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Category: Social media

  • Exclusive: “Man Who Has It All” bares all

    Wooohoooo! BroadAgenda has obtained an exclusive interview with social media smash hit, The Man Who Has It All (MWHIA).
    We’ve teamed up with social media expert Dr Catherine Archer – who has deep interest in women’s online engagement – to give us the low down on why “The Man” has a cult following and not only makes us laugh until our bellies ache, but turns the patriarchy on its head. 
    Who is MWHIA, you ask? Read on. We’ve got you covered. Grab some tissues in case you cry laughing. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

    Catherine: The ‘Man Who Has It All’ is a self-described ‘busy working dad of three’ who apparently, ‘has it all’, including: kids, work outside the home, luminous skin, happy eyes, barely there legs, a simple but stylish home and voluminous cheeks. With more than half a million ‘friends’ (on Facebook, that is), including 12 of mine, 245k Twitter followers, a best-selling book and an online shop, this ‘dadpreneur’ appears to be winning at life.

    By now, you may have guessed that the Man who Has it all (MWHIA) is a parody social media ‘persona’, that takes our/society’s impossible expectations for women in general – and mothers in particular – and handballs them across to men.

    The Man’s identity is a closely guarded secret, but through his publicist, BroadAgenda editor Ginger Gorman managed to get some exclusive comments (in character) from him.

    Ginger: Tell us a bit about yourself? For those who don’t know, who are you?

    MWHIA: I’m bossing it as a busy working dad of three. I started a Twitter account called Man Who Has It All in 2015 to give men tips about how to have it all.

    Ginger: You say you have it all. What exactly is “it all”?

    MWHIA: When I say, “it all”, I mean kids, work outside the home, luminous skin, happy eyes, barely there legs, a simple but stylish home and voluminous cheeks.

    Ginger: How do you stop your social media popularity going to your head?

    MWHIA: I think it is so important that men are able to accept compliments about their work. I am proud of what I have achieved. With the right mentoring and tone of voice, men can actually succeed in business on their own merits, without playing the ‘man card’ to get ahead.

    There is so much advice out there now for dadpreneurs, boy bosses and male leaders on how to dress for your body shape and how to communicate more like a woman to succeed at work. It’s up to men to embrace it and be their best version of themselves.

    Catherine: I am not sure when I started following him on Twitter, (where he began offering ‘advice’ to men in 2015) or when I befriended him on Facebook, but like many women I found his posts incredibly funny because they took all those self-help adages aimed at women and just made them for men.

    For those who have grown up pre-internet and read girls and women’s magazines like Dolly, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Weekly, New Idea and Marie Claire, the advice from MWHIA seemed startlingly like the advice trotted out to women on a regular basis.

    What is even more depressing for me, is that as an academic studying women’s use of social media (in particular, mum bloggers, now more likely to be called ‘mumfluencers’), I have seen similar impossible advice and beauty standards (for women, of course) infiltrate Instagram and other social media from many of the ‘mumpreneurs’ I have followed.

    It is probably a no-brainer as to why MWHIA is so funny and popular but being an academic I do like to apply theories to these things (and besides, BA’s Ginger Gorman asked me to put an academic lens on him).

    Ginger: How do you keep your skin and figure so nice?

    MWHIA: I pared my skincare routine down during lockdown to just 18 products to create flawless skin that resembles glass. I get up at 6am and drink 2 litres of water with freshly squeezed lemon juice.

    Next, I use a jade roller on my face before applying my sunscreen and serums.  I follow the same diet as Prince William, after reading a feature called ‘What William Eats In A Day.”

    I also do Hot Yoga and dancing to keep my core strong. Before bed, I always remove all traces of the day; dirt, excess oil, pollution and unwanted skin cells. I take pride in the way I look. So much so that my wife has actually never seen me with unwanted skin cells on my face!

    Catherine: Ten years ago, I started studying mum bloggers and at the time, amongst the fashion advice and blogs with titles like ‘the organised housewife’, there were also incredibly funny and painful stories, with the women often sharing the double standards of child rearing using humour and pathos.

    I also noticed that mainstream media were particularly derisive of these women’s writing/’blogging’. When then PM Julia Gillard invited what were seen as the ‘influential’ mum bloggers, and other female writers, to a dinner at Rooty Hill RSL and morning tea at Kirribilli House, the reaction from mainstream media columnists was incredulous and sneering.

    I started my research in 2012 and it was at the beginning of what was then termed the ‘blogging revolution’ when it was thought that ‘authentic posts’ from real women would change the world. But then, the advertisers/brands caught on that women were reading these posts and, and what with the ‘Instagram aesthetic’, the once raw posts of unfiltered motherhood of the early blogging days, gave way to aspirational #blessed #filtered #sponsored influencers selling us all the anxieties that would encourage women to spend big on what mattered – you know, diet products, skincare and Botox.

    Of course, many of the early and later influencers have welcomed the attention of advertisers and have gone on to forge lucrative careers with their content, just as the MWHIA has done.

    So why is MWHIA so appealing? He has done what many of the mum bloggers and other influencers have also achieved, using social media to profit but in his case also poke fun at society’s expectations of women.

    Activists and artists have often used humour to highlight societal issues and hypocrisy, way back to court jester days, and the internet has been a great place to do this. Mum blogger themselves used to poke fun at their label and some embraced it while others felt it was cringeworthy.

    To find out why MWHIA appeals so much, I did what all good academics do – I did some research, well actually I asked my female friends (real ones and those who are online ‘friends’ in an all-female closed Facebook group). Fortunately, as this is a news article, I didn’t have to take six weeks to apply for and be granted ethics approval.

    The women’s response was quick….

    It’s a witty, light-hearted flip on (what is often a shitty) reality. And the comments are GOLD!

    I love it so much, as a solo mum most of my parenting it actually made me realise how I didn’t need to live through the double standard so much, clearly just up to me.

    It gives me a good giggle, but it also reminds me that my anger at how myself and other women have been treated is absolutely justified. It’s one thing to *know* the double standards are there but when you’re reading his posts with the gender roles flipped it makes you realise just how absurd and deeply ingrained in us they are.

    When you flip the standards imposed on women and apply them to men, it really highlights how gaslighty and ridiculous the messaging can be. There is also a lot of posts highlighting gendered language, gendered careers and subtle everyday sexism.

    It makes me laugh, and points attention to double standards.

    I love it. Cut through, accurate and very funny! I find it so reassuring given the constant tidal wave of double standards in media and public discourse.

    I reckon it could be used in gender studies.

    It resonates – and makes you stop, think, and challenge how deeply engrained some of those stereotypes really area. And yes, it’s hilarious.

    It’s astounding how satire – seemingly so simple – can have such complex impacts. Let’s hear direct form MWHIA again:

    Ginger: What’s the best way to get “me time” in your hectic schedule?

    MWHIA: I get up five hours earlier than my wife and kids to give me time to chill in the kitchen, complete my gratitude journal and put my first load of washing on. I find it hard to relax until I have made the kids’ lunches, fed and walked the dog, put the slow cooker on and laid out the kids’ clothes for the month. Sometimes I have five minutes to think about how I can be kinder to myself and to others.

    Ginger: How do you avoid being sexually harassed at work? What advice would you give?

    MWHIA: There were posters in the men’s toilets in my last job telling us to walk home in pairs or groups to avoid being sexually harassed. We were also told not to wear short sleeves or tight fitting trousers. I think this is good advice.

    After all, girls will be girls and if it’s served up to them on a plate, most women can’t resist. The vast majority of women, especially older women, unfortunately would harass an attractive young man if they knew they would get away with it. I’m really lucky, most women I have worked with have been really nice and haven’t so much as laid a finger on me. There are some good women left!

    Ginger: When women are being opinionated and aggressive in work meetings – and cutting you off and talking over you, how do you manage this situation?

    When this happens to me, I adjust my posture and lean in. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make any difference and they talk over me anyway. I think the reality is that women and men have different strengths.

    Women are better at making decisions and chairing meetings and, like it or not, men are better at taking minutes, making drinks and taking the work tea towels home to wash at weekends.

    Ginger: You might have seen in the newspapers that some men are sick of being a minority in Parliament and they want quotas. They say the current system – where mostly women are elected – is not based on merit, but sexism. How would you respond to that?

    MWHIA: I don’t think men need quotas. I think men should get ahead by merit alone. Clearly the men currently in Parliament didn’t need a leg up to get there, so why should other men get special favours? Some men whine about structural inequalities, but I think these sort of men have too much time on their hands. Don’t they realise men in other countries have it worse?

    Ginger: How is your pitch to The Guardian for books by men that women should read going? (Women can’t help it if they’ve never heard of any male authors!)

    MWHIA: Unfortunately, I haven’t heard back from The Guardian. I just don’t think there is an appetite for male authors yet. Men’s Fiction remains a niche genre and you can’t expect everyone to be interested in such a narrow topic. Hopefully in another one hundred and fifty years we will start to see male authors being taken seriously.

    Ginger: Is there any other advice or thoughts you’d like to share?

    I’m encouraging everyone to comment on William’s parenting at the Jubilee Pageant in June if they haven’t already. Please wade in, especially if you didn’t see it.

    Say hello to a happy healthy summer (editor’s note: it’s summer in the UK!) and don’t forget to smile!

    Catherine: The marketisation of motherhood (and womanhood) in our neoliberal society and the ‘intensive mothering’ expectations placed on women, mean that sometimes closed Facebook groups can be one area where women remove the ‘mask of motherhood’ and share the humour, pain and frustrations where ‘having it all’ often means ‘doing it all’.

    I have researched this phenomenon with other academic colleagues, and we found that women sought these perceived safe spaces for guidance, connection, community, humour and to ‘vent’.

    The irony is that it takes a ‘man’ who has it all to shine a light on what female academics and feminists have been banging on about now for more than 50 years. In this case, it could be that mansplaining may be useful after all. It would be intriguing to know the real identity of MWHIA, but with this international man of mystery, ‘he’ gives us all a good laugh and also makes us think, and in these tumultuous times, that’s probably what we need right now.

    Finally, Ginger asked MWHIA what advice he would give to working women.

    His response was: “I think women have it easy to be honest. My wife gets home from work to a tidy house, gorgeous husband and happy kids. I’m lucky that she helps out. She’s very much a hands-on mum, especially now they’re a bit older. She takes them to the park on a Saturday morning for an hour so I can clean the house in peace. My advice to women would be to treasure and protect us; we are wonderful, mysterious creatures!”

    • Feature image: ‘The Man Who Has It All’. Picture: Supplied 

     

    The post Exclusive: “Man Who Has It All” bares all appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Armed PNG election supporters cause chaos in capital, attack bystanders

    By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby

    Running like a pack of animals, a group of political party supporters in Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby were armed with bush knives, iron bars and other weapons as they chased down two men outside the national elections counting centre yesterday afternoon.

    They reached the first man, and without a second thought they slashed him outside the Sir John Guise Stadium in Waigani.

    Then they reached the second man, he fell, they slashed him without hesitation, and they continued attacking him.

    The third man wasn’t so lucky, he was casually walking by and the mob turned their attention onto him. He put up his hands in a sign of protest. He was attacked, his hand sliced off, he fell and the mob mercilessly slashed him.

    Police Commissioner David Manning was disgusted by the turn of events, saying: “How many ways can you report animalistic behaviour?”

    The Post-Courier has confirmed that six men were wounded but no deaths were reported.

    The video showing these horrific attacks has now caught the attention of everyone. The response has been quick — all makeshift tents belonging to scrutineers, vendors and supporters were removed, burnt and everyone outside the Sir John Guise Indoor Complex were chased away by security personnel.

    What was the issue?
    What was the issue these men were angry about? It was alleged that the attacks were over nine ballot boxes from ward 6 in Moresby Northeast.

    The Post-Courier understands that scrutineers from Moresby Northeast demanded that the counting officials stop nine boxes from ward 6 from being counted and continue to wards 9 and 12 because a candidate was leading.

    The scrutineers argued among themselves and the argument was taken outside, where it led to an argument and eventually a fight broke out.

    "Barbaric act!" ... banner headline in the PNG Post-Courier 250722
    “Barbaric act!” … the banner headline in the PNG Post-Courier today. Image: PNG Post-Courier

    The Post-Courier was at the scene after the video was released and witnessed security personnel removing all makeshift tents along the John Guise Road which passes by the stadium where the election counting is taking place.

    For the next 30 minutes — from 3.30pm to 4pm — security personnel entered Vision City gates and checked the area.

    More security personnel were outside checking vehicles and removing any remnants of the makeshift tents.

    Shots were also fired into the air to disperse crowds that had gathered. It was a tense moment.

    Eventually the area was cleared.

    Nine suspects arrested with bush knives
    Police said that after the slashing of the men, about 30 minutes later, policemen stopped a blue land cruiser and nine suspects were apprehended with five bush knives in their possession.

    The nine were taken to the Waigani police station cells and their particulars were taken down by police investigators. Police are now investigating incident.

    Meanhile, shots were fired around the Rita Flynn Courts as police also removed and dispersed makeshift tents of scrutineers, supporters and vendors along the Bava road.

    According to a police source what happened at SJGS may also happen at other counting centres and thus police are not taking any more chances.

    Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Digital toolbox needed to counter Pacific ‘hotspot of misinformation’

    ANALYSIS: By Romitesh Kant

    A shortage of resources and investment from major digital platforms has left the Pacific region battling a campaign of misinformation and under-moderation.

    Word spreads fast through the “coconut wireless”, the informal gossip network across Pacific Islanders’ social media.

    But when such rapid proliferation is spreading false or misleading news, it becomes a problem that requires resourcing and commitment to solve.

    The Pacific is currently a global hotspot for misinformation.

    The ability of Pacific island countries and territories to respond to “infodemic” risks online has been exposed by the covid-19 pandemic.

    Misinformation about the pandemic has persisted online, despite efforts by Pacific governments, civil societies, citizens, media organisations, and institutions to counter it.

    The Pacific presently has the smallest percentage of their population using the internet and social media compared with the rest of the world.

    Internet difficult, costly
    Internet provision is made more difficult and costly in the Pacific due to the region’s unique geographic features. A lack of high-capacity cables and other technical infrastructure has also held back Pacific connectivity.

    New undersea cables are arriving in the region, such as the Australian-financed Coral Sea Cable, connecting Sydney to Port Moresby and Honiara, ending decades of reliance on slow and expensive satellite connections.

    These cables, along with other planned reforms and upgrades, are expected to increase the number of mobile internet users in the Pacific by about 11 percent annually between 2018 and 2025, according to estimates by industry groups.

    Health workers offering Covid-19 vaccinations in Tonga.
    Health workers in Tonga offering to chat and answer questions about the covid-19 vaccine. Image: Tonga Ministry of Health

    More access has rapidly changed how government officials communicate with the public and shifted perceptions of politics.

    Both Kiribati and Vanuatu broadcast their national election results live on Facebook.

    In Kiribati, the 9400-member Kiribati election 2020 group posted photos of handwritten vote totals. In Vanuatu, the national broadcaster streamed the entire ballot-counting process on Facebook Live.

    Sparked by the rollout of mobile broadband across Papua New Guinea, hundreds of thousands of citizens now read the latest news and monitor happenings in Port Moresby through blogs and Facebook groups filled with lengthy discussions and heated calls to action.

    Flipside over access
    The flipside to such access is that false online rumours and scams directly targeting Pacific people have spread rapidly through Facebook groups and closed messaging applications.

    Rising internet access may be exacerbating the problem of child sexual exploitation online.

    In some regions of Papua New Guinea, hate speech, harassment, and harmful rumours can sometimes lead to actual acts of violence.

    Local politicians in the Pacific are starting to recognise the potential of social media, but unethical online influence techniques can go undetected if proper transparency measures and safeguards are not implemented.

    Facebook, for one, has implemented its transparency systems to curb hidden manipulation of its advertising features for partisan ends.

    Journalists and investigators in dozens of larger markets use these tools to reveal voter manipulation, but most Pacific island nations are yet to adopt them.

    The lack of transparency makes it very difficult for observers to track what political actors are saying online, especially as Facebook’s advertising system allows different messages to be targeted to different parts of the population.

    Fake Facebook accounts
    Social media companies make little effort to reach out to Pacific leaders, which may explain why so few public figures in the region use the “verified” badges that are useful in helping distinguish official accounts from personal ones.

    Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape found that out the hard way — fake Facebook and Twitter accounts were created in his name, and his lack of verification made the real profile harder for users to distinguish.

    Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape at the 76th UN General Assembly
    Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape told the 76th UN General Assembly more international efforts are needed to combat misinformation online. Image: UN

    Some governments have threatened to completely block social media to curb the spread of content they deem immoral, harmful, or destructive to established norms and values.

    Nauru’s government blocked Facebook from 2015 to 2018, and Papua New Guinea and Samoa hinted at blocking the platform multiple times over the past few years.

    In 2019, Tonga considered a ban on Facebook to prevent slander against the monarchy.

    Social media bans are rarely implemented, and face fierce opposition from free speech advocates and users.

    The frequency with which such measures are proposed in the Pacific reflects a sobering reality: communities in the region often lack the protections that communities elsewhere in the world rely on to address harmful content and abuse on social media.

    Rule-breaking content
    Current systems for moderating content on social media are not effective in the Pacific. These systems rely on algorithms that flag rule-breaking content in multiple languages, human reviewers who make determinations on flagged material, users who voluntarily report content violating the rules, and legal requests from law enforcement officials.

    Social media platforms do not prioritise hiring from the Pacific region, where there are comparatively fewer people. They do not invest in developing language-specific algorithms for languages like Tongan, Bislama, or Chuukese, which have a smaller user base.

    Despite the growing importance of third-party fact-checking partnerships, no Pacific Island country is home to a dedicated fact-checking team.

    All claims in Australia and the Pacific islands are referred to the Australian Associated Press’s fact-checking unit. Pacific social media users are missing out on one of the few tools that global social media companies use to strengthen information ecosystems due to the lack of a robust local fact-checking organisation.

    All signs point to an increase in the dangers posed by false and misleading information in the months and years ahead, as both state and non-state actors attempt to steer online discourse in service of their strategic goals.

    Politically-motivated domestic and foreign actors (or proxies) regularly attempt to manipulate online platforms and social media worldwide. These efforts are highly diverse, always in flux, and frequently related to more extensive political or national interests.

    At least one organised effort to spread false information online about the West Papuan conflict has already occurred in the Pacific.

    Dangers posed
    External pressures and crises will amplify the dangers posed by these campaigns, as they did during the covid-19 pandemic when an excess of data and a lack of apparent credibility and fact checking allowed rumours to spread unchecked.

    Rising tensions between the developed world and China add to the already complex political situation, and the narrative tug-of-war for influence among significant powers on Covid-19 is likely to continue.

    There is a risk that online misinformation from foreign media will increase due to this competition for narrative dominance, leaving countries in the region vulnerable to influence operations that target online discourse, media, and communities.

    More robust local capacity (outside of government) to identify problematic content and bad actors online is necessary for the region to recover from Covid-19 and respond to future crises.

    This includes better coordination among regional institutions and governments, increased engagement between social media companies and Pacific leaders, and more thorough reporting of online problems.

    Foreseeing and preparing for future potential threats to health and safety is something that leaders can do now.

    Romitesh Kant is a Fiji PhD scholar at the Australian National University, and a research consultant with more than 10 years’ experience in the fields of governance, civic education and human rights. He is also a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review. This article was originally published on 360info under Creative Commons and RNZ Pacific. It has been republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NFP party chief’s challenge to FijiFirst over election complaint – ‘bring it on!’

