Carl,
Although I agree about Donald Trump, I don't think that this stuff is related
to him. I think that this is what our national security state, partnered with
the big tech companies, has been doing for at least nineteen years, since the
attacks on 9/11. This is what Yasha Levine and a whole bunch of other folks
have been writing books and articles about. And this became particularly
obvious when the US involved itself in the coup in Ukraine and began pushing
anti Russian propaganda much more than it had done previously. Things have been
getting much worse, more quickly. Remember that I've been talking about the
changes in how Democracy Now covers stories and in what they cover? No one is
immune from the pressure from the elites and the deep state. Remember how Amy
Goodman used to interview Julian Assange? When is the last time that his name
has been mentioned on that program? Did they even cover how he was treated in
the Ecuadorian embassy after the change in government leadership or his arrest
or what has happened with his case? Do you think all of that has been omitted
by accident? And that has nothing to do with Trump. Patrick Coburn who is a
British investigative reporter and who covers the Mid East, tells about what he
sees honestly. He was last on Democracy now, talking about Syria in 2011 or
2012, and he hasn't been back since. He's still reporting. Aaron Mate writes
about Russiagate. He was once a junior reporter for Democracy now, as was
Jeremy Scahill. Even The Nation was brave enough to print one of Aaron's
articles about Russiagate, but that's because the husband of its editor is a
Russia expert who is one of the few people willing to tell the truth about
Russia. Amy won't even have Aaron back on her program. I'm just using Democracy
Now as an example of how far things have gone. Little by little, everything is
being censored and controlled. And this is happening to our last hope in
government, the renegade left wing young house members. Every supposedly left
of center person whose stuff I read or whom I hear, except for a tiny minority,
gives due respect to the accepted orthodoxy that Russia is an enemy, as is
Iran, and that China is a competitor, and that somehow, they are authoritarian
countries who threaten us by their existence and in order to protect our
security, we need to surround and isolate them. They are interfering with us,
with our social media, with our elections, and we are innocent victims who
stand for freedom and liberty. And Trump weakened us by not signing that TPP
and by sounding friendly to Putin. Trump is a meglo maniac and they know he's
crazy. But they are power mad and will use him or any other president like
Reagan or Obama or anyone else they can as a symbol so that the US can rule the
world. I believe that the reason they didn't get rid of Trump at the start,
even though they knew how dangerous he is, is that they believed they could use
our fear of him to manipulate us into allowing them to do whatever they
pleased, to us and all of the other people in the world.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 6:49 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Popular Viral Video Firm Sues Facebook over
Russian Propaganda Label
This all becomes very complex. One thing I do know, however, is that the sort
of cut throat and negative trashing we see on the part of Donald Trump and his
Trumpeteers, reflects the interaction among billionaires in the private sector.
It might not seem very nice, but it's the way the game is played. Folks
wanting to jump in should understand the rules before taking the plunge.
And in case anyone thinks Donald Trump is crazy...psychotic perhaps, but not
crazy, they should be warned that this is the game Donald Trump understands,
and has played all his life.
Beware! Donald Trump could very well be the first Emperor of the American
Empire...and also he could be the last.
Carl Jarvis
Carl Jarvis
On 8/15/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Popular Viral Video Firm Sues Facebook over Russian Propaganda Label
The company behind In The Now, Soapbox and Waste-Ed is taking on media
giant Facebook, who it claims is falsely labeling it as Russian
state-controlled propaganda.
by Alan Macleod
August 15th, 2020
By Alan Macleod
An online media company is suing social media giant Facebook for
falsely smearing it as a Russian state-controlled propaganda outlet.
Maffick, the owner of In The Now, Soapbox and Waste-Ed, has filed a
lawsuit against Facebook in a Northern California district court for
defamation, intentional interference and violating section 43(a) of
the Lanham Act, unjustly causing them economic and reputational harm,
claiming that Facebook's actions represent unfair competitive
practices.
Go to any of the Maffick-owned Facebook pages, including In The Now
(4.9 million followers), which focuses on light-hearted news and
social justice issues, Soapbox (320,000 followers), featuring
politically opinionated videos, or Waste-Ed (216,000 followers), with
content on environmental topics, and you are greeted with a warning
from Facebook: "This publisher is wholly or partially under the
editorial control of a state." Maffick strenuously denies this, noting
that its sole owner, Anissa Naouai, is a U.S. citizen living in
California. "In doing all of these actions, Facebook has acted
fraudulently, with actual malice and in reckless disregard for the
truth," the complaint alleges.
