It’s time to mull punishment for having & watching ‘terrorist propaganda’ – Swedish security chief
RT | June 29, 2019
The head of Sweden’s Security Service has called on the government to investigate whether it is feasible to punish anyone found with “terrorist propaganda,” arguing that even looking at such materials is an incitement to violence.
Klas Friberg, who leads Säpo, the Swedish security agency responsible for counter-espionage and counter-terrorism, wrote in an op-ed that he and his colleagues work “around the clock” to protect Sweden from terrorism.
Despite their best efforts, the risk of terrorist attacks remains high, Friberg said, partly due to Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS) “Hollywood-like propaganda machine” which produces “gruesome imagery with both living and dead people.”
The security official noted that the materials are used to recruit new supporters, but that Swedish authorities can do nothing to stop the propaganda from spreading because it is not criminal to possess or view these videos and images.
Arguing that “terrorism must be countered in every way,” Friberg called on the government to open an inquiry into whether it should be a punishable offense to handle violent content produced to spread the ideology of Islamic State. He says the legislation would not be radical, drawing a parallel to laws prohibiting the possession of child pornography.
This could help Säpo investigate and prosecute those deemed a threat to Sweden, he said, adding that measures must be taken to ensure that “rights and freedoms” are preserved.
Sweden suffered a terrorist attack in 2017, when an IS supporter rammed a truck into a crowd of people on a busy street in Stockholm, killing five people.
European trade unions urge governments to ban trade with illegal Israel settlements
![A campaign against Israeli settlement goods [Amnesty UK/Twitter]](https://i1.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Israeli-settlement-goodsDtglC7HWsAICLWw.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
MEMO | June 28, 2019
Dozens of European trade unions have urged authorities to ban trade with Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).
In a letter to the European Commission and European governments, the unions demand “effective action to bring an end to European complicity with human rights abuses associated with illegal Israeli settlements and to introduce a ban on economic activities with illegal Israeli settlements”.
According to the European Trade Union Initiative for Justice in Palestine, the 34 signatories represent millions of workers across Europe, including the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Belgium’s ACV/CSC Brussels and La Centrale Générale FGTB, as well as Britain’s Unison and Unite the Union.
Although the European Union (EU) views Israeli settlements as illegal under international law, Brussels still allows Israel to export large quantities of products produced or partly produced in such settlements to Europe, providing direct support to the settlement expansion.
Last week, the advocate general of the European Court of Justice said that European shops ought to label Israeli settler exports so that consumers can boycott them for “ethical reasons”.
“This opinion highlights the fact that European governments are falling short on their obligations under international law. To be consistent with its own legislation the EU and all European states should go further and end all economic relations with illegal Israeli settlements”, stated Koen Vanbrabandt, a chair of European Trade Union Network for Justice in Palestine.
The trade unions argue that the EU as a whole and its member states are obliged to withhold from trading with Israeli settlements as part of their duties of non-recognition and non-assistance to such grave violations of international law.
“The fundamental values of trade union internationalism mandate us to take concrete and effective action to facilitate the implementation of UN resolutions, international legal obligations, and a just and equitable peace for all”, state the signatories.
Orwell’s 1984 no longer reads like fiction. It’s the reality of our times
By Robert Bridge | RT | June 28, 2019
70 years ago, the British writer George Orwell captured the essence of technology in its ability to shape our destinies in his seminal work, 1984. The tragedy of our times is that we have failed to heed his warning.
No matter how many times I read 1984, the feeling of total helplessness and despair that weaves itself throughout Orwell’s masterpiece never fails to take me by surprise. Although usually referred to as a ‘dystopian futuristic novel’, it is actually a horror story on a scale far greater than anything that has emerged from the minds of prolific writers like Stephen King or Dean Koontz. The reason is simple. The nightmare world that the protagonist Winston Smith inhabits, a place called Oceania, is all too easily imaginable. Man, as opposed to some imaginary clown or demon, is the evil monster.