    By Meri Radinibaravi in Suva

    “Bring it on!” That’s the challenge from National Federation Party (NFP) general-secretary Seni Nabou to FijiFirst party general-secretary Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum in the wake of a complaint he made to Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem about a video by a New Zealand-based NFP supporter.

    Nabou claimed the video was extracted from a live stream of the party’s last rally in the lead up to the 2018 General Election at Rishikul Primary School and it had been “edited”.

    At a press conference on Tuesday evening, Sayed-Khaiyum said he had sent a letter of complaint to Supervisor of Elections (SoE) Mohammed Saneem.

    He said it was in reference to a video circulating on social media where Auckland-based NFP supporter Ahmed Bhamji was seen saying that the “Tertiary Education Loan Scheme (TELS) is a lifetime slavery”.

    NFP general-secretary Nabou said the image submitted by Sayed-Khaiyum to the SoE had been “deliberately edited to show only Mr Bhamji because the full image, which we have provided as evidence, proves beyond any doubt when the statement was made”.

    “The evidence he has submitted shows it was extracted from a “Vote for Change” Facebook page,” Nabou said.

    ‘Free from dictatorship’
    She said the NFP has never been associated with the “Vote for Change” page and all their official social media pages had been submitted to the SoE.

    Nabou said the video was extracted from a live stream of the party’s last rally in the lead up to the 2018 general election at Rishikul Primary School.

    “Whatever it is, bring it on. We will not be trampled nor derailed from our vision to once again make Fiji a land of hope and opportunity, free from the dictatorship and thuggery of two-man rule.”

    Meri Radinibaravi is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Major parties spend big on social media ads

    Labor and the Coalition, backed by big business, mining companies and billionaires, spent millions of dollars on political advertising to win votes, according to a new report by the Australia Institute. Isaac Nellist reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Controversial Roe v Wade ruling triggers intense NZ media reaction

    By Hayden Donnell, RNZ Mediawatch producer

    Some said the US Supreme Court’s controversial ruling on abortion was none of our business, because we don’t have the same legal or political set-up, let alone its religious cleavages and cultural conflicts.

    Opinion leaders in our media didn’t agree — and provoked a significant political response.

    Days after his election to the National Party leadership in December last year, Christopher Luxon sat down for an interview where he outlined some hardline views on abortion.

    Pressed by Newshub’s Jenna Lynch on whether he felt the practice was tantamount to murder, he said “that’s what a pro-life position is”.

    Those comments have become newsworthy again this week, as the US Supreme Court handed down a decision to overturn the right to abortion enshrined in the decision Roe v Wade.

    Local media, pro-choice advocates and politicians all expressed concern that the National leader would act on his beliefs, and work to ban a practice he considers all-but murderous, if he was able to form a government.

    Their worry only escalated after National’s MP for Tāmaki, Simon O’Connor, posted a Facebook status following the Supreme Court’s decision saying “Today is a good day”.

    Noted Luxon’s pro-life views
    The     New Zealand Herald ran an initial story focusing on how every party in Parliament had condemned the court’s ruling bar National. It also noted Luxon’s pro-life views.

    Even after Luxon moved to clarify that there would be no changes to abortion law under any government he leads, Labour’s Grant Robertson said people have a “right to be sceptical” about his statements given the views he expressed to Lynch.

    Newshub’s Amelia Wade pressed Luxon further on his stance, asking Luxon for his opinion of women who get abortions. He didn’t answer the question directly in Newshub’s report.

    “As I’ve said I have a pro-life stance. I think it’s a very difficult and a very agonising decision,” he said.

    These stories — and a corresponding outcry on social media — provoked right-wing figures who see it as an attempt to stir up a US-style culture war.

    Political commentator Ben Thomas played down the concern over Luxon’s anti-abortion views in an interview on Newstalk ZB.

    “We’ve seen pro-life prime ministers like Bill English, Jim Bolger, deputy prime ministers like Jim Anderton just not go anywhere near [abortion] when they’ve been in government,” he pointed out.

    Plea to stop US culture war
    On Twitter, he pleaded for people to stop trying to stir up US culture wars in New Zealand.

    That was echoed by National’s Nicola Willis, who had been criticised for failing to speak up against the Roe v Wade ruling despite her socially liberal credentials.

    “I actually think that these attempts by Labour to import US-style culture wars into New Zealand is irresponsible. It is creating needless anxiety,” she told the Herald.

    The concern over abortion becoming a political wedge issue is understandable.

    Its transformation into a fundamental political dividing line is part of the reason the US now has some of the most hardline abortion laws in the developed world.

    But it’s worth noting there’s an element of political convenience in politicians’ statements as well.

    National would benefit if people stopped talking about its leader’s publicly-stated position that abortion is tantamount to murder and go back to discussing the cost of living crisis.

    It’s hard to get the politics out of politics.

    Still deep divisions
    Pro-choice advocates have also taken issue with the idea their anxiety is “needless”.

    The decision to take abortion out of the Crimes Act in 2020 only passed by a comparatively narrow margin, 68-51.

    Two-thirds of National’s caucus voted against it back then, with the aforementioned Simon O’Connor ending his speech with a Latin phrase which translates to “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord”.

    National MPs also proposed several amendments to that bill which would have restricted abortion access considerably.

    Former National MP Amy Adams recently told the media that deep divisions remain in National on the issue.

    As for the US culture wars, they appear to have gained a foothold already. Some people might have noticed them camped out on Parliament’s lawns for the better part of a month.

    The question for pro-choice supporters is whether to sit back and hope these movements don’t gain momentum, or to apply as much political pressure as possible to protect their own position.

    In this case they prompted a strong commitment from an anti-abortion politician to not act on his views if in power. Arguably they succeeded by speaking out strongly and decisively.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Nobel laureate Maria Ressa calls for journalists to fight ‘Devil’s megaphone’

    East-West Center

    Nobel Peace Prize laureate and press freedom champion Maria Ressa wasn’t intending to make breaking news when she planned her keynote address at the East-West Center’s 2022 International Media Conference in Honolulu this week.

    But late the night before she got disturbing word from her lawyers that the Philippines government’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had issued an order for her online news organisation Rappler to shut down.

    “You are the first to hear this,” Ressa said, as she told the combined in-person and online audiences of around 450 international journalists and media professionals gathered for the conference about the commission’s order.

    Under now-former President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa and Rappler have faced multiple charges, widely believed to be retaliation for her critical reporting on Duterte’s deadly drug war and abuses of power.

    Ressa vowed to continue fighting the commission’s order, even as new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr — son of the late Philippines dictator who was forced to flee the country in 1986 — prepared to be sworn into office yesterday.

    In the meantime, she said, “It is business as usual for Rappler. We will adapt, adjust, survive, and thrive. As usual, we will hold power to account. We will tell the truth.”

    Safeguarding freedom of expression
    Ressa’s struggle to thwart the government’s efforts to shut down her groundbreaking news outlet and imprison her for cyber-libel led to Ressa becoming the first Filipino recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace,” as the Nobel Committee put it.

    In her address to the media conference, Ressa bemoaned the fact that the global environment for quality journalism has deteriorated so quickly, in part because at least initially there was a reluctance to accept just how much damage the online world can do to the real one.

    “Online violence is real-world violence,” she said. “They’re not separate. Digital impunity is real-world impunity.

    “There is only one world that we live in, and for the platforms and legislators to think that these are two systems has weakened the rule of law in the real world.”

    After being brutally attacked online by Duterte backers, Ressa has campaigned tirelessly against what she called a “tyranny of trends.” Through their algorithms, social media platforms have created a new information ecosystem that prioritises “lies laced with anger and hate” over “boring” facts, she said.

    “These platforms are determining the future of news, and yet their driver is profit, right? The platform’s profit — not the public’s, not journalism’s.”

    That system has made it more difficult for humans to listen to their better angels, Ressa said, because “social media gave the devil a megaphone. And this is why we are seeing the worst of human nature.”

    The problem, she said, is that the forces of manipulation do not need to convince the public of anything. They only need to sow doubt and uncertainty in order to create distrust of the facts.

    Maria Ressa talks to journalists
    Maria Ressa talks to journalists … Rappler was built on a foundation of three pillars to rebuild trust in the news media: technology, journalism and community. Image: East-West Center

    Pillars of trust
    Ressa said Rappler was built on a foundation of three pillars to rebuild trust in the news media: technology, journalism and community.

    “Tech has to be first because this was the spark that ignited the world, and not for good,” she explained.

    “Journalism, because we must continue independent journalism despite what it costs us, and we must let our societies know that. And finally community, because journalists can’t do this alone.”

    The importance of maintaining independent journalism outlets is intensified by the fact that this year there are more than 30 elections globally, according to Ressa: “I said this in the Nobel lecture: If you don’t have integrity of facts, how can you have integrity of elections? You can’t, and that’s the problem.”

    The consequences can be catastrophic, she said. “When real people who are insidiously manipulated online then democratically elect an illiberal leader and the balance of power of the world shifts, how much more time do we have before we move into a fascist world?”

    Banding together against disinformation
    Ressa counsels independent journalists around the world to build their courage, commitment and, most importantly, community, saying the only way to stand up to the forces of disinformation is to join hands.

    Before the recent elections in the Philippines, for example, 16 news organisations agreed to collaborate on fact-checking campaign statements.

    “We shared each with other,” Ressa said. “We made the content agnostic. We’re not competing against each other; we’re competing against evil and lies.”

    That experience helped inform Ressa’s vision of a world in which trust in facts and institutions can be rebuilt on four levels. The first and most basic is independent journalism as exemplified by news organisations like hers.

    The second she calls “the mesh”, elements of civil society that can take the facts news outlets and share them with emotion and inspiration.

    The third level is academic research designed to help better understand the societal challenges, which continue to evolve. The final level is a proactive legal approach in which lawyers engage in both tactical and strategic litigation, rather than simply waiting to defend against the latest attacks.

    Still, Ressa admitted that she is extremely worried about the future of objective journalism and the societies that rely on it.

    The world does have the resources to fight back, she but not as individuals: “We really must work together,” she concluded. “And a global coalition is the best way to do this.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rappler ordered to shut down by Philippines government, says Ressa

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Nobel Peace Prize laureate and journalist Maria Ressa says that the Philippine government has ordered her news organisation Rappler to shut down, reports Axios.

    The online news website Rappler has exposed Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “bloody war on drugs”, documented the government’s propagation of disinformation and been critical of President-elect “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator.

    Ressa, a Filipino-American, said in a keynote address at the East-West Center’s International Media Conference in Honolulu, Hawai’i, that the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission had issued the decree on Tuesday, reports Nathan Bomey.

    She said Rappler would fight the order, which “affirmed” an earlier decision to revoke the organisation’s certificates of incorporation.

    “We’re not shutting down. Well, I’m not supposed to say that,” Ressa said.

    “We are entitled to appeal this decision and will do so, especially since the proceedings were highly irregular.”

    Axios reported that the Philippine embassy in the US did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

    Shared Nobel Peace Prize
    Ressa shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov after using her platform to raise awareness of Duterte’s alleged abuses.

    She had previously been convicted in the Philippines of “cyber libel” and could serve prison time in a case widely seen as politically motivated.

    Ressa has also been a vocal critic of social media platforms for failing to prevent the flow of falsehoods.

    “Most people, they don’t realize they’re being manipulated, that these platforms are biased against facts,” Ressa previously told Axios editor-in-chief Sara Goo in an exclusive interview published yesterday.

    “You don’t get facts. It’s toxic sludge. Social media encourages anger, hate, conspiracy theories. There’s violence,” and it’s getting worse, she added.

  • Gavin Ellis: An open letter to the incoming media minister

    OPEN LETTER: By Gavin Ellis to the new Minister of Broadcasting and Media Willie Jackson

    Dear Minister,

    Congratulations on assuming the Broadcasting and Media role.

    The announcement of your new portfolio put me in mind of Hercules as King Eurystheus told him there were a dozen small jobs he would like done.

    Like Hercules, you will find that the tasks ahead are challenging. Some will seem insurmountable. Yet, the underlying message of that particular piece of Greek mythology is that nothing is impossible.

    I would hesitate to suggest that success will lead to immortality, but you will certainly make an enduring name for yourself if you are able to ensure that New Zealand’s media ecosystem is fit for purpose.

    In order for that to happen you must undertake, if I may be so bold, the Twelve Labours of Willie Jackson.

    Here are the tasks you should address:

    1. The new public media entity — ensure it is an entirely new approach to a digital future and not merely a TVNZ/RNZ merger, and enshrine independent governance.
    2. Media content review – act as the coordinator for a project to determine how we should address harmful media content, which spans a multitude of issues and ministries.
    3. Social media platforms — make them pay for plundering our media and our audiences, and make them accountable for content.
    4. Public Interest Journalism Fund – restore public confidence in the fund (by removing requirements seen as linked to government policy) and continue to fund the scheme.
    5. Regulatory structures – facilitate the replacement of the Media Council and the Broadcasting Standards Authority by a single, demonstrably independent, body.
    6. Private sector survival — investigate alternative mechanisms that replace declining revenue, and incentivise plurality.
    7. Māori media — Have a stern talk with yourself, as the Minister for Māori Development, to finally bring something concrete out of the Māori Media Sector Shift that has already been three years in the making.
    8. Ethnic media — recognise and support media that directly address often hard to reach communities.
    9. Media law — review statutes that were predicated on media structures and methodologies that have long been superseded.
    10. Media training — resurrect the Journalism Training Organisation with a mandate to devise curricula standards and assess their implementation by tertiary institutions.
    11. Policy balance – work to ensure that the legitimate Te Tiriti initiatives being pursued by the Labour Government do not inadvertently ignore the broader needs of the media sector and its audiences (plural).
    12. Technology watch — set up a monitoring group to alert government to technological changes (in areas such as artificial intelligence) that will affect media production, impact and oversight.

    I realise that it is no more than 18 months to the next election and, even if you expect another term in government, you will need to prioritise.

    Three broad rubrics
    The tasks fall under three broad rubrics that are inter-related: Media sustainability, media governance, and social cohesion. Admittedly, they involve some activities that currently sit outside your portfolio but there is a crying need for a coordinator. That can, and should, be you.

    The most pressing task is the New Public Media Entity, which both Television New Zealand and RNZ openly call “the merger”. You have inherited a project in the second of its three phases, and I am sure the easiest approach would be to leave it to take its (predetermined) course.

    That would be both a lost opportunity and, I respectfully suggest, an abrogation of your responsibility to oversee the establishment of an organisation that is truly fit for purpose.

    Your predecessor, Kris Faafoi, is admirably well-meaning and I have no doubt the initiative started under his watch had sound core purposes. However, he tended to lead from behind and the outcomes to date suggest the results will be less than the sum of their parts.

    There is a golden opportunity to establish an entirely new organisation, born for a digital future that can accommodate but not be led by its legacy technologies and cultures. Its impact on the overall media landscape will be so significant that it must have a unique multi-tiered independent governance structure to insulate it from government control and to contain its own power.

    I see neither of these imperatives in any of the material that has so far entered the public domain and I fear the introduction of draft legislation in the next week or two will confirm my misgivings on both fronts. My hope is that you will intervene to ensure the final form of the bill addresses both opportunities and threats, and your discussions with the Establishment Board gives it the courage to think a significant distance beyond the square.

    The Content Review, led by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, also demands your attention. While extremely useful work has already been undertaken on harmful content in various forms of media, there is a real need for strong coordination with your portfolio. My fear is that mainstream media could suffer because, when it comes to policing content, they are low hanging fruit. The real danger with harmful content lies with digital platforms.

    Absence of strong government direction
    Those social media platforms also demand your attention in other ways. The absence of strong government direction (the antithesis of what is evident in Australia and the European Union) has allowed them to apply a cynical cherry-picking approach to compensating New Zealand media for the material they appropriate.

    Unless they are forced to act responsibly, they will continue to serve only their own pecuniary interests and to minimise their responsibilities for content. You have an opportunity to align New Zealand internationally.

    Your predecessor performed a real service to media and the public in setting up the Public Interest Journalism Fund. I have to declare an interest here: I have been involved in evaluating applications for PIJF on behalf of NZ on Air. That involvement has allowed me to witness at first hand the determination to pursue journalism that is squarely in the public interest and to see successful applications for projects that hold government — and other forms of power — to account.

    Blackened the name
    However, oppositions forces (both political and more malign) have blackened the name of the fund. It has been characterised as a bribe that has muted criticism of the Labour government.

    It may be a hard ask, given that you represent the very people accused of doing the bribing, but you need to restore the fund’s reputation…and commit to its continuation.

    You may feel those tasks will be more than sufficient to keep you occupied for the rest of the current term, but you cannot ignore the other Labours of Willie Jackson. I suggest you coalesce them into a single project: Futureproofing New Zealand Media. It could provide the blueprint for your next term as Minister of Communication and Media.

    It may also embrace the idea of my long-advocated Bretton Woods #2 and bring together the many elements that make up our media and their audiences to map a collective future. That would make this old man very happy.

    I wish you well with your new portfolio. You bring to the role many years of media experience. Complete these 12 labours and, like Hercules, you will be a hero.

    Dr Gavin Ellis ONZM MA PhD

    Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a website called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • National Security State Censoring of Anti-Imperialist Voices

    The US rulers use many tools to disrupt and disorganize the anti-war and anti-imperialist left. Three discussed here include: (1) corporate control of the news media gives them free reign to spread disinformation and fake news against foreign and domestic targets; (2) they use government and corporate foundation resources to fund and promote a compatible left to counter the anti-imperialist left; and (3) the rulers use their control of social media and internet to censor those voices.

    Since 2016 their censorship of websites, Facebook pages, Twitter, and Paypal accounts has escalated alarmingly. They target those who counter the narratives the government and big business media feed us, whether it be US intervention and attempted overthrow of other governments, Covid, or stories of Russian interference.

    With the Ukraine war, the US government and corporate media immense propaganda power has been directed against Russia and intensified on an overwhelming scale.

    As the US empire began the Cold War soon after the end of World War II, with the rise of McCarthyism (which predated Joe McCarthy), news manipulation and suppression often fell under the control of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird. The corporate media followed CIA directions in representing the interests of the US rulers. The CIA secretly funded and managed a wide range of front groups and individuals to counter what the US rulers considered its enemies. It encouraged those on the left who opposed actually existing socialism, seeking to foster splits in the left to undermine the communist and build the non-communist left.

    Significant liberal and left figures who worked with the CIA included Gloria Steinem, key feminist leader, Herbert Marcuse, considered a Marxist intellectual, Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers Union (1946-1970), David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (1932-1966). The CIA collaborated with Baynard Rustin, Socialist Party leader and close associate of Martin Luther King, with Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington, who became the fathers of the third campist (“neither Washington nor Moscow”) Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Likewise, Carl Gershman, a founder of Social Democrats, USA, and later founding director (1983-2021) of the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

    Through  the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA underwrote the publishing of leftist critics, such as Leszek Kolakowski and Milovan Djilas’ book The New Class. The CIA aided the “Western Marxism” of the Frankfurt School, which included Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, former director of New School of Social Research, also subsidized by the Rockefeller Foundation.

    Corporate foundations, such as the Rockefeller, Ford, Open Society, and Tides foundations, among many others, funneled CIA money to progressive causes. The Cultural Cold War (pp. 134-5) noted that from 1963-66, nearly half the grants by 164 foundations in the field of international activities involved CIA money. The Ford Foundation continues as one of the main financers of progressive groups in the US; for instance, both Open Society and Ford foundations have heavily funded Black Lives Matter.

    The CIA is regarded as a ruthless organization overthrowing democratic governments that US corporations considered a threat to their profits. While true, overlooked is “gentler” CIA work: underwriting and encouraging a compatible left, one which looks to forces in the Democratic Party for political leadership. This third camp left provides an alternative to an anti-imperialist or a communist left, and yet appears progressive enough to lure radicalizing youth, activists and intelligentsia. This cunning CIA strategy has fostered confusion, dissension, and divisions among these sections of the population.

