Hezbollah, Iraqi anti-terror group slam US seizure of website domains tied to pro-resistance media
Press TV – June 24, 2021
Lebanon’s Hezbollah pro-resistance movement and Iraq’s anti-terror Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq have strongly condemned the US government’s decision to seize and block dozens of website domains connected to Iranian and regional media outlets, describing the measure as a “criminal act” and a convincing proof of Washington’s policy of repression.
“Hezbollah condemns in the strongest terms the seizure of a large number of free media sites by the US administration [of President Joe Biden]. The move confirms Washington’s pursuit of suppressing freedom under false allegations and lurid headlines,” Mohammad Afif, Hezbollah’s head of public relations office, said in a statement on Thursday.
He added, “Through such an outrageous move, the US administration sought to cover up truth about crimes and atrocities committed by itself and its allies against the oppressed nations of our region, especially in Palestine and Yemen, where people are subjected to the worst forms of abuse and blockade.”
“Hezbollah expresses its solidarity with these honorable sites, whose reflection of truth cannot be hidden away at all. We call for a major campaign of solidarity with these media institutions so they can continue to perform their sincere and humanitarian missions,” the statement concluded.
‘US seizure of website domains tied to resistance out of despair’
Qais Khazali, who leads the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq resistance group, also reacted to the US seizure of pro-resistance news website domains.
“Day by day, the West’s hollow claims about advocating human rights and freedom of expression are becoming further exposed,” he said in a statement carried by the Iraqi News Agency said, citing the removal of the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen and the Israeli regime from a list of groups violating children’s rights, and the recent seizure of “the media websites that oppose American, British, Israeli, Saudi and Emirati schemes.”
“This is a sufficient justification… the United States, having failed in its military plans, desperately opted to seize websites whose sole weapons are words and ideas,” Khazali continued.
“The seizure shows its defeat in the field of media war. The pro-resistance media outlets exposed Washington’s hideous nature and its conspiracies,” he pointed out.
On Tuesday, the US seized the websites of Press TV and al-Alam, Iran’s English-language and Arabic-language newscasters, as well as al-Masirah TV of Yemen.
Other web domains, including Palestine al-Youm, a Palestinian-directed broadcaster, Karbala TV – the official television of the Imam Hussein (PBUH) shrine in the holy Iraqi city of Karbala, Iraqi Afaq TV, Asia TV and al-Naeem TV satellite television channels, as well as Nabaa TV which reports the latest stories about Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, were also seized.
Bahrain’s LuaLua TV, a channel run by opposition groups with offices in London and Beirut, was also closed, according to AFP.
Press TV website was back online within hours with the new .ir domain address. Al-Alam TV also quickly announced that its website will be available on .ir domain.
Al-Masirah TV established a new website, using its name but swapping the .net domain for .com.
The US Justice Department said Wednesday it had seized 33 media websites used by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU), as well as three of the Iraqi anti-terror Kata’ib Hezbollah group, which it said were hosted on US-owned domains in violation of sanctions.
Over the past years, the United States has for several times taken similar measures against Iranian media outlets.
The US tech giant Google has recurrently taken on Press TV more than any other Iranian outlet given the expanse of its viewership and readership.
In March, Google for the seventh time blocked the English-language news network’s access to its official YouTube account without any prior notice, citing “violations of community guidelines.”
The US-based social media giant Facebook also informed Press TV in the same month that its account had been shut down for what it claimed to be the Iranian news channel’s failure to “follow our Community Standards.” The page was reinstated a few days later.
The Tehran-based network has also fallen victim to censorship on Twitter and Instagram.
They Denied A Lab Leak At Wuhan. They Are Wrong About Other Things.
By Mary Beth Pfeiffer | Trial Site News | June 16, 2021
After months of denial, the U.S. government has acknowledged that the COVID-19 catastrophe may indeed have originated in a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
We are now allowed to talk about what until May 13 was a debunked conspiracy theory. Like many facets of the pandemic of our age, Wuhan was censored with the dreaded “disinformation” label, on Facebook and just about everywhere else. Not anymore.
The Wuhan debacle shows what happens when public health institutions have too much power, and the media plays mouthpiece rather than watchdog. Truth suffers. So does trust.
