Sates national security interests.”

The act also offers grants to organizations (think news agencies and research groups) that promise to “counter efforts by foreign entities to use disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda to influence the policies and social and political stability” of the U.S. and allied nations. (Shout out to Rob Reiner; did you apply for one of those grants? Might be a good opportunity for you.)

Does no one see a problem with this?  What exactly is foreign propaganda? Is it RT’s occasional charges that the U.S. press treats Trump unfairly? Is it RT’s penchant for left-wing, anti-establishment commentary, e.g., Chris Hedges, Thom Hartmann, and Lee Camp? Our intelligence elites certainly think so, judging from the seven pages they dedicated to RT’s supposed rascally programming in the January intelligence assessment.

And what exactly will it mean to “counter … foreign … disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda”? Will it mean countering any news or commentary deemed anti-NATO or pro-Russian? Any news or commentary deemed pro-Iranian? How exactly will our government define “foreign propaganda”? How, moreover, will it define “national security”? What lengths will it take to deny the American public — not to mention foreigners — access to legitimate opinions?

Alien and Sedition Acts

Perhaps the real analogue here isn’t World War I after all, but the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Of course it wasn’t Russians that President John Adams worried about; it was hot-blooded Irish radicals and French émigrés with their revolutionary idealism, which was ostensibly corrupting the nation. Ordinary Americans were suddenly refusing to vote for their Federalist political betters, and those betters determined to make them pay. Far better to jail Jeffersonian editors and drive out foreigners than to let them endanger America’s “national security.”

We are forsooth reliving the age of Hamilton, I fear, when political elites dance to Wall Street theatricals about anti-democrats while feeling virtuous about opposing “deplorables.” Just don’t expect them to care about free speech. Thanks to our government’s push against so-called fake news, both Google and Facebook have already altered algorithms to such an extent that they have pushed down readership for one old progressive venue, AlterNet, by fully 40 percent (other progressive venues have seen similar declines), thus starving them for ad revenue. Meanwhile neoconservative researchers are trumpeting inch-deep investigations into supposed Russian propagandizing that — thanks to vast funding — may get churned out for years to come.

Let’s not kid ourselves; this project isn’t about shutting down “fake news.” From the moment the Washington Post ran its infamous PropOrNot story in November 2016, the message has been clear: the real threat isn’t Russians, it’s any media outlet that fuels anti-establishment politics.

The Universality of Hacking 

All that said, it is still very possible that CrowdStrike and the intelligence community are correct to attribute at least some DNC exfiltration of data to Russians or to loose-leashed teams working as subcontractors, or, alternatively, criminal organizations that sometimes answer to Russia. The one thing that the skeptics (of whom I am obviously one) have not answered is why the CrowdStrike investigation found uniquely modified X-TUNNEL source code in DNC servers, which would seem to have been created for this particular hack.

Since I don’t have years to become a cyber-security expert, I’ll leave the technical experts to further argue that question. However, I am left to wonder whether X-TUNNEL indeed betrays a Russian hack of at least some DNC emails, but that another party altogether — a leaker — was nevertheless responsible for handing the full complement of DNC documents to Wikileaks.

None of the skeptics are claiming that the Russians for certain didn’t hack the DNC (which wouldn’t be that surprising, really; we probably hack their political entities, too). The skeptics are only claiming that G2 was an insider who downloaded documents onto a thumb drive. Both claims can be true.

I’ll add — just to be clear — that I am quite certain that the U.S. intelligence community is correct that the Russian government is engaged in broad hacking attempts aimed at targets all over the world, many of them associated with APT 28/29. But that doesn’t mean they carried out the particular hacks at issue here (or, at least, it doesn’t mean that Russian state actors were behind the WikiLeaks releases, or the attacks on state databases).

And it certainly doesn’t mean — contrary to what over-wrought bloggers claim — that Russians changed 2016 vote tallies. The answer isn’t to shout “war” and create hysteria; the answer is to secure U.S. infrastructure.