    These secret US government and CIA operations have been detailed in The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers, The Cultural Cold War, and AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?

    In 1977 Carl Bernstein revealed CIA interconnections with the big business media. More than 400 journalists collaborated with the CIA, with the consent of their media bosses. Working in a propaganda alliance with the CIA included: CBS, ABC, NBC, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, United Press International, Miami Herald, Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald Tribune. The New York Times still sends stories to US government for pre-publication approval, while CNN and others now employ national security state figures as “analysts.”

    Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat operate similarly, participating in covert British government funded disinformation programs to “weaken” Russia. This involves collaboration with the Counter Disinformation & Media Development section of the British Foreign Office.

    The CIA pays journalists in Germany, France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand to plant fake news. Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the largest German newspapers, showed how the CIA controls German media in Presstitutes: Embedded in the Pay of the CIA. Ulfkotte said the CIA had him plant fake stories in his paper, such as Libyan President Gaddafi building poison gas factories in 2011.

    The CIA was closely involved with the long defunct National Students Association and with the trade union leadership. The AFL-CIO’s American Institute of Free Labor Development, received funding from USAID, the State Department, and NED to undermine militant union movements overseas and help foment murderous coups, as against President Allende of Chile (1973) and Brazil (1964), as well as defended the rule of their masters at home. This continues with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, which receives $30 million a year from NED.

    The CIA created publishing houses, such as Praeger Press, and used other companies such as John Wiley Publishing Company, Scribner’s, Ballantine Books, and Putnam to publish its books. It set up several political and literary journals such as Partisan Review. This CIA publishing amounted to over one thousand books, mostly geared to a liberal-left audience, seeking to bolster a third camp left, and undermine solidarity with the once powerful world communist movement.

    That mission largely accomplished years ago, today the national security state works to undermine the anti-imperialist left and build up a left inclined towards the “lesser evil” Democratic Party.

    Recent US Government and Media Thought Control Measures

    CIA use of corporate media to undermine perceived threats to the national security state escalated with Obama signing NDAA 2017, which lifted formalistic restrictions on security state agencies feeding fake news directly to the US population. The Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act in the NDAA, which went into effect in the early stages of Russiagate, created a central government propaganda organ:

    to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments (with the role of the Russian Federation hidden or not acknowledged publicly) through front groups, covert broadcasting, media manipulation, disinformation or forgeries, funding agents of influence, incitement, offensive counterintelligence, assassinations, or terrorist acts. The committee shall expose falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian Federation or their proxies.

    Glen Ford observed:

    Every category listed [above], except assassinations and terror, is actually a code word for political speech that can, and will, be used to target those engaged in ‘undermining faith in American democracy’ — such as Black Agenda Report and other left publications defamed as ‘fake news’ outlets by the Washington Post [article on PropOrNot].

    This Disinformation and Propaganda Act created the innocuously named Global Engagement Center, operated by the State Department, Pentagon, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors [renamed US Agency for Global Media], the Director of National Intelligence, and other spy agencies. This Center oversees production of fake news supporting US imperial interests, focused primarily against Russia and China (such as Uyghur genocide and Russiagate), but also against Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and others. Verifiable reports exposing US regime change operations and disinformation are often outright censored or labeled pro-Russian or pro-Chinese propaganda.

    The Global Engagement Center finances journalists, NGOs, think tanks, and media outlets on board with campaigns to vilify non-corporate media reporting as spreaders of foreign government disinformation. This may shed light on the origins of smears that opponents of the US regime change against Syria or in Ukraine are Putinists, Assadists, tankies, Stalinists, part of a red-brown alliance.

    National security state propaganda against Russia surged after it aided Syria in thwarting the US-Saudi war against the Assad government. It reached levels of hysteria with the fabricated Russiagate stories designed to sabotage the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. Seymour Hersh disclosed that the widely covered news of Russian hacking of DNC computers in 2016 was CIA disinformation. Hersh confirmed from FBI sources that Hillary Clinton’s emails were taken by Seth Rich and offered to Wikileaks for money, and that the fake news story of Russian hacking was initiated by CIA head John Brennan. However, exposures of the Clinton-neocon-national security state Russiagate fake news were themselves written off as disinformation concocted by pro-Russian operators.

    An example of Global Engagement Center work may be a recent smear against anti-imperialists as agents of Russia appeared in The Daily Beast. It targets Lee Camp, Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, and others: “propaganda peddlers rake in cash and followers at the expense of the truth and oppressed people in Ukraine, Xinjiang, and Syria” because of their accurate reporting that goes against the US propaganda line.

    Other articles may indicate this government Disinformation Center use of the third camp left in the tradition of Operation Mongoose. George Monbiot’s article in The Guardian fit the billing:

    We must confront Russian propaganda – even when it comes from those we respect – The grim truth is that for years, a small part of the ‘anti-imperialist’ left has been recycling Vladimir Putin’s falsehoods.

    Louis Proyect crusaded for Syria regime change, and against those opposing the US war on the country as being part of a “red-brown alliance.” Proyect often relied on British Foreign Office funded Bellingcat for his articles, writing, “The Bellingcat website is perhaps the only place where you can find fact-based reporting on chemical attacks in Syria.” Proyect defended “Syrian revolution” “socialist” Anand Gopal, of the International Security Program at the New America Foundation, funded by the State Department and corporate foundations, and run by Anne-Marie Slaughter, former State Department official.

    Democracy Now, which also repeatedly relied on Anand Gopal as a news source, has long received foundation money, and we see the self-censoring effect this has on its former excellent anti-war journalism degenerating into compatible leftism.

    Another product of this government-corporate aid for this Democratic Party “lesser evil” left may be NACLA’s articles smearing the Nicaraguan government. NACLA Board Chair Program Director is Thomas Kruse of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 2018, NACLA, New York DSA, and Haymarket Books hosted anti-Sandinista youth activists while on a tour paid for by right-wing Freedom House.

    In These Times, which receives hundreds of thousands in foundation money, ran similar articles smearing socialist Cuba. It claimed Cuba was “the Western Hemisphere’s most undemocratic government” – not Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Chile with its police who blinded pro-democracy protesters, not Colombia’s death squad supporting government, nor Honduras’ former coup regime, or Haiti’s hated rulers.

    Haymarket Books, which produces many third camp left books, receives Democratic Party aligned think tank and nonprofit money via the pass through Center for Economic Research and Social Change. The Grayzone reported that the DSA, Jacobin Magazine, and Haymarket sponsored Socialism conference featured NED and State Department funded regime-change activists.

    Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara is former vice-chair of the Democratic Party’s reform oriented DSA. In 2017 the Jacobin Foundation received a $100,000 grant from the Annenberg Foundation, set up by billionaire publisher and Nixon administration U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Walter Annenberg.

    This milieu includes New York’s Left Forum, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, underwritten by the German government.

    Bob Feldman revealed corporate financing for the Institute of Policy Studies, The Nation, In These Times, NACLA, Middle East Research & Information Project (MERIP), Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), Progressive, Mother Jones, AlterNet, Institute for Public Accuracy, among others.

    The US Chamber of Commerce discovered that foundations gave $106 million to workers centers between 2013-2016, and concluded that the worker center movement was “a creature of the progressive foundations that encouraged and supported it.”

    These are but a few examples of US ruling class financing of anti anti-imperialist leftists, an effective means to channel and organize the left milieu into an opposition that poses no real threat to their control.

    An essential characteristic of this milieu is looking to the Democratic Party as a lesser evil ally.

    Alexander Cockburn  pointed out the dangers of this financing back in 2010:

    The financial clout of the “non-profit” foundations, tax-exempt bodies formed by rich people to dispense their wealth according to political taste… Much of the “progressive sector” in America owes its financial survival – salaries, office accommodation etc — to the annual disbursements of these foundations which cease abruptly at the first manifestation of radical heterodoxy. In the other words, most of the progressive sector is an extrusion of the dominant corporate world, just as are the academies, similarly dependent on corporate endowments.”

    Right after Trump’s surprise 2016 election win, the Washington Post cranked up the anti-Russia McCarthyism by introducing PropOrNot. ProporNot’s catalog of supposed Putin-controlled outlets sought to resurrect the witchhunts of the Red Scare era,  when 6.6 million people were investigated just between 1947-1952. The PropOrNot blacklist includes some of the most alternative and anti-war news sites on the web, including Anti-war.com, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig, Naked Capitalism, Consortium News, Truthout, Lew Rockwell.com, Global Research, Unz.com, Zero Hedge, and many others.

    PropOrNot asserted 200 websites were “Russian propaganda outlets.” No evidence was offered. PropOrNot refused to reveal who they were or their funding. Alan Mcleod recently uncovered: “A scan of PropOrNot’s website showed that it was controlled by The Interpreter, a magazine of which [Michael] Weiss is editor-in-chief…[a] senior fellow of NATO think tank The Atlantic Council.” The Atlantic Council itself is financed by the US government and Middle Eastern dictatorships, weapons manufacturers Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs; and petrochemical giants like BP and Chevron. Mcleod concluded, “Thus, claims of a huge [foreign] state propaganda campaign were themselves state propaganda.”

    Soon after PropOrNot, the German Marshall Fund, largely financed by the US government, concocted Hamilton 68: A New Tool to Track Russian Disinformation on Twitter. This identifies supposed “accounts that are involved in promoting Russian influence and disinformation goals.” Daniel McAdams of Ron Paul Liberty Report noted, “They are using US and other government money in an effort to eliminate any news organization or individual who deviates from the official neocon foreign policy line on Russia, Syria, Ukraine, etc.”

    This year, the Department of Homeland Security presented a new censorship and disinformation organ, allegedly to combat pro-Russian fake news, the Disinformation Governance Board. As the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act and PropOrNot showed, what challenges US national security state narratives is often labeled Russian disinformation. Glenn Greenwald forewarned, “The purpose of empowering the Department of Homeland Security to decree what is and is not “disinformation” is to bestow all government assertions with a pretense of authoritative expertise and official sanction and, conversely, to officially decree dissent from government claims to be false and deceitful.”

    The national security state, which lied about Russiagate, lied about National Security Agency’s 24/7 spying on the US population, lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, plans to decide what is true and false, and enforce that on big business and alternative media outlets.

    Thus, the CIA’s secret Operation Mongoose, devoted to encouraging hostility to actually existing socialism among the left, has morphed into official, public US government McCarthyite agencies directed at shutting down or smearing outlets and activism opposing the US empire and its wars.

    What Corporate Social Media instruments are targeting which anti-war outlets?

    This joint US government corporate media censorship has become an increasingly open attack. Paypal has allied itself with the Zionist Anti-Defamation League to “fight extremism and hate through the financial industry and across at-risk communities… with policymakers and law enforcement.”

    Twitter has shut down many political accounts, even possessed the power to suppress the President of the United States’ account. In 2020, Twitter deleted 170,000 accounts “spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China,” and in 2021, it deleted hundreds of accounts for “undermining faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.” The company has hired a number of FBI officers for this censorship work. Twitter executive for Middle East is British Army ‘psyops’ soldier Gordon MacMillan of the 77th Brigade, which uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to conduct “information warfare.”

    Google and Youtube executives team up with government spy agencies to censor anti-imperialist voices. Google’s “Project Owl,” designed to eradicate “fake news,” employed “algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative [compatible] content” and downgrade “offensive” [anti-imperialist] material. As a result, traffic dropped off to websites such as Mint Press News, Alternet, Global Research, Consortium News, liberal-left Common Dreams and Truthout.

    Wikipedia censors articles on its website, as Ben Norton notes:

    The CIA, FBI, New York Police Department, Vatican, and fossil fuel colossus BP, to name just a few, have all been caught directly editing Wikipedia articles.

    A minor player,  NewsGuard, “partners” with the State Department and Pentagon to tag websites that deviate from the establishment line.

    Facebook relies on PropOrNot’s Atlantic Council to combat reporting contrary to the US government line. Facebook later announced it would further fight “fake news” by partnering with two propaganda organizations sponsored by the US government: the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). The NDI was chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, while Senator John McCain was the longtime IRI chair.

    Just as The Mighty Wurlitzer, The Cultural Cold War, and Bernstein’s The CIA and the Media showed with the big business print media, we are witnessing an integration of social media companies into the national security state.

    Who have been censored by this corporate media and social media integration with the national security state? 

    Like with any censored book list, national security state targets provide a Who’s Who of what we should be reading and watching: The Grayzone, TeleSur,  Venezuelanalysis, Lee Camp, By Any Means Necessary, Caleb Maupin, Syria Solidarity Movement, Consortium News, Mint Press News, Abby Martin, Chris Hedges, CGTN and other Chinese media, George Galloway, Pepe Escobar, Scott Ritter, ASB Military News, RT America, Strategic Culture Foundation, One World Press, SouthFront, Gonzalo Lira, Oriental Review, Revolutionary Black Network, Sputnik News, Ron Paul’s Liberty Report.  Youtube warns us of watching Oliver Stone’s Ukraine on Fire. Journalists who have collaborated with a Russian media outlet are now dubbed “affiliated with the Russian government.”

    The FBI directly shut down American Herald Tribune and Iran’s Press TV. RT and Sputnik are already shut down in Europe. PropOrNot listing of 200 media sites catalogs for us what the national security state doesn’t want us to read, listen to, know, or think.

    Since the beginning of the first Cold War, there has been a continuous CIA-national security state operation to neutralize, marginalize, and create disunity among its opponents, often with the collaboration of the left that consider the Democratic Party a lesser evil. This strategy includes extensive foundation financing of leftist outlets and NGOs in order to tame them.

    Therefore, it is mistaken to fault the US left for its weakness. The CIA and the foundations have been key players in covertly manipulating opposition to US imperial rule, in part by strengthening the left soft on the Democrats to undermine any working class or anti-US empire challenge. To date, this national security state mission has also shown considerable success.

    The problems of building a working class left-wing partly results from the US rulers’ decades long campaign to disrupt the movement. This involves not just imprisoning and killing activists, such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or the Black Panthers, but also big business media marketing disinformation as news, their funding of a compatible left, and the present social media and internet censorship of anti-imperialist voices. Rebuilding an anti-war and working class left wing requires us to directly address and navigate through this maze ruling class sabotage has created.

    The post National Security State Censoring of Anti-Imperialist Voices first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • PNG election misinformation ‘worse than ever’, says journalist

    RNZ Pacific

    As the Papua New Guinea elections approach next month there are increasing worries about the spreading of false information.

    The poll begins on July 2 and is set to conclude three weeks later on July 22.

    RNZ Pacific’s PNG correspondent Scott Waide said that while misinformation during elections was not new, it appeared to be more coordinated and managed during this election.

    Waide runs classes on identifying misinformation and malinformation — which is information that is correct but is used to inflict harm.

    He said one item that appeared on social media, and which he has used in his classes, was a false claim that the incumbent in the Bougainville regional seat, Peter Tsiamalili, had been shot dead.

    He said even past information is being used to deceive.

    “Another instance is of an [alleged] photo of candidates Sylvia Pascoe and Gary Juffa, a very intimate photograph of them — they had a relationship before,” he said.

    “So, this photo is coming out on the eve of polling, being spread by people with intentions to destroy their integrity and their chances of political office.”

    Police investigating discovery of uniforms
    Meanwhile, the police are investigating the discovery of police and PNG defence uniforms on a chartered flight to Hela Province.

    Police Commissioner David Manning said security forces intercepted and confiscated the uniforms on the flight from Port Moresby to Komo Airport in Hela.

    Manning said a pistol found on a person who was meeting the flight had been confiscated.

    He said police were trying to uncover who chartered the aircraft and what role the ground staff at the airport played.

    Last week, a Highlands police commander issued instructions to the public to look out for people masquerading as police officers during the general elections.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Facebook Enables Anti-Abortion Clinics to Collect Data on Would-Be Patients

    Facebook is collecting ultra-sensitive personal data about abortion seekers and enabling anti-abortion organizations to use that data as a tool to target and influence people online, in violation of its own policies and promises.

    In the wake of a leaked Supreme Court opinion signaling the likely end of nationwide abortion protections, privacy experts are sounding alarms about all the ways people’s data trails could be used against them if some states criminalize abortion.

    A joint investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and The Markup found that the world’s largest social media platform is already collecting data about people who visit the websites of hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers, which are quasi-health clinics, mostly run by religiously aligned organizations whose mission is to persuade people to choose an option other than abortion.

    Meta, Facebook’s parent company, prohibits websites and apps that use Facebook’s advertising technology from sending Facebook “sexual and reproductive health” data. After investigations by The Wall Street Journal in 2019 and New York state regulators in 2021, the social media giant created a machine-learning system to help detect sensitive health data and blocked data that contained any of 70,000 health-related terms.

    But Reveal and The Markup have found Facebook’s code on the websites of hundreds of anti-abortion clinics. Using Blacklight, a Markup tool that detects cookies, keyloggers and other types of user-tracking technology on websites, Reveal analyzed the sites of nearly 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers – with data provided by the University of Georgia – and found that at least 294 shared visitor information with Facebook. In many cases, the information was extremely sensitive – for example, whether a person was considering abortion or looking to get a pregnancy test or emergency contraceptives.

    In a statement to Reveal and The Markup, Facebook spokesperson Dale Hogan said: “It is against our policies for websites and apps to send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools,” which includes its advertising technology. “Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it detects, and we work to educate advertisers on how to properly set up our Business Tools.” Facebook declined to answer detailed questions about its filtering systems and policies on data from crisis pregnancy centers. It’s unknown whether the filters caught any of the data, but our investigation showed a significant amount made its way to Facebook.

    Using Meta’s Privacy Center, we found that Facebook captured Reveal reporter Grace Oldham requesting an appointment at the Pregnancy Resource Center of Owasso in Oklahoma.
    Using Meta’s Privacy Center, we found that Facebook captured Reveal reporter Grace Oldham requesting an appointment at the Pregnancy Resource Center of Owasso in Oklahoma.

    More than a third of the websites sent data to Facebook when someone made an appointment for an “abortion consultation” or “pre-termination screening.” And at least 39 sites sent Facebook details such as the person’s name, email address or phone number.

    Facebook takes in data from crisis pregnancy centers through a tracking tool called the Meta Pixel that works whether or not a person is logged in to their Facebook account. The Pixel is largely an advertising tool that allows businesses to do things like buy Facebook ads targeted to people who have visited their website or to people who share similar interests or demographics with their site’s other visitors. This is a mostly automated process in which the business does not have access to information about the specific users being targeted. It’s not clear how this data is later used.

    Crisis pregnancy centers and other businesses can choose whether to install Pixel on their websites, though many website builders and third-party services automatically embed trackers. In 2020, The Markup found that 30% of the 80,000 most popular sites use the ad tracker, and Facebook has said millions of Pixels are on websites across the internet. Facebook says Pixel data can be stored for years.

    That personal data can be used in a number of ways. The centers can deliver targeted advertising, on Facebook or elsewhere, aimed at deterring an individual from getting an abortion. It can be used to build anti-abortion ad campaigns – and spread misinformation about reproductive health – targeted at people with similar demographics and interests. And, in the worst-case scenario now contemplated by privacy experts, that digital trail might even be used as evidence against abortion seekers in states where the procedure is outlawed.

    “I think this is going to be a wake-up call for millions of Americans about how much danger this tracking puts them in when laws change and people can weaponize these systems in ways that once seemed impossible,” said Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the New York-based Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

    Facebook and crisis pregnancy centers “are operating with virtually no rules,” he said.