This commentary isn’t about the media’s wholesale buy-in of a possibly mythical pangolin that caused a pandemic.
This is about other potential Wuhans — issues that social and mainstream media have put to rest and closed to honest examination. We are told: Vaccines are safe. Lockdowns are just. We must protect, and be protected from, children. All those statements should be open to debate — and dispute.
I have spent the last eight months attacking another insidious COVID myth. It holds that there is no early treatment.
This actual disinformation has led to deaths and debility. In reporting it, the guardians of media have endowed public figures and institutions with wisdom they surely did not and do not have. Once definitive, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization have reversed themselves on a potential Wuhan lab leak.
Then: “Extremely unlikely,” WHO said after a cursory probe.
Now: “Not convinced” the virus came from nature, said Fauci.
What else might they have gotten wrong?
‘Trusted’ News
Just months into the pandemic, research suggested that a handful of approved generic drugs could potentially quell COVID and save lives. By late last year, a safe drug that won its developers the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015 had risen to the top: ivermectin.
Fifty-eight trials now show this 40-year-old drug, off patent since 1997, greatly reduces the ravages of COVID. It lessens severity, lowers hospitalization, and saves lives. Significantly, it also prevents infection.
That few Americans know this is a direct result of two things: First is an unreasonably high, and shifting, bar set by the NIH, FDA and WHO, which collectively reject, cherry-pick or ignore what is now a trove of studies. Second is a media campaign that upholds the anti-IVM dictum, using charged language – from “controversial” to “snake oil” — that makes doctors, medical journals and other media fearful of backlash.
In a case of government propaganda, the Food and Drug Administration actually warned against ivermectin last spring, based, it said, on “multiple” people sickened by an animal formulation, which turned out to be four. Moreover, FDA admitted it “hadn’t studied” the considerable data then available on treatment with the human form.
As government failed us, mainstream and social media did something unique in modern history. Google, YouTube, Facebook, BBC, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters and others conspired to shape content and coverage in the government’s image.
They called it, ironically, the Trusted News Initiative. It existed to ferret out falsehoods and declare certainty in a rapidly changing information landscape. The media became a COVID fact-checking apparatus, devoid of nuance or meaningful investigation.
In the wake of Wuhan relevations, some outlets are now correcting the record.
Vaccine OR Treatment
From the start, there was no room for both vaccines and treatments under the statute that has allowed millions of Americans to be vaccinated with an unlicensed, largely unstudied substance. The key mechanism on which this turned was the vaccine’s “Emergency Use Authorization,” which can be granted by the FDA only if there is “no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the product for diagnosing, preventing or treating” a disease.
But even as the vaccine was minimally tested and maximally hyped, there was an alternative. Ivermectin.
“It’s the most effective antiviral agent we have,” Dr. Paul E. Marik, co-founder of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, said in a conversation for this article. “If the WHO was to say that or the NIH — were they to approve ivermectin — the EUA for all the vaccines would become invalid.”
Ivermectin, said FLCCC president Dr. Pierre Kory, “would kneecap the entire global vaccine policy around the world.”
The choice was always vaccines OR treatment. Not both. Operation Warp Speed spent three times as much — $18 billion — to develop a vaccine as it did to develop a treatment. Moreover, money for therapeutics went largely toward costly new drugs, some of which failed and others still in development.
The media did not question the oversight of existing drugs and emerging research. Instead, it became an arm of government in a shared single fixed goal: Vaccinate quickly and at any expense.
A Year Lost
America’s COVID Czar Anthony Fauci predicted in July of 2020 that an antiviral would be available by that fall. Then, last December he said his “highest priority” was a quick-acting COVID drug. In reality, NIH waited until April 29, 2021 to announce a large study of safety-tested, FDA-approved drugs. That was roughly 400 days – and nearly 600,000 U.S. deaths — into the pandemic.
Forget a few dozen studies – most from other countries — that universally agreed on ivermectin’s efficacy. Forget a peer-reviewed meta-analysis that showed 83 percent fewer deaths. Forget the experiences of hundreds of real treating doctors in the U.S. and around the world.