In the very first pages of the book, Orwell demonstrates an uncanny ability to foresee future trends in technology. Describing the protagonist Winston Smith’s frugal London flat, he mentions an instrument called a ‘telescreen’, which sounds strikingly similar to the handheld ‘smartphone’ that is enthusiastically used by billions of people around the world today.
Orwell describes the ubiquitous device as an “oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror” affixed to the wall that “could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.” Sound familiar? It is through this gadget that the rulers of Oceania are able to monitor the actions of its citizens every minute of every day. At the same time, the denizens of 1984 were never allowed to forget they were living in a totalitarian surveillance state, under the control of the much-feared Thought Police. Massive posters with the slogan ‘Big Brother is Watching You’ were as prevalent as our modern-day advertising billboards. Today, however, such polite warnings about surveillance would seem redundant, as reports of unauthorized spying still gets the occasional lazy nod in the media now and then.
In fact, just in time for 1984’s anniversary, it has been reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) has once again been illicitly collecting records on telephone calls and text messages placed by US citizens. This latest invasion of privacy has been casually dismissed as an “error” after an unnamed telecommunications firm handed over call records the NSA allegedly “hadn’t requested” and “weren’t approved” by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2013, former CIA employee Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA’s intrusive surveillance operations, yet somehow the government agency is able to continue – with the help of the corporate sector – vacuuming up the private information of regular citizens.
Another method of control alluded to in 1984 fell under a system of speech known as ‘Newspeak’, which attempted to reduce the language to ‘doublethink’, with the ulterior motive of controlling ideas and thoughts. For example, the term ‘joycamp’, a truncated term every bit as euphemistic as the ‘PATRIOT Act’, was used to describe a forced labor camp, whereas a ‘doubleplusgood duckspeaker’ was used to praise an orator who ‘quacked’ correctly with regards to the political situation.
Another Newspeak term, known as ‘facecrime’, provides yet another striking parallel to our modern situation. Defined as “to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense.” It would be difficult for the modern reader to hear the term ‘facecrime’ and not connect it with ‘Facebook’, the social media platform that regularly censors content creators for expressing thoughts it finds ‘hateful’ or inappropriate. What social media users need is an Orwellian lesson in ‘crimestop’, which Orwell defined as “the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.” Those so-called unacceptable ‘dangerous thoughts’ were determined not by the will of the people, of course, but by their rulers.
And yes, it gets worse. Just this week, Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘private company’ agreed to give French authorities the “identification data” of Facebook users suspected of spreading ‘hate speech’ on the platform, in what would be an unprecedented move on the part of Silicon Valley.
‘Hate speech’ is precisely one of those delightfully vague, subjective terms with no real meaning that one would expect to find in the Newspeak style guide. Short of threatening the life of a person or persons, individuals should be free to criticize others without fear of reprisal, least of all from the state, which should be in the business of protecting free speech at all cost.
Another modern phenomenon that would be right at home in Orwell’s Oceania is the obsession with political correctness, which is defined as “the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” But since so many people today identify with some marginalized group, this has made the intelligent discussion of controversial ideas – not least of all on US college campuses, of all places – exceedingly difficult, if not downright dangerous. Orwell must be looking down on all of this madness with much surprise, since he provided the world with the best possible warning to prevent it.
For anyone who entertains expectations for a happy ending in 1984, be prepared for serious disappointment (spoiler alert, for the few who have somehow not read this book). Although Winston Smith manages to finally experience love, the brief romance – like a delicate flower that was able to take root amid a field of asphalt – is crushed by the authorities with shocking brutality. Not satisfied with merely destroying the relationship, however, Smith is forced to betray his ‘Julia’ after undergoing the worst imaginable torture at the ‘Ministry of Love’.
