Senior House Republican Says Parler Shutdown by Rivals Breaks Monopoly Laws
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 11.01.2021
Attempts by Big Tech to muzzle US President Donald Trump and his supporters have had mixed results. While conservative social media site Parler has been shut down, Twitter shares lost $5 billion in value on Monday following the deletion of Trump’s hugely-popular account.
California Congressman Devin Nunes has accused Big tech firms of breaching anti-trust, civil rights and racketeering law by banning social media site Parler.
Nunes, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Amazon, Apple and Google committed a “clear violation” of laws when they banned the ‘free speech’ social media platform popular with conservatives.
“There should be a racketeering investigation on all the people that coordinated this attack on not only a company, but on all of those like us,” Nunes told Fox News on Sunday. “I have 3 million followers on Parler. Tonight I will no longer be able to communicate with those people and they’re Americans.”
Tech giant Amazon shut down Parler just after midnight US Pacific time (08:00 GMT) when it evicted the site from its rented servers. Google and Apple had earlier blocked access to the Parler mobile phone app, although tech-savvy users were still able to download and install it after changing the security settings on their devices.
“The effect of this is that there is no longer a free and open social media company or site for any American to get on any longer,” Nunes said. “Poof, it’s gone.”
Amazon claimed Parler was “unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others,” posing “a very real risk to public safety”. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Parler does not aggressively moderate users’ posts according to a set of “community guidelines”.
Unintended Consequences
On Friday Parler stormed to the number one spot on Apple’s app store after Twitter deleted President Donald Trump’s account — which had some 88 million followers — in the wake of last Wednesday’s occupation of the US Capitol building in Washington DC by protesters attempting to disrupt the confirmation of Democratic candidate Joe Biden as president-elect by Congress.
Twitter shares tumbled by 12 per cent on the stock markets on Monday, losing $5 billion in value after Trump supporters left the site in droves. One pro-Trump ‘channel’ on Russian-founded messaging app Telegram had gained almost 44,000 subscribers by Monday afternoon, just two days after it was created.
Republicans and conservative media figures raised the alarm last week after tens of thousands of their Twitter followers mysteriously disappeared. House Democrats claimed those followers were “neo-Nazis”, “insurrectionists” and “terrorists” who Twitter had purged. But left-wing British broadcaster and former MP George Galloway experienced the same phenomenon.
“Republicans have no way to communicate,” Nunes said, “and it doesn’t even matter if you’re a Republican or conservative.”
Sunday’s New York Post editorial declared: “Big Tech is a cartel, and must be regulated.”
Blanket Ban
Parler CEO John Matze revealed on Sunday not only had the three tech leviathans united to shut down his company, but every firm providing services to the site had abandoned it.
“They made an attempt to not only kill the app, but to actually destroy the entire company,” Matze said. “And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day.”
French Government “Shocked” at Twitter Banning of Trump
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | January 11, 2021
The French government has echoed Angela Merkel’s sentiment in saying it is “shocked” at Twitter’s banning of President Trump, asserting that Big Tech is a threat to democracy.
Junior Minister for European Union Affairs Clement Beaune said the decision to silence Trump proved the need for Big Tech platforms to be tightly regulated.
“This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” he told Bloomberg TV on Monday. “There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms.”
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire also said that “the digital oligarchy” was “one of the threats” to democracy and should be reigned in by the state.
As we highlighted earlier, the German government also warned that Big Tech’s deplatforming of Trump set a very dangerous precedent.
Communicating via a spokesman, Chancellor Angela Merkel called the move “problematic,” adding that social media giants shouldn’t have the power to decide who has the right to free speech.
“This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” said the statement.
While Republicans were completely toothless in their efforts to control Big Tech during Trump’s administration, Poland could be set to pass a law that would fine social media companies $2.2 million a pop for censoring lawful free speech.
“In the event of removal or blockage, a complaint can be sent to the platform, which will have 24 hours to consider it. Within 48 hours of the decision, the user will be able to file a petition to the court for the return of access. The court will consider complaints within seven days of receipt and the entire process is to be electronic,” reported Poland In.
Tech guru Durov warns Apple & Google pose threat to freedom, as Russian Senator says Trump Twitter ban a challenge to sovereignty
RT | January 11, 2021
The move by US Tech companies to censor US President Donald Trump has raised concern in Russia, with politicians and IT industry figures expressing concerns about it, and about its potential implications for political freedoms.
Alexey Pushkov, a prominent Senator and Chairman of the Federation Council on Information Policy and Media Relations warned on Sunday that the “diktat of internet giants” set a dangerous precedent. In a message posted to his official Telegram channel, the politician added that Moscow would “draw serious conclusions from the blocking of Trump by US social network conglomerates. Almost totally depending on foreign internet platforms is incompatible with the sovereignty of the country,” he argued.