Viewed in the kindest possible way, that delay, that lost year, wasn’t so much intentional as institutionalized. U.S. treatments are driven by the integral and outsized influence of pharmaceutical money on the regulatory process, and no one was putting up $20 million for what are considered, questionably, the “gold-standard” of evidence-based medicine: randomized control trials.
Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine researcher and inventor of mRNA technology, went bankrupt trying to repurpose old antiviral drugs to treat the Zika virus in the 2010s. “The investment community had zero interest because there’s no way to make a buck,” he said in a must-see podcast on pandemic missteps. “The financial incentives around drug repurposing are such that it doesn’t get done.”
Ivermectin is the penicillin of COVID, particularly when combined with other generics like fluvoxamine and the vilified but effective hydroxychloroquine. Now, however, as at the start of COVID, newly infected patients are still denied treatment and turned back into the community, often to infect others.
As Malone put it, “We’re sending people home and telling them not to come back until your lips are blue.”
“Were this a hundred years ago,” a Pennsylvania opthamologist named Neil Chasin told me months ago, “and Ivermectin was available, it would be used everywhere.”
Media Sees No Evil
The dereliction of duty, by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal (with the Wuhan exception), Associated Press, USA Today and other media giants, likely cost many thousands of lives. The questions that were never asked, the issues never investigated, include:
–In April 2020, Fauci endorsed the high-priced anti-viral remdesivir, calling it the “standard of care” before the first study was published. Did anyone in those investigative powerhouses question the financial ties between the NIH and the drug’s maker, Gilead? Did they care that the study showed no mortality improvement, and the trial’s endpoint was changed to improve benefits so marginal that the WHO advises against the drug?
–Hospitals vehemently oppose ivermectin, forcing some patients’ families to obtain court orders to get it. Does this comport with their liberal use of treatments like monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma that are still considered experimental? Just 19 deaths were associated with ivermectin in 20 years; 503 were linked to remdesivir in its first year. Annualized, that’s roughly a 500-fold higher toll for remdesivir. Why is ivermectin — safe, FDA-approved — not used off-label, especially in dying ICU patients, when the potential harm is miniscule?
–The COVID pandemic has led to the most widespread, government-sanctioned wave of censorship and authoritarian message control in American history. Rather than fighting this, the media carries the water. When Merck disingenuously disavowed ivermectin’s safety — a drug it gave away by the billion in a life-saving campaign against parasites — widespread media reports failed to note the company’s potential to make big money on patented new drugs on which it was already working.
–More importantly, the evidence in favor of ivermectin aligns so uniformly that the odds of it being wrong are infinitesimal. Why not read the studies? Why not talk to doctors who have used the drug and patients who have taken it?
The unholy alliance of media and money was foreshadowed at a 2016 conference on preparation for the next SARS epidemic. There, Peter Daszak, whose NIH funding for virus research in China is under scrutiny, emphasized the need to use the press. He is quoted in the proceedings:
“A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage … Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of process, Daszak stated.”
So far, the hype has prevailed. But it can be wrong. Can we now talk about ivermectin?
***
Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative journalist and author of two books. A list of her article links can be found here.
Google bans Dr. Vladimir Zelenko from sharing Google Docs
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | June 2, 2021
Google has been expanding censorship around Covid topics and users it disapproves of from the public-facing platforms like YouTube and Search – to Google Docs.
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko – a Westchester, New York-based US physician who became known last year for proposing alternative Covid treatments that was endorsed by then President Donald Trump – is on the receiving end.
After Facebook and YouTube restricted Zelenko’s presence on the social networks and Twitter suspended his account, the doctor is now prevented from sharing documents – six in all – using Google Docs.
The documents once again concern the Covid pandemic, discussing Zelenko’s own approach to the outbreak that included the use of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc, which he says played a significant role in preventing the need to hospitalize patients, Newsbusters reported.
Among the files Google is stopping him from sharing is also a letter he penned to New York Governor Cuomo and an opinion piece on the subject.
But since the same documents can be shared by other users, it is presumed that Google is targeting Zelenko specifically rather than this content per se.
Last year, the Times of Israel wrote that even though President Trump did not name the doctor who had written urging him to support the use of the combination of the three drugs, the description matched that of physician Vladimir Zev Zelenko.