The book ends with the words, “He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” Will we too declare, like Winston Smith, our love for ‘Big Brother’ above all else, or will we emerge victorious against the forces of a technological tyranny that appears to be just over the horizon? Or is Orwell’s 1984 just really good fiction and not the instruction manual for tyrants many have come to fear it is?
An awful lot is riding on our answers to those questions, and time is running out.
Globalism has failed US middle class, Trump saw it – Putin on MAGA
RT | June 27, 2019
US President Donald Trump’s election victory should be attributed not to some foreign influence but to the fact that many Americans were left behind by globalization and Trump saw it, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said.
“The middle class in the US has not benefited from globalisation; it was left out when this pie was divided up,” Putin told the Financial Times ahead of the G20 summit when asked to comment on the US president’s policies.
“Trump looked into his opponents’ attitude to him and saw changes in American society, and he took advantage of this,” he explained, while calling the perceived Russian influence on the US 2016 election “mythical.”
Putin also assumed that globalization could have divided US society – at least in an economic sense. “In the US, the leading US companies — the companies, their managers, shareholders and partners — made use of these benefits. The middle class hardly benefited from globalization.”
“The Trump team sensed this very keenly and clearly, and they used this in the election campaign. It is where you should look for reasons behind Trump’s victory, rather than in any alleged foreign interference,” Putin said. Trump’s “extravagant” policies might be a sign of the US president’s attempts to right some wrongs in accordance with his own “distinct world outlook.”
“He seems to believe that the results of globalization could have been much better for the US than they are. These globalization results are not producing the desired effect for the US, and he is beginning this campaign against certain elements of globalization.”
Putin argued, one of the major problems in the US, but in Europe as well, is that the “ruling elites have broken away from the people.” The elites continue to entertain so-called liberal ideas and seem to be quite happy with the ongoing developments while people are increasingly concerned by such issues as mass immigration, the Russian president believes.
“The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”
US Approach to Palestine-Israel Peace Unveiled at Manama Workshop ‘Counterproductive’ – Moscow
Sputnik – June 27, 2019
Bahrain hosted a two-day forum on 25-26 June, which sought to encourage rich Arab countries to invest in Palestinian projects as part of US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century”.
Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday lambasted the US approach to the Palestine-Israel settlement presented at a workshop in Manama, Bahrain.
According to the ministry, the US stance on the issue appears ‘counterproductive’.
The ministry lamented the fact that the issues of relaunching direct Palestine-Israeli negotiations as well as the creation of an independent Palestinian state within its 1967 borders were excluded from the talks in Manama.
On Wednesday, the two-day meeting concluded in Bahrain’s capital Manama. The forum focused on the economic aspects of the initiative developed by the United States to resolve the Middle East conflict, which the media dubbed the “deal of the century”.
Representatives of the Palestinian Authority boycotted the forum, viewing it as an attempt to bribe them.
The Palestinians have been seeking diplomatic recognition for their independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which are partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip.
Haniyeh: ‘Palestine is not for sale’
MEMO | June 27, 2019
Head of Hamas’ political bureau Ismail Haniyeh has said that the Manama workshop “secures economic cover for a political attempt to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”
Haniyeh’s statement came in a speech during a conference organised by Palestinian factions on Tuesday, entitled the Palestinian National Conference to face the Deal of the Century and Reject the Manama Workshop held in Gaza.
He added: “We are witnessing a crucial historical moment. Our position is clear: Palestine is not for sale. No for deals which consecrate the occupier’s hegemony over our land.”
He continued: “The Palestinian people stand today in the face of the Manama workshop in a renewed uprising and political revolution, as Palestinians have sensed the unprecedented strategic threat facing the Palestinian cause.”
Haniyeh pointed out that the Manama workshop “grants Israel the green light to expand its occupation efforts and control over the entire West Bank, in addition to paving the way for normalisation with Arab countries and the integration of the occupier in the region.”
He stressed that the workshop “was born dead and frustrated. The Palestinian people today stand unified in the face of these deals.”