MintPress reached out to Naouai for comment, but, for legal reasons,
she was hesitant to speak about the case specifically. Rania Khalek,
who makes videos for Soapbox, however, was far more forthcoming.
"Facebook has a list of criteria they came up with for what
constitutes state-controlled media.
We don't meet any of the criteria on that list. But they still labeled
us that way. And this comes after a couple of years of being
relentlessly attacked by U.S.-government backed think tanks like the
Atlantic Council.who have been trying to get us censored," she told
The Katie Halper Show.
Why is Facebook targeting Maffick? In the past, it was indeed
majority-owned by Ruptly, a subsidiary company of RT, which receives
funding from the Russian government. Naouai also previously hosted a
show on the network called In The Now, further complicating things.
However, the lawsuit claims the company has been completely owned and
controlled by Naouai for over a year. Nevertheless, for many living
through a climate of heightened concern about foreign-sponsored fake
news, this is doubtless enough to raise suspicions, if not to condemn
the project completely.
For their part, Facebook is not buying the new changes in ownership, a
company spokesperson telling MintPress today that, "We want people to
know if the news they read on Facebook is coming from a publication we
believe is under the control of a government and we've made public the
criteria we use to make this determination. This lawsuit is without
merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously." MintPress also
contacted the attorneys for Maffick, but as of the publication of this
article, they have not responded.
The effect on Maffick's business has been considerable, with the
company taking hits on revenue, engagement and viewing figures. Future
partnerships with other brands are also in doubt. Who would want to do
business with a Russian propaganda outlet? "This is a slippery slope,"
said Khalek, "Because if Facebook can just label our page 'Russian
state-controlled media' when it is not true - it is a factually false
claim to make, what can stop them from labelling any page anything
they want to label it?"
"I have put my whole life into building Maffick," Naouai told
MintPress. "I won't let Facebook destroy my business because of
politics. We play by the rules and deserve a fair chance to monetize
our content which has been devastated by this false disclaimer."
Et tu, Twitter?
Twitter has also affixed a warning to Maffick's pages, describing them
as "Russia state-affiliated media." Last week it announced new labels
for government and state-backed media accounts. "In 2019, we banned
all state-backed media advertising and political advertising from Twitter.
Today
we're expanding the types of political accounts we label," they wrote.
Many users immediately noted, however, that the new warning notices
were only being applied to Russian media like RT, and not other
government-funded ventures like the BBC, France 24, or Voice of
America. Furthermore, journalist Ben Norton exposed how Twitter is
still taking money from the U.S. government to constantly promote
Voice of America Farsi content into Iran in an effort to foment
anti-government sentiment.
Twitter had a response to some of the criticism: "We believe that
people have the right to know when a media account is affiliated
directly or indirectly with a state actor. State-financed media
organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the U.K. or
NPR in the U.S. for example, will not be labeled," it wrote.
Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman, Assistant Professor of International
Journalism at the United International College in Zhuhai, China, was
not particularly impressed with the response. "In an effort to show
they're trying to do something, anything to combat 'fake news' or
'disinformation', Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are going after the
lowest hanging fruit: media owned or affiliated with governments. It's
much easier to add a label saying 'state funded' and wash your hands
of the whole situation than to deal with the fact they are the central
battlefield in a modern information war," he told MintPress.
Others were more cynical. "Twitter is insulting the intelligence of
its users. Or perhaps its executives really believe what they wrote
about the BBC - which would itself illustrate the ideological
uniformity of western media," said Joe Emersberger, a media analyst
who writes for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Emersberger noted
that academic studies had found the organization to display the
strongest pro-war bias, while for decades it actively collaborated
with British intelligence services, vetting all important appointments
to ensure leftists were not hired.