Trump at the time said that he himself was taking this therapy, after “hearing a lot of good stories” about it.
Reacting to the latest round of censorship against him, Zelenko said that he had “called out the globalist elite” for their mishandling of Covid.
Google blocks ads from Italian author who suggested coronavirus could have originated in a lab
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 26, 2021
Facebook, YouTube and other major social media platforms have been enforcing extremely strict rules around what their users can and cannot say about coronavirus and the pandemic for over a year now, to make sure only messages and narratives aligned with state authorities and the WHO made it through.
But at this point, it looks like those rules are even more stringent than what officials are saying, to the point that, if applied consistently, Facebook would have to ban Dr Fauci for not ruling out the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.
This has so far been considered the type of “misinformation” that is sure to get posts deleted and accounts suspended, as Facebook says it prohibits any discussion around coronavirus possibly being man-made.
Facebook is not alone, since YouTube has a similar censorship policy. Only last week, Google prevented Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti from advertising his book that explores much the same topic that Fauci did in his recent comments. Google said Gatti – whose book also criticizes China’s role – was guilty of creating content with “speculative intent.”
“Once the infection is overcome with vaccines, as I write in my book, we will have to defend our democracies from totalitarianism and the digital monopoly,” Gatti said, reacting to the blacklisting, and urged Google to reverse the decision.
Other contentious rules enforced by YouTube concern any questioning of the usefulness of masks, regardless of the fact official recommendations and guidelines on this topic have been changing throughout the pandemic.
Along the same line, saying that coronavirus vaccines might cause serious harm to people will get content and/or users banned on Facebook – even if medical authorities in Europe and in other places say that at least two of them – AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – can cause blood clots, though rare.
Even though tech giants behind the largest social media sites defend their policies as a way to prevent misinformation and promote official sources, those who have been on the receiving end – everyday users, medical professionals, journalists – see this as unwarranted censorship that stifles any debate.
And as former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson observed, this vigorous suppression of opposing views around Covid is a cause for concern, but is also emblematic of the general direction we’re headed in.
“This isn’t about Covid, it’s about whether or not as a society we’re going to allow people who have views that are sort of outside what the mainstream media want you to believe, to present those views. It’s becoming harder and harder to have honest conversations,” said Berenson, whose book skeptical of lockdowns and masks Amazon had temporarily banned.
The Biden Administration Wants to Partner with Criminals to Spy on You
By Thomas Knapp | CounterPunch | May 6, 2021
“The Biden administration,” CNN reports, “is considering using outside firms to track extremist chatter by Americans online.”
Federal law enforcement agencies are legally and constitutionally forbidden to monitor the private activities of citizens without first getting warrants based on probable cause to believe those citizens have committed, or are committing, crimes. The feds can browse public social media posts and so forth, but secretly trawling private groups and hacking encrypted chats is off-limits.
Private companies and nonprofit civic organizations, not being government entities, don’t need warrants or probable cause to access those private discussion areas. The administration’s bright idea is that through partnership with these non-government entities, they can get around legal and constitutional barriers: “WE didn’t collect the information. THEY collected the information, then gave it to us.”
There are several flies in that ointment. Here’s a big one:
It’s entirely understandable that — to use an entirely hypothetical example — someone with the Southern Poverty Law Center might impersonate a fictional white supremacist to get into a private Ku Klux Klan chat room and see what those people are up to.
But the US Department of Justice says it’s illegal (under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) to evade terms of service with false identities.
A government partnership with an organization that gathers information in that way is no different than the government partnering with a burglar to find out what you have in your house, without the bother of convincing a judge there’s probable cause to issue a search warrant. It is, quite simply, criminal conspiracy.
As with so many political and social issues arising in the Internet age, we’re coming up against a big question that urgently needs answering:
At what point does “working with” government amount to “being part of” government?
Much of the “private” tech sector makes big money on government contracts. NBC News reports, based on a 2020 Tech Inquiry expose, that Microsoft enjoys thousands of subcontracts with the US Department of Defense and federal law enforcement. Amazon has more than 350 such subcontracts with agencies like ICE and the FBI. Google, more than 250.
What about the “nonprofit” sector? According to the National Council of NonProfits, 31.8% of nonprofit revenues are tied to government grants and contracts.