I’ll also add that even “high confidence” that Russia hacked the DNC, Podesta, and/or state databases is insufficient grounds for aggressive policy — e.g., harsh sanctions and diplomatic ejections, not to mention military action — let alone grounds for announcing “we are at war.” Suppose for the sake of argument that “high confidence” is 75 percent probability. Would we convict an accused murderer on 75 percent probability?

If we did that — and if the accused were then put to death — we would be knowingly killing 25 innocents out of every 100 we adjudge. The same logic should apply to foreign policy. We should not be taking punitive measures unless we can assess culpability with greater certitude, else we risk harming millions of people who had no role in the original crime.

Where We Stand

It seems to me that we are in uncharted waters. Not everyone can be a cyber-security expert; we must trust those who are. And yet in doing so, we put enormous powers into the hands of unelected technocrats with their own biases and agendas. As others have noted, moreover, the cyber-war community is at odds with the cyber-security community.

On the one hand, intelligence operatives are constantly developing new tools to exploit cyber vulnerabilities of other nations and criminal actors. On the other hand, cyber-security people (e.g., DHS) seek to patch those same vulnerabilities to protect U.S. infrastructure. The problem is that the people who know how to exploit the vulnerabilities don’t want to report those vulnerabilities because it means years of work down the drain. Why make your tools obsolete?

We need to resolve these contradictions in favor of security, not cyberwar.

I cannot say this loudly enough. This whole episode isn’t just about Hillary Clinton losing the election, or Russian hacking of the DNC, or Deep State bias and boss-pleasing. The upshot is that we are entering a cyber-arms race that is going to become ever more byzantine, hidden, and dangerous to democracy, not just because elections can be stolen, but because in guarding against that, we are handing over power to unelected technocrats and shutting down dissenting speech. We are entering a new era; this won’t be the last time that hacking enters political discourse.

We might already be in the midst of a cyber Cold War, though the American public has no idea — flat zero — what sort of offensive gamesmanship our own cyber-warriors are engaging in. (One interesting theory: The Russians deliberately implicated themselves in the DNC hack in order to send a warning to U.S. cyber-warriors: we can play dirty, too).

Presumably not even our cyber-security experts at the DHS and FBI know what the CIA and NSA’s cyber-warriors are up to. Thus Russian hacking becomes “Pearl Harbor” rather than an unsurprising reciprocal response. Both the State Department and the CIA, after all, have been in the foreign propaganda business for decades; the American public, however, has not the vaguest idea of what they do.

We might also be on the brink of something else nightmarish: an international cyber-war with multiple parties participating — attacking one another while no-one-knows-who-did-what.

The intelligence community’s whispered “trust us, we’re the experts” simply isn’t good enough. If we don’t demand hard evidence, then we’re following the same path we took in 1898, 1915, 1950, 1964, and 2003. Let’s not go there.

Daniel Herman is Professor of History at Central Washington University. He specializes in American cultural history and the American West.

September 29, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Google hiring 1,000 journalists in effort to control American news flow

It’s about controlling information offline and online

By Alex Christoforou | The Duran | September 19, 2017

Google is learning from its mistakes.

Not being able to place Hillary Clinton in office, the search monopoly has decided that online influence over what Americans think, say, and do is not enough to guarantee the right woman enters the White House.

Google is now embarking on a 5 year plan, where they will seed 1,000 aspiring, liberal left journalists into America’s local media markets.

Poynter reports that the Google News Lab will be working with Report For America (RFA) to hire 1,000 journalists all around the country.

Many local newsrooms have been cut to the bone so often that there’s hardly any bone left. But starting early next year, some may get the chance to rebuild, at least by one.

On Monday, a new project was announced at the Google News Lab Summit that aims to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms in the next five years. Report For America takes ideas from several existing organizations, including the Peace Corps, Americorps, Teach for America and public media.

Unlike foreign or domestic service programs or public media, however, RFA gets no government funding. But they are calling RFA a national service project. That might make some journalists uncomfortable – the idea of service and patriotism. But at its most fundamental, local journalism is about protecting democracy, said co-founder Charles Sennott, founder and CEO of the GroundTruth Project.