However, the founder of the Russian-created Telegram messaging service, Pavel Durov, has now warned that “the Apple-Google duopoly poses a much bigger problem for freedoms than Twitter.” Of the two, he said, Silicon Valley stalwart Apple, worth more than $1.3 trillion, was the most worrying.
This, he suggests, is “because it can completely restrict which apps you use.” Over the weekend, the tech giant announced it would ban social media service Parler from its iOS store over apparent breaches to its guidelines. Telegram, which says it prioritizes the right to free speech more than its rivals, has become popular with Trump and his supporters since the president was indefinitely suspended from Twitter and Facebook. Telegram’s Durov added that his company was working on a web-based app as a contingency, should it become the next target of an App Store ban.
The Telegram founder, who first made his name with Russia’s top social network VK, also urged smartphone users to make the switch to the Android operating system, where users have more control over what they can install and use. This, he said, is “the least they can do to retain access to a free flow of information.”
In November, Russia’s media watchdog warned Google, and its subsidiary YouTube, over perceived censorship of content from the country’s media organizations. The row was sparked by the California-based streaming service’s decision to label an RT documentary on American right-wing militias as “extremist.” Roskomnadzor, the federal communications agency, warned that “cases of the administration of the YouTube video hosting service blocking, labelling, warning, consent and other restrictions with respect to materials of Russian media and journalists have become more frequent.”
Parler goes offline as Amazon pulls the plug on the conservative social network
Donald Trump has faced a near-total removal from social media sites since facing accusations that he’d encouraged his supporters to storm Washington’s Capitol building last Wednesday. Four protesters and one police officer are said to have lost their lives in the violent scenes. While he urged the activists to “go home,” the president reiterated claims that November’s election had been rigged, and told demonstrators that “we love you. You’re very special.”
As well as his removal from Twitter and Facebook, Trump has since faced action from platforms including Instagram, Google, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat and Pinterest.
Trump’s blanket ban from social media proves the information war is over
By Helen Buyniski | RT | January 9, 2021
US President Donald Trump has been banned from most social media platforms, supposedly for inciting riots at the Capitol. But with no one capable of holding the tech behemoths to account, even fervent Trump-haters should worry.
Twitter permanently banned the president from its platform on Friday, following in the footsteps of Facebook, Snapchat, Twitch, and other platforms that used Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol as an excuse to do what much of Silicon Valley has wanted to do for years.
But it wasn’t Trump’s on-platform conduct that was the problem, according to Twitter – it was “how [his tweets] are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter,” a post on the company’s blog declared on Friday. The platform then interpreted two seemingly innocuous tweets – regarding not attending Democrat President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration and giving his fans a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” – as a call to arms directed at his supporters, far out-crazying the so-called “conspiracy theorists” Twitter has also sought to deplatform.
Logically speaking, it’s impossible for anyone – especially a public figure like Trump – to control how his words are being interpreted, or even who’s reading them to begin with. For Twitter to translate the president’s praise of his supporters and promise not to attend his successor’s inauguration into a call for violence requires a full-on break with reality.
But platforms like Twitter, and especially Facebook, have been declaring all-out war on reality for years now, merely ramping up hostilities in the wake of the Capitol riot. On Facebook, even just sharing footage of Wednesday’s riot was off-limits, as was posting Trump’s speech to his supporters. Any call for further protests, no matter how peaceful, was also targeted for removal.
These platforms’ notorious echo chambers have no room for dissenting narratives, whether it concerns the Capitol protests or the growing contingent of Covid-19 dissenters crying foul as lockdowns drag on (and cases go up) with no end in sight. And while a Trump-scale individual may be able to create their own means of addressing the people, thousands of others have been wiped out over the past year for political or public-health wrongthink.
The narrative managers are unlikely to stop at wiping their ideological nemeses off the internet, either.
Perhaps emboldened by social media’s iron-fisted approach to building its own alternate reality, New Jersey assemblyman Paul Moriarty has been lobbying cable TV providers to stop carrying conservative channels like Newsmax, OANN, and Fox News.
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R) had a book deal revoked for challenging the results of November’s elections.
Social media, once sold as a tool for promoting democracy and giving ordinary people a voice they previously lacked, revealed its true identity over the course of 2020. Whether attempting to delete records of an entire event, as Facebook has done with the Capitol protests, or memory-holing inconvenient facts about the Covid-19 pandemic, the ‘new and improved’ reality crafted by the media establishment provides the ideal foundation for the police state being constructed around the human mind.
The average person might go through life unaware this invisible thought-barrier is even there – but anyone who steps out of line is quickly zapped back into obedience. And if they refuse to cooperate even then? Deplatforming, in an age where face-to-face contact has gone the way of the dodo, is the modern equivalent of ‘disappearing’ dissidents in broad daylight.
Indeed, these platforms have merged with government in too many ways to count here. Those who express political ‘wrongthink’ online aren’t just disappeared from the digital public square – they can be barred from supposedly apolitical apps like AirBnB, or even denied the use of their bank accounts.