Haniyeh continued that “all Arab people stand today to emphasise the significance of the Palestinian cause and that Jerusalem is the compass of the nation.”
On Tuesday evening the Manama Peace to Prosperity Workshop began in Bahrain, looking at the economic aspects of the Middle East peace settlement plan, known as the deal of century, according to US media.
Haniyeh demanded all factions “insist on steadfast adherence to the Palestinian cause, primarily Jerusalem, the right of return and a sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital on the entire national territory.”
Haniyeh said: “We, Hamas, are ready now to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza, in Cairo or anywhere.”
Haniyeh called for “the formation of a government of national accord to run our affairs, and prepare for the presidential and legislative elections as well as the Palestinian National Council.”
The movement’s leader also called for “the reconstruction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation to include all factions under one single leadership.”
NSA Again Exposed For Unauthorized Collection Of Americans’ Phone Records
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 06/26/2019
Yet again, the National Security Agency has been exposed for “accidentally overcollecting” call-record metadata of millions of Americans. According to a WSJ report that relied on documents obtained by the ACLU, the NSA received metadata records from an unnamed phone company that the agency hadn’t been authorized to collect.
According to the report, it’s unclear how the overcollection occurred, but the incident took place after the NSA said it had purged hundreds of millions of metadata records it had amassed since 2015 in a separate overcollection episode.
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, “Metadata” include the numbers called or texted and the associated time stamps, but not the contents of the conversation.
The documents didn’t make clear how many records had been collected by the NSA since October. The NSA’s media relations chief, Greg Julian, refused to comment on this specific episode, but referred to the prior overcollection episode – which resulted in the NSA deleting an entire database of collected metadata – where the NSA had collected information it hadn’t been authorized to collect.
Essentially, the agency blamed the incident on service providers who incorrectly interpreted the NSA’s request.
“While NSA lawfully sought data pertaining to a foreign power engaged in international terrorism, the provider produced inaccurate data and data beyond which NSA sought,” Julian said.
The company began delivering those records to the NSA on Oct. 3, 2018 through Oct. 12, when the agency asked it investigate the “anomaly.”
Exposure of the incident has predictably provoked outrage from lawmakers, who have been railing against the NSA’s surveillance programs since they were first exposed by former contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. Former lawmaker Pat Toomey, now an ACLU staff attorney, said the incident is just the latest reason why the NSA metadata-collection program, launched in the aftermath of 9/11 as part of the Patriot Act, should be discontinued.
“These documents only confirm that this surveillance program is beyond redemption and should be shut down for good,” Patrick Toomey, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a statement. “The NSA’s collection of Americans’ call records is too sweeping, the compliance problems too many, and evidence of the program’s value all but nonexistent. There is no justification for leaving this surveillance power in the NSA’s hands.”
The House Judiciary Committee has already started weighing which expiring Patriot Act provisions will be renewed, and according to several lawmakers, the phone surveillance program likely won’t be reauthorized.
“Every new incident like this that becomes public is another reason this massive surveillance program needs to be permanently scrapped,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of the program. “But it is unacceptable that basic information about the program is still being withheld from the public.”
There is no parity between ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Jews’ exodus from Arab states
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | June 26, 2019
British Conservative MP Theresa Villiers blundered into a debate on Israel and Palestine last week. In doing so, the former Northern Ireland Secretary rehashed discredited myths the function of which has historically been to shield Israel from taking responsibility for the plight of Palestinian refugees. During deliberations in the House of Commons on “Jewish Refugees from the Middle East and North Africa”, Villiers spoke of the “untold story” of the “ethnic cleansing” of 856,000 Arab Jews from Arab countries.
According to the member of Conservative Friends of Israel, ignoring the plight of these Jewish refugees and concentrating only on the Palestinians “gives the international community a distorted view of the Middle East dispute.” Villiers added that, “A fair settlement needs to take into account the injustice suffered by Jewish refugees as well as the plight of the Palestinians.”