    Facebook has policies and filters that are supposed to block sensitive personal data. But the platform’s filters have often proven to be porous against the vast amount of information they take in every day. Essentially, that means the company is putting the onus on its advertising clients to monitor themselves.

    And Facebook does not have an incentive to crack down on violations of its advertising policies, said Serge Egelman, research director of the Usable Security & Privacy Group at UC Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute. “That costs them money to do. As long as they’re not legally obligated to do so, why would they expend any resources to fix this?”

    Using Data to Make Abortion “Unthinkable”

    Crisis pregnancy centers market themselves as being in the “pregnancy resource” business, offering a range of free or low-cost services from pregnancy tests to baby clothing and “options consultations.” But their mission, articulated by Heartbeat International, the largest crisis pregnancy center network in the world, is far more sweeping: “to make abortion unwanted today and unthinkable for future generations.”

    Although many centers resemble medical clinics, the majority are not licensed medical facilities. Thus, most are not required to follow most privacy protections against the sharing of personal health information, including the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

    In recent years, crisis pregnancy centers have become increasingly savvy about targeting people using sophisticated digital tools and infrastructure. Heartbeat International, for example, has developed suites of products to help individual centers improve their online presence, digital advertising and data management. These online tools enable the centers to amass highly personal information, including medical histories, details about prior pregnancies and even ultrasound photos, and store and share that information with networks of anti-abortion partners.

    As Heartbeat International says on its webpage marketing its data management system: “Big data is revolutionizing all sorts of industries. Why shouldn’t it do the same for a critical ministry like ours?”

    When asked about Heartbeat International’s data-sharing practices, spokesperson Andrea Trudden said, “Heartbeat International encourages all pregnancy help organizations to utilize a variety of marketing to reach those seeking pregnancy help.” But, she said, “we do not require affiliates to provide such details to us.”

    Crisis pregnancy centers also have been documented as spreading false or misleading information about abortion, contraceptives and other reproductive health topics, including on Facebook. In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Facebook showed ads promoting an unproven medical procedure known as abortion pill reversal as many as 18.4 million times. Many of those advertisements were linked to Heartbeat International’s Abortion Pill Rescue Network project, which did not respond to a request for comment.

    How We Tracked the Data

    To test how Facebook and crisis pregnancy centers have been using the data the Pixel collects, Reveal reporter Grace Oldham created a new Facebook profile in late April solely for this investigation. Then, while logged in to Facebook, she visited the 294 crisis pregnancy center websites that Blacklight found to have a Pixel, clicking through each website and, when available, filling out appointment request forms. Oldham conducted the research in a clean browser with a cleared cache.

    In early May, she and Reveal data reporter Dhruv Mehrotra used Meta’s Privacy Center to download and review the data of the clean Facebook account. They found that Facebook retained data about Oldham’s interactions with 88% of those crisis pregnancy center websites, linking her behavior to her Facebook profile. For instance, Facebook knew Oldham had scheduled an appointment with the Pregnancy Resource Center of Owasso, Oklahoma. That state’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, signed a law in late May that bans virtually all abortions from the point of fertilization and took effect immediately. The Owasso center did not respond to a request for comment, but after we reached out, Facebook’s tracking Pixel was removed from every page on the center’s website.

    Our analysis found that in states that will ban most or all abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned, at least 120 crisis pregnancy centers sent data to Facebook about their website visitors. In Tennessee, for example, where the Human Life Protection Act is poised to outlaw abortion statewide, Facebook retained data from Oldham’s interactions with 11 centers. Next Steps Resources in Dunlap sent data to Facebook about every single page Oldham visited on its site. Facebook stored that data and knew that Oldham had submitted an appointment request with the center. Next Steps’ executive director, Debbie Chandler, told Reveal and The Markup that the people she hired to manage her website and marketing disagreed that “any private information was being sent to Facebook.”

    An appointment request form on the website of Next Steps Resources, a crisis pregnancy center in Dunlap, Tennessee.
    An appointment request form on the website of Next Steps Resources, a crisis pregnancy center in Dunlap, Tennessee.

    We also found that anti-abortion marketing companies gained access to some of Oldham’s Pixel data, even though she never interacted with their websites. These included Choose Life Marketing, whose website claims to help crisis pregnancy centers develop digital strategies to “reach more abortion-minded women,” and Stories Marketing, a social media marketing company for “pregnancy centers and life-affirming organizations.” Those organizations also added Oldham’s Facebook profile to custom audience groups capable of targeting her and people like her with ads for their services, as well as anti-abortion messaging. Choose Life Marketing and Stories Marketing did not respond to requests for comment.

    In their online materials, the marketing companies explain why Facebook plays such an important role in their digital strategies. “Facebook ads have the highest return on investment (ROI) of any type of online marketing – even twice the ROI of Google Ads,” Stories Marketing says, adding: “Facebook ads can also be placed on Instagram and other apps for free, extending your reach at no extra cost.” According to Choose Life: “Retargeting is an effective method of keeping your center at the forefront of their minds. … This digital marketing method can also help build credibility and trust as women go through the decision-making process because your center’s name becomes familiar to them.”

    We first ran our analysis in February and repeated it using the same methodology in early May. The results of both analyses were similar. As of Tuesday, Facebook still had data about Oldham’s interactions on crisis pregnancy center websites.

    Abortion Data Collection “Ripe for Abuse”

    Cahn, of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed concerns about how law enforcement agencies could use Facebook data to find people seeking abortions should the procedure become illegal in some states. “It’s ripe for abuse,” he said of Facebook’s data collection. “It seems indefensible to me that we are allowing companies to have so much power to expose our most intimate moments to these platforms and have them use it against us.”

    In recent years, law enforcement agencies have barraged tech companies like Google and Uber with demands for user data. Often, these legal requests don’t target individual suspects but instead compel the company to divulge data about people in a particular place or searches using specific keywords. According to the most recent data available from Facebook’s Transparency Center, the company received nearly 60,000 government requests for data from July to December 2021 and complied 88% of the time.

    Although crisis pregnancy centers could provide law enforcement with data about anyone who had voluntarily provided personal information, they probably don’t have the technology to disclose specific information about individuals who had merely visited their websites. But Facebook is different. Because the social media company can link activity on a crisis pregnancy center site to an individual’s profile, Facebook is in a much better position to divulge granular data about the center’s website visitors than the center itself.

    Data from search engine histories played a key role in a 2018 criminal case, in which a Mississippi woman was indicted for second-degree murder after suffering a pregnancy loss at home. The evidence included internet searches the woman had allegedly conducted for how to “buy Misoprostol abortion pill online.” The charges eventually were dropped.

    “There’s nothing to stop police from using Facebook ad-targeting data the same way they’ve been using Google’s data, as a mass digital dragnet,” Cahn said.

    Laura Lazaro Cabrera, a legal officer at London-based Privacy International, said that even metadata, like the titles of webpages or URLs, can be revealing. “Think about what you can learn from a URL that says something about scheduling an abortion,” she said. “Facebook is in the business of developing algorithms. They know what sorts of information can act as a proxy for personal data.”

    Getting Facebook to Fix the Problem

    Privacy experts have been warning for years that Facebook’s laissez-faire attitude toward how clients use its advertising technology is vulnerable to exploitation. After The Wall Street Journal and New York state regulators exposed how the social media behemoth collected sensitive user data from popular health apps that chart everything from heart rates to menstrual cycles, Facebook claimed to have implemented sophisticated filtering mechanisms to detect and prevent it from taking in sensitive health data. According to the Journal, the filters were supposed to block “70,000 terms related to topics such as sexual health and medical conditions.”

    But our investigation found that Facebook has continued to ingest data from webpages with obvious sexual health information – including ones with URLs that include phrases such as “post-abortion,” “i-think-im-pregnant” and “abortion-pill.”

    Despite Facebook’s official policy prohibiting websites from sending it sensitive health information, it’s unclear what, if anything, the platform does to educate its advertising clients about the policy and proactively enforce it.

    One way for Facebook to prevent anti-abortion organizations from misusing its ad technology would be to strengthen the filters it already has in place or to discontinue the Pixel tool entirely. But the reality, said Egelman of UC Berkeley, is that the company’s $115 billion a year in advertising revenue creates a huge financial disincentive to block user information.

    “This is their business. The more data they get, the more targeted advertising they can do, and that’s the gravy train for them: targeted ads,” he said. “If they’re proactive about cutting off sites like that, it impacts their revenue in multiple ways.”

    In the absence of Facebook action, Egelman says he thinks that the best fix is public pressure and tough legislation. That’s what happened last year, when critical backlash prompted Meta-owned Instagram to shelve its plans for a kids’ version of its social media software.

    While no comprehensive federal data privacy legislation currently exists in the United States, a draft of a bill called the American Data Privacy and Protection Act was released in early June that, if passed, could increase the Federal Trade Commission’s power to regulate and enforce how companies can use sensitive health data. Until then, however, it remains up to state legislatures to enact consumer privacy protections.

    Brandie Nonnecke, founding director of the CITRIS Policy Lab at UC Berkeley, said the European Union is creating stronger protections that would apply through the Digital Services Act. The new guidelines, which are awaiting formal approval by the European Parliament and EU Council, will require large online platforms, like Facebook, and search engines to proactively identify ways their systems could be abused and create strategies to prevent that misuse.

    “We’re not in a place where there is robust enough transparency and accountability on these data ecosystems and how they’re being used,” she said, “and especially the vulnerabilities to individuals.”

    Byard Duncan and Surya Mattu contributed to this story. It was edited by Nina Martin, Soo Oh, Rina Palta and Andrew Donohue and copy edited by Nikki Frick.

    This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to their weekly newsletter at revealnews.org/newsletter.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Duterte ‘institutionalised’ disinformation, paved the way for a Marcos victory

    By Loreben Tuquero in Manila

    On social media, Ferdinand Marcos Jr needed to have all pieces in place to stage a Malacañang comeback: he had a network of propagandist assets, popular myths that justified his family’s obscene wealth, and narratives that distorted the horrors of his father’s rule.

    He had even asked Cambridge Analytica to rebrand his family’s image.

    The living component among these pieces was Rodrigo Duterte — an ally who, when elected president, normalised Marcos’ machinery, painting over a picture of murders and plunder to show glory and heroism instead.

    “I think that really, if we are to make a metaphor [to] describe the role of Duterte to Marcos’ win, it’s really Duterte being the sponsor or a ninong to Marcos Jr…. I think Duterte ultimately is the godfather of this all,” said Fatima Gaw, assistant professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman.

    The alliance
    Marcos’ disinformation machinery that was years in the making was complemented by his longtime ties to the Duterte family. Before “Uniteam,” there was “AlDub” or Alyansang Duterte-Bongbong.

    Marcos courted Rodrigo Duterte in 2015, but Duterte chose Alan Peter Cayetano to be his running mate. Even then, calls for a Duterte-Marcos tandem persisted.

    Gaw said Duterte played a part in driving interest for Marcos-related social media content and making it profitable. The first milestone for this interest, according to Gaw, was when Marcos filed his certificate of candidacy for vice-president in 2015.

    They saw an influx of search demand for Marcos history on Google.

    “There’s interest already back then but it was amplified and magnified by the alliance with Duterte. So every time there’s a pronouncement from Duterte about, for example, the burial of Marcos Sr. in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, that also spiked interest, and that interest is actually cumulative, it’s not like it’s a one-off thing,” Gaw said in a June interview with Rappler.

    Using CrowdTangle, Rappler scanned posts in 2016 with the keyword “Marcos,” yielding over 62,000 results from pages with admins based in the Philippines. Spikes can be seen during key events like the EDSA anniversary, the Pilipinas 2016 debate, election day, and instances after Duterte’s moves to bury the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

    On February 19, 2016, Duterte said that if elected president, he would allow the burial of the late dictator at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. On August 7, 2016, Duterte said that Marcos deserved to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani for being a soldier and a former president.

    The burial pushed through on November 18, 2016 and became a major event that allowed the massive whitewashing of the Martial Law period.

    Made with flourish
    Related content would then gain views, prompting platforms to recommend them and make them more visible, Gaw said. In a research she conducted in 2021 with De La Salle University (DLSU) communication professor Cheryll Soriano, they found that when searching “Marcos history” on YouTube, videos made by amateur content creators or people unaffiliated with professional groups were recommended more than news, institutional, and academic sources.

    “A big part of Marcos’ success online and spreading his message and propaganda is because he leveraged both his political alliances with [the] Dutertes, as the front-facing tandem and political partnership. And on the backend, whatever ecosystem that the Duterte administration has established, is something that Marcos already can tap,” Gaw said.

    In an upcoming study on social media and disinformation narratives authored by Aries Arugay and Justin Baquisal, they identified four thematic disinformation narratives in the last election campaign — authoritarian nostalgia/fantasy, conspiracy theories (Tallano gold, Yamashita treasure), “strongman”, and democratic disillusionment.

    Arugay, a political science professor at UP Diliman, said these four narratives were the “raw materials” for further polarisation in the country.

    “Para sa mga kabataan, ’yung mga 18-24, fantasy siya. Kasi naririnig natin ‘yun, ah kaya ko binoto si Bongbong Marcos kasi gusto kong maexperience ‘yung Martial Law,” Arugay said in an interview with Rappler in June.

    (For the youth, those aged 18-24, it’s a fantasy. We hear that reasoning, that they voted for Bongbong Marcos because they want to experience Martial Law.)

    Arugay described this as “unthinkable,” but pervasive false narratives that the Martial Law era was the golden age of Philippine economy, that no Filipino was poor during that time, that the Philippines was the richest country next to Japan, among many other claims, allowed for such a fantasy to thrive.

    Institutionalising disinformation
    While traditional propaganda required money and machinery, usually from a top-down system, Gaw said Duterte co-opted and hijacked the existing systems to manipulate the news cycle and online discourse to make a name for himself.

    “I think what Duterte has done…is to institutionalise disinformation at the state level,” she said.

    This meant that the amplification of Duterte’s messaging became incorporated in activities of the government, perpetuated by the Presidential Communications Operations Office, the Philippine National Police, and the government’s anti-communist task force or the NTF-ELCAC, among others.

    Early on, Duterte’s administration legitimized partisan vloggers by hiring some of them in government. Other vloggers served as crisis managers for the PCOO, monitoring social media, alerting the agency about sentiments that were critical of the administration, and spreading positive news about the government.

    Bloggers were organized by Pebbles Duque, niece of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, who himself was criticised over the government’s pandemic response.

    Mocha Uson, one of the most infamous pro-Duterte disinformation peddlers, was appointed PCOO assistant secretary earlier in his term. (She ended up campaigning for Isko Moreno in the last election.)

    Now, we’re seeing a similar turn of events — Marcos appointed pro-Duterte vlogger Trixie Cruz-Angeles as his press secretary. Under Duterte’s administration, Angeles had been a social media strategist of the PCOO.

    Following the Duterte administration’s lead, they are again eyeing the accreditation of vloggers to let them cover Malacañang briefings or press conferences.

    “So in the Duterte campaign, of course there were donors, supporters paying for the disinformation actors and workers. Now it’s actually us, the Filipino people, funding disinformation, because it’s now part of the state. So I think that’s the legacy of the Duterte administration and what Marcos has done, is actually to just leverage on that,” Gaw said.

    Targeting critics
    What pieces of disinformation are Filipinos inadvertently funding? Gaw said that police pages are some of the most popular pages to spread disinformation on Facebook, and that they don’t necessarily talk about police work but instead the various agenda of the state, such as demonising communist groups, activist groups, and other progressive movements.

    Emboldened by their chief Duterte, who would launch tirades against his critics during his speeches and insult, curse, and red-tag them, police pages and accounts spread false or misleading content that target activists and critics. They do this by posting them directly or by sharing them from dubious, anonymously-managed pages, a Rappler investigation found.

    Facebook later took down a Philippine network that was linked to the military or police, for violating policies on coordinated inauthentic behavior.

    The platform has also previously suspended Communications Undersecretary and NTF-ELCAC spokesperson Lorraine Badoy who has long been targeting and brazenly red-tagging individuals and organizations that are critical of the government. She faces several complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman accusing her of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and the Code of Conduct for public officials.

    “PCOO as an office before wasn’t really a big office, they’re not popular, but all of a sudden they become so salient and so visible in media because they’re able to understand that half of the battle of governance is not just doing the operations of it but also the PR side of it,” Gaw said.

    Facebook users recirculated a post Badoy made in January 2016, wherein she talked about the murders of Boyet and Primitivo Mijares under Martial Law. In that post, just six years ago, Badoy called Bongbong an “idiot, talentless son of the dead dickhead dictator.”

    Badoy has since disowned such views. In a post on May 2022, Badoy said she only “believed all those lies I was taught in UP” and quoted Joseph Meynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind.”

    Angeles also said the same in June 2022 when netizens surfaced her old tweets criticising the Marcos family. She said, “I changed my mind about it, aren’t we entitled to change our minds?”

    But the facts haven’t changed. A 2003 Supreme Court decision declared $658 million worth of Marcos Swiss deposits as ill-gotten. Imelda Marcos’ motion for reconsideration was “denied with finality”.

    According to Amnesty International, 70,000 were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed under Martial Law.

    Red-tagger Lorraine Badoy
    “Red-tagger” Lorraine Badoy … spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) pictured in November 2020. Image: Rappler

    The rise of alternative news sources
    Outside government channels, Badoy co-hosts an SMNI programme named “Laban Kasama ng Bayan” with Jeffrey “Ka Eric” Celiz — who is supposedly a former rebel — where they talk about the communist movement. SMNI is the broadcasting arm of embattled preacher Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ church.

    SMNI has been found to be at the core of the network of online assets who red-tag government critics and attack the media. The content that vloggers and influencers produce to defend Duterte’s administration now bleeds into newscasts by organisations with franchises granted by the government.

    The first report of the Digital Public Pulse, a project co-led by Gaw, found that on YouTube, leading politician and government channels, including that of Marcos, directly reach their audiences without the mediation of the media.

    “This shift to subscribing to influencers and vloggers as sources of news and information, and now subscribing to nontraditional or non-mainstream sources of information that are [still considered institutional] because they have franchises and they have licences to operate, it’s part of the trend of the growing distrust in mainstream media,” Gaw said.

    She said that given the patronage relationship that religious organisations have with politicians, alternative news sources like SMNI and NET25 don’t necessarily practice objective, accountable, or responsible journalism because their interest is different from the usual journalistic organisation.

    “I think that in general these two are politically tied and economically incentivised to perform the role that the administration and the incoming presidency of Marcos want them to play, and exactly, serving as an alternative source of information,” she said.

    A day after he was proclaimed, Marcos held a press conference with only three reporters, who belonged to SMNI, GMA News, and NET25.

    Rappler reviewed NET25’s Facebook posts and found that it has a history of attacking the press, Vice-President Leni Robredo, and her supporters. The network had also released inaccurate reports that put Robredo in a bad light.

    Gaw said because these alternative news channels owned by religious institutions have a mutually-benefiting relationship with the government, they are given access to government officials and to stories that other journalists might not have access to. There is thus no incentive for them to report critically and perform the role of providing checks and balances.

    “They would essentially be an extension of state propaganda,” Gaw said.

    For Arugay, the Marcos campaign was able to take advantage of how the state influenced the standards of journalism.

    “Part [of their strategy] is least exposure to unfriendlies, particularly media that’s critical. I think at the end they saw the power of critical media. And once they were able to get an opportunity, they wanted to turn things around. And this is where democracy suffers,” Arugay said.

    Under Duterte, journalists and news organisations faced a slew of attacks that threatened their livelihood and freedom. Rappler was banned from covering Malacañang, faced trumped-up charges, then witnessed its CEO Maria Ressa being convicted of cyber libel.