The US constitution does not permit the government to punish individuals who aren’t even suspected of committing a crime. Nor does it permit the suppression of lawful speech or allow authorities to paw through private citizens’ lives in the hope of turning up something incriminating. But private corporations – as the neoliberal center never tires of reminding us – can do what they like, including depriving Americans of their First and Fourth Amendment rights. Such capabilities explain why Washington has looked the other way for so many years while Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Amazon became preposterously huge, insanely profitable monopolies.
But the joke’s on the government, in this case. With hundreds of billions of dollars at their disposal, and a user-base trained to embrace their mental slavery with a positively Pavlovian response, Big Tech seems to have realized it no longer has to pretend to play nice with Big Government.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Twitter Bans Trump! What’s Next?
By Stephen Lendman | January 9, 2021
Dark forces against an open, free, fair society pushed for silencing Trump.
Twitter complied. Facebook and perhaps other significant social media may be next.
Who’ll next be censored and silenced?
Will muckraking, investigative, truth-telling journalists be banned by Twitter and other social media?
Will everyone diverging from the falsified official narrative face online banishment across the board?
Will cutting edge websites I and many others follow no longer be accessible ahead, including my own?
Will my writing and by others I respect and follow be criminalized if continued?
GW Bush once calling the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper” is reality as tyranny incrementally replaces the rule of law in the US.
It began happening post-state-sponsored 9/11, especially since last year to the present and what may lie ahead.
Daniel Ellsberg explained the ominous threat revealed by releasing the Pentagon Papers.
Arundhati Roy called them “mesmerizing, not as documentation of the history of the US war in Indochina, but as insight into the minds of (diabolical) men (and women) who planned and executed it.”
The Pentagon Papers exposed US war on humanity abroad.
Police state America wages it at home.
Most Americans are unaware of what’s going on and the ominous threat it poses — notably looking ahead to what may follow what’s happening now.
The road to tyranny moves incrementally toward becoming full-blown.
How it happened in Nazi Germany may be replicated in the US — wrapped in the American flag for mass deception.
Ellsberg called 9/11 — followed by Bush/Cheney’s contempt for the rule of law — “a coup (with another to come from) the next 9/11,” adding:
What’s happening is “a steady assault on every fundamental (aspect) of our Constitution (to create) an executive government (to) rule by (police state) decree.”
So far it’s not with jackboots in the streets. It’s by Big Government in cahoots with Big Media manipulation of the public mind and more.
In includes censorship, what I call the new abnormal.
Dark forces in cahoots with social media perhaps intend banning online content entirely that diverges from the official falsified narrative.
Friday I stressed that if social media can deny a US president his First Amendment rights, will state approved censorship on everyone diverging from the official narrative become the new abnormal?
Will truth-telling on vital issues be criminalized?
Will independent voices be threatened, intimidated, and mistreated like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and other heroic whistleblowers?
Will full-blown tyranny ahead permit no challenges to diabolical aims of US dark forces — enforced by police state harshness?
The US Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees speech, media and academic freedom.
If lost, all other rights are threatened with abolition. Tyrannical rule will supersede the rule of law.
On June 30, 1971, the US Supreme Court ruled that the NYT and Washington Post were legally permitted to publish material in the Pentagon Papers.
A per curiam statement (meaning by the court, not a single justice) said the following:
“Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.”
The government “thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling upheld First Amendment rights, stating:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Banning Trump by Twitter with perhaps other social media to follow flagrantly breached First Amendment rights and the High Court’s ruling that upheld them.
It affirmed the constitutional right to speak or publish truthful information in the public interest no matter how it was obtained.
Britain’s mistreatment of Julian Assange on orders from Washington flagrantly breached the US First Amendment — upheld by the US Supreme Court numerous times.
In its Pentagon Papers ruling, Justice Hugo Black said the following:
The government’s injunction to prohibit publication by the NYT and Washington Post “should have been vacated without oral argument when the cases were first presented,” adding:
“(E)very moment’s continuance of the injunctions… amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment.”
“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.”
“The government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government.”
“The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.”
“Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
“And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people…”
“(W)e are asked to hold that… the executive b ranch, the Congress, and the judiciary can make laws… abridging freedom of the press in the name of ‘national security.’ ”
Justice William Brennan argued that publication of the Pentagon Papers was a First Amendment right.
So did Justice Thurgood Marshall, adding:
The term “national security” is too broad and ill-defined to be used as justification to restrain publication of information in the public interest.
The right of speech, press, and academic freedoms is fundamental in a society claiming to be free.
I profoundly condemn most Trump actions throughout his tenure.
I strongly disagree with and reject most of his views.
But I defend his constitutional right to express them on social media, in speeches, on television, and other public remarks — no matter how contrary to my own.
That’s what the rule of law in an open, free and fair society is all about.