When these entities do things FOR government, they should be held to the same standards and limits AS government. And those standards and limits should put our freedom and privacy first.
Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).
‘They’re coming to kill us’: Canada’s Rebel News CANCELED by PayPal without notice
RT | May 6, 2021
Rebel News co-founder Ezra Levant announced that payment processor PayPal has canceled their account without an explanation. The Canadian outlet has been critical of the Covid-19 lockdowns and the government of PM Justin Trudeau.
“Look, this isn’t a mistake. It’s a cancel culture attack on the largest independent news agency in Canada. It’s censorship,” Levant announced on Thursday, in a fundraising appeal for legal fees to sue PayPal.
“They’re finally coming to kill us,” the Rebel News account tweeted.
According to Levant, PayPal sent a “form letter” by email last Friday after business hours, informing the outlet that their account – which processed over 150,000 transactions for 8 million Canadian dollars over the past six years – was canceled. The email had no signature, contact information, explanation or way to appeal, Levant said.
“We’re a big client. But with no notice at all, they just breached the contract. They ambushed us,” he wrote. Levant maintains Rebel News never breached PayPal’s terms of service, and that the company has simply ignored multiple letters from his lawyers.
Levant argues this is a coordinated effort, pointing to the fact that Google-owned YouTube handed Rebel News a week-long suspension before PayPal made its move. Moreover, in addition to the Rebel News account, PayPal shuttered Levant’s personal account, as well as that of the For Canada nonprofit, used to fundraise for charity projects.
“That’s why I don’t think this is a mistake. They’re trying to destroy us. And they don’t have the courage to even tell us to our face,” said Levant, who co-founded the outlet in 2015.
While identifying as conservative, Rebel News has been critical of both the Liberal Trudeau government and the conservative provincial leaders such as Jason Kenney in Alberta and Francois Legault in Quebec.
Levant even speculated that PayPal’s action may have been related to the recent Rebel News revelation that Trudeau had funded the Anti-Hate Network – an offshoot of the US-based SPLC – to “lodge malicious complaints against Trudeau’s enemies.”
He says Rebel News has lost about a million dollars as a result of the PayPal and YouTube actions, and wants to raise $150,000 to sue.
While PayPal is yet to comment on the matter, denial of service by banks and payment processors has been a popular way of shutting down unpopular outlets and online platforms over the past several years. Back in March, Gab CEO Andrew Torba revealed that several banks have refused to do business with his company citing bad coverage in the corporate press, urging like-minded Americans to “cancel them all before they cancel us.”
Silicon Valley Algorithm Manipulation Is The Only Thing Keeping Mainstream Media Alive
By Caitlin Johnstone | May 3, 2021
The emergence of the internet was met with hope and enthusiasm by people who understood that the plutocrat-controlled mainstream media were manipulating public opinion to manufacture consent for the status quo. The democratization of information-sharing was going to give rise to a public consciousness that is emancipated from the domination of plutocratic narrative control, thereby opening up the possibility of revolutionary change to our society’s corrupt systems.
But it never happened. Internet use has become commonplace around the world and humanity is able to network and share information like never before, yet we remain firmly under the thumb of the same power structures we’ve been ruled by for generations, both politically and psychologically. Even the dominant media institutions are somehow still the same.
So what went wrong? Nobody’s buying newspapers anymore, and the audiences for television and radio are dwindling. How is it possible that those same imperialist oligarchic institutions are still controlling the way most people think about their world?
The answer is algorithm manipulation.
Last month a very informative interview saw the CEO of YouTube, which is owned by Google, candidly discussing the way the platform uses algorithms to elevate mainstream news outlets and suppress independent content.
At the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Technology Governance Summit, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson that while the platform still allows arts and entertainment videos an equal shot at going viral and getting lots of views and subscribers, on important areas like news media it artificially elevates “authoritative sources”.
“What we’ve done is really fine-tune our algorithms to be able to make sure that we are still giving the new creators the ability to be found when it comes to music or humor or something funny,” Wojcicki said. “But when we’re dealing with sensitive areas, we really need to take a different approach.”