“I think journalism needs that kind of passion for public service to bring it back and to really address some of the ailments of the heart of journalism,” he said.

Here’s how RFA will work: On one end, emerging journalists will apply to be part of RFA. On the other, newsrooms will apply for a journalist. RFA will pay 50 percent of that journalist’s salary, with the newsroom paying 25 percent and local donors paying the other 25 percent. That reporter will work in the local newsroom for a year, with the opportunity to renew.

Zerohedge reports…

Of course, while the press release above tries to tout the shared financial responsibility of these 1,000 journalists, presumably as a testament to their ‘independence’, it took about 35 seconds to figure out that the primary funder of the journalists’ salaries, RFA, is funded by none other than Google News Lab.

Meanwhile, as a further testament to RFA’s ‘independence, we noticed that their Advisory Board is flooded with reputable, ‘impartial’ news organizations like the New York Times, NPR, CBS, ABC, etc….

We are sure that these 1,000 journalists will never be called upon by Google to report on the news in a way that benefits the giant search company.

September 19, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Seeks to Monopolize Cyberwarfare

By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 15.09.2017

The use of information to enhance martial power goes back to the beginning of human civilization itself, where propaganda and psychological warfare went hand-in-hand with slings, arrows, swords and shields.

The most recent iteration of this takes the form of social media and cyberwarfare where tools are being developed and deployed to influence populations at home and abroad, to manipulate political processes of foreign states and even tap into and exploit global economic forces.

In the beginning of the 21st century, the United States held an uncontested monopoly over the tools of cyberwarfare. Today, this is changing quickly, presenting an increasingly balanced cyberscape where nations are able to defend themselves on near parity with America’s ability to attack them.

To reassert America’s control over information and the technology used to broker it, Jared Cohen, current Google employee and former US State Department staff, has proposed a US-created and dominated “international” framework regarding cyberconflict.

His op-ed in the New York Times titled, “How to Prevent a Cyberwar,” begins by admitting the very pretext the US is using to expand its control over cyberwarfare is baseless, noting that “specifics of Russia’s interference in the 2016 America election remain unclear.”

Regardless, Cohen continues by laying out a plan for reasserting American control over cyberwarfare anyway, by claiming:

Cyberweapons won’t go away and their spread can’t be controlled. Instead, as we’ve done for other destructive technologies, the world needs to establish a set of principles to determine the proper conduct of governments regarding cyberconflict. They would dictate how to properly attribute cyberattacks, so that we know with confidence who is responsible, and they would guide how countries should respond.

Cohen, unsurprisingly, nominates the US to lead and direct these efforts:

The United States is uniquely positioned to lead this effort and point the world toward a goal of an enforceable cyberwarfare treaty. Many of the institutions that would be instrumental in informing these principles are based in the United States, including research universities and the technology industry. Part of this effort would involve leading by example, and the United States can and should establish itself as a defender of a free and open internet everywhere.

Cohen never explains how this US-dominated framework will differ from existing “international” frameworks regarding conventional warfare the US regularly abuses to justify a growing collection of devastating conflicts it is waging worldwide.

And as has been repeatedly documented, the United States’ definition of a “free and open internet everywhere” is an Internet dominated by US tech companies seeking to enhance and expand US interests globally.

Cohen ironically notes that:

Cyberweapons have already been used by governments to interfere with elections, steal billions of dollars, harm critical infrastructure, censor the press, manipulate public conversations about crucial issues and harass dissidents and journalists. The intensity of cyberconflict around the world is increasing, and the tools are becoming cheaper and more readily available.

Indeed, cyberweapons have already been used, primarily by the United States.

Jared Cohen himself was directly involved in joint operations between Google, Facebook, the US State Department and a number of other US tech and media enterprises which before and during 2011 set the stage for the so-called “Arab Spring.”

It included the training, funding and equipping of activists years ahead of the the uprisings as well as active participation in the uprisings themselves, including providing assistance to both protesters and militants everywhere from Libya to Syria in overthrowing governments targeted by Washington for regime change.