Without the right of unstricted free expression in all forms — no matter how offensive to some — a nation safe and fit to live in no longer exists.
That’s the ominous state of today’s USA.
Silencing Trump may be prelude to making it the police state law of the land on the fabricated pretext of national security and/or whatever other phony pretext(s) dark forces cook up to justify what’s unjustifiable.
James Madison once called “(t)he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… the definition of tyranny.”
When rule of the people becomes of, by, and for privileged interests at the expense of exploited and silenced others, tyranny is the law of the land.
Things today are at an ominous crossroads.
If left unchecked, the nation I grew up in long ago no longer will exist — replaced by polar opposite what just societies most cherish.
Martin Niemoller’s long ago ominous warning is relevant today in the US, saying:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.”
“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.”
“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.”
“Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
First they enacted police state laws in the US post-state-sponsored 9/11.
Then came 9/11 2.0 last year — followed by banning a US president’s free expression rights on social media.
Is the the path Niemoller warned about now followed by US dark forces?
Are things well along toward abolishing America as once existed, warts and all?
Is there time to stop and reverse what’s going on?
Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said the following:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”
“Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
I’ve stressed many times that ordinary people have power when they use it.
Now’s the time for its use to save what otherwise may be permanently lost.
A Final Comment
Below is Twitter’s attempt to unjustifiably justify Trump’s “permanent suspension” of his First Amendment rights, saying:
“(W)e have permanently suspended (his) account due to the risk of further incitement of violence (sic).”
In response to Trump’s tweet that he “will not be going to the inauguration on January 20,” Twitter falsely claimed the following:
His tweet “is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and is seen as him disavowing his previous claim made via two Tweets…that there would be an ‘orderly transition’ on January 20th (sic).”
His tweet “may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the inauguration would be a ‘safe’ target, as he will not be attending (sic).”
The above claims defy and reinvent reality.
Nothing Trump tweeted, otherwise stated, or implied encouraged violence on Capitol Hill last Wednesday or possibly ahead.
Claiming otherwise by Twitter and other media reinvented reality to unjustifiably blame Trump for what he had nothing to do with — followed by Twitter’s unconstitutional ban on DJT.
Was its action a shot across the bow warning against others using its platform?
Henceforth will everyone’s views that conflict with the official narrative be silenced by Twitter and other social media?
With unilateral censorship of a sitting US president, Big Tech has proven it’s more powerful than any government
By Helen Buyniski | RT | January 8, 2021
Big Tech’s moves to muscle President Donald Trump off social media have been heralded by some as victory. But a corporate-run state with politicians serving as mere figureheads amounts to the very fascism they claim to oppose.
The smug, palpable air of ‘mission accomplished’ emanating from Facebook, Twitter and Google in the weeks after the media called November’s election for Democrat Joe Biden has been hard to ignore. Thanks to an iron grip on the political narrative and the heavy-handed suppression of any influential dissenting voices, these insanely wealthy companies and their partners in the media establishment have managed to successfully upend what was left of the US’ democratic process.
In short, they have reason to celebrate, having pulled off the first successful national-level coup-by-media in US history. And better yet — for them at least — having helped the ‘right’ guy win, they won’t have to answer to any bogus charges of Russian collusion this time around. Indeed, no less than the Department of Homeland Security came forward to declare the vote the most secure in US history — a baffling claim at best, given the same officials have spent months insisting foreign infiltration supposedly had democracy hanging by a thread.
The epic pearl-clutching that followed Wednesday’s march on the Capitol is almost guaranteed to result in further restrictions on online speech — and as many observers noted, that’s just how Big Tech and Big Brother want it. No explanations have been forthcoming as to why the Capitol was largely unguarded during the protests, even though Trump had for weeks been calling on his followers to stage “wild” demonstrations on that day. Nor was it clear why Mayor Muriel Bowser waited so long before sending in police and the military to rein in the chaos.
The stage seemed to have been deliberately set for disaster, just the sort of spectacle a clever Big Business-Big Tech axis needs to terrify the masses into believing a full-on insurrection is afoot. The only real surprise in Wednesday’s events is that more people weren’t killed — but that’s where the media came in, wielding luridly detailed descriptions and photographing the most bizarrely-attired figures in the group.
By distracting the public, attributing the violence that claimed five lives to the ubiquitous Radicalized Domestic Extremists™ and banning an ever-growing number of discussion topics, Facebook, Twitter, and Google can dodge a total repeal of Section 230 liability protections and live to blanket the nation in propaganda another day. Never mind the absence of visible ‘white supremacists,’ Nazis, and other undesirables supposedly leading the pro-Trump contingent — it’s always possible to Photoshop in a Nazi insignia or 12 in post.
Ultimately, the narrative diverges from reality just enough to make its point, fingering social media as the culprit, and duping the average American into supporting further incursions on their First Amendment freedoms. The moral of the story becomes “Stop thinking, before someone gets hurt.”