Wojcicki said in addition to banning content deemed harmful, YouTube has also created a category labeled “borderline content” which it algorithmically de-boosts so that it won’t show up as a recommended video to viewers who are interested in that topic:
“When we deal with information, we want to make sure that the sources that we’re recommending are authoritative news, medical science, et cetera. And we also have created a category of more borderline content where sometimes we’ll see people looking at content that’s lower quality and borderline. And so we want to be careful about not over-recommending that. So that’s a content that stays on the platform but is not something that we’re going to recommend. And so our algorithms have definitely evolved in terms of handling all these different content types.”
Progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski has a good video out reacting to Wojcicki’s comments, saying he believes his (entirely harmless) channel has been grouped in the “borderline” category because his views and new subscribers suddenly took a dramatic and inexplicable plunge. Kulinski reports that overnight he went from getting tens of thousands of new subscriptions per month to maybe a thousand.
“People went to YouTube to escape the mainstream nonsense that they see on cable news and on TV, and now YouTube just wants to become cable news and TV,” Kulinski says. “People are coming here to escape that and you’re gonna force-feed them the stuff they’re escaping like CNN and MSNBC and Fox News.”
It is not terribly surprising to hear Susan Wojcicki admit to elevating the media of the oligarchic empire to the CEO of a neoconservative publication at the World Economic Forum. She comes from the same elite empire management background as all the empire managers who’ve been placed in charge of mainstream media outlets by their plutocratic owners, having gone to Harvard after being literally raised on the campus of Stanford University as a child. Her sister Anne is the founder of the genetic-testing company 23andMe and was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Google itself also uses algorithms to artificially boost empire media in its searches. In 2017 World Socialist Website (WSWS) began documenting the fact that it, along with other leftist and antiwar outlets, had suddenly experienced a dramatic drop in traffic from Google searches. In 2019 the Wall Street Journal confirmed WSWS claims, reporting that “Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results.” In 2020 the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet admitted to censoring WSWS at a Senate hearing in response to one senator’s suggestion that Google only censors right wing content.
Google, for the record, has been financially intertwined with US intelligence agencies since its very inception when it received research grants from the CIA and NSA. It pours massive amounts of money into federal lobbying and DC think tanks, has a cozy relationship with the NSA, and has been a military-intelligence contractor from the beginning.
Then you’ve got Facebook, where a third of Americans regularly get their news. Facebook is a bit less evasive about its status quo-enforcing censorship practices, openly enlisting the government-and-plutocrat-funded imperialist narrative management firm The Atlantic Council to help it determine what content to censor and what to boost. Facebook has stated that if its “fact checkers” like The Atlantic Council deem a page or domain guilty of spreading false information, it will “dramatically reduce the distribution of all of their Page-level or domain-level content on Facebook.”
All the algorithm stacking by the dominant news distribution giants Google and Facebook also ensures that mainstream platforms and reporters will have far more followers than indie media on platforms like Twitter, since an article that has been artificially amplified will receive far more views and therefore far more clicks on their social media information. Mass media employees tend to clique up and amplify each other on Twitter, further exacerbating the divide. Meanwhile left and antiwar voices, including myself, have been complaining for years that Twitter artificially throttles their follower count.
If not for these deliberate acts of sabotage and manipulation by Silicon Valley megacorporations, the mainstream media which have deceived us into war after war and which manufacture consent for an oppressive status quo would have been replaced by independent media years ago. These tech giants are the life support system of corporate media propaganda.
Project Veritas Founder Sues Twitter After He Was Banned Amid Ongoing ‘Expose CNN’ Series
By Alexandra Kashirina – Sputnik – 20.04.2021
Earlier, Twitter permanently suspended the account of Project Veritas founder, James O’Keefe, as the watchdog continues to release its “Expose CNN” series, including the broadcaster’s director saying that the channel was using “propaganda”.
James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, filed a defamation lawsuit against Twitter on Monday, denying platform accusations that he used false pages, considered in Twitter rules as a way to “artificially amplify or disrupt conversations.”
“This defamation action arises from Twitter’s false and defamatory April 15, 2021, statement concerning Twitter’s decision to ban Plaintiff James O’Keefe, an investigative journalist followed by over 926,000 Twitter users as of the time he was banned.”