One such tool used in these efforts was described in a UK Independent article titled, “Google planned to help Syrian rebels bring down Assad regime, leaked Hillary Clinton emails claim,” which would report that:

An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails have reportedly revealed.

By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and ‘give confidence’ to the rebel opposition.

The article would continue, mentioning Jared Cohen by name:

The email detailing Google’s defection tracker purportedly came from Jared Cohen, a Clinton advisor until 2010 and now-President of Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas, the company’s New York-based policy think tank.

In a July 2012 email to members of Clinton’s team, which the WikiLeaks release alleges was later forwarded to the Secretary of State herself, Cohen reportedly said: “My team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from.”

Would Cohen’s more recently proposed “framework” have prevented the United States’ use of these cyberweapons against sovereign states to undermine sociopolitical stability, overturn entire governments and plunge them into enduring chaos many still remain in 6 years later? Most likely not.

What Cohen and the interests he represents are truly concerned with is that nations are now not only able to recognize, prepare for and defend against US cyberwarfare, they may be capable of retaliating against the US.

Cohen’s proposal for an international framework to govern cyberwarfare simply seeks to define it in terms that leaves the US with both an uncontested monopoly over cyberwarfare as well as the means to wield it globally with absolute impunity.

It would be not unlike current “international” frameworks used to govern conflicts between nations which the US has used to justify an expansive, global campaign of extraterritorial war stretching from North Africa to Central Asia and beyond.

Such frameworks have become enablers of injustice, not a deterrence to it.

As nations from Iran to North Korea are discovering, the only true means of defending oneself from foreign military aggression is creating a plausible deterrence to dissuade foreign nations from attacking. This is done by creating a price for attacking and invading that is higher than the perceived benefits of doing so.

Nations like Russia and China have already achieved this balance with the United States in terms of conventional and nuclear warfare, and have now nearly established a similar deterrence in terms of cyber and information warfare. For the rest of the world, developing cyberdefense is not as costly as conventional military or nuclear arsenals, making cyberwarfare a corner of the battlefield unlikely to be monopolized by the US as it had done at the turn of the century.

Ensuring that no single nation ever has the opportunity to abuse such a monopoly again means exposing and confronting efforts by those like Google’s Jared Cohen and his proposal for an “international framework” for cyberwarfare that resembles the same sort of enabling the United Nations provides the US in terms of proliferating conventional conflicts across the globe.

September 15, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

We Told You So: Google Is NSA

By Phil Butler – New Eastern Outlook – 04.09.2017

Google wants to be Big Brother’s eyeballs on you. All us Internet gurus knew this since before the NSA was found out spying on everybody. But now the Mountain View boys are more determined than ever to filter your information, and to obliterate any semblance of truth reaching people.

If I had led into an article with that paragraph even five years ago, I’d have been instantly labeled a “conspiracy theorist” or worse. How about now dear reader? Is the idea the technocrats and their huge monied handlers want to run you crazy? I didn’t think so. But if you need proof beyond the obvious, Google’s 160-page handbook tells us all exactly how they plan to spoon feed us only “their” news. The lengthy handbook is a heavy read for the average person, but the book does lay out an Orwellian machination unlike anything seen since the Nazi propaganda machine of Hitler. Pay close attention to the “instructional” on page 108 where Google dictates who does and does not meet rating criteria. The section under Fails to Meet (FailsM) is a steamrolling of the free press, and suggested hiding certain kinds of sites:

“Pages that directly contradict well established historical facts (e.g., unsubstantiated conspiracy theories), unless the query clearly indicates the user is seeking an alternative viewpoint.”

As per usual, Google has obscured its real intentions with the idea some super smart algorithm is “filtering” or “learning” results to help your life be better. Once again Google supposes to do “what is good for us” by destroying some sources and propping up others. Using terms like “search quality rating guidelines” and “page quality rating guidelines” the little Machiavellis at Google provide justification for controlling what you see and read on the web. Censorship and monopolization of internet information and business – this is the case against the Mountain View boys this time.