And should the relationship sour, and politicians want their power back? Big Tech can easily scuttle any legislative attempts to break up its monopoly merely by threatening to expose the secrets of the dozens of government agencies that have their data stored in the cloud. Companies like Facebook and Twitter, Amazon and Google have what’s left of American ‘democracy’ by the proverbial balls, and should some crusading politician attempt to disrupt their cozy relationship, they’d almost certainly live to regret it.
It would take just one inconvenient ‘leak’ to turn the public against any Luddite savior attempting to pry Big Tech’s boot off American necks. These firms’ control of the media is so airtight that a manufactured ‘scandal’ could be cooked up and launched into cyberspace in a matter of hours. Such retaliation would serve the dual purpose of destroying the political crusader’s career and reminding other would-be do-gooders not to do anything foolish — like fighting to defend one’s own country against the megacorporations holding it hostage.
By blocking Trump from even posting on Facebook and live-streaming platform Twitch – and only recently allowed back into his Twitter account with a “final warning” after a 12-hour lockout – Big Tech has made it clear they’re no longer satisfied with a mere monopoly over one of the few profitable industries left in the US. They won’t stop accumulating power until they run politics, from the presidency to the smallest local election. With Wednesday’s riots, the carefully-choreographed dance between tech execs and the politicians who do their bidding has been given the green light to ascend to the next level. Deplatforming Trump is only the beginning of a megalomaniacal crusade against all those who would question a government by the algorithms, of the algorithms, and for the algorithms.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Twitter Says It Will REMOVE All Posts Claiming Vaccines Can Harm People
By Steve Watson | Summit News | December 17, 2020
Twitter has declared that it will remove all posts that suggest there are any “adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations,” despite reports already emerging of health workers getting sick from taking Pfizer’s coronavirus shot.
Twitter announced that beginning next week it will memory-hole any posts that “invoke a deliberate conspiracy” or “advance harmful, false, or misleading narratives” about vaccines.
“Using a combination of technology and human review, we will begin enforcing this updated policy on December 21, and expanding our actions during the following weeks,” the company proclaimed.
Twitter added that it will be monitoring posts about vaccinations “in close consultation with local, national, and global public health authorities around the world.”
The tech company will also wipe any posts that suggest vaccines “are used to intentionally cause harm,” or “control populations,” or are “unnecessary.”
The statement also notes that posts will be scrubbed if they contain “false claims which have been widely debunked about the adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations.”
Exactly what “debunked” means was not clarified. Presumably it means any claims about vaccines that Twitter disagrees with.
The New York Times and others reported Wednesday that healthcare workers in Alaska have been hospitalized with a serious allergic reaction after taking Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.
The development follows reports last week from Britain where some healthcare workers reported serious allergic reactions to the vaccine, prompting Britain’s medical regulator to issue a warning for people with a history of allergies not to take the shot.
There is a mountain of documented evidence that some vaccines can cause harm and have adverse effects, and compared to previous vaccines, the coronavirus shot is relatively untested, indeed six people even DIED during the rush to develop it.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators also revealed that some people who got Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine during its trial have since developed Bell’s palsy, a form of facial paralysis.
Both the US and UK governments have rolled out technology specifically to monitor adverse effects of the vaccine, because they know there will be many, many cases.
Yet Twitter appears to be decreeing that any suggestion the shot could cause damage will be met with strict censorship.
Where it cannot prove something has been “debunked” and remove the post entirely, Twitter says it intends to attach “warning” labels to tweets that “advance unsubstantiated rumours, disputed claims, as well as incomplete or out-of-context information about vaccines.”
Last month, Twitter declared that it will send warnings to everyone who likes a post the company deems to contain “misleading information”.
The fascist neo-left and the Trump Factor
By Ghassan Kadi for the Saker Blog | November 21, 2020
Nearly three weeks after the American elections, Americans and the world in general, are still none-the-wiser; not knowing who really won and if the votes have all been legitimate or otherwise.
And the man who is supposedly trying to make America respectable again, yes, Joe Biden, started his ‘tenure’ ironically by presenting his own disrespect by breaking the law and declaring himself as ‘president elect’ and establishing an illegal entity in the name of the ‘Office of President-Elect’.
There are serious accusations that allege that dead people have voted, that boxes of late illegal ballots (all voting for Biden) suddenly appeared from no-where, that the Dominion machines have been deliberately rigged in a manner that favoured Biden, that ballot observers from the Trump camp were not allowed to scrutineer, and much more.
Whilst all of the above points are considered allegations from the legal point of view, the Democrat camp should not be concerned at all if it has nothing to hide. If anything, if it is serious about restoring America’s respect in the eyes of the world, it should encourage transparency and investigations that prove without a single speck of doubt that they are all false. But that same camp that refused the legitimate results of a Trump win four years ago and then fabricated stories like Russiagate and others, is now urging the whole world to believe that the alleged Biden win is legitimate and that there was no interference.