    Broadcasting giant ABS-CBN was shut down. Journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio is in her second year in jail.

    While the international community lauds the courageous and critical reporting of Philippine journalists, Filipinos are shutting them out.

    All bases covered
    While Duterte mostly used a Facebook strategy to win the election, Marcos went all out in 2022 — and it paid off.

    “[The] strategy of the Marcos Jr. campaign became very complicated [compared with] the Duterte campaign because back then they were really, they just invested on Facebook. [That’s not the case here]…. No social media tech or platform was disregarded,” Arugay said.

    At one point in 2021, YouTube became the most popular social media platform in the Philippines, beating Facebook. Whereas Facebook at least has a third-party fact-checking programme, YouTube barely has any strong policies against disinformation.

    “I think with the Marcos campaign, they knew Facebook was a battleground, they deployed all their efforts there as well, but they knew they had to win YouTube. Because that’s where we can build more sophisticated lies and convoluted narratives than on Facebook,” Gaw said.

    YouTube’s unclear policies allow lies to thrive
    A study by FEU technical consultant Justin Muyot found that Marcos had the highest number of estimated “alternative videos” — those produced by content creators — on YouTube. These videos aimed to shame candidates critical of Marcos and his supporters, endear Marcos to the public, and sow discord between the other presidential candidates.

    YouTube is also where hyperpartisan channels thrive by posing as news channels. These were found to be in one major community that includes SMNI and the People’s Television Network.

    This legitimises them as a “surrogate to journalistic reporting”.

    “That’s why you’re able to sell historical disinformation, you’re able to [have] false narratives about the achievements of the Marcoses, or Bongbong Marcos in particular. You’re able to launch counterattacks to criticisms of Marcos in a very coherent and coordinated way because you’re able to have that space, time, and the immersion required to buy into these narratives,” Gaw said.

    Apart from YouTube, Gaw said that Marcos had a “more clear understanding of a cross-platform strategy” across social media.

    On Twitter, freshly-made accounts were set up to trend pro-Marcos hashtags. The platform later suspended over 300 accounts from the Marcos supporter base for violating its platform manipulation and spam policy.

    Philippines presidential candidate Leni Robredo
    Outgoing Vice-President and unsuccessful presidential candidate Leni Robredo – the only woman to contest the president’s office last month. Image: David Robie/APR

    Ruining Robredo was a ‘coordinated effort’
    Duterte and Marcos had a common target over the years: Robredo. She is another female who was constantly undermined by Duterte, along with Leila de Lima, a victim of character assassination who continues to suffer jail time because of it.

    “It has been a coordinated effort of Duterte and Marcos to really undermine her, reap or cultivate hatred against her for whatever reason and to actually attach her to people and parties or groups who have political baggage, for example LP (Liberal Party) even if she’s not running for LP,” Gaw said.

    The meta-partisan “news” ecosystem on YouTube, studied by researchers of the Philippine Media Monitoring Laboratory, was found to deliver propaganda using audio-visual and textual cues traditionally associated with broadcast news media.

    They revealed patterns of “extreme bias and fabricated information,” repeating falsehoods that, among others, enforce negative views on Robredo’s ties with the Liberal Party and those that make her seem stupid.

    Rappler found that the top misogynistic attack words used against Robredo on Facebook posts are “bobo,” “tanga,” “boba,” and “madumb,” all labeling her as stupid.

    Fact-checking initiative Tsek.PH also found Robredo to be the top victim of disinformation based on their fact checks done in January 2022.

    “By building years and years of lies and basically giving her, manufacturing her political baggage along the way, that made her campaign in [2022] very hard to win, very hard to convert new people because there’s already ambivalence against her,” Gaw said.

    Arugay and Gaw both said that the media, academe, and civil society failed to act until it was too late. “The election result and [and where the] political landscape is at now is a product of that neglect,” Gaw said.

    There is still a lack of a systemic approach on how to engage with disinformation, said Gaw, since much of it is still untraceable and underground. To add, Arugay said tech companies are to blame for their nature of prioritising profit.

    “Just like in 2016, the disinformation network and architecture responsible for the 2022 electoral victory of Marcos Jr. will not die down. They will not fade.

    “They will not wither away. They will just transition because the point is no longer to get him elected, the point is for him to govern or make sure that he is protected while in power,” Arugay said.

    When the new administration comes in, it will be the public’s responsibility to hold elected officials accountable. But if this strategy — instilled by Duterte’s administration and continued by Marcos — continues, crucifying critics on social media and in real life, blaming past administrations and the opposition for the poor state of the country, and concocting narratives to fool Filipinos, what will reality in the Philippines look like down the line?

    Loreben Tuquero is a journalist for Rappler. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified

    Campaign disseminating disinformation sent thousands of tweets, often targeting the White Helmets

    A network of more than two dozen conspiracy theorists, frequently backed by a coordinated Russian campaign, sent thousands of disinformation tweets to distort the reality of the Syrian conflict and deter intervention by the international community, new analysis reveals.

    Data gathered by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) identified a network of social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations who disseminated disinformation about the conflict, with 1.8 million people following their every word. The three principal false narratives promoted by the network of conspiracy theorists involved misrepresenting the White Helmets, the volunteer organisation working to evacuate people in Syria. They also focused on the denial or distortion of facts about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons and on attacking the findings of the world’s foremost chemical weapons watchdog.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Trump’s Site Truth Social Has Been Banning Users Over Posts on Jan. 6 Hearings

    Users on Truth Social, former President Donald Trump’s social media platform, are reporting that they’ve been banned from the site over their commentaries relating to the January 6 select committee’s investigation into the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building.

    Users have had their accounts deactivated solely because they discussed the public hearings, Variety reported. The hearings began last week and have thus far highlighted how Trump and his allies attempted a coup to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

    Trump started Truth Social after he was banned from several prominent social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. Trump claimed that the site would “be a voice for all,” and a haven for “free speech,” and vowed that the platform would be unfettered by the rules that other private companies have put in place to limit harassment or calls for violence.

    In practice, however, Truth Social has operated in a way that is perhaps more restrictive than other sites, especially when it comes to banning users for their political opinions. Several users have recently pointed out that mentioning the January 6 hearings in their “truths” — what Truth Social calls posts on the site, similar to “tweets” on Twitter — has resulted in their suspensions.

    “My Truth Social account was just permanently suspended for talking about the January 6th Committee hearings,” wrote Travis Allen, a security analyst and political commentator.

    “I was suspended from Truth Social for posting about the January 6th hearing last night. Donald Trump is scared of free speech,” said Jack Cocchiarella, a user who describes himself as a Democratic digital strategist.

    Although Truth Social has been advertised as a bastion of free speech principles, its terms of service suggest otherwise, allowing managers of the site to ban “any person for any reason or no reason” whatsoever.

    Users have also reported that merely criticizing the former president has resulted in their accounts being banned. The bans are not just limited to progressive users; far right conservatives who expressed anti-Trump sentiments on the site have claimed that they’ve also faced suspecion.

    Truth Social has been banning users since the site launched earlier this year. Days after the platform launched, comedian Matt Ortega, who ran parody handles on the site and on Twitter purporting to be former Republican congressman Devin Nunes’s cow, was banned almost immediately after he signed up. (Nunes, who unsuccessfully sued Ortega for defamation, manages Truth Social’s parent company.)

    “I may be the first officially ‘cancelled’ Truth Social user,” Ortega said upon his suspension.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Nigeria, Oh, Nigeria, Cry for me, Nigeria!

    So, good friend, Madu, who I met decades ago, at UT-El Paso. He was coming through buildings where part-time English faculty had offices. That big smile, that large voice, and an open hand. He was working the used/discount book gig: going to colleges to get books from faculty and bookstores that might have been extra copies from the respective publishers called review copies.

    So, part-time faculty like myself, in the 1980s, would order tons of these reviewer’s copies of grammar, lit, and survey collections. Then fellows like Madu might come by with hard cold cash to buy them up.

    The old days when students could find alternative prices (lower) than what college bookstores would charge. Madu has that service.

    We talked, and his Nigerian love, his Nigerian spirit, the fact he was in Houston, with a wife and three children, all of that, made the chats open and real. I had just had a baby girl, so we talked about her.

    Then politics, Africa, my own activism around Central America, the US-Mexico border, the environment, twin plants, militarization of campuses and the border, and my own work trying to unionize part-time exploited faculty.

    Global politics. Nigeria, Africa, Diasporas, evil US-backed dictators, colonialism, post-colonialism, the trauma, the long-term biopiracy of Africa, the theft of resources, and alas, imagine, 30 years later, almost, and African countries are in the grips of AFRICOM, the US vassals, the exploiters, the mining, ag, and oil thieves. Until, 2022, many are becoming failed states, famines, the entire world of data mining, Zuckerberg encircling the continent with his Metaverse, and on and on. The story of United Fruit Company, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Big Pharma, Hearts and Minds USA special forces, and proxy wars and Nationa ENdowmenr for Democracy/CIA fomenting hell.

    Oh, this devil USA:

    Phoenix Express 2021, the AFRICOM-sponsored military exercise involving 13 countries in the Mediterranean Sea region, concluded last week. While its stated aim was to combat “irregular migration” and trafficking, the U.S. record in the region indicates more nefarious interests. “AFRICOM military’s exercise: The art of creating new pretexts for propagating U.S. interests” (source)

    Go to MR Online, and then put in AFRICOM. Or, AFRICOM and Nigeria, or pick your country. Mark my words: Everything, I say EVERYTHING, tied to the USA and UK and EU when involving African nations now, well, pure evil:

    This is recent, as in Oct. 2021:

    Please join us for the launch of the international month of action by attending a webinar on October 1st, titled “AFRICOM at 13: Building the Popular Movement for Demilitarization and Anti-Imperialism in Africa.” Speakers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, and the African diaspora will discuss AFRICOM and what we can do to expel imperialist forces from the continent. Following the webinar, events will take place throughout October organized by various organizations on the African continent, in the U.S., and around the world to demand an end to the U.S. and western invasion and occupation of Africa.

    BAP makes the following demands in the U.S. Out of Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign:

    • The complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Africa,
    • The demilitarization of the African continent,
    • The closure of U.S. bases throughout the world, and
    • That the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) oppose U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and conduct hearings on AFRICOM’s impact on the African continent, with the full participation of members of U.S. and African civil society.

    Written by Tunde Osazua, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Africa Team and the coordinator of the U.S. Out of Africa Network.

    So, I was on Madu’s radio show, and he has run for Senate in Nigeria, and he wants to run for president. However, as he clearly states: “You have to have millions of dollars and militias to buy the votes.”

    This is his organization:

    Here’s a statement from Madu:

    Not rising up by Nigerians from within Nigeria and around the world beyond ethnic, regional, religious and partisan political boundaries to save Nigeria from the hands of her mostly visionless, ignorant, insensitive, inhumane, squandermanic and most painfully, corrupt and morally bankrupt drivers of government at all levels whose actions have significantly weakened her sovereignty and territorial integrity, and made her peoples so poor and vulnerable , is a sin against God and a grave infraction against humanity for which history and unborn generations of Nigerians will judge us all harshly if we fail today to act unconditionally to save the country from an imminent collapse.

    ….Smart Madu Ajaja

    This is a serious and long-term project, the decolonizing of the world, including all those countries’ economies, the land, the people, the cultures and the individuals:

    This Special Issue aims to explore the complex and contested relationship between trauma studies and postcolonial criticism, focusing on the ongoing project to create a decolonized trauma theory that attends to and accounts for the suffering of minority groups and non-Western cultures, broadly defined as cultures beyond Western Europe and North America. The issue builds on the insights of, inter alia, Stef Craps’s book, Postcolonial Witnessing, and responds to his challenge to interrogate and move beyond a Eurocentric trauma paradigm. Authors were invited to submit papers on the theorization and representation of any aspect of postcolonial, non-Western and/or minority cultural trauma with a focus predominately, but not exclusively, on literature. (Source= Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism … 200+ pages!)

    I talked with Madu on his radio show, and below, the show. I do cover a lot of philosophical territory, and alas, this is about Madu and his love of his country and how quickly the country of his birth has spiraled into a country of selling people as slaves, kidnapping people for organs, murder, rape, theft.

    So under the cover of counterterrorism, AFRICOM is beefing up Nigeria’s military to ensure the free flow of oil to the West, and using the country as a proxy against China’s influence on the continent. And that is the issue, too, that Madu is not happy with — his country being exploited by anyone, including China. I explained to him that the USA has the military bases, the guns, and China has the contracts, the builders. In fact, Madu is spiritually exasperated at how his own countrymen turn against their own countrymen, and how there is a overlay of trauma and laziness and desperation and inflicted PTSD, including the post-colonial trauma referenced above.

    USA is like a storm of ticks, locusts, mosquitos, viruses, as the syphilitic notions of Neocon and Neoliberal anti-diplomacy hits country after country like disease. A plague.

    The greatest threat looming over our planet, the hegemonistic pretentions of the American Empire, are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger, and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads.

    –Hugo Chavez

    The United States Military is arguably the largest force of ecological devastation the world has ever known.

    –Xoài Pham

    Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, and fulfill it or betray it.

    –Frantz Fanon (source)

    William Blum wrote about the illegality of the USA’s direct and indirect bombing and invasions.

    Here, a bit of an update:

    The Death Toll of U.S. Imperialism Since World War 2

    A critical disclaimer: Figures relating to the death toll of U.S. Imperialism are often grossly underestimated due to the U.S. government’s lack of transparency and often purposeful coverup and miscounts of death tolls. In some cases, this can lead to ranges of figures that include millions of human lives–as in the figure for Indonesia below with estimates of 500,000 to 3 million people. We have tried to provide the upward ranges in these cases since we suspect the upward ranges to be more accurate if not still significantly underestimated. These figures were obtained from multiple sources including but not limited to indigenous scholar Ward Churchill’s Pacifism as Pathology as well as Countercurrents’ article Deaths in Other Nations Since WWII Due to U.S. Interventions (please note that use of Countercurrents’ statistics isn’t an endorsement of the site’s politics).

    • Afghanistan: at least 176,000 people
    • Bosnia: 20,000 to 30,000 people
    • Bosnia and Krajina: 250,000 people
    • Cambodia: 2-3 million people
    • Chad: 40,000 people and as many as 200,000 tortured
    • Chile: 10,000 people (the U.S. sponsored Pinochet coup in Chile)
    • Colombia: 60,000 people
    • Congo: 10 million people (Belgian imperialism supported by U.S. corporations and the U.S. sponsored assassination of Patrice Lumumba)
    • Croatia: 15,000 people
    • Cuba: 1,800 people
    • Dominican Republic: at least 3,000 people
    • East Timor: 200,000 people
    • El Salvador: More than 75,000 people (U.S. support of the Salvadoran oligarchy and death squads)
    • Greece: More than 50,000 people
    • Grenada: 277 people
    • Guatemala: 140,000 to 200,000 people killed or forcefully disappeared (U.S. support of the Guatemalan junta)
    • Haiti: 100,000 people
    • Honduras: hundreds of people (CIA supported Battalion kidnapped, tortured and killed at least 316 people)
    • Indonesia: Estimates of 500,000 to 3 million people
    • Iran: 262,000 people
    • Iraq: 2.4 million people in Iraq war, 576, 000 Iraqi children by U.S. sanctions, and over 100,000 people in Gulf War
    • Japan: 2.6-3.1 million people
    • Korea: 5 million people
    • Kosovo: 500 to 5,000
    • Laos: 50,000 people
    • Libya: at least 2500 people
    • Nicaragua: at least 30,000 people (U.S. backed Contras’ destabilization of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua)
    • Operation Condor: at least 10,000 people (By governments of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. U.S. govt/CIA coordinated training on torture, technical support, and supplied military aid to the Juntas)
    • Pakistan: at least 1.5 million people
    • Palestine: estimated more than 200,000 people killed by military but this does not include death from blockade/siege/settler violence
    • Panama: between 500 and 4000 people
    • Philippines: over 100,000 people executed or disappeared
    • Puerto Rico: 4,645-8,000 people
    • Somalia: at least 2,000 people
    • Sudan: 2 million people
    • Syria: at least 350,000 people
    • Vietnam: 3 million people
    • Yemen: over 377,000 people
    • Yugoslavia: 107,000 people (Source: The Mapping Project is a multi-generational collective of activists and organizers in the Boston area who are deeply engaged in Palestine solidarity / BDS work. For over a year, we’ve been tracing Greater Boston’s networks of support for the colonization of Palestine–and how these networks participate in other forms of oppression, from policing to U.S. imperialism to medical apartheid and privatization.)

    Madu and most activist Nigerians know these facts. Big global facts. The vices the United States of America has put the world in. The dirty Empire. The global cop. And, so, Nigerians in the USA number around two million, with a few hundred thousand. Now, of course, off camera, I repeated to Madu that most Americans, oh, 90 percent of the 355 million currently residing (most illegally) here do not care about Black, Africans, Chinese, and again one American is worth a million Nigerians. It is a juggling act, being part of the Diapora, and Madu is a nurse, and he like I said ran for Senate, and lost, and he has been inspired by some youth, but again, youth are being colonized by the ticks of data. Read below the YouTube window.

    So, Alison McDowell at Wrench in the Gears, and then Silicon Icarus and others are talking about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the next colonialization of Africa. Coltan and gold may be like gold to the Wall Streeters and Transnationalists, and water and food and good land may be like platinum to the same group of thieves, but data is worth its gigbytes/terrabytes in emeralds. “French Imperialism vs. Crypto Colonialism: The Central African Republic Experiment” and “Blockchain Technology & Coercive Surveillance of the Global South” both by Sebs Solomon

    So, Madu, and great honorable youth in Nigeria who want to have a free, open, clean, sustainable, cultural-centric, food security, self-imposing, country of healthy bodies, minds and ecosystems, I am sorry to report the devils wear skinny jeans, and many come to the USA from India with work permits to work and live in Seattle/Redmond to work for Microsoft/Google/Facebook and all the other devils helping put these systems in place:

    At the same time, SingularityNET partnered with UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education (IBE) to establish a new curriculum for children and teens, with an emphasis on emerging technology to prepare the youth for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. According to UNICEF:

    There will never be enough money allocated in the budget, qualified teachers, or places in schools for the population we have; therefore, emerging technologies like Virtual Reality allow us to leapfrog these problems and offer the hope of more affordable, scalable and better quality education.

    It is striking to read that UNICEF doesn’t believe there will ever be enough money to help all of the children in the world receive a traditional, classroom, education; therefore, it’s better to invest and scale Virtual Reality education — a rather pessimistic take from the “children’s fund” arm of the UN. UNICEF Innovation Fund, has virtual reality education programs in Chile, India, Nigeria, and Ghana. In Ghana, they noted there are “challenges to accessing the necessary teaching and learning resources for students to receive quality education; which is compounded by the lack of necessary and up-to-date education materials, huge class sizes and the lack of necessary infrastructural facilities.” (source)

    How many more battlefields shall honorable people like Madu enter into with no money, no militias and the kings of capital weilding more powerful digital bombs than hydrogen bombs?

    For a rabbit hole or warren, go to: Silicon Icarus and see Alison McDowell’s work on the following: Alison McDowell. Or over at her blog: Wrench in the Gears. She’s expending lifetime hours looking into this evil web of Davos, WEF, the billionaires’ club, the taking over of humanity through transhumanism, blockchain, Singularity, and all the other topics the mainstream and leftstream media and blogs just won’t tackle.

    • Blockchain
    • Gamification
    • Genomics
    • Impact Finance
    • Smart Cities
    • Biosecurity State

    This is what the Fourth Industrialization devils want for all children on earth (minus their kids and their sychophants’ kids). Soylent Green be damned!