The MP for Chipping Barnet claimed that, “The historic UN Resolution 242 states that a comprehensive peace agreement should include ‘a just settlement of the refugee problem’; the language is inclusive of both Palestinian and Jewish refugees.”
Villiers-who often speaks in support of Israel and has even used a Commons debate about terrorism on the streets of London to appeal for “sympathy and solidarity” for the Zionist state- mimicked discredited claims made by Israeli officials since the 1950s to absolve the country from its obligations under international law to the 750,000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed in 1947-8.
As others have pointed out, “The analogy between Palestinian displacement and the Jewish ‘exodus’ from Arab countries is misleading.” The claims of the two communities are very different; the history and circumstance of their displacement bears no resemblance to each other, which makes any attempt to use the plight of one group to dismiss the other, as though it were a kind of population transfer reminiscent of countries split apart by civil war, totally fanciful.
Contrary to what Villiers suggested, there was no forced mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries, in the way that there was a deliberate, forced expulsion of Palestinians from their own land. If we look at Iraq, for example, Arab Jews left due to a combination of factors, of which a hostile environment following the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine was certainly one. Other push factors, according to Abbas Shiblak, author of The Lure of Zion: Case of the Iraqi Jews, include laws that were enacted to facilitate the Jewish exodus. One such law is 1/1950, known as the denaturalisation law, which empowered the Iraqi government to “divest any Iraqi who wished of his own free will and choice to leave Iraq for good, of his Iraqi nationality.” Shiblak points out that this law was welcomed by Israel, as well as Britain and the US, both of which were applying pressure on Iraq to agree to a population transfer deal involving 100,000 Iraqi Jews. It was indeed a driving factor in the flight of Iraqi Jews.
Other factors, though mired in controversy, also played a part. The 1950s saw a number of Israeli false flag operations. One that grabbed global attention was the failed covert operation, known as the “Lavon Affair”. Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside British and American civilian targets, including churches and libraries. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian communists in order to induce the British government to maintain its occupation army in the Suez Canal zone.
While that operation was not intended to create a hostile environment for Jews in Egypt with the hope of persuading them to go to Israel — that result was an arguably unintended consequence — similar plots in Iraq were designed with exactly that in mind. From 1950 through to 1951 Israeli spy agency Mossad orchestrated five bomb attacks on Jewish targets in an operation known as Ali Baba, to drum up fear amongst and hostility towards Iraqi Jews. As the mood darkened, more than 120,000 Jews — 95 per cent of the Jewish population in Iraq — left for Israel via an airlift known as Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.
In addition to the anti-Jewish feelings that took root in Arab cities following the creation of the State of Israel and prompted Jewish flight, there was also a powerful pull factor that had nothing to do with hostility in Arab countries. The very creation of Israel was based on the idea of “the ingathering of the exiles”, which assumed that the self-styled “Jewish State” would attract as a matter of course Jews from around the world to make “aliyah” and migrate there. This was not only intended to fulfil the secular dream of a Jewish “national home” (as the Balfour Declaration put it, not a “state”) but also to bring about what fundamentalist Evangelical Christians believe is a Biblical prerequisite for the long-awaited return of Jesus Christ, Armageddon and the end days; what they refer to as the “rapture”. If the whole purpose of the State of Israel was and remains to attract Jewish migration from across the world — Arab states included, presumably — then to claim that those who make the move are “refugees” is totally inaccurate and a false representation of reality.
In stark contrast, the ethnic cleansing (a term applied by Israeli historians) of three-quarters of the Palestinian population of historic Palestine, and the subsequent further expulsions of the native population that followed the June 1967 war, was premeditated in order to create a Jewish majority in the land. This is not only an indisputable historical fact, but is also reflected in various UN resolutions.
Israel’s membership of the UN was conditional upon the nascent Zionist state taking responsibility for the plight of Palestinian refugees and allowing them to return to their homes. It’s worth noting that Israel first applied to join the UN on 15 May, 1948, the day after it declared its independence; the application was rejected. A second application on 17 December the same year was also turned down on the grounds that the fighting was ongoing in Palestine and that Israel had failed to establish a demilitarised zone in the Negev Desert. It was only at its third attempt a year later that the international community allowed Israel to become a member of the organisation with the aforesaid condition.
UN General Assembly Resolution 273 of 11 May, 1949 admitted the state as a member, but required Israel to comply with Resolution 194 of 11 December, 1948 which “resolves that the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” The Israeli government agreed to this condition. In pursuit of this goal, the UN ordered the creation of a commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.
However, Israel has never shown any inclination to fulfil that condition of its UN membership, despite agreeing to do so. Palestinians who were expelled from their land, and their descendants, still live in refugee camps across the occupied Palestinian territories and neighbouring countries, with many others in the wider diaspora around the world.
The international community recognises no such moral and legal claims for Arab Jews who moved to Israel, though it should also be pointed out that many chose to settle elsewhere. Villiers cited UN Resolution 242 when she claimed that such an obligation does indeed exist. However, the strongest interpretation of this resolution given its context in being adopted by the Security Council in 1967 after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza during a war that led to the displacement of a further 400,000 Palestinians, is that UN Resolution 242 refers only to Palestinian refugees. The resolution also required Israel to withdraw from the territories that it occupied during the war; it hasn’t done that yet, either.
One could of course make a case for Arab Jews to be compensated for the suffering that they endured and the property they left behind, but that should not in any way be at the expense of Palestinian refugees. Such a move would have no basis in international humanitarian law, and would thus be baseless. Human rights are not interchangeable: you cannot simply exchange the rights of one person with those of another as though it were some kind of commodity to be bartered. The rights and claims of Palestinian refugees on the state of Israel cannot be wiped away by rights that Jews may or may not have over Arab states. The simple truth is that there is not, and never has been, any parity between the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians since 1947, and the exodus of Jews from Arab states. As a lawyer, Theresa Villiers should know that but, as a strong supporter of the State of Israel, like many others she chooses to ignore it as she tries to deny Palestinians of their legitimate rights.
Facebook to give French courts data on hate speech suspects, says minister
RT | June 25, 2019
Facebook has agreed to give French courts the identification data of users suspected of spreading hate speech on the platform, according to a French minister, in what is being described as a world first.
France’s minister for digital affairs and former top advisor to President Emmanuel Macron, Cedric O, confirmed the agreement on Tuesday, but suggested the courtesy would not be extended to other nations.
“This is huge news, it means that the judicial process will be able to run normally,” O told Reuters. “It’s really very important, they’re only doing it for France.”
The deal between the world’s largest social media network and France came after a series of meetings between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Macron.
The social network had already been giving French authorities IP addresses and identifying data of suspected terrorists after judges demanded their cooperation, but this is the first time the agreement has extended to hate speech.
Macron has made no secret of his interest in regulating online hate speech and fake news. Recently, parliament has been considering implementing a fine of 4 percent of a tech company’s global revenue if they are found to not have done enough to remove certain content from their network.
Google Executive Allegedly Says Only Big Tech Can Prevent 2020 ‘Trump Situation’
Sputnik – June 25, 2019
While Big Tech has consistently brushed off accusations of discrimination and political bias, a new investigative report by Project Veritas provides new insight into Google’s alleged internal practices.
Project Veritas has published a new report on Google along with an undercover video of the company’s head of Responsible Innovation, Jen Gennai, and leaked docs by an alleged insider that purportedly expose the tech giant’s plans to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections in the United States and “prevent the next Trump situation”.
“Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that”, she appears to be saying in the footage, which was filmed at a restaurant on a hidden camera.
Gennai was referring to a statement by Massachusetts Senator Warren to break up tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook as the companies face mounting backlash ahead of the 2020 vote.