Apart from allegations, what each of us knows for fact is that the media, especially social media, especially Facebook and Twitter have been instrumental in restricting and censoring posts and comments that favour Trump. At the same time, they implemented a blackout relating to the serious allegations of corruption about Biden and his family. If this is not interference in the election results, then what is?
Given the reach and power of social media, and given that most people are not interested in fact-finding, Facebook and Twitter have been engaged in a deliberate campaign of choosing what they allowed to be published and preventing others based on and only on their political views vis-à-vis the American elections.
Once the dust settles one way or the other, if there is any justice left in this world, social media personnel who have forged and implemented those policies must face trial.
What is most ironic about this whole new world that is everything but brave, is that the filthy rich and corrupt are cloaking themselves with the attire of the Left. There is really nothing left of the original Left in today’s Left.
Many, if not most of today’s ”Lefties” are inclined towards the current version of the political Left without really discerning that much has changed since the days of Castro and Guevara.
Today’s Left does not represent the working class.
Today’s Left is not concerned with achieving social justice.
Today’s Left is not concerned with ending capitalism and feudalism.
Today’s Neo-Left, is the consortium of globalists who own sweat shops in developing countries. They are the war-mongers, the arms dealers, the foot soldiers of thought police and they insist that your six-year-old children and grandchildren must learn about subjects like gender fluidity instead of learning history.
The devolution of the former political Left has been taking place for at least three decades, since the collapse of the USSR perhaps and the emergence of the so-called ‘New World Order’. But the 2016 Trump election has fast-tracked the process. George Soros who has an axe to grind with Communism became overnight the principle benefactor of most post-USSR Left movements. For better or for worse, it was as if he wanted to make sure that he contained the Left in a manner that deviates it from its original ideology. But he is not alone, and he is probably not doing this only because of political conviction. His ‘bigger’ partners, whether he is aware of their presence or not, have got a much bigger fish to fry; the fish of global control.
But is globalism what it appears to mean or is it a new form of hegemony? Let us not get into this herein. This will be the subject of the next article. Enough to say that what seems to surface from the actions and agendas of globalists is that they are adamant about destroying Western values; including democracy.
When my wife and I were in Russia on the 70th Anniversary of Victory over Nazi Germany, we were in total awe watching the Eternal Regiment on Nevski Prospect in St. Petersburg. Men and women proudly, silently and dignifiedly marching carrying photos of family members who perished fighting the Nazi malice. What was most amazing was seeing young boys and girls giving flowers to the elderly as a mark of respect. This is because students in Russia study history. The young generations must never take for granted the privileges they have. If they do not understand and respect the sacrifices of their forebears, they will never be able to realize what their own obligations are for today and the future. Many Americans do not know what the 4th of July stands for any more than they know how many States there are in the Union. Children growing up in the West have no idea, no idea at all, how and why they live in affluent countries with public services and government-financed welfare.
And when the million man/woman march was over many hours after it started, we could not see a single empty drink can dumped on the street, not even cigarette butts. And then we remembered that a few days earlier when we were in Moscow admiring among other things, the subway/metro stations, we did not witness any evidence of vandalism or graffiti either on the carriages or in the stations.
A far cry from what we see in the West, because to be proud of who one is has become taboo in the West; courtesy the neo-Left and their henchmen.
Personally, I used to feel concerned of what the armed Right-wing Evangelicals might do if they have it their way. But despite their heavy public display of weapons, I didn’t see any evidence to show that they have taken to the streets for the purpose destroying shops and looting. In saying this, and I am not saying that the pro-Trump militias are incapable of perpetrating organized violence, but recently thus far they haven’t. If anything, with all the BLM-associated violence and the attacks Trump supporters have recently faced, the armed conservatives have thus far displayed a huge degree of self-control and abidance by the rules of the law. They argue that their presence is to protect private and public property, and evidence seems to stack up in their favour.
On the other hand, and despite the bias of mainstream media, videos have emerged showing BLM supporters not only looting, but also terrorizing those who disagree with them and refuse to put their fist up in show of support.
Today’s Neo-Left activists are the ones using Nazi tactics; not the other way around. They are the controlled opposition and the foot soldiers of the thought-police; and these are undeniable facts. If anything, the Trump factor has enhanced their exposure.
And if you resurrect Guevara and catapult him into today’s political world without giving him a crash refresher course, he would not know which side of the political divide is which. If anything, he may think that it is the other way around.
In the event of a Biden win that Trump’s supporters may see as unfair, they may be driven to become violent, I don’t know. What I do know is that I have seen serious and concerning rowdy violent behaviour from the Left that makes me now feel that I am more fearful of organizations such as Extinction Rebellion than I am from the armed Evangelicals.
When the late and great Martin Luther King Jr. made his historic ‘I have a dream’ speech, he did not dream of a day when angry mobs would use the excuse of human rights in order to loot and pillage, gang attack supporters of their political opponents, and break the law and Constitution.