State-backed media warns of state-backed media What the discussion
misses, however, is that massive platforms like Facebook and Twitter
are themselves state-affiliated media. Facebook, for example, partners
with the Atlantic Council, a Cold War-era NATO think tank, to help
them cultivate the news feeds of its 2.7 billion worldwide users. The
Atlantic Council's board of directors is a who's who of the most
powerful American state officials, including notorious war planner
Henry Kissinger, influential Bush-era operatives like Condoleezza
Rice, James Baker and Colin Powell, virtually every living CIA chief,
including Leon Panetta, Michael Chertoff, Michael Hayden and Michael
Morell, and ex-military commanders like Admiral James Stavridis and
General Wesley Clark. When an organization like this is deciding what
the world sees, what else to call it but state censorship on a global
level? Worse still, the Atlantic Council is at the forefront of
pushing questionable RussiaGate narratives, publishing a string of
highly dubious reports claiming that virtually every political party
in Europe that is challenging the status quo from the left or right is
secretly controlled or manipulated by the Kremlin. These are, in turn,
used as justification for more political changes.
Meanwhile, Twitter works with Freedom House, a conservative
organization that is overwhelmingly funded by Washington. In 2006, the
Financial Times reported that the U.S. government hired Freedom House
to perform "clandestine activities," (i.e. regime change operations)
in Iran. Even more blatantly, last year a senior Twitter executive
with editorial responsibility for the entire Middle East region was
exposed as an active officer in the British Army's 77th Brigade, a
unit dedicated to online psychological operations and propaganda. The
news failed to garner any mainstream attention whatsoever, save for a
single article in Newsweek. The journalist responsible for the story
resigned a few weeks later, citing strong editorial pressure to toe a
certain line.
"What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century," wrote Google
executives Eric Schmidt and Larry Cohen in their book, "The New
Digital Age, "technology and cyber-security companies [like Google]
will be to the twenty-first," suggesting that big tech see themselves
as leaders in a global information war. The book was heartily endorsed
by Atlantic Council director Henry Kissinger.
Implicit in much of the discussion about media bias is that it is only
state-owned media that has an agenda, with the corporate press being
"independent," "neutral," or "objective." This is not the case. While
state-backed media's agenda's tend to be relatively straightforward,
the complex array of financial interests corporate media has is often
much harder to discern. All media, even alternative media, has an
agenda, with writers wishing to propagate and spread their worldview.
That is why until the 1940s all political content was called
"propaganda," until the word fell out of fashion, and began to be
applied only to political enemies.
Nevertheless, state-owned media is constantly assessed by the public
as more trustworthy. A greater proportion of the public in the United
Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan, Finland, Switzerland,
Austria, Ireland, Japan and Portugal trust their public broadcaster
more than any private news outlet. Indeed, BBC America is the most
trusted major news source in the United States as well, according to
the latest edition of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report.
"They don't want people to see anti-war content"
The net effect of all the concern over Russian-backed fake news has
been to extend mainstream media's control of the Internet, to the
detriment of foreign and alternative media. As big companies like
Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Bing changed their algorithms to
elevate "reputable" sources, high-quality alternative news sites
suffered huge drops in traffic, throttling their influence and
threatening their very existence. After Google changed its algorithm,
for instance, Common Dreams traffic fell by
37
percent, Democracy Now! by 36 percent, and Truth-Out by 25 percent.
Under the guise of fighting misinformation, anti-war sites have been
hit the hardest. MintPress was essentially blacklisted for its
coverage of Syria and Palestine, which did not fit the narrative
Washington would like to project onto the world. Likewise, hundreds of
thousands of Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan, and Iranian accounts have
been removed from Facebook and Twitter on the grounds that they were
spreading misinformation. But American accounts do not suffer the same
fate.
Indeed, the U.S. government has sometimes directly involved itself
with online censorship. Facebook announced earlier this year it would
delete all positive mentions of the recently assassinated Iranian
General Qassem Soleimani across its many platforms. Soleimani's
organization, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was
labeled a terrorist group by the Trump administration. According to
polls, he was Iran's most popular living figure. "We operate under
U.S. sanctions laws, including those related to the U.S. government's
designation of the IRGC and its leadership," said a Facebook
spokesperson, explaining the decision. Thus, President Trump himself
was able to stop Iranians in Iran speaking in Farsi sharing a majority
opinion online to other Iranians, because of the power the government
holds over Silicon Valley.
For Khalek, the political message she is sharing explains Facebook's
latest actions against Maffick. "The main reason why we have been
continuously attacked by these think tanks is because of the stuff
that is produced at Soapbox.Soapbox is very progressive and has a very
obvious, anti-war bent,"
she said. "If they can do it to us, they can do it to anyone," she warned.
"they don't want people to see anti-war content."
Feature photo | MintPress | Antonio