“Twitter’s false claim that Mr. O’Keefe used ‘fake accounts’ on Twitter has caused Mr. O’Keefe damage and, unless retracted, will continue to cause him damage,” the lawsuit reads.
According to the lawsuit, “Twitter made such claims with knowledge of their falsity in order to distract and detract from Project Veritas’s CNN release of the same day.”
Last week, Twitter banned O’Keefe’s page after accusing O’Keefe of using “fake accounts.”
The ban came shortly after the release of a third Project Veritas revelation which included an interview with CNN technical director Charles Chester recorded clandestinely on a hidden camera. Chester claimed that the broadcaster was aiming to prevent former US President Donald Trump from being re-elected by focusing on negative news about him.
“Look what we did, we [CNN] got Trump out. I am 100% going to say it, and I 100% believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out…I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that,” Chester appeared to say during a secretly recorded conversation with a Project Veritas journalist.
Chester also claimed that CNN was only covering US President Joe Biden in a favorable light and asserted that the network had assisted BLM the movement by concealing crimes committed by people of color.
The non-profit conservative outlet Project Veritas was founded in 2010 by O’Keefe and includes a group of journalists who focus on publishing investigative reports on officials they claim are liberal as well as various organizations, including big tech companies.
Project Veritas and the social media accounts of several of its employees have faced a number of bans regarding their reporting about Facebook, Twitter, Google and Pinterest.
Google renews attack on YouTube account of Iran’s Press TV
Press TV – March 30, 2021
Google has for the seventh time targeted Iranian broadcaster Press TV, blocking the English-language news network’s access to its official YouTube account without any prior notice.
The US tech giant shut YouTube accounts of Press TV late on Tuesday, citing “violations of community guidelines.”
“We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our Community Guidelines. Because of this, we have removed your channel from YouTube,” Google said in a message.
The community guidelines, as YouTube says, are designed to ensure the video-sharing platform stays protected and set outs what is allowed and not allowed on YouTube. The guidelines apply to all types of content, including videos, comments, links, and thumbnails.
The last time Google blocked Press TV’s access to its official YouTube account was last September, again without any prior notice but citing “violations of export laws.”
The United States export laws and regulations prohibit the use of and access to controlled information, goods, and technology for reasons of national security or protection of trade.
Over the past years, the US tech giant has recurrently been opting for such measures against Iranian media outlets. It has taken on Press TV more than any other Iranian outlet given the expanse of its viewership and readership.
The measure comes hot on the heels of another hostile move and aggression on the Iranian media outlets, with Facebook having permanently shut down the page of Press TV news network.
The US-based social media giant informed Press TV on Friday that its account had been shut down for what it claimed to be the Iranian news channel’s failure to “follow our Community Standards.”
Facebook has on a number of occasions attacked Press TV, despite its claim of providing space for freedom of expression.
The Tehran-based English-language news network has repeatedly fallen victim to censorship on multiple fronts, including Twitter and Instagram besides Google and its services.
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
Cristina Fernandez Scores Major Win on Google’s Defamation Case
Vice President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Buenos Aires, March 20, 2021. Photo: Twitter/ @thesunpostnews
teleSUR | March 20, 2021
In May 2020, Google defamed the Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner by calling her “Thief of the Argentine Nation” instead of making reference to her position.
Argentina’s Supreme Court dismissed the appeal filed by Google against the ruling which forces the company to keep the defamatory information against Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Last year, Cristina filed a petition with her country’s justice system demanding that U.S. tech giant Google preserve the data naming her as “Thief of the Argentine Nation.”
The nickname appeared on Google’s platform replacing the information about her current positions when entering the Vice President’s name. The result was displayed without referring to any third-party website but under the sole responsibility of Google.
The Supreme Court ruling forces Google to keep the data associated with Fernandez from May 17, 2020, until the end of the investigation process, which will allow to get proofs and assess the defamation.
“Google’s reach in the world is immeasurable, so the damage generated in this opportunity is difficult to calculate without the results of the expert evidence,” said the former president’s lawyer Carlos Berardi.
Former president Cristina Fernandez (2007-2015) declared that if she wins the defamation case and there is compensation for the caused damages, the payment will be donated to the “Sor Maria Ludovica” Children’s Hospital in La Plata.