And when John Lennon sang ‘Give Peace a Chance’ and ‘Imagine’, he was hoping that one day political leaders would take heed and start putting their hearts before what they can achieve militarily.
Among other things, the thing with Trump is that he is/was not a politician. What drove him from being a profiteering tycoon to a man who wants to end American wars in the world is not something I can explain or understand. Clearly though, even if he is merely running America as a corporation, he must realize that it is not in America’s interests to be constantly engaged in expensive wars that do not have any benefit for America itself. If this is pragmatism from a profit-and-loss business perspective, then I don’t have any problems with this. I want to see American troops pulling out of conflict regions in the world. They have no business in Japan, South Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq and my beloved Syria to name a few places.
The thing about Trump is that he is not even a typical die-hard Republican. The archetypal Republicans are not a bunch of ‘nice guys’ either. How can anyone forget the legacy of the GOP? How can we forget George W Bush’s war on Iraq and his lies about the alleged Iraqi WMD’s? And what about his gang of infamous neo-cons; Perle, and Wolfowitz; not to forget Cheney, McCain, and many more from the gung-ho Republican Right that invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq, killed at least a million civilians and only ended up creating more problems than the ones they claimed they needed to resolve?
Whether Trump wins or loses the legal battle against what looks like a huge body of evidence of electoral fraud at different levels, between now and January the 20th 2021, unlike what the social media brainwashers want people to think and believe, he is not a ‘presidential candidate’, he remains to be the President of the United States of America and he remains to be the Commander in Chief.
To this effect, in as much as the POTUS is domestically building up a huge legal case against the alleged win of Biden, he equally seems to be preparing for the worst-case scenario on international matters. He is working on the contingencies of losing by seemingly making serious efforts into ending wars and the presence of American troops overseas. May he be successful doing this if he is true to his word.
But Mr. President, if you really want to clean up the slate as much as possible in case you lose the legal battle against the corrupt who serve the Deep State, you must then remember that partial withdrawals do not end wars. A drawdown is not a withdrawal. Stand by your promise and let history festoon you as the man who ended all of America’s wars overseas. For even if you leave one soldier, yes Mr. President, one single American soldier on the soil of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or any other place on earth where his presence is not legitimately requested by the people of that land, then you will be remembered in history as the man who faked withdrawals of American troops; and you despise fake actions Mr. President, don’t you?
Last but not least Mr. President, you must at least stop the oil theft from Syria, repeal the Caesar Act, and pardon Assange.
Assange, Mr. President, is the victim of your enemies. His ‘crime’ was to expose the dirty works of Hillary. How can you not drop all charges against him?
And Mr. President, should you win the legal battle and prove that your opponents have cheated the public, you MUST then clean up the swamp with an iron fist and a high pressure hose. Zuckerberg, the Clintons, the Bidens, CNN, as well as officials that helped fabricate stories about you. The whole gamut of filthy lying manipulators must face justice and the next four years will be a case of now or never.
The electoral issues are something for the American legal system to decide; provided that the system continues to have the power to reach a decision that is lawful and not dictated by the party machine of the Democrats, their cohorts and henchmen with Facebook, Twitter and Google being on the top of the list.
Martin Luther King Jr. would now be saying I’m having a nightmare, I am having a nightmare because in the name of social justice, in my name, protestors are attacked, shops are looted and elections are getting rigged.
The failings of the Neo-Left do not mean that the neo-Right, Trumpism, is always or even necessarily sometimes right by default. What is pertinent is that the choice between the former and traditional Right and Left has now morphed into a choice of discerning right from wrong, and it is the Neo-Left activists who are behaving like Fascists, courtesy the Trump factor.
UK Labour Party demands online crackdown on ‘anti-vax disinformation’ ahead of Covid-19 vaccine rollout
RT | November 15, 2020
With the UK preparing for a Covid-19 vaccine rollout, the Labour Party is calling for emergency censorship legislation to punish social-media companies if they allow posting of what it considers to be “anti-vax disinformation.”
“Social-media companies have a pitiful record of tackling disinformation,” shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens said Sunday on Twitter.
“The government needs to stop dragging its heels and force companies to remove this dangerous content ahead of the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.”
Stevens and Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, have co-authored a letter demanding that the government impose financial and criminal penalties on social-media platforms that fail to censor anti-vaccine posts.
The government must “deal with some of the dangerous nonsense, nonsensical anti-vax stuff that we’ve seen spreading on social media, which erodes trust in the vaccine,” Ashworth said. He added that the government will need “strong public-health messaging” to ensure that legitimate questions are answered and fears are allayed.
Facebook, Twitter and Google agreed last week to help the UK’s government blunt the spread of vaccine misinformation and disinformation. The companies promised to help spread government-promoted messaging about vaccine safety and to ensure quick response to content that has been flagged by health officials. They also agreed to block people from profiting on anti-vaccine content. But Stevens and Ashworth said that anti-vax groups that were flagged months ago to social-media platforms remain active.