Then there’s the section concerning how Google will rank the best of the best news sites entitled “A High Level of Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness (EAT)”. The acronym should clue you that Google search users are about to be fed some bullshit truth. “High Quality Pages” for the Google oligarchs means that either the page owner pays Google through the nose, or that the site in question serves Google’s masters well – period. At the top of this matrix of sources are newspapers (High News 1) like The Washington Post and New York Times, followed by the articles within those pages (High News 2). On down the list of authority pages are government sites like the US State Department and White House, and then pages categorized (believe it or not) “High Humor”. So, Google has factored out the importance of truth or even the importance of the news story itself, in favor of “who” wrote the story and the “reality” Google wants you to accept – Big Brother’s network – end of story.

Melissa Dykes of Truth Stream Media made a video about the new Big Brother effort, and Government Slaves did their take as well. And the latter even suggests alternatives to using Google Search, such as Yandex and DuckDuckGo, for those refusing the totalitarian tendencies we see headed our way these days. For people who would rather boycott the imminent evil Government Slaves also lists 400 sites for independent news outside Google’s MATIX. My advice for everyone is to start making the transition away from Google and Facebook now. My own vast experience in dealing with these tech people has revealed people with no morals whatsoever, people willing to do anything necessary to perpetuate their dominance in digital. Google has destroyed millions of people’s livelihoods, broken its own code, lawyers itself around anti-trust and fair practice rules, avoided taxes, and colluded against the people of the United States with the intelligence agencies. All these assertions are not just this writer’s ramblings. Back in 2014 John W. Whitehead wrote about the NSA and Google for the Huffington Post :

“Just look around you. It’s happened already. Thanks to an insidious partnership between Google and the National Security Agency (NSA) that grows more invasive and more subtle with every passing day, “we the people” have become little more than data consumer commodities to be bought, sold and paid for over and over again.”

On August 29th the notorious Zero Hedge creator, Tyler Durden wrote a piece entitled “Why Google Made The NSA”, which revealed a project called INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a crowd-funded investigative journalism project that had released a story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. You read that correctly. My past assertions that Sergey Brin and Larry Page were “lifted up” by unseen money were probably correct. While I presumed George Soros or Rockefeller being behind it, it’s conceivable Uncle Sam was the spook in the woodpile. The Zero Hedge story delves deep into a “deep state” we never imagined in our worst nightmares. The report unveils Pentagon Highlands Forum’s more or less taking over tech giants like Google to pursue mass surveillance. Furthermore, the report shows how the intelligence community has played a key role in secret efforts to manipulate the media and the public. The endless crisis and war we find ourselves in, is in large part because of the efforts of Google and the other technocratic institutions. In another section the author frames how the Obama administration really consolidated this “Big Brother” control:

“Under Obama, the nexus of corporate, industry, and financial power represented by the interests that participate in the Pentagon Highlands Forum has consolidated itself to an unprecedented degree.”

These people refer to themselves as “the gatekeepers”. Their arrogance is only exceeded by their amoral agnosticism. The successes of the information age, Silicon Valley’s dubious venture capital bonanzas, the mysterious ways in which fairly ordinary innovators were propelling into the limelight warns us to the underlying swamp Donald Trump described. But it is the immensity of the network that should clue us. Imagine a new president taking office and fending off attacks as best he could, only to discover that the whole machine of the US government being under such a controlling influence. It’s easy to theorize after learning all this, how Trump did an about face on so many issues. He must have been overwhelmed. Or, he was part of the plan all along.

Finally, if we expand on this news and include other technocrats like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, then understanding world crises caused by bad US policy becomes simpler. It’s a corporation – all of it is a corporation for war and friction. Bezos walking with former Marine General and current Secretary of Defense, “Mad Dog” Mattis at Amazon is symbolic. Trump’s posture with Israel, the Saudis, even on domestic policy tells us those campaign promises sank in the wake of a deep state ship at full steam forward. If we allow Google and other such players to continue unchecked….

Well, you are as capable as I of completing that sentence. I only pray we are not too late.

September 4, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment