RT Fending Off Attacks in Fight Without Rules
By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 25.01.2017
The access of RT (Russia Today), a Russian state-funded media company, to its Facebook page was partially blocked by the social network. The ban would have coincided with President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. The pretext was a copyright complaint about an Associated Press (AP) video stream of Barack Obama’s press conference on RT’s Facebook page on January 18. The ban, initially set to last until January 21, was lifted on January 19. RT has a sizable Facebook presence, with 4.1 million likes.
This is the first time that Facebook has ever blocked the content of any media outlet from appearing on the service. No other news outlet has been punished by Facebook in a manner like this.
The event is part of a broader picture. A few hours after the Facebook ban, RT claimed that some users had complained about not being able to see news from the broadcaster on other social media platforms. It was corrected later. Dataminr, a news-alert service partly owned by Twitter, has terminated its contract with the broadcaster. RT has received a request from YouTube to show that its employees were not among the individuals sanctioned by the US over Ukraine.
RT appears to come under attacks coming from all sides. The journalists and university professors in the United States who have appeared on RT television have been blacklisted. Last October, the National Westminster Bank informed RT that it would no longer have the broadcaster among its clients. The bank provided no explanation for the decision. «They closed our accounts in Britain. All of them. ‘Decision not to be discussed’. Long live freedom of speech!» RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said on her Twitter account.
The US intelligence report on Russia’s alleged hacking issued this January says «RT — as well as Sputnik, another Russian government–funded English-language propaganda outlet — began aggressively producing pro-Trump and anti-Clinton content starting in March 2016. That just so happens to be the exact same time the Russian hacking campaign targeting Democrats began». The authors of the paper affirm that «During the 2016 campaign, RT aired a number of weird, conspiratorial segments — some starring WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange — that cast Clinton as corrupt and funded by ISIS and portrayed the US electoral system as rigged».
The idea to use soft power for political ends has been glorified in the West, becoming part of all foreign policy concepts. Freedom of speech has always been extolled, any attempts to curtail it have been slammed. Now the West is losing the battle to the Russian outlet offering its own opinions and it is ready to go to any length in an effort to reverse the trend, including outright pressure.
RT challenges the West’s hegemonic grip on shaping and controlling the global media agenda. The broadcaster is popular with Western audiences because it offers a refreshingly different perspective. The RT broadcasting is called «propaganda» simply because it says something different.
Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, believes that US media are a «disgrace» and the quality of published material is «embarrassingly low». According to him, «we have a system that’s owned and dominated by a handful of huge corporations».
RT has provided independent journalists and professors a chance to make detailed arguments often contradicting the views expounded by Western mainstream media. Remember how the US and UK «pro-establishment» outlets defended the idea of military intervention in Iraq? That’s life. Governments are prone to employ strategies of manipulation to shape public opinions.
Alternative sources of information are the only way to shape impartial views. One has the right to choose news sources. Useful insights and information may be gained from a variety of the media outlets and RT is the one.
Until now RT has fended off the attacks. It has mustered broad support, including in social networks. The AP has not openly accused RT of running a pirated live-stream of outgoing President Barack Obama’s final speech. Nothing was said openly. Facebook has not responded to RT to explain why the restrictions have been placed on its account. YouTube’s request on sanctioned RT employees was said to be not politically motivated. But it’s not the end. The pressure will grow stronger to threaten the very same values the West has sworn to protect.
For instance, the human rights situation in America evokes concern serious enough to be addressed by media independent from the US government. For instance, Paul Craig Roberts, former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, asked for Russian citizenship accused of being a Russian agent for speaking his mind fearlessly. In particular, in an appearance on RT Mr. Roberts dared to support Senator Bernie Sanders for president.
Many hold an opinion that an information war is being waged. But even wars have certain laws to abide by but RT appears to be engaged in a fight without rules.
Saudi dissident suspiciously dies in jail
Press TV – January 25, 2017
A political prisoner has died under suspicious circumstances in a Saudi prison after four years of imprisonment without trial.
The suspicious death of opposition activist Mohammad Razi al-Hasawi was reported Wednesday by European human rights envoy for Saudi Arabian affairs, A’adel al-Saeed.
Saudi officials contacted the relatives of the Shia prisoner last week to summon them to the prosecutor’s office and hand over his personal belongings to them.
Hasawi, who had been held at the Dammam prison for four years, was never tried at a court.
Numerous dissidents have been jailed without trial or on vague charges in Saudi Arabia, where the regime has been cracking down on the Shia population in the country’s Eastern Province since 2011.
In recent days, Saudi forces have routinely raided the homes of people in the Awamiyah region of Eastern Province, taking activists into custody. Saudi police forces also recently placed the al-Masoura neighborhood of Awamiyah under siege. According to reports, they also engaged in aimless shooting while raiding the area in an apparent bid to generate fear among the locals.
On Sunday, it was reported that Saudi forces had, for a second consecutive day, gone on a shooting spree in Awamiyah. The forces targeted both residential and commercial centers, inflicting material damage.
David Icke and the meaning of Jewish power
By Gilad Atzmon | January 24, 2017
Jewish power is the power to suppress discussion on Jewish power.
Seemingly this power is waning these days.
Jewish media outlets have reported today that campaigners are calling for a Manchester venue to be fined after it hosted “notorious anti-Semite” David Icke in front of a sold-out crowd this weekend.
But what is it that makes Icke into a “notorious anti-Semite?” He reckons that Jews control the world and started WWI. Icke also believes that Jews dominated the Versailles Peace Conference and created the circumstances which made the Second World War inevitable.
It is rather obvious to every reasonable human being that in a free society, Icke is entitled to his thoughts and should be free to share them with the rest of us.
Apparently, Stephen Silverman, the director of Campaign against Anti-Semitism (CAA) doesn’t agree at all. Jewish history, he believes, can’t be discussed freely. But can you think of any other people who attempt to block the rest of us from looking into their past? Can Muslims, for instance, stop us from looking into their history? As things stand, even the British ruling class doesn’t attempt to prevent us from looking into the crimes of British imperialism.
In Britain, some Jewish organisations attempt to stifle the discussion of the Jewish past. They probably know that they have a lot to hide. The truth of the matter is that Jews are often ashamed of their history. Early Zionism was, in fact, a promise to wipe out the Jewish past and introduce a new Jewish beginning on someone’s else land….
I learned today that Stephen Silverman isn’t just concerned with Icke’s take on Jewish history, he is also disturbed by the fact that some gentiles have managed to profit from Icke’s popularity. “Not only did the O2 Apollo allow him to address their packed venue for twelve hours, they profited from it.”
Silverman knows that looking at the current international blunders (inflicted on us by the likes of Soros, Goldman Sachs, Israel, neocons and others) in historical perspectives can’t be ignored anymore.
David Icke’s is on the road at the moment. Israel and its Sayanim are desperately trying to stop him for a reason… he is, obviously, a truth teller.
German Government ‘Has a Problem With Critically-Minded Citizens’
Sputnik – 23.01.2017
Head of the German party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) Frauke Petry criticized what she views as a contradictory understanding of freedom of speech demonstrated by the German government.
Following the meeting of leaders of the European Parliament’s faction “Europe and Freedom Nations” (ENF) in Koblenz, Petry told journalists that the German government can’t deal with people who have an alternative opinion.
According to Petri, people whose opinion differs from that of the majority are “immediately labeled as anti-democratic.”
“We see that the government is clearly having a problem with freedom of speech and that it can hardly deal with critically-minded citizens,” Petri said.
Earlier, it was reported that German Facebook will trial a fake news filtering system for German users of the site, allowing individuals to fact-check and report stories they suspect to be untrue.
Such stories are expected to be dispatched to Correctiv, a German fact-checking organization. If Correctiv determines the story to be fake, it will be marked as false and users seeing it in their feeds will be warned about its doubted authenticity. It will also be blocked from being promoted in users’ feeds.
However, Petri believes that the new initiative is aimed not at fact-checking potentially fake stories, but at establishing a supervisory authority that will try to get rid of certain undesirable content.
The politician argued that it will be about a “new censorship authority which will impose fines on creators of the so-called fake web news in the Internet.”
See also:
Facebook ‘Fake News’ Plan ‘a Brutal Attack on Freedom of Speech’
Some 1,000 People Participated in Anti-NATO Protest in Northeastern Italy
Sputnik – 22.01.2017
VICENZA – About 1,000 protesters participated on Saturday in a demonstration against NATO bases and major infrastructure projects of the local authorities, such as construction of a motorway and a railway for high-speed trains, in the city of Vicenza, located in northeastern Italy.
According to a RIA Novosti correspondent, the march was headed by the No Dal Molin Movement, opposing a US airbase located in the north of the city. The protesters carried a huge banner, saying “Protection of land for the future without military bases.”
“Until the people do not mobilize, until they put pressure on the government to expel the US military from our territory, politicians will do nothing as they are not interested in it. Politicians should be forced to give us an answer, and now they do not want to do this at the moment,” one of the march’s organizers Francesco Pavin told RIA Novosti.
The demonstration was sanctioned by local authorities and was accompanied by a police escort.
There are a total of four NATO bases in the Vicenza area.
During his presidential campaign, US President Donald Trump repeatedly stated that the United States should decrease the support of other NATO member states and protect only those members of the alliance, who “fulfill their obligations” in respect to Washington.
Israeli Border Police Executed Bedouin at Um al Hiran, Doctored Video Footage
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | January 20, 2017
I wrote a post about the killing of Musa Abu Qilyan in which I presented both the claim of the Border Police that he killed a policeman in a deliberate terror attack; and also presented video which, as I wrote, failed to support the police claims (though it didn’t refute them). Now, Ronnie Barkan has provided a close video analysis of two separate versions of the video, one distributed by the police and another slightly longer one which surfaced on Facebook. Ronnie shows (be patient in watching the various iterations of the video clips he presents) incontrovertibly that the Police video was subtly and slightly edited, both removing the first shot a Border Policeman fired at the car, and also speeding up the video to make the vehicle appear to be going faster than it was. You may read an alternate version, which essentially agrees with Ronnie’s work, at 972.
What does all this mean? First, that when Abu Alqilyan’s vehicle drove along the road it presented no threat whatsoever to the police personnel. It was driving slowly and deliberately. As it proceeds, a police officer runs toward it firing. Three or four shots are fired. The first shot is fired while the car is driving quite slowly and seemingly under the driver’s control. Only after those shots are fired does the vehicle speed up, lose control and hit another police officer standing near the road. Clearly, the driver had been fatally struck by these bullets before he killed the officer.
In other words, the police acted recklessly and with total disregard even for their own safety. They essentially murdered the Bedouin driver when he posed no threat. After he was incapacitated, his vehicle struck and killed the other officer. He was not intending to harm anyone. Ergo, he was not a terrorist. It’s certainly possible he was a supporter of the Islamic Movement, but certainly not of ISIS as Israeli Jewish politicians have claimed. Further, being an Islamist is not the same as being a terrorist.
The only possibility I can think of to support the police version is perhaps an officer had tried to stop him at some point before the drone footage began. He may have seemed to defy an order to stop and proceeded on his path, which led the officer to fire. But you can be sure that if such a thing happened, the drone footage authenticating it would’ve been released.
Further, how can a major police action at which physical altercations and protest is expected not secure the perimeter of vehicle and pedestrian traffic? How could the police have allowed any vehicles to approach them as this man did? Why weren’t there roadblocks preventing access? To me, this appears to be a botched Border Police operation for which they have only themselves to blame.
Finally, this is yet another example of fraud and mendacity on the part of the Israel’s most vicious, brutal and violent police authorities. Not only are Border Police the most racist, they are also the mostly likely to lie and cover up their errors, as they have here. It’s a shameful episode which should be met with skepticism and derision by the Israeli media and the Israeli public. However, Israeli Jews are all too quick to swallow the lies fed to them by authorities. Once they have drunk the Koolaid, counter-evidence like this threatens their equanimity and is usually ignored or dismissed.
In my earlier post I debated the meaning of “terrorism” in the Israeli context and argued that dispossessing the Bedouin as Israel is doing, along with deadly violence like this constitutes state terror. This new evidence confirms there was no terror on the part of the Bedouin at all. The only terror was that of the forces of the State. If I were Israeli, I would hang my head in shame.
NGO: Israeli shooting of Palestinian teen in Tuqu ‘extrajudicial killing’
Ma’an – January 18, 2017
BETHLEHEM – A Palestinian rights group slammed on Wednesday the killing of a Palestinian teen by Israeli forces earlier this week, calling the case an “extrajudicial killing” and demanding that Israeli authorities open an investigation into the case.
Qusay al-Umour, 17, was killed during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian youth in the Bethlehem-area village of Tuqu in the occupied West Bank on Monday.
Video of the moments immediately following al-Umour being shot by Israeli forces has elicited a strong emotional response, as it showed Israeli soldiers roughly carrying the teenager’s limp body by his dangling arms and legs.
Legal NGO BADIL said in a statement on Wednesday that the footage provided “evidence contradicting Israeli accounts and raises concerns about the adherence of the Israeli forces to the central tenets of international law.”
The group quoted Hisham Abu Shaqra, the Palestinian journalist who recorded the video, who said that al-Umour was not a threat to Israeli forces when he was fatally shot — contradicting claims by the Israeli army, which said that the Palestinian youth was the “main instigator” of the clashes that day.
“Qusay was sitting between olive trees, you know how guys are, he was just watching the soldiers… Only a few seconds after (I was) looking at him the Israeli forces shot him three or four times,” Abu Shaqra said.
“The soldier who shot him was not in danger at the time of the shooting, in fact, he was secured and safe,” he added. “First the (Israeli military) jeeps started coming closer and closer [to the youth] and then this specific soldier, the sniper with the Ruger rifle, also started coming closer. I remember he was by the third jeep, then I saw him by the second jeep and he was by the first jeep when he shot Qusay.”
The eyewitness accounts of the incident, coupled with the audiovisual evidence, have led BADIL to conclude that “whether he was throwing stones at the soldiers or not, al-Umour could not have presented a lethal threat to the well-protected Israeli border police from a distance of around 100 meters, and the use of live ammunition against him was therefore unjustified.”
The NGO denounced the “complete lack of consideration for (al-Umour)’s human dignity or his traumatic injuries.”
The group also slammed statements by Israeli police to Ma’an saying that they were “not aware” of any official investigation being carried out by Israeli authorities into al-Umour’s killing.
“Israel continuously fails to investigate such actions or to prosecute members of its forces, which is the natural result of a growing culture of impunity that exists within the Israeli military,” BADIL wrote. “This is why recent Israeli actions towards Palestinian civilians cannot be considered as isolated incidents, but rather as the violent manifestations of a policy of lawlessness in which Israeli forces operate in repeat, and direct contravention of international law absent effective accountability.”
The group therefore “demands that a comprehensive and independent investigation be launched into this killing as a matter of great urgency in order to identify those responsible and to hold them accountable to the full extent of international law.”
Al-Umour is the fourth Palestinian to have been confirmed killed by Israeli forces in 2017. Two more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the two days since.
Five Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in 2017.
In 2016, Ma’an recorded the deaths of 112 Palestinians, 15 Israelis, and three foreign nationals.
Rights groups have routinely condemned Israeli authorities for their excessive use of force against Palestinians, including minors, during incidents which could have been handled without the use of deadly violence.
Israeli police accused of cover-up over killing during Negev demolition raid
Ma’an – January 18, 2017
NEGEV – The Joint List, which represents parties led by Palestinian citizens of Israel in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, accused Israeli police of spreading misinformation to Israeli media regarding an alleged vehicle attack Wednesday morning in the Negev, as new video footage emerged further contradicting the Israel police’s version of events.
The Joint List’s statement argued that Israeli police lied in their claim that a Palestinian Bedouin deliberately rammed his car into officers during a raid to demolish homes in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, in order to distract from Israel’s campaign to establish Jewish-only towns “on the ruins of Bedouin villages.”
Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said that during a raid of the slain Palestinian’s home, police found three copies of a Hebrew-language newspaper from 2015 with the headline: “Isis bomb that took down a plane,” suggesting that the old newspapers were evidence that the man carried out a terror attack.
Rosenfeld added in his statement that Israeli police also detained and were questioning the son “of the terrorist” as part of the investigation.
However, numerous eyewitnesses reported that Israeli police fired at the Palestinian Bedouin, identified as Yaqoub Abu al-Qian, while he was driving, which caused him to spin out of control and crash into Israeli officers, killing one policeman. Family members also firmly denied Abu al-Qian intended to carry out an attack.
Meanwhile, new Israeli police footage published by Israeli daily Haaretz, which they said was most likely from a police a helicopter hovering above the scene, appeared to show police officers shooting at al-Qian as he was driving at a very slow pace, and only several seconds after the gunfire does his car appear to speed up, eventfully plowing through police officers. It is unclear if the drive sped up intentionally.
Hours later, as Israeli bulldozers began razing the homes to the ground, renewed clashes erupted in the village.
Umm al-Hiran is one of 35 Bedouin villages considered “unrecognized” by the Israeli state, and more than half of the approximately 160,000 Negev Bedouins reside in unrecognized villages.
The unrecognized Bedouin villages were established in the Negev soon after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war following the creation of the state of Israel.
Now more than 60 years later, the villages have yet to be recognized by Israel and live under constant threats of demolition and forcible removal.
The Joint List’s statement described the actions by Israeli authorities as “a terrorist and bloody invasion that brings to mind the scenes of displacement and destruction of Arab villages during the Nakba in 1948.” Some 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the creation of the state of Israel in what Palestinians call the Nakba — “catastrophe” in Arabic.
The statement described how Israeli forces besieged Umm al-Hiran en mass and fired tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets, “terrifying residents who took to the streets to defend their homes.”
Israeli police have denied to Israeli media that rubber-coated steel bullets were used to suppress the clashes, which are used by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. Some news sites said police were in fact firing sponge-tipped bullets, with journalists pointing out they are just as lethal as rubber bullets.
“Police behaved as in a battlefield, and as a result of the clashes, Yaqoub Abu al-Qian fell a martyr, and dozens of others, including MK Ayman Odeh were injured.”
The Joint List said that the “crime in Umm al-Hiran” was in line with the “dangerous escalation” of anti-Palestinian policies within the “extremist” Israeli government.
“The (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu government has effectually declared a military war against our people in the 1948 area,” the statement said, referring to lands that were declared part of the Israeli state in 1948.
“The war started with demolitions in Qalansawe, and it is continuing today in Umm al-Hiran.”
The Joint List denied the “false narrative,” in which Israeli police claimed that Abu al-Qian carried out a deliberate car ramming attack, which left an Israeli police officer dead. Israeli police also said they were investigating to see whether or not the slain Bedouin was “influenced” by the so-called Islamic State.
Numerous eyewitness accounts said that al-Qian lost control of his vehicle after he was shot, causing him to crash into Israeli police.
“Israeli police are trying to cover up the crime of displacing and uprooting a whole town and killing an unarmed Arab citizen through an incitement campaign against all Arab citizens, by spreading misinformation that a police officer was killed in a terrorist, ISIS-like attack.”
The statement urged Hebrew-language news outlets to ensure that they work “professionally” and fact-check their information before they publish their news reports.
“When media outlets take the information they receive from Israeli police as facts, they in fact partake in incitement against Arab citizens,” the statement argued.
Human rights organization Adalah also said Wednesday that they strongly objected to Israeli police’s version of events in Umm al-Hiran according to witness accounts.
They group said the police statements, “reflects the Israeli police’s culture of lying,” and referred to recent accusations by Israeli authorities claiming that a string of wildfires were deliberate arson attacks committed by Palestinians, saying that the claims had “not been proven at all. Not one person has been convicted based on these accusations.”
Rights groups have claimed that demolitions in unrecognized Bedouin villages is a central Israeli policy aimed at removing the indigenous Palestinian population from the Negev and transferring them to government-zoned townships to make room for the expansion of Jewish Israeli communities.
According to Adalah, families of the Abu al-Qian tribe were initially expelled from their lands in Khirbet Zubaleh in 1948 after they had cultivated the area for generations, and were eventually forced to move to Umm al-Hiran by an Israeli military order.
“Despite this, the state has not legally recognized the village to this day. As a result of the decision to establish the Israeli Jewish town of Hiran over the Bedouin village, the Israel Land Authority (ILA) demanded to expel them again, to the government-planned town of Hura.”
According to Israeli daily Haaretz, the Israeli government approved the construction of the new Jewish community of Hiran in November 2013 to be built on the land of Umm al-Hiran. Village residents lost the legal defenses they mounted, including an appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, and were unable to prevent the demolition of the village.
“Palestinians from Umm al-Hiran have Israeli passports and citizenship, yet the Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing, colonization, forcible displacement, and apartheid affect them all the same,” Maya al-Orzza, a legal researcher at NGO BADIL said Wednesday.
“These policies do not only happen in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but also inside Israel against Palestinians,” al-Orzza said, noting that Palestinians make up some 20 percent of Israeli citizens.
Commenting on a peace conference held in Paris on Sunday which reaffirmed international commitment to the two-state solution and the cessation of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territory, al-Orzza said that “by focusing on the one- or two-state discussion, or only on Israeli actions in the occupied territory, the international community is disregarding the ongoing policies of ethnic cleansing that Israel is implementing against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
Leonard Peltier denied clemency or commutation by Obama
International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee | January 18, 2017
Brothers, sisters, friends and supporters:
Our hearts are heavy today. President Obama has denied Leonard’s application for a commutation. His name appears on the January 18 list of commutations denied by Obama as issued by the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Leonard’s attorney Martin Garbus was also notified. (Pardon Attorney’s Letter)
Today, in an email, Leonard said, “If I should not [receive clemency] then after we are locked in for the day I will have a good cry and then pick myself up and get myself ready for another round of battles until I cannot fight [any] more. So, don’t worry. I can handle anything after over 40 years.”
It’s hard to bear such a blow, though. And make no mistake — Leonard has been hit hardest of all. But let’s not mourn so very long. Instead, let’s move ever forward. Channel your grief and anger in a positive way. Remember that Leonard still needs our help. He needs quality health care and a transfer to a medium security facility, among other things. We’ll always work towards freedom for Leonard, but these actions may help to make his life more bearable until freedom is won.
Now, we urge you to write to Leonard and help to keep his spirits up. Tell him you won’t give up, that you’ll walk the rest of the way with him. Send cards and letters to:
Leonard Peltier #89637-132
USP Coleman I
PO Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Thank you for your hard work and determination. Blessings to all of you.
Please stay tuned.
In solidarity,
International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
‘Facebook deals first blow in the fake war against fake news’
RT | January 19, 2017
Governments are using media organizations as proxies in an effort to control the information citizens can get from the Internet, says former MI5 officer Annie Machon. The fake war against fake news is predicated on a big lie, she added.
RT has been blocked from posting content to its Facebook page during the live broadcast of Barack Obama’s final news conference over an alleged copyright infringement.
The suspension was triggered by one of the social network’s algorithms, which is alerted according to what’s being submitted.
RT has a contract with the Associated Press and streamed a news feed. The agency has confirmed RT had the right to retransmit the video, so the problem must lie with Facebook.
The head of Russia’s telecoms watchdog is warning of “active response measures” if RT’s work is restricted by the American media or the social networks.
Facebook has not replied to inquiries, and the restrictions on posting remain.
RT: The news outlet was mentioned as triggering a Facebook alert and says it’s not them. So just how sensitive has Facebook’s media clampdown tool become?
Annie Machon: I think this is the first blow in Facebook’s self-proclaimed war against so-called fake news. Both Facebook and Google in the wake of the shadowy PropOrNot list of 200 news organizations around the world that are supposedly peddling fake news, but actually just offering an alternative to the corporate US media, and RT was included in that. Facebook and Google in the aftermath said that they would start to censor all these outlets. I think that is what we are seeing with Facebook now is that they are using the excuse of copyright to censor legitimate news channel and stop them from covering a world event that the rest of the world is going to watch without any problem on other channels.
RT: At the World Economic Forum in Davos the Facebook representative said that their organization is dedicated, as they put it, to tackling so-called fake news and the whole phenomenon that we’ve heard of lately. Do you think this is part of that?
AM: I think it is part of that. And it is not just Facebook and Google who said they are going to take on the so-called fake news. It is also the European Union who issued a diktat last November saying that they were going to set up a body to counter fake news. We see countries like France and Germany already peddling this idea that there is going to be hacking and counter-democratic activity in the run up to their elections this year. So, they are using this. But I think it is interesting to see that the copyright has been used as a pretext for this censorship. I’ve been saying for years that the media organizations are being used by the governments as proxy organizations in terms of trying to control the information we can ingest over the internet and the information we can actually access over the internet.
RT: The suspension is imposed ahead of Trump’s inauguration and won’t be lifted until the day after it. What do you make of that? Is it a coincidence?
AM: Absolutely not. It is a first blow in the so-called battle – fake battle against fake news. And let’s just remind ourselves how this so-called concept of fake started. Somehow information was leaked from the DNC last year and the people who received that information, WikiLeaks said very clearly it was not a hack, it was actually a leak. And yet the corporate media in America has said again, “No, this was Russia hacking the DNC.” And then somehow it became Russia hacking the American elections, Russia hacking voting computers, Russia hacking the energy grid in America. None of this has been proven. Some of it has been actively proven to be false. But when Obama expelled the 35 Russian diplomats from America back to Russia before Christmas, that sort of solidified as fact that the Russians had done something wrong. There is no proof whatsoever. So this fake war against fake news is predicated on a big lie.
I think there are strings have been pulled in the background, shall we say. Particularly, in America. And the big media and internet corporations in America have been proven year after year to be very much in bed with the US state and with the US secret state. We know this of course because of the revelations of Edward Snowden. You know, all the big social media giants signed up to allow access to their databases by the secret agencies in America, starting with Microsoft back in 2006. We know that they are complicit; we know that they have been compromised. So, who can tell where this is going to go. There is a sort of all-out fight between the president-elect anyways and his so-called intelligence agencies.
RT: The original source mentioned as alerting Facebook denies it raised a copyright flag. AP confirmed RT had the rights for transmission. Facebook is the only entity yet to answer. Why isn’t it being more pro-active to remedy this considering this being a pretty big media news?
Chris Bambery, political analyst: It is pretty big media news, and I am really puzzled. Donald Trump is about to become President, and he is painted by much of the world’s media and spy agencies as being President Putin’s chum. And yet there is this continuing escalation of the Cold War with Russia, even hours before Trump is elected. Facebook is a giant American transnational. It is not known for its own transparency over these things. It does lead one to suspect that there are sections of our US elite who really do not like Donald Trump and want to create difficulties between the incoming presidency and Russia.
RT: RT’s troubles with Facebook come a day after the online news alert service Dataminr refused to renew our contract with them. That stems back to the CIA also being denied access and saying the same should apply to RT claiming we’re tied to Russian intelligence. Is that the real reason, do you think?
CB: On that basis, if you are being blocked because you receive state funding, the BBC World service is funded by the British Foreign Office, so why would that not be blocked? And I am sure Radio Free Europe and various other outlets have received funding from the American state. So, if that is to be criteria than a lot of leading news agencies would be off social media, and off air. This is going to feed into the conspiracy theories because it is so bizarre and strange.
Well, the biggest fake news story I’ve seen was the so-called dossier about Donald Trump, and they didn’t seem to be blocking that, which was all over Facebook. Again, I find it rather strange.
Read more:
Facebook blocks RT from posting until after Trump inauguration
Dataminr terminates RT access to Twitter news discovery tool, gives no official reason
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From the Archives
Confronting the Threat of Ethnic Bioweapons
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 29.11.2017
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program. … continue
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- After Ashley Moody Epstein Probe, Donors Linked to Him Poured Money Into her Senate Campaign
- Worried about Russian meddling in UK politics? Wait till you see what Israel is up to
- Israeli settlers attack West Bank center for disabled children, church leader calls for int’l action
- Pulling Out Teeth Just to Live: How Israel Has Devastated Dental Care in Gaza
- Gaza’s “ceasefire” death toll passes 1,500 – Daily Update
- Activists Abused By Israel Return to New Freedom Flotilla Mission
- 60 Minutes won’t tell the full truth about Israeli settler violence
- Nearly 50,000 women, girls killed or severely injured in Gaza since October 2023: UN Women
- ADL is working with AI companies to suppress alleged ‘antisemitism’
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