The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and it aims to get emergency approval to start distribution by next month. But Labour’s push to censor discussion that it deems false is raising concern that proper scrutiny of the vaccine won’t be allowed in a country that was forced to pay settlements to patients who suffered brain damage resulting from the H1N1 vaccine in 2009.
“This is scary,” writer Sue Cook tweeted. “Censorship? If we objectively want to investigate issues around the safety of a particular vaccination before rolling it out, surely that’s good. It is not a matter of being ‘anti-vax.’”
Former Labour MP Ruth Smeeth, who now heads a free-speech group called the Index on Censorship, argued that “rational argument will be lost” if anti-vaccine discussion is pushed underground. “Surely the answer isn’t to ban the anti-vaxxers but to explain why they are wrong on every available platform,” she said.
Twitter Doubles Down On Censorship With Renewed Warnings On Trump Tweets
By JonathanTurley | November 4, 2020
We have been discussing the rising private censorship on the Internet demanded by Democratic leaders and meted out by companies like Twitter and Facebook. The original purpose of the Internet as a free and robust space for political and social expression is under attack as politicians demand greater levels of control to combat “disinformation.”
Indeed, Biden adviser Pete Buttigieg on Election Day demanded more penalties for companies not stopping “inciting material,” a subjective term left intentionally undefined. This drumbeat for censorship was amplified on Election Day when Twitter again hit tweets from President Donald Trump with warnings of disinformation. The tweets were pure political speech and Twitter again showed that it is now fully committed to biased regulation of speech between users of its service.
I have criticized President Trump’s rhetoric in the election about “stealing” the election. However, that is hyperbolic political speech. Biden supporters, including leaders like House Whip James Clyburn, have been saying that Trump was stealing the election through voter suppression. They have not been hit with Twitter warnings. Yet, Trump was immediately hit when he sent a Twitter post that Democrats were trying to “steal” the election: “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!”
I have previously objected to such regulation of speech. What is most disturbing is how liberals have embraced censorship and even declared that “China was right” on Internet controls. Many Democrats have fallen back on the false narrative that the First Amendment does not regulated private companies so this is not an attack on free speech. Free speech is a human right that is not solely based or exclusively defined by the First Amendment. Censorship by Internet companies is a “Little Brother” threat long discussed by free speech advocates. Some may willingly embrace corporate speech controls but it is still a denial of free speech.
This is why I recently described myself as an Internet Originalist:
The alternative is “internet originalism” — no censorship. If social media companies returned to their original roles, there would be no slippery slope of political bias or opportunism; they would assume the same status as telephone companies. We do not need companies to protect us from harmful or “misleading” thoughts. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not approved speech.
If Pelosi demanded that Verizon or Sprint interrupt calls to stop people saying false or misleading things, the public would be outraged. Twitter serves the same communicative function between consenting parties; it simply allows thousands of people to participate in such digital exchanges. Those people do not sign up to exchange thoughts only to have Dorsey or some other internet overlord monitor their conversations and “protect” them from errant or harmful thoughts.
The actions by Twitter and Facebook on Election Day were reprehensible and wrong. What is so disturbing is that so many Democrats have become enablers of such corporate speech controls by the giant tech companies.
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Israeli rabbi says ‘kill everyone in Gaza, including babies’
The Cradle | March 24, 2024
Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, head of the Shirat Moshe yeshiva (religious school) in the occupied city of Jaffa, called on the Israeli army to kill everyone in Gaza, including babies.
During a conference on 8 March, Mali said that “according to the halachic principle (a religious-ethical system of legal reasoning in Judaism), all residents of Gaza must be killed.”
When asked during the conference if babies should be killed as well, he said: “The same thing. You can’t be clever with the Torah. Today he’s a baby, tomorrow he’s a fighter. There are no questions here. Today’s terrorists were previously 8-year-old children.”
“Those who create the terrorists” should also be killed, he said in reference to women in Gaza.
The Rabbi went on to explain that Israel’s war on Gaza is a “Mitzvah war,” which is defined as a war of “commandment” in Jewish tradition. According to Jewish law, this kind of war does not require permission from a “Sanhedrin,” also known as a council or assembly, such as the war against Amalek – previously declared in a biblical reference by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the start of the war on Gaza.
“There is a difference between a civilian population in other places and a civilian population in Gaza. In Gaza, according to estimates, 95 to 98 percent want us destroyed.”
“Since this is a sensitive issue, and I was told that it is being uploaded on the Internet, I want to be ahead of the curve and say that the bottom line is that you have to do exactly what is said in the IDF’s order,” Mali added.
The rabbi’s students in the Shirat Moshe yeshiva serve in the Israeli army. The Yeshiva is sponsored by the Israeli government. … Full article
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