The executive, whose “Responsible Innovation” sector monitors and evaluates the implementation of AI technologies, said in the video that Google has been working to reprogramme its systems and algorithms.
“We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again. We’re also training our algorithms, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?”
According to Project Veritas, Gennai as well addressed the anti-conservative bias accusations the company has recently faced and explained that “conservative sources” and “credible sources” didn’t always overlap in line with Google’s editorial practices.
“We have gotten accusations of around fairness is that we’re unfair to conservatives because we’re choosing what we find as credible news sources and those sources don’t necessarily overlap with conservative sources…”
As part of the report, the video also contains snippets of an interview with an alleged Google whistleblower, who provided information on the alleged “algorithmic unfairness” and Machine Learning Fairness, which he claimed was “one of the many tools the company uses to advance a political agenda”.
“They are going to redefine a reality based on what they think is fair and based upon what they want, and what and is part of their agenda”.
Gennai has already read the Project Veritas report and penned a Medium post to explain what happened, claiming that the outlet had edited the video “to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election”.
She dismissed the report as an “unadulterated nonsense” and reiterated that the company “works to be a trustworthy source of information, without regard to political viewpoint”.
“In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. I was having a casual chat with someone at a restaurant and used some imprecise language. Project Veritas got me. Well done”, she wrote.
YouTube has already removed the video of the interview with Gennai from the platform, while Reddit has suspended Project Veritas’ account following the release of the report.
This isn’t the first time Project Veritas has had its accounts or content removed after publishing an investigative report which exposes the internal practices of big tech firms. One of its reports, which shed light on Pinterest’s internal blacklists, was censored heavily as a result of questionable privacy complaints.
Aside from being taken down from YouTube, Project Veritas was also suspended on Twitter and other journalists who talked about the report in their videos had them removed.
In the past few weeks, Google and its video-sharing platform YouTube have faced multiple accusations of political bias against conservative views and independent media sites, as well as suppression of free speech.
The tech giants have, however, always denied the allegations.
Anti-Palestinian repression in Germany: Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat banned from speaking
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | June 23, 2019
The repression of Palestinian rights advocacy in Germany continued last night, Saturday, 22 June, as Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat was banned by the Berlin authorities from delivering a speech on the so-called “deal of the century” spearheaded by Donald Trump and the Arab and Palestinian response. He was also banned from engaging in all political activities and events in Germany until 31 July, whether directly (in-person) or “indirectly” (over video.) This outrageous attack on freedom of expression is only the latest assault on Palestinian rights carried out by the German government.
The event was originally scheduled to take place on Friday, 21 June, organized by an Arab community discussion group that regularly hosts speakers on important events in the Arab world. The city-owned venue reportedly received complaints about the event from pro-Zionist and pro-Israeli apartheid organizations, and informed the hosts that they could not hold the event. The event was instead relocated to a Sudanese community center on Saturday, 22 June. With the Bahrain conference to promote so-called “economic peace” at the expense of Palestinian rights expected in the coming days, the talk was of particular importance.
However, without notice or explanation, there were large numbers of police stretching from the closest U-Bahn station to the venue and blocking the street. When Barakat approached with Samidoun international coordinator Charlotte Kates, they were stopped by police and told the event would not take place tonight because it had been prohibited. They were then taken in a police van to a larger police station, where they were met by a German-Arabic translator, more police and two representatives of the Foreigners’ Office of Berlin.
Barakat was presented with an 8-page document and told that he was not allowed to give speeches in person or over video, participate in political meetings or events or even attend social gatherings of over 10 people; he was told that violations were punishable by up to a year in prison. Under German law, non-citizens can be barred from political activity if it could harm the “security or stability” of Germany. The accusations, which purport to show that his political activity is “dangerous,” do not do so; instead, there is mainly a list of speeches and events as well as a 2014 interview with Rote Fahne News, the publication of the MLPD (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany.) Despite claiming that Barakat’s speech could increase tensions or “political conflict” between Jews and Palestinians and Arabs in Germany, the document points to absolutely no negative repercussions whatsoever of all of his previous speeches in the country.