    The post Nigeria, Oh, Nigeria, Cry for me, Nigeria! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A new book argues Julian Assange is being tortured. Will Australia’s new PM do anything about it?

    REVIEW: By Matthew Ricketson, Deakin University

    It is easy to forget why Julian Assange has been on trial in England for, well, seemingly forever.

    Didn’t he allegedly sexually assault two women in Sweden? Isn’t that why he holed up for years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid facing charges?

    When the bobbies finally dragged him out of the embassy, didn’t his dishevelled appearance confirm all those stories about his lousy personal hygiene?

    Didn’t he persuade Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to hack into the United States military’s computers to reveal national security matters that endangered the lives of American soldiers and intelligence agents? He says he is a journalist, but hasn’t The New York Times made it clear he is just a “source” and not a publisher entitled to first amendment protection?

    If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you are not alone. But the answers are actually no. At very least, it’s more complicated than that.

    To take one example, the reason Assange was dishevelled was that staff in the Ecuadorian embassy had confiscated his shaving gear three months before to ensure his appearance matched his stereotype when the arrest took place.

    Julian Assange
    Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Britain, on April 11, 2019. His shaving gear had been confiscated. Image: The Conversation/EPA/Stringer

    That is one of the findings of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, whose investigation of the case against Assange has been laid out in forensic detail in The Trial of Julian Assange.

    What is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture doing investigating the Assange case, you might ask? So did Melzer when Assange’s lawyers first approached him in 2018:

    I had more important things to do: I had to take care of “real” torture victims!

    Melzer returned to a report he was writing about overcoming prejudice and self-deception when dealing with official corruption. “Not until a few months later,” he writes, “would I realise the striking irony of this situation.”

    The Trial of Julian Assange
    Cover of The Trial of Julian Assange … “the continuation of diplomacy by other means”. Image: Verso

    The 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council directly appoint
    special rapporteurs on torture. The position is unpaid — Melzer earns his living as a professor of international law — but they have diplomatic immunity and operate largely outside the UN’s hierarchies.

    Among the many pleas for his attention, Melzer’s small office chooses between 100 and 200 each year to officially investigate. His conclusions and recommendations are not binding on states. He bleakly notes that in barely 10 percent of cases does he receive full co-operation from states and an adequate resolution.

    He received nothing like full co-operation in investigating Assange’s case. He gathered around 10,000 pages of procedural files, but a lot of them came from leaks to journalists or from freedom-of-information requests.

    Many pages had been redacted. Rephrasing Carl Von Clausewitz’s maxim, Melzer wrote his book as “the continuation of diplomacy by other means”.

    What he finds is stark and disturbing:

    The Assange case is the story of a man who is being persecuted and abused for exposing the dirty secrets of the powerful, including war crimes, torture and corruption. It is a story of deliberate judicial arbitrariness in Western democracies that are otherwise keen to present themselves as exemplary in the area of human rights.

    It is the story of wilful collusion by intelligence services behind the back of national parliaments and the general public. It is a story of manipulated and manipulative reporting in the mainstream media for the purpose of deliberately isolating, demonizing, and destroying a particular individual. It is the story of a man who has been scapegoated by all of us for our own societal failures to address government corruption and state-sanctioned crimes.

    Collateral murder
    The dirty secrets of the powerful are difficult to face, which is why we — and I don’t exclude myself — swallow neatly packaged slurs and diversions of the kind listed at the beginning of this article.

    Melzer rightly takes us back to April 2010, four years after the Australian-born Assange had founded WikiLeaks, a small organisation set up to publish official documents that it had received, encrypted so as to protect whistle-blowers from official retribution.

    Assange released video footage showing in horrifying detail how US soldiers in a helicopter had shot and killed Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists in 2007.

    Apart from how the soldiers spoke — “Hahaha, I hit them”, “Nice”, “Good shot” — it looks like most of the victims were civilians and that the journalists’ cameras were mistaken for rifles. When one of the wounded men tried to crawl to safety, the helicopter crew, instead of allowing their comrades on the ground to take him prisoner, as required by the rules of war, seek permission to shoot him again.

    As Melzer’s detailed description makes clear, the soldiers knew what they were doing:

    “Come on, buddy,” the gunner comments, aiming the crosshairs at his helpless target. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.”

    The soldiers’ request for authorisation to shoot is given. When the wounded man is carried to a nearby minibus, it is shot to pieces with the helicopter’s 30mm gun. The driver and two other rescuers are killed instantly. The driver’s two young children inside are seriously wounded.

    US army command investigated the matter, concluding that the soldiers acted in accordance with the rules of war, even though they had not. Equally to the point, writes Melzer, the public would never have known a war crime had been committed without the release of what Assange called the “Collateral Murder” video.

    The video footage was just one of hundreds of thousands of documents that WikiLeaks released last year in tranches known as the Afghan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and cablegate. They revealed numerous alleged war crimes and provided the raw material for a shadow history of the disastrous wars waged by the US and its allies, including Australia, in Aghanistan and Iraq.

    Julian Assange in 2010
    Julian Assange in 2010. Image: The Conversation/ Stefan Wermuth/AP

    Punished forever
    Melzer retraces what has happened to Assange since then, from the accusations of sexual assault in Sweden to Assange taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in an attempt to avoid the possibility of extradition to the US if he returned to Sweden. His refuge led to him being jailed in the United Kingdom for breaching his bail conditions.

    Sweden eventually dropped the sexual assault charges, but the US government ramped up its request to extradite Assange. He faces charges under the 1917 Espionage Act, which, if successful, could lead to a jail term of 175 years.

    Two key points become increasingly clear as Melzer methodically works through the events.

    The first is that there has been a carefully orchestrated plan by four countries — the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and, yes, Australia — to ensure Assange is punished forever for revealing state secrets.

    Assange displaying his ankle security tag in 2011
    Assange displaying his ankle security tag in 2011 at the house where he was required to stay by a British judge. Image: The Conversation/Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

    The second is that the conditions he has been subjected to, and will continue to be subjected to if the US’s extradition request is granted, have amounted to torture.

    On the first point, how else are we to interpret the continual twists and turns over nearly a decade in the official positions taken by Sweden and the UK? Contrary to the obfuscating language of official communiques, all of these have closed down Assange’s options and denied him due process.

    Melzer documents the thinness of the Swedish authorities’ case for charging Assange with sexual assault. That did not prevent them from keeping it open for many years. Nor was Assange as uncooperative with police as has been suggested. Swedish police kept changing their minds about where and whether to formally interview Assange because they knew the evidence was weak.

    Melzer also takes pains to show how Swedish police also overrode the interests of the two women who had made the complaints against Assange.

    It is distressing to read the conditions Assange has endured over several years. A change in the political leadership of Ecuador led to a change in his living conditions in the embassy, from cramped but bearable to virtual imprisonment.

    Since being taken from the embassy to Belmarsh prison in 2019, Assange has spent much of his time in solitary confinement for 22 or 23 hours a day. He has been denied all but the most limited access to his legal team, let alone family and friends.

    He was kept in a glass cage during his seemingly interminable extradition hearing, appeals over which could continue for several years more years, according to Melzer.

    Julian Assange’s partner, Stella Morris, speaks to the media
    Julian Assange’s partner, Stella Morris, speaks to the media outside the High Court in London in January this year. Image: The Converstion/Alberto Pezzali/AP

    Assange’s physical and mental health have suffered to the point where he has been put on suicide watch. Again, that seems to be the point, as Melzer writes:

    The primary purpose of persecuting Assange is not – and never has been – to punish him personally, but to establish a generic precedent with a global deterrent effect on other journalist, publicists and activists.

    So will the new Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, do any more than his three Coalition and two Labor predecessors to advocate for the interests of an Australian citizen? In December 2021, Guardian Australia reported Albanese saying he did “not see what purpose is served by the ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange” and that “enough is enough”.

    Since being sworn in as prime minister, he has kept his cards close to his chest.

    The actions of his predecessors suggest he won’t, even though Albanese has already said on several occasions since being elected that he wants to do politics differently.

    Melzer, among others, would remind him of the words of former US president Jimmy Carter, who, contrary to other presidents, said he did not deplore the WikiLeaks revelations.

    They just made public what was the truth. Most often, the revelation of truth, even if it’s unpleasant, is beneficial. […] I think that, almost invariably, the secrecy is designed to conceal improper activities.

    The Conversation

    Dr Matthew Ricketson is professor of communication, Deakin University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Ramos-Horta challenges Pacific’s biggest threat to media freedom – China’s gatekeepers

    COMMENTARY: By David Robie

    Timor-Leste, the youngest independent nation and the most fledgling press in the Asia-Pacific, has finally shown how it’s done — with a big lesson for Pacific island neighbours.

    Tackle the Chinese media gatekeepers and creeping authoritarianism threatening journalism in the region at the top.

    In Dili on the final day of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s grand Pacific tour to score more than 50 agreements and deals — although falling short of winning its Pacific region-wide security pact for the moment — newly elected (for the second time) President José Ramos-Horta won a major concession.

    Enough of this paranoid secrecy and contemptuous attitude towards the local – and international – media in democratic nations of the region.

    Under pressure from the democrat Ramos-Horta, a longstanding friend of a free media, Wang’s entourage caved in and allowed more questions like a real media conference.

    Lusa newsagency correspondent in Dili Antonió Sampaio summed up the achievement in the face of the Pacific-wide secrecy alarm in a Facebook post: “After the controversy, the Chinese minister gave in and agreed to speak with journalists. A small victory for the media in Timor-Leste!”

    Small victory, big tick
    A small victory maybe. But it got a big tick from Timor-Leste Journalists Association president Zevonia Vieira and her colleagues. He thanked President Ramos-Horta for his role in ending the ban on local media and protecting the country’s freedom of information.

    Media consultant Bob Howarth, a former PNG Post-Courier publisher and longtime adviser to the Timorese media, hailed the pushback against Chinese secrecy, saying the Chinese minister answering three questions — elsewhere in the region only one was allowed and that had to be by an approved Chinese journalist — as a “press freedom breakthrough”.

    On the eve of Wang’s visit, Timor-Leste’s Press Council had denounced the restrictions being imposed on journalists before Horta’s intervention.

    “In a democratic state like East Timor not being able to have questions is unacceptable,” said president Virgilio Guterres. “There may be limits for extraordinary situations where there can be no coverage, but saying explicitly that there can be no questions is against the principles of press freedom.”

    The pre-tour Chinese restrictions on the Timorese media
    The pre-tour Chinese restrictions on the Timorese media … before President Jose Ramos-Horta’s intervention. Image: Antonio Sampaio/FB

    The Chinese delegation justified the decision to ban questions from journalists or to exclude from the agenda any statements with “lack of time” and the “covid-19 pandemic” excuses.

    However, Ramos-Horta was also quietly supportive of the Chinese overtures in the region.

    According to Sampiaio, when questioned in the media conference about fears in the West about China’s actions in the Pacific, Ramos-Horta said “there is no reason for alarm” and noted that Beijing had always had interests in the region, for example in fishing.

    Timor-Leste's President Jose Ramos-Horta with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Dili
    Timor-Leste’s President Jose Ramos-Horta with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Dili … “is no reason for alarm” over Chinese lobbying in the Pacific. Image: TL Presidential palace media

    ‘A lot of lobbying’
    “These Pacific countries have done a lot of lobbying with China to get more support and China is responding to that. These one-off agreements with one country or another, they don’t affect the long-standing interests of countries like Australia and the United States,” he said.

    An article by The Guardian’s Pacific Project editor Kate Lyons highlighted China’s authoritarian approach to the media this week, saying “allegations raise press freedom concerns and alarm about the ability of Pacific journalists to do their jobs, particularly as the relationship between the region and China becomes closer.”

    But one of the most telling criticisms came from Fiji freelance journalist Lice Movono, whose television crew reporting for the ABC, was deliberately blocked from filming. Pacific Islands Forum officials intervened.

    “From the very beginning there was a lot of secrecy, no transparency, no access given,” she told The Guardian.

    “I was quite disturbed by what I saw. When you live in Fiji you kind of get used to the militarised nature of the place, but to see the Chinese officials do that was quite disturbing.

    “To be a journalist in Fiji is to be worried about imprisonment all the time. Journalism is criminalised. You can be jailed or the company you work for can be fined a crippling amount that can shut down the operation … But to see foreign nationals pushing you back in your own country, that was a different level.”

    Media soul-searching

    Google headlines on China and Pacific media freedom
    Google headlines on China and Pacific media freedom. Image: Screenshot APR

    China was moderately successful in signing multiple bilateral agreements with almost a dozen Pacific Island nations during Wang’s visit to the region. The tour began 11 days ago in Solomon Islands — where a secret security pact with China was leaked in March — and since then Wang has met Pacific leaders from Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Niue (virtually), Cook Islands (virtually) and Vanuatu.

    However, the repercussions from the visit on the media will lead to soul searching for a long time. Some brief examples of the interaction with Beijing’s authoritarianism:

    Solomon Islands: The level of secrecy and selective media overtures surrounding Wang’s meetings with the government sparked the Media Association of the Solomon Islands (MASI) to call on local media to boycott coverage of the visit in protest over the “ridiculous” restrictions.

    Samoa: Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson criticised the Chinese restrictions on the media with only a five-minute photo-op allowed and no questions or individual interviews. There was also no press briefing before or after Wang’s visit.

    Fiji: No questions were allowed during the brief joint press conference between Wang and Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama. Local media later reported that, according to Fijian officials, the no-question policy came from the Chinese side.

    Chinese Ambassador Qian Bo's article in the Fiji Sun
    Chinese Ambassador Qian Bo’s article in the Fiji Sun on May 26. Image: China Digital Times

    Examples of local media publishing propaganda were demonstrated by the pro-government Fiji Sun, with a full page “ocean of peace” op-ed written by Chinese Ambassador Qian Bo claiming China’s engagement with Pacific Island countries was “open and transparent”. The Sun followed up with report written by the Chinese embassy in Fiji touting the “great success” of Wang’s visit.

    Tonga: Matangi Tonga also published an article by Chinese Ambassador Cao Xiaolin a day before Wang’s visit claiming how “China has never interfered in the internal affairs of [Pacific Island countries]” and would “adhere to openness.”

    Papua New Guinea: As a joint scheduled press conference was about to start, media were told that after both ministers had spoken, only one Chinese journalist and one PNG journalist could ask a question of their own foreign minister. However, according to the ABC correspondent Natalie Whiting, when PNG Post-Courier’s Mirriam Zarriga “asked a question about the Solomons security deal, both the PNG and Chinese foreign ministers responded”.

    Wang then “made a point of calling on the ABC to also ask a question”. The ABC asked about the “inability to get the 10 Pacific nations to sign on to the proposed regional deal”.

    China has called for a “reset” in relations with Australia and blamed a “political force” for the deteriorating relations.

    Global condemnation
    The secrecy and media control surrounding Wang’s tour was roundly condemned by the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists and Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and other media freedom watchdogs.

    “The restriction of journalists and media organisations from the Chinese delegation’s visit … sets a worrying precedent for press freedom in the Pacific,” said the IFJ in a statement.

    “The IFJ urges the governments of Solomon Islands and China to ensure all journalists are given fair and open access to all press events.”

    Likewise, RSF’s Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard said the actions surrounding the events organised by the Chinese delegation with several Pacific island states “clearly contravenes the democratic principles of the region’s countries”.

    He added: “We call on officials preparing to meet Wang Yi to resist Chinese pressure by allowing local journalists and international organisations to cover these events, which are of major public interest.”

    University of the South Pacific journalism head Associate Professor Shailendra Singh also criticised the Chinese actions, saying “we have two different systems here. China has a different political system — a totalitarian system, and in the Pacific we have a democratic system.”

    In Papua New Guinea, the last country to be visited in the Pacific before Timor-Leste, “there appeared to be little resistance” to the authoritarian screen, according to independent journalist Scott Waide, a champion of press freedom in his country.

    “There’s not a lot of awareness about the visit,” he admits. “I would have liked to have seen a visible expression of resistance at least of some sort. But from Hagen, where I was this week. I didn’t see much.”

    Waide has been training journalists as part of the ABC’s Media for Development Initiative (MDI) programme as a prelude to the PNG’s general election in July.

    ‘Problems to be resolved’
    “We have problems that need to be resolved. Over the last month, I’ve tried to impart as much as possible through training workshops on the elections,” he told Pacific Media Watch But there are huge gaps in terms of journalism training. I believe that is a contributor to the lack of obvious pushback over Wang’s visit.”

    Reflecting on China’s Pacific tour, Lice Movono, said: “At the time of my interview with The Guardian, I think I was still pretty rattled. Now I think the best way to describe my response is that I feel extremely disturbed.”

    She expressed concerns that mostly women journalists from the region noted “but that didn’t get enough traction when other media covered the incident(s) — that China was able to behave that way because the governments of the Pacific allowed it, or in the case of Fiji, preferred it that way.

    Movono said that since her criticisms, she had come in for nasty attention by trolls.

    “I’m getting some hateful trolling from Chinese twitter accounts – got called a ‘fat pig’ yesterday,” she told Pacific Media Watch.

    “Also I’m being accused of lying because some photos have come out of the doorstop we did on the Chinese ambassador here and some have purported that to be an accurate portrayal of Chinese ‘friendliness’ toward media.”

    So the pushback from President Ramos-Horta is a welcome sign for media freedom in the region.

    Timor-Leste rose to 17th in the 2022 RSF World Press Freedom Index listing of 180 countries — the highest in the Pacific region — while both Fiji and Papua New Guinea fell in the rankings. There are some definite lessons there for media freedom defenders.

    Frustrated Pacific journalists hope that there will be a more concerted effort to defend media freedom in the future against creeping authoritarianism.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Democracy can be fragile’: Ardern uses Harvard speech to call out tech companies

    RNZ News

    New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has delivered the highly regarded Harvard Commencement address, calling out social media as a threat to modern day democracy.

    She was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the university.

    The Commencement is steeped in history with Ardern’s predecessors including Winston Churchill, JFK, Angela Merkel — and topically for today’s speech — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

    Capping off her day, Ardern confirmed to media afterwards that she would meet US President Joe Biden at the White House on Tuesday (Wednesday NZ time).

    She invoked the memory of the late Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim country, and to give birth while in office with Ardern being the second.

    Seven months after the two women met Bhutto was assassinated, Ardern said.

    ‘Path carved still relevant’
    “The path she carved as a woman feels as relevant today as it was decades ago, and so too is the message she shared here.

    “She said part way through her speech in 1989 the following: ‘We must realise that democracy… can be fragile’.

    “… while the reasons that gave rise for her words then were vastly different, they still ring true. Democracy can be fragile.”

    Ardern told her audience of thousands that because of the speed of social media, disinformation is creating an ever increasing risk.

    Watch the address

    The Harvard Commencement address.    Video: RNZ News

    “Social media platforms were born offering the promise of connection and reconnection. We logged on in our billions, forming tribes and subtribes.”

    While it started as a place to experience “new ways of thinking and to celebrate our difference” it was now often used for neither of those things, she said.

    However, just two days after the massacre in a school in Texas that saw 19 students and two teachers killed, the biggest response she got from the audience was when she referred to changes to firearms law.

    Standing ovation over guns stance
    She received a standing ovation when she said the government had succeeded in banning military style semi-automatics and assault rifles, in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks.

    Outside Harvard University in Boston on the day that PM Jacinda Ardern received an honorary doctorate.
    Outside Harvard University in Boston on the day that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern received an honorary doctorate. Image: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Gazette

    “On the 15th of March 2019, 51 people were killed in a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The entire brutal act was livestreamed on social media. The royal commission that followed found that the terrorist responsible was radicalised online,” she said.