REPORT: Biden White House Working with Silicon Valley to Censor Vaccine Criticism
21st Century Wire | March 15, 2021
As reports of problems regarding the new experimental COVID vaccines continue to mount internationally, officials in the United States have been working behind the scenes to try and censor any dissent against the official party line on COVID policy, and vaccine efficacy, safety and distribution.
A recent Reuters report has revealed how a worried Biden administration has reached out to Silicon Valley’s digital monopoly firms Google Inc, Facebook, and Twitter – to coordinate efforts to shut down any discussions or independent journalism online which might challenge the credibility of either government or World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic and vaccine policies, as well crush any serious challenge to the credibility of pharmaceutical firms and the products they are pushing, namely their new experimental range of COVID vaccines.
According to a White House official, the new effort is meant to curb supposed “COVID misinformation” included making sure Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter prevent any independent content from going viral.
A Twitter spokesman admitted that the firm was coordinating their censorship operation with the Biden team, and were “in regular communication with the White House on a number of critical issues including COVID-19 misinformation.”
According to a report by Reuters, a source confirmed the collusion between the White House and Big Tech is focused on protecting Biden’s vaccine numbers:
“Disinformation that causes vaccine hesitancy is going to be a huge obstacle to getting everyone vaccinated and there are no larger players in that than the social media platforms,”
“We are talking to them … so they understand the importance of misinformation and disinformation and how they can get rid of it quickly.”
The source also told Reuters that the companies “were receptive” as they engaged with the White House. “But it is too soon to say whether or not it translates into lessening the spread of misinformation.”
For its part, Facebook has committed to adding even more ‘dangerous informational’ labels to any posts which mention vaccines in a negative light, as part of its wider censorship effort to counter what it claims is “COVID-19-related misinformation” on its platforms.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed in a blog post this week that his new warning labels will contain “credible information” about the vaccines from the W.H.O. which Facebook believes is an infallible source of information COVID and pharmaceutical products. Zuckerberg said that this operation will be global, covering multiple languages.
The social network is also adding a tool to help get users vaccinated by connecting them to information about where and when they can get their shot.
The mainstream media have been applying continuous pressure on Facebook and Instagram for allowing “anti-vaxxer propaganda”, with Facebook responding by applying its notorious ‘fact-check’ labels and other censorship measures.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from Childrens Health Defense recently explained how this coordinated censorship effort is also targeting high-profile advocates, including himself:
Over the last two weeks, Facebook and other social media sites have deplatformed me and many other critics of regulatory corruption and authoritarian public health policies. So, here is some fodder for those of you who have the eerie sense that the government/industry pandemic response feels like it was planned — even before there was a pandemic.
In fact, a simulation called Event 201, which involved top public health officials, academics and NGOs was in fact paid for by Bill and Melinda Gates, taking place only a few months before the ‘global pandemic’ was declared in January 2020. Kennedy describes the confab which took place in late October 2019 at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC:
Gates’ co-conspirators included representatives from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum (Great Reset), Bloomberg/Johns Hopkins University Populations Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, various media powerhouses, the Chinese government, a former Central Intelligence Agency/National Security Agency director (there is no such thing as a former CIA officer), vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson, the finance and biosecurity industries and Edelman, the world’s leading corporate PR firm.
At Gates’ direction, these eminences role-played members of a Pandemic Control Council, wargaming government strategies for controlling the pandemic, the narrative and the population. Needless to say, there was little talk of building immune systems, off-the-shelf remedies or off-patent therapeutic drugs and vitamins, but lots of chatter about promoting uptake of new patentable antiviral drugs and vaccines.
But the participants primarily focused on planning industry-centric, fear-mongering, police-state strategies for managing an imaginary global coronavirus contagion culminating in mass censorship of social media.
The real danger here is the Government and Big Tech may in fact be censoring important critical voices of what are fast proving to be highly problematic experimental vaccines. In doing so, they may be preventing important public health opinion and commentary from being heard, which raises the likelihood that any rank corruption like with the WHO’s Swine Flu hoax in 2009, or the Swine Flu vaccine disaster in 1976 – may happen again, only this time on a global scale.
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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