The document also accuses Barakat of being a member of the Palestinian leftist party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Despite noting that the PFLP is, in fact, not banned in Germany, it notes that it is listed on the EU terrorist list and thus presents a danger, even though none of the listed allegations indicate any danger at all. It could not be more clear that this is the latest attempt on Palestinian expression and advocacy and the further restriction of freedom of speech, expression and association in Germany.
Barakat and Kates were also told that their residency in Germany would not be renewed and would “come to an end,” although they were not presented with that decision.
This incident comes amid an ongoing campaign by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the so-called “anti-BDS ministry,” to attack Palestinian and solidarity organizations, especially leftists. Barakat has been singled out by this ministry on multiple occasions, as has Samidoun and its work. It also comes following a series of attacks on Palestinian rights and freedom of speech in Germany, including:
- the political ban and stripping of the Schengen visitor visa targeting Rasmea Odeh, former Palestinian political prisoner and community leader
- the anti-BDS resolution passed by the German Bundestag (parliament) denouncing BDS as “anti-Semitic”
- the criminal prosecution of activists for interrupting an Israeli official speaker involved in the war on Gaza at Humboldt University
- the cancellation of performance invitations to American rapper Talib Kweli and Scottish rappers Young Fathers for their support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement
- the forced resignation of the director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin for tweeting a link to a statement against the Bundestag’s anti-BDS resolution written by Jewish scholars
It should be noted that this repression comes hand in hand with political attacks on the Arab and Muslim communities in Germany spearheaded by the far-right rhetoric of the AfD and other parties, but with the active complicity of the official “left,” which continues to support the suppression of Palestinian community organizing and Palestine solidarity in defense of a colonial, apartheid, racist system. It also comes amid ongoing criminalization of popular movements in Europe, including trials of trade union leaders and refugee solidarity organizers in various countries.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network expresses our deepest outrage at the political ban against Khaled Barakat. We believe that it indicates a serious danger that outright bans, police repression and residency revocation are becoming a police state norm for suppressing unwanted Palestinian political speech that defends rights, justice and liberation.
On Friday, 28 June, a protest is being organized against the Bundestag’s anti-BDS resolution under the slogan Palästina Spricht (Palestine Speaks), and we urge all to attend and participate. Internationally, your statements and voices of solidarity are critical in helping to fight back against this intensified repression. These attacks will not silence Khaled Barakat or the Palestinian people – but it is critical that we build our international movement to defend Palestine, especially as it is targeted for liquidation.
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From the Archives
US murdering 1 million Iraqis is democracy, Iran giving yogurt to Iraq is “domination”
By Ali Salaam | American Herald Tribune | July 31, 2017
The New York Times, owned by the Zionist Jewish supremacist Ochs-Sulzberger family, has no problem with Iraqi suffering as long as Iran is not the one behind it.
The Iraq War was a genocide of the Iraqi people by Zionist supremacists in the Bush administration. Over 1 million innocent people were killed based on a lie. American soldiers died in an Israeli war and now an average of 22 soldiers commit suicide every day because their consciences cannot cope with the fact they committed crimes in an illegal war that served no purpose other than to benefit Israel, not America.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, once said “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”
Paul Wolfowitz had his sights on Iraq since his time in the first Bush administration. Former Israeli official and Bush administration official Richard Perle had his eyes on Iraq since at least his authorship of the Clean Break white paper. The Zionist regime had their eyes on Iraq since the 1980s when strategist Oded Yinon wrote his white paper in support of dividing the Arab-Muslim world along ethnic and sectarian lines. The global Zionist lobby has had their eyes on Iraq since Theodor Herzl stated that Eretz Israel’s true borders go from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The Search for Truth: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination One Year Later
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