    “In the aftermath of New Zealand’s experience, we felt a sense of responsibility. We knew we needed significant gun reform, and so that is what we did.”

    She went on to say that if genuine solutions were to be found to the issue of violent extremism online, “it would take government, civil society and the tech companies themselves to change the landscape. The result was the Christchurch Call to Action.

    “And while much has changed as a result, important things haven’t.”

    Ardern called on social media companies to recognise their power and act on it and acknowledge the role they play in shaping online environments.

    “That algorithmic processes make choices and decisions for us — what we see and where we are directed — and that at best this means the user experience is personalised and at worst it means it can be radicalised.

    ‘Pressing and urgent need’
    “It means, that there is a pressing and urgent need for responsible algorithm development and deployment.”

    She said the forums were available for the tech companies to work alongside society and governments to find solutions to the issues.

    She encouraged her audience to realise that their individual actions were also important.

    “In a disinformation age, we need to learn to analyse and critique information. That doesn’t mean teaching ‘mistrust’, but rather as my old history teacher, Mr Fountain extolled: ‘to understand the limitations of a single piece of information, and that there is always a range of perspectives on events and decisions’.”

    While the prime minister’s US trip was planned around the Harvard Commencement, there is a trade and tourism focus, but also a chance to check in with some of the tech giants at whom she delivered her message, in particular around the Christchurch Call, during the next few days.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at Harvard University
    Jacinda Ardern has received an honorary law doctorate from Harvard University. Image: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Gazette

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tūkākī reveals ‘horrific abuse’ he receives over NZ’s hotspot of racism

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Aotearoa New Zealand’s chair of the Māori Council, Matthew Tūkākī, has revealed the degree of “horrific abuse” he has been facing in a Today FM radio discussion about the forthcoming Tauranga byelection in the city claimed to be a hotspot of white supremacy and racism.

    He joined Lloyd Burr on Today’s Lloyd Burr Live programme to discuss the safety reasons why the opposition Te Pāti Māori will not contest the byelection.

    The party says it is because they feel “too unsafe” in the area, reports Today FM.

    They say racist leaflets and threats are common.

    Tukaki defended Te Pati Māori’s decision, saying: “I think they’ve done the right thing.”

    He said he hoped that New Zealand could address racism, or the Tauranga controversy could be an indicator of things to come with next year’s general election.

    “As somebody who himself, who’s been on the back end of a significant amount of racist correspondence, emails, letters and messages from people who sadly reside in my former hometown of Tauranga, [Te Pati Māori] are absolutely justified,” Tūkākī said.

    All New Zealanders ‘should be concerned’
    “All Māori, all New Zealanders should be concerned.

    “Not every person in the beautiful city of Tauranga is a racist or a white supremacist. I don’t think anyone’s alluding to that.

    “What we do have is great concern for the activity that’s unfolding in that by-election.”

    Presenter Burr asked Tūkākī about his first-hand experience with racism and hatred and supremacy.

    “I get called n****r every single day in Facebook messages on fake profiles to my account. I had a six-page letter arrive at my home in Point Chevalier that was handwritten,” he told Today FM.

    “He was emboldened enough so much to write his name, contact details and even sign the letter and the content. In that basically called me a black bastard. And I and any number of other things under the sun.

    “I get messages calling me a dirty black bastard, you filthy gang mongrel. You this, you that.

    ‘It’s relentless’
    “It’s relentless. It is absolutely relentless for the last couple of years, just because I choose to represent my people and pushed kaupapa that I know is going to change their lives for the better.”

    Tūkākī told Today FM: “I don’t want [the abusers’] children to listen to this crap and then go to school and repeat it to little Māori kids or Pasifika kids or Asian kids — I’m tired.”

    The byelection, for the seat left vacant by the resignation of former opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges, is on June 18. Tauranga is one of New Zealand’s most affluent and fastest growing cities with a population of more than 132,000.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Making sense of the scary Philippines election – 10 seconds into the future?

    COMMENTARY: By Keeara Ofren

    Many of you will know that I am Filipina. The past few days have been quite a journey following the Philippine elections, culminating with a frightening win of the dictator’s son Bongbong Marcos Jr and Sara Duterte, daughter of the outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte.

    There is speculation that their leadership style may be more despotic than their authoritarian parents (with proposals to “rewrite history” on previous dictatorship). I am worried that this is election result will genuinely risk lives in what could be a continued crackdown on activists and a prolonged massacre of the poor.

    There are also significant fears around worries related to China’s influence in the South China Sea and beyond, especially on human rights matters.

    This is an election the world should be paying close attention to, as it fortells the result of structural inequality through a lack of civics education and the influence of social media.

    I have not yet seen an interpretation of the results for friends who may not be familiar with Filipino politics. I also think I may have a different view, given my family’s heritage as working class rural Filipinos and growing up in the Western world.

    The Philippines was, and sadly still is, a place where you can be “redtagged” and assassinated for your political views.

    The ousted President Ferdinand Marcos was known for a reign of terror through martial law, widespread torture, politically motivated violence and corruption.

    A period of hope
    After his rule, there was a period of hope with the Yellow Revolution where the country turned towards democracy and the idea of becoming a cosmopolitian and educated state.

    This was the kind of pattern hoped for with this post-Duterte election, moving towards a country free from extrajudicial killings, punitive culture and violence against the poor.

    Al Jazeera documentary Deliverance
    Babies of the Al Jazeera documentary Deliverance, part of a series on the Philippines called The Slum. Image: Screenshot KO/APR

    But by Tuesday morning, this was not to be. Outgoing Vice-President Leni Robredo, the opposition leader who our hopes were on to win, fell further and further behind in the results.

    Philippines has one of the highest percentage of social media users in the world, the majority of political engagement and general learning happens with the internet.

    These past few days, several whistleblowers called into local radio stations and posted on Reddit revelations of mass paid troll farms and social media strategies to deliberately create discord.

    The Duterte administration cracked down on initiatIves like this community pantry
    The Duterte administration cracked down on initiatIves like this community pantry … “Free Market; Free to take, free to give. Share love, give free … community free shop.” Image: Screenshot KO/APR

    One of the most worrying allegations was the use of double agents, which I fear is starting to create a divide within Filipino activist communities.

    However, even without troll farms, many Filipino voters, especially in disenfranchised rural areas, are single issue voters or may vote in exchange for food and essentials for their family — this is something I have witnessed personally.

    Petri dish for mass disinformation
    This, combined with a country of varying levels of access to education and critical thinking, is a petri dish for mass disinformation. We may have seen seeds of this in the West, with the growth of disinformation and movements increasingly willing to turn to political violence.

    The 1988 “NO” referendum campaign in Chile against Pinochet and neoliberalism was featured in the 2012 historical drama No.

    I am watching the situation with apprehension, I am worried for my extended family. For those with family in the Philippines (or any other authoritarian country) who feels the same, it is high time to secure activist movements.

    For those similarly disappointed by the result: Political participation is not just with the ballot box, it’s building awareness, learning as much as we can and thinking about how we can protect and empower vulnerable and disenfranchised people.

    The popular campaign against the 1988 “NO” referendum of Chile marked a new era of people’s empowerment free from the dictator Pinochet and neoliberalism. This was documented in an inspirational 2012 film called No. And this is what many Filipinos were hoping for in this election, but alas…

    Laban! … Fight on!

    Keeara Ofren is a final year law student at the University of Auckland – Waipapa Taumata Rau and a former president of Amnesty On Campus. She works in communications for the Auckland Refugee Council. This article was first published on her Facebook page and is republished here with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Reality Privileged: Orwell/Huxley/McLuhan on Steroids

    You can go through life with a thousand epigrams or deep quotes that you might come back to over two, four, six decades. Then, the disrupters pop up, those techno fascists, the tinkers and culture blasters.

    These sociopaths who get the limelight then become part of a new set of epigrams, but not grand ones, but totally emblematic of a new normal of Triple Speak, Capitalism Porn, and the Stiff Arm to the Coders and their Masters.

    It’s sad, really. Here, quality ones of very different and varied origins:

    • Timothy 6:10 “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
    • Pierre Joseph-Proudhon: “Property is Theft.”
    • Karl Marx: “Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital.”
    • “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
      ― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
    • “It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.”
      ― Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right

    We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’re stood up and said we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactons with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.
    ― Fred Hampton (source: “Fred Hampton Speech Transcript on Revolution and Racism” ) 

    “Only from a capitalist viewpoint being productive is a moral virtue, if not a moral imperative. From the viewpoint of the working class, being productive simply means being exploited.”
    ― Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle

    One might wake up after two decades of capitalist slumber and feel like Rip Van Winkle while observing how deep the slide into those circles of capitalist hell we have all ended up. Exhumed from the grave all the felons, high and midddling, and then see that the world is still valorizing . . . Kissinger, Albright, Bush, Trump, Biden, Obama, et al. Shocks to the system every nano second. Capitalism with a gun, with a drug, with a bank.

    Here, McLuhan:

    Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly. (Marshall McLuhan rocketed from an unknown academic to rockstar with the publication of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Manin 1964.)

    Concentrated power — information age, and now, it’s even so much worse, 60 years later.

    Get these people’s aims and goals. These are the powerful, work with the powerful, are armies unto themselves, and they take no prisoners. We are all Luddites if we resist their machinations, their totalitarianism in skinny jeans, on the spectrum, vegan and all.

    I’ll let the guy’s words flow here, longish. Monsters, really:

    Marc Andreessen (“The Internet King on why the Internet is a force for good, on media conformity, the inevitable triumph of the WEIRD, Crypto, ‘Retards,’ etc. — Source) breaks down Reality Privilege:

    Your question is a great example of what I call Reality Privilege. This is a paraphrase of a concept articulated by Beau Cronin: “Consider the possibility that a visceral defense of the physical, and an accompanying dismissal of the virtual as inferior or escapist, is a result of superuser privileges.” A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date. These are also *all* of the people who get to ask probing questions like yours. Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege—their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world.

    The Reality Privileged, of course, call this conclusion dystopian, and demand that we prioritize improvements in reality over improvements in virtuality. To which I say: reality has had 5,000 years to get good, and is clearly still woefully lacking for most people; I don’t think we should wait another 5,000 years to see if it eventually closes the gap. We should build—and we are building—online worlds that make life and work and love wonderful for everyone, no matter what level of reality deprivation they find themselves in.

    Here’s a thought experiment for the counterfactual. Suppose we had all just spent the last 15 months of COVID lockdowns *without* the Internet, without the virtual world. As bad as the lockdowns have been for people’s well-being—and they’ve been bad—how much worse would they have been without the Internet? I think the answer is clear: profoundly, terribly worse. (Of course, pandemic lockdowns are not the norm—for that, we’ll have to wait for the climate lockdowns.)

    Is this an easy target? Am I just poking fun at culture, the new masters of the metaverse? Are we speaking two very “man who fell to earth” languages? Or, is this fellow above, misanthrope on a very pathetic scale? We know he’s got hundreds of millions, and he is the guru, and governments and the Titans of Media all have his ear.

    Oh, I have old people whispering how they feel for today’s kids, how they feel for the young adults who are stuck in this bubble inside a bubble. I hear them while they have grand machinations of flipping a home into a bank account and some smaller home. Too expensive in Pacific Northwest or California? Then, sell sell sell, and end up in Appalachia. Lewisburg. Get a home and two acres for $250K, and bank the rest, and be damned, the rest of the world.

    Me-myself-I, that’s the reptilian brain angle these Titans of the Screen/Black Mirror in the Hand have going for them (not a great term, really, repitilian, but you get the picture — food, sex, water, fight or flight, flash, rest, run, jump, gobble, hump).

    Indonesia cancels Komodo island closure, saying tourists are no threat to dragons | Indonesia | The Guardian

    Get these stats, mom and pop, uncle and aunt, cuz:

    In Chain Reactions, he writes about how stunning the scale of the internet has become; every minute on the internet:

    • Netflix users stream 404,444 hours of video
    • Instagram users post 347,222 stories
    • YouTube users upload 500 hours of video
    • Consumers spend $1,000,000 online
    • LinkedIn users apply for 69,444 jobs
    • TikTok is installed 2,704 times
    • Venmo users send $239,196 worth of payments
    • Spotify adds 28 tracks to its music library
    • Amazon ships 6,659 packages
    • WhatsApp users send 41,666,667 messages
    • And 1,388,889 people make video and voice calls

    Every minute. American adults spend over 11 hours interacting with digital media every day. Daily media consumption on mobile has grown 6x from 45 minutes in 2011 to 4 hours and 12 minutes in 2021.

    The Brains Development - The Cavern

    The “entire world is a stage” is played out minute by minute, in Ukraine by the Zionist Comic Nazi-loving Jew (not-not), or the charades of Biden and the gang (media). Now? Every man, woman, child is an island — connected to the WWW — unto him-her-them SELF:

    Biden mocks himself and roasts Trump

    This is it, while the crocodile tears are spewing for the poor Ukrainians, and the trillion$ soon for guns, nukes, these idiots try a Jon Leibowitz Stewart thing: White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday night. The dinner was shunned by Trump and canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    But then, they all are misanthropes, and again, the optics, man, the optics of the USA decaying while Biden shits his pants: “I’m really excited to be here with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have,” Biden joked to the Washington, DC crowd, referring to his own sub-40% polling and to surveys showing just 36% of Americans trust the mass media.

    This is insane, of course, on many levels. It is the inside joke, and the giant overt joke. This is the spokesperson for the free world, and these are the minutes they spend in their spare time. All puppets, all wind-up dolls, and the media, they are the lever pullers. Behind the media? Oh, man, you don’t need a recap on who the monster men (a few women, too) are?

    Okay, now down the other rabbit hole: Go to Alison McDowell’s work (Wrench in the Gears (dot) com) recently in Salt Lake City, following the LDS/Mormons capitalization of transhumanism, blockchain, social impact investing, cyber everything, internet of bodies, brains, babies. Slide show/stack here, Ignorance is Bliss?

    Check out 36 videos looking into this dispicable system of mind-matter-money control: Transhumanism, CIA Enslavement, Faith and Technology, Digital Education. YouTube.

    I have those discussions now, with former students, who want to know from me, what I think of Zoom Doom Rooms, or where I think education, both K12 and higher (sic), is going. Of course, the language we use is not always in synch, since I think the systems of education were flawed from the beginning, and that capitalism and fascism as it is delineated by GloboCap, set people up to accept lies, and the systems of oppression are about getting people to learn how to lie to themselves.

    I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic — it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.
    ― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

    I talked recently with a teacher who knew me, and wondered where I was, in the substitute teacher stable. I informed her that this county, the school district, has banned me for pushing high school students to think about their own lives tied to stories like Of Mice and Men and Animal Farm, two books the teacher of record was having me, the substitute of record, work with. Amazing, I was frog marched out of the classroom and school, and there was zero recourse, no audience to be gained, and alas, I couldn’t defend myself: this is how one system of oppression works.

    This fourth grade teacher went on and on about how oppressive it is to be that elementary grade teacher in this district, and how the higher ups, the school board, they have scorn for the teachers, the paraeducators, the staff.

    Hell, I was teaching a community education class, and it took me more than a month and a half to be paid by the community college. This is the new normal, but not so new. This is the mentality whichruns the world. And, more and more people want to be their own boss, but their options are limited — really, a cinnamon roll shop, beads, candles, more deep fried oysters?

    Capitalism is lovely, so creative, open, available for smart small and tiny entrepeneurs. Wrong!

    Disdain, just like the fellow announcing that Reality Privilege is dead. The world of games, the world of on-line shopping, dating, hunting, driving, hiking, that is it for the world from here on in. Get on the phone, six hours a day, at least. Plug in.

    Zoom Zelensky from Britain or Poland. Watch Sean Penn or Pelosi fly into some staged area, then, long-live the ZioLenksy Nazi, and then, more dialing for dollars. Stage left, masks on, start themusic, do the edits, cut cut cut, and then let the lies fly.

    Reality. Here, from Farnam Street Articles!

    “The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts,” wrote McLuhan. Rather they “alter patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.”

    In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan proffered,

    “A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them.”

    We see this today as newspapers transition to a digital world and how the medium—the internet—remakes the papers to fit its own standards. Not only have newspapers moved from physical to virtual but now they are hyperlinked, chunked, and embedded within noise. If he were alive (and healthy) McLuhan would argue these changes impact the way we understand the content.

    McLuhan foresaw how all mass media would eventually be used for commercialization and consumerism:

     “Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left.”

    Carry on:

    CM 170: Nicholas Carr on What the Internet Does to Our Brains

    And, finally, reality is reality, all those down-home chemicals, cancers, catastrophies. A new outfit with the Environmental Working Group, The New Lede.   PFAS, Monsanto, other pesticides, all covered by investigative journalists. You can attempt to “virtual reality” away the reality world. These are freaks!  However, a hero like Carey Gillam has spent more than 25 years reporting on corporate America. She is the managing editor at The New Lede. Watch her over at RFK Jr’s site!

    Reality for Us, the Unprivileged.

    For a visitor to this rural part of eastern Nebraska, the crisp air, blue skies and stretch of seemingly endless farm fields appear as unspoiled landscape. For the people who live here, however, there is no denying that they are immersed in an environmental catastrophe researchers fear may impact the area for generations to come.

    The signs of a silent poisoning are everywhere: A farmhouse has been abandoned by its owners after their young children experienced health problems; a pond once filled with fish and frogs is now barren of all life; university researchers are collecting blood and urine from residents to analyze them for contaminants; and a local family now drinks water only from plastic bottles because tests show chemical contamination of their drinking well.  — Source, Carey Gillam

    No matter how many hours you might be connected to a gamefied world, virtual and augemented, the chemicals will still bore their toxins into your cells until no amount of AI-VR-AR can save you!

    Listen to these monsters . . .

    And then, four hours learning about this global brain mentality. Good work by Wrench In the Gears:

    And how many people are willing to go down these blockchain, decentralized technologies, social impact and reality priviledge and digital ID and crypo-funding? The Church of LDS is into Transhumanism. Keep your eye close on these folk, synthetic biology eugenics freaks.

    The post Reality Privileged: Orwell/Huxley/McLuhan on Steroids first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Elon Musk Says He’ll Let Trump Back on Twitter, Calling Ban “Foolish”

    On Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he would allow former President Donald Trump to return to Twitter once his purchase of the social media site for nearly $44 billion is finalized.

    Trump was banned from Twitter shortly after a mob of his loyalists, incensed by his false claims of election fraud, attacked the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, to interrupt the certification of President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

    Musk described the ban on Trump as “foolish in the extreme” at a car exposition event hosted by The Financial Times on Tuesday.

    “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake,” Musk said, adding that the company’s decision “alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

    Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account shortly after the attack on the Capitol due to the incendiary nature of his public statements.

    “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said less than a week after the attack occurred.

    In one of the last tweets Trump published before his account was suspended, he defended his loyalists’ actions and continued to push lies about the 2020 election being illegitimate.

    “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots,” Trump wrote on the evening of the Capitol attack.

    Trump has said that he won’t return to Twitter, opting instead to stick with his own social media site, Truth Social. But those close to the former president say that the temptation to return to his @realDonaldTrump handle on Twitter will be too difficult to overcome.

    Musk plans to make drastic changes to Twitter’s rules once he’s in charge; in his words, the site will become a “digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated” without restriction. Of course, in real town hall settings, there are rules of decorum that must be followed — and people can be banned if they continually incite violence or propagate disinformation.

    One recently published study suggests that Musk’s plans may decrease free speech on the platform.

    “Social media users have in past years become victims of manipulation by ‘astroturf’ causes, trolling and misinformation,” said head researcher of the study Filippo Menczer, professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University. “Abuse is facilitated by social bots and coordinated networks that create the appearance of human crowds.”

    He added:

    Musk’s likely acquisition of Twitter raises concerns that the social media platform could decrease its content moderation. This body of research shows that stronger, not weaker, moderation of the information ecosystem is called for to combat harmful misinformation.

    “The voices of real users would be drowned out by malicious users who manipulate Twitter through inauthentic accounts, bots and echo chambers” if Musk’s laissez-faire policies were enacted, Menczer said, noting that such policies “would ironically hurt free speech.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Media freedom slide in Australia ‘undermining’ ability to project democratic values

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    A Melbourne-based Indonesian media academic has warned that declining media freedom in Australia is undermining the country’s ability to project liberal democratic values to the Asia-Pacific region.

    “Many people who have been watching media and journalism in Australia have been worried,” Tito Ambyo, a journalism lecturer at RMIT, told ABC News.

    He said governments in Australia needed “to start seeing journalists as an important part of democracy”.

    “We don’t have journalists being killed or imprisoned in Australia, but we have seen a lot of abuses,” he said, pointing to online harassment that was “often racist or gendered in nature”.

    Ambyo was responding to the 2022 World Press Freedom Index released this week by the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders which reported a big slump in media freedoms in Australia.

    Media freedom in Australia is “fragile” and less protected than in New Zealand and several emerging democracies in Asia, RSF concluded in its annual Index. The assessment measures have become more comprehensive in changes introduced this year.

    Australia slid from 25 to 39 in the Index, ranking below New Zealand in 11th place and Timor-Leste at number 17, but above Samoa (45th), Tonga (49th), Papua New Guinea (62nd) and Fiji (102nd) — with both the latter Pacific countries experiencing big falls while facing elections this year.

    Taiwan, which has transitioned from a military dictatorship to a liberal democracy since the late 1980s, ranked just above Australia at 38th.

    The Press Freedom Index, which assesses the state of journalism in 180 countries and territories, highlights the disastrous effects of news and information chaos — the effects of a globalised and unregulated online information space that encourages fake news and propaganda.

    ‘Fox News model’
    Within democratic societies, divisions are growing as a result of the spread of opinion media following the “Fox News model” and the spread of disinformation circuits that are amplified by the way social media functions.

    At the international level, democracies are being weakened by the asymmetry between open societies and despotic regimes that control their media and online platforms while waging propaganda wars against democracies.

    Polarisation on these two levels is fuelling increased tension, says RSF.

    The invasion of Ukraine (106th) by Russia (155th) at the end of February reflects this process, as the physical conflict was preceded by a propaganda war.

    China (175th), one of the world’s most repressive autocratic regimes, uses its legislative arsenal to confine its population and cut it off from the rest of the world, especially the population of Hong Kong (148th), which has plummeted in the Index.

    Confrontation between “blocs” is growing, as seen between nationalist Narendra Modi’s India (150th) and Pakistan (157th). The lack of press freedom in the Middle East continues to impact the conflict between Israel (86th), Palestine (170th) and the Arab states.

    Media polarisation is feeding and reinforcing internal social divisions in democratic societies such as the United States (42nd), despite President Joe Biden’s election, reports RSF.

    Social media tensions
    The increase in social and political tension is being fuelled by social media and new opinion media, especially in France (26th).

    The suppression of independent media is contributing to a sharp polarisation in “illiberal democracies” such as Poland (66th), where the authorities have consolidated their control over public broadcasting and their strategy of “re-Polonising” the privately-owned media.

    The trio of Nordic countries at the top of the Index — Norway, Denmark and Sweden — continues to serve as a democratic model where freedom of expression flourishes, while Moldova (40th) and Bulgaria (91st) stand out this year thanks to a government change and the hope it has brought for improvement in the situation for journalists even if oligarchs still own or control the media.

    The situation is classified as “very bad” in a record number of 28 countries in this year’s Index, while 12 countries, including Belarus (153rd) and Russia (155th), are on the Index’s red list (indicating “very bad” press freedom situations) on the map.

    The world’s 10 worst countries for press freedom include Myanmar (176th), where the February 2021 coup d’état set press freedom back by 10 years, as well as China, Turkmenistan (177th), Iran (178th), Eritrea (179th) and North Korea (180th).

    Fatal danger for democracies
    “Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT (the former Russia Today), revealed what she really thinks in a Russia One TV broadcast when she said, ‘no great nation can exist without control over information,’ said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.

    “The creation of media weaponry in authoritarian countries eliminates their citizens’ right to information but is also linked to the rise in international tension, which can lead to the worst kind of wars.

    “Domestically, the ‘Fox News-isation’ of the media poses a fatal danger for democracies because it undermines the basis of civil harmony and tolerant public debate,” he said.

    “Urgent decisions are needed in response to these issues, promoting a New Deal for Journalism, as proposed by the Forum on Information and Democracy, and adopting an appropriate legal framework, with a system to protect democratic online information spaces.”

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Take action, don’t just offer words, MEAA tells Australia on media freedom

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The next Australian government must recommit to press freedom by putting in place overdue reforms to support public interest journalism, says the union for Australia’s media workers.

    On World Press Freedom Day, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance is calling on all political parties to act on a range of reforms that are needed to ensure journalists can continue to perform their essential work finding facts, seeking the truth and holding power to account.

    MEAA media federal president Karen Percy said the role of public interest journalism in a democratic society had been highlighted by the covid-19 pandemic, when there has been confusion and debate about what is true and what is false, often exploited by deliberate disinformation campaigns.

    “We know from the covid-19 pandemic that the work of journalists saves lives, informs the public, improves public policy and holds the powerful to account,” Percy said in a statement.

    “But we’ve also witnessed how people have been confused about what is true and what is false with their vulnerabilities exploited by those pushing disinformation campaigns.

    “Australians have relied on journalists to accurately and impartially convey important information, but our jobs have been made all the more difficult when governments suppress information, refuse to answer questions, hide information under the pretext of national security, and when defamation laws are used to quash accountability.

    “So, on World Press Freedom Day 2022, it is timely to call for our political leaders — and those aspiring to lead us — to respect and honour public interest journalism, to put accountability and transparency at the heart of our democracy.

    “Because without a free press, democracy dies.”

    With the federal election underway, MEAA has submitted to the major parties our key priorities for reform to protect media freedom and support public interest journalism.

    Among the reforms that are needed are:

    • Boosting the Public Interest News Gathering (PING) programme for a minimum of three years with $150 million per annum available to the small and medium news sectors, with substantial funds quarantined for providers of regional news services.
    • Restoration of adequate funding to public broadcasters the ABC and SBS, with greater certainty over a five-year funding cycle.
    • Implementing reforms to protect whistle blowers who disclose confidential information to media in the public interest.
    • Conducting an urgent review of Australia’s security laws to remove impediments and sanctions against public interest journalism.
    • Harmonising journalism shield laws across all national, state and territory jurisdictions to protect journalists from identifying sources.
    • Introduce new provisions to ensure that any future media mergers meet a “diversity of voices” test before they are approved by government regulators.
    • Financial reforms to enable the costs of journalism to be offset via taxation incentives.
    • Increasing international advocacy in support of journalists and allied workers when they are exposed to arbitrary detention, imprisonment and threats to their life, and adopting the International Federation of Journalists’ International Convention on the Safety and Independence of Journalists and Other Media Professionals.

    Today, MEAA is also releasing its annual report into the state of press freedom in Australia, titled Truth vs Disinformation: the Challenge for Public Interest Journalism.

    The report examines the impact of covid-related disinformation campaigns on journalism and press freedom, including increases in violent attacks, harassment and threats against journalists.

    The report is available at pressfreedom.org.au.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The NATO To TikTok Pipeline: Why Is TikTok Employing So Many National Security Agents?

    As the bloody conflict in Ukraine continues to escalate, so does the online propaganda war between Russia and the West. A prime example of this is the White House directly briefing influencers on popular social media app TikTok about the war and how to cover it. As the crisis spirals out of control, Americans have turned to TikTok to view real time videos and analysis of the invasion. With the app estimated to have around 70 million U.S. users, the White House is keenly aware of its impact. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest … so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source,” President Joe Biden’s director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, told 30 top TikTok influencers. Since 2020, there has been a wave of former spooks, spies and mandarins appointed to influential positions within TikTok, particularly around content and policy – some of whom, on paper at least, appear unqualified for such roles.

    The post The NATO To TikTok Pipeline: Why Is TikTok Employing So Many National Security Agents? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Nobel laureates Ramos-Horta, Ressa demand freedoms, fight for democracy

    By Sofia Tomacruz in Manila

    Nobel laureates José Ramos-Horta and Maria Ressa have urged Southeast Asians to keep working toward a better region where democratic freedoms are protected in lecture leading into World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

    Nobel laureates José Ramos-Horta and Maria Ressa have called on Southeast Asians to fight for democracy and continue demanding human rights amid growing threats to democratic freedoms in the region.

    Ramos-Horta, a longtime politician and independence leader in Timor-Leste, along with Ressa, veteran journalist and co-founder of Rappler, made the statements in an online lecture titled “Freedom in Southeast Asia” last Tuesday.

    The discussion centred on ethical issues and the future of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the areas of governing democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and social media.

    “We have to keep fighting to improve democracy, perfect democracy as we have been fighting for decades, continue understanding that there will be setbacks, there will be triumphs for democracy again,” Ramos-Horta said.

    Ramos-Horta recently won Timor-Leste’s presidential election, gaining 62 percent of votes after facing off with incumbent President Francisco “Lu Olo” Guterres, who secured 37 percent.

    Ramos-Horta, one of East Timor’s best known political figures, was also president from 2007 to 2012, and prime minister and foreign minister before that.

    Ramos-Horta said part of the reason he decided to run for public office again was inadequate government response to crises like the covid-19 pandemic. The president-elect said he would work to respond to global economic pressures, including supply chain issues stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war and covid-19 lockdowns in China.

    ‘Demand good governance’
    “Don’t lose sight of what is important. Fight, but fight not with radicalism but fight with brains, wisdom, and a great deal of humility,” Ramos-Horta said.

    Ressa, who covered Ramos-Horta as a journalist, echoed this call, saying that people in Southeast Asia “must continue demanding our rights and demanding good governance.”

    “Our public officials need to realize that in the end, their struggle for power should not impede on the ability to deliver what their citizens need,” she said.


    The full media freedom lecture. Video: Rappler

    ‘Enlightened self-interest’
    Ressa, who has reported on democracy movements in Southeast Asia, said ASEAN has not been able to live up to its promises since it was founded in 1967. While advances have been made, the fight to protect democracy, she said, faces steeper challenges, including the use of social media platforms to spread lies and hate.

    Ressa challenged leaders and the public to practice “enlightened self-interest” in an effort to foster a code of ethics that could push back against corruption and abuse.

    Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa
    Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa … “I can distill almost everything wrong into two words: power and money – and how do you put guardrails around the people who have that?. Image: RSF

    “I can distill almost everything wrong into two words: power and money – and how do you put guardrails around the people who have that? Ethics, rules-based [order], and they themselves limit themselves because there is a greater good. This is not just ASEAN, it is universal,” she said.

    In fighting for democracy in the region, the Rappler co-founder also urged young people to first think of what they consider important and what freedoms they are willing to fight for.

    She said: “Because of social media, democracy now is a person-to-person battle for integrity. And so the question for you is, where do you draw the line?

    “How well will you give up some of your power to others in order to have a better world? What kind of leader not only do you want, but what kind of leader do you want to be?”

    Ramos-Horta reminded the public to “live up to the responsibility” the region has in Myanmar, where a military coup plunged the country into turmoil, derailing a decade of democratic reforms and economic gain.

    Expected to join ASEAN
    Ramos-Horta earlier said he expected Timor-Leste to become the 11th member of the ASEAN “within this year or next year at the latest.” It currently holds observer status in the bloc – and also observer status with the Pacific Islands Forum.

    “The message to the young people: You want a better Southeast Asia? You want a better region, better community that is generous, embracing of everyone because Southeast Asia is extraordinarily rich in diversity – and that makes Southeast Asia unique – then fight for it,” he said.

    “Do not abandon the people of Myanmar who feel completely abandoned. That is the absolute priority for us in Southeast Asia,” he added.

    Sofia Tomacruz is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Cyber attack on NZ sea level website blamed on anti-climate critics or ‘the Russians’

    By John Lewis of the Otago Daily Times

    Aotearoa New Zealand’s new NZ SeaRise website, designed to show how the country’s coastline will be affected by rising sea levels and land subsidence, has been hit by a cyber attack.

    Project co-leader and Victoria University of Wellington earth sciences Professor Tim Naish said the website went live this morning at 5am, and since then it had been getting 10,000 hits per second which had ”just killed” the website.

    ”We’re trying to get it back up and running,” he said.

    ”The guess is that these are anti-climate change people or the Russians — who knows.

    ”We don’t know for sure, but we think they’re using an autobot. They’re coming from an overseas IP address.

    ”It’s just hitting us with thousands of hits and our website can’t cope.”

    It was frustrating because local government mayors were being asked to comment on the website, but were unable to because it was inaccessible at the moment, he said.

    Frustrating for residents
    It was also frustrating for residents interested in what was going to happen on their own land.

    The NZ SeaRise website shows location-specific sea level rise projections to the year 2300, for every 2km of the coast of New Zealand.

    Climate change and warming temperatures are causing sea levels to rise by 3.5mm a year on average, but until now, the levels did not take into account local vertical land movements.

    Professor Naish said continuous small and large seismic events were adding up to cause subsidence in many parts of New Zealand, and the new projections showed the annual rate of sea level rise could double.

    Project co-leader and GNS Science associate professor Richard Levy said the team had connected vertical land movement data with climate-driven sea level rise to provide locally-relevant sea level projections.

    “Property owners, councils, infrastructure providers and others need to know how sea level will change in the coming decades so that they can consider how risks associated with flooding, erosion and rising groundwater will shift,” he said.

    ”We have estimated future sea levels for 7434 sites around our coastline. The largest increases in sea level will occur along the southeast North Island along the Wairarapa coast.

    Land subsidence rates are high
    ”Here, land subsidence rates are high and sea level could rise by well over 1.5m by 2100 if we follow the least optimistic climate change scenario.

    ”In contrast, land is rising near Pikowai, in the Bay of Plenty, and uplift rates may keep pace with climate change-driven sea level rise, causing a small fall in sea level if we follow the most optimistic climate scenario.”

    Dunedin and Invercargill were not likely to be any closer to inundation by the sea than had already been predicted, because ground movement in the South was ”quite stable”, he said.

    Based on present international emissions reduction policies, global sea levels were expected to have risen about 0.6m by 2100, but for large parts of New Zealand that would double to about 1.2m because of ongoing land subsidence.

    ”We know that global sea-level rise of 25cm-30cm by 2060 is baked in and unavoidable regardless of our future emissions pathway, but what may be a real surprise to people is that for many of our most populated regions, such as Auckland and Wellington, this unavoidable rise is happening faster than we thought.”

    Vertical land movements mean sea level changes might happen 20-30 years sooner than previously expected.

    For many parts of New Zealand’s coast, 30cm of sea-level rise is a threshold for extreme flooding, above which the 100-year coastal storm becomes an annual event.

    Climate change adaptation options
    Joint Otago Regional and Dunedin City Councils’ South Dunedin Future group programme manager Jonathan Rowe welcomed the new information and said it would feed into many aspects of the councils’ work, particularly that relating to the South Dunedin programme which was considering climate change adaptation options.

    ORC operations general manager Gavin Palmer said the information would also feed into flood protection planning to mitigate the impacts of sea level rise in other parts of coastal Otago, such as the Clutha Delta and the Taieri Plain.

    Rowe said for South Dunedin, the new data confirmed previous guidance, that further sea level rise of 24cm-35cm was predicted by 2050-60, and up to 112cm by 2100, depending on global emissions.

    A climate change adaptation plan would be presented to both councils in June, he said.

    Climate Change Minister James Shaw said the findings were “sobering” and the government’s first plan to cut emissions in every part of New Zealand, would be published later this month.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. It was first published on the Otago Daily Times website.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • When mainstream media fails to hold truth to power, social media is the saviour

    ANALYSIS: By Shailendra Singh

    Social media is a mixed bag, with both democratic and undemocratic tendencies.

    But then few things in life are perfect.

    And in that regard social media poses a major dilemma. Not just in Fiji, but many countries are grappling with how best to tackle social media.

    This includes even developed countries like Australia.

    But it is in fragile states like Fiji that the threat of social media is more pronounced.

    This is partly because of long-standing ethnic tensions and political differences.

    The ills of social media — racism, xenophobia, cyberbulling and hate speech — are rife in Fiji.

    Disinformation peaks around elections
    We have also seen sophisticated examples of disinformation, which peak around elections.

    The election period has been the riskiest time in Fiji, even before social media.

    There were appalling examples of disinformation in the 2018 elections.
    Some of it was so convincing that it may well have swayed some voters.

    We might even see more disinformation in this year’s elections.

    However, in Fiji, as in many other countries, social media can be empowering and liberating as well.

    Even then, it seems disenchantment with social media’s undemocratic traits is greater than the appreciation for its democratising tendencies.

    I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect that social media is sometimes over-demonised, under-appreciated.

    This is a major challenge.

    Access to mainstream news
    Not everyone has access to mainstream news media to express views.

    But any Tom, Dick and Harry can have their say about governments, or about anything and anyone, on social media.

    This is priceless in controlled countries.

    In Fiji, social media is pivotal because mainstream media are hampered by the punitive Media Industry Development Act 2010.

    Social media is also important because mainstream media can also be biased.

    We analysed mainstream media coverage of the 2018 Fiji elections, to be published soon.

    We found that all national media gave overwhelming positive coverage to the ruling party, except one.

    Opposition parties shut out
    The opposition parties were shut out — this claim is not based on hearsay but solid research.

    Besides The Fiji Times, the only place to find dissenting views during the 2018 elections was social media.

    When mainstream media fails to hold truth to power, social media is the saviour for the opposition and the pubic.

    Unlike social media, mainstream cannot be everywhere 24/7. Social media created citizen journalists out of citizens.

    This is not to say that social media and mainstream media are always competing. Not only do they complement each other, each is a check and balance on the other.

    My main point is, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater by over legislating social media or under appreciating its value.

    Education, not just legislation is the way to deal with issues like disinformation.

    Many disillusioned with social media
    In Fiji, this is not as simple as it seems: Many people are disillusioned with social media, with good reason.

    And government is bent on legislating social media as well, with a certain level of public support.

    We should remember that mainstream media are also caught in the crossfire of social media legislation. Their space is also restricted even though professional journalists are not normally party to the abuse of social media.

    Education would mean more than just how to spot disinformation, or use social media responsibly.

    Education also means understanding the value of social media and the need to protect our access to it, rather than unknowingly surrender these rights.

    Education should become part of the school curriculum.

    This is because any government, by nature, will try to control social media to curtail criticism, win elections and stay in power.

    Only if the population is well educated in what social media means in a democracy will they challenge governments trying to take over social media.

    Dr Shailendra Singh is associate professor in Pacific journalism and coordinator of journalism at the University of the South Pacific. He is the 2022 Pacific Research Fellow at the Australian National University. His views are not necessarily shared by the universities that he is associated with. This address was made at a “Building public confidence in elections in Fiji through civil society action” panel discussion at the Coral Coast, Sigatoka, Fiji, on 29 April 2022.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Elon Musk is the latest billionaire to muscle in on the media

    The rich and their interests control the means of communication. That’s why it’s vital to support truly independent media that challenges the status quo.

    By Curtis Daly

    This post was originally published on The Canary.