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  • The West Has Fallen Into Darkness

    When reason hath to deal with force, yet so
    Most reason is that reason overcome.

    — Paradise Lost (6.125-126)

    As the Western elites continue to pour weapons into Ukraine to the delight of the armaments industry and the closet Nazis of Natostan, the cult of neoliberalism, which put the Banderite regime in power during the Obama years, reaches new depths of degradation with each passing day. Both at home and abroad, the schizophrenic rift between the language of neoliberalism and the actual policies that these creatures support continues to widen. The increasingly delusional trajectory of the queen of cults is propelling us into a new dark age where literacy, reason, the rule of law, and even the survival of our species are in danger.

    Subconsciously, neoliberals believe that they are carrying on in the tradition of the Enlightenment, the abolitionists, the New Dealers, the civil rights activists, and the anti-war activists that marched against the Vietnam War and the bombings of Laos and Cambodia. In actuality, what they offer today is lawlessness, unfettered capitalism, biofascism, deunionization, war, sectarianism; and the multicultural curriculum, a cousin of Banderite education, as both are predicated on the anti-humanities. It is this sophomoric hubris of neoliberals, the macabre fantasy that they are sensible, rational, and moral beings while the heathens represent intolerance, ignorance, and bigotry, which blinds them to the barbarism of their deeds. Like the lost souls in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, neoliberals believe they are firmly grounded in reality, when they are enslaved to venal public health agencies and a mass media brainwashing apparatus which have entrapped them in a world of deception and lies — a world of shadows.

    While Ukrainian civilization is inextricably linked with Russian history and culture, Banderite education is anchored in Russophobia, its antithesis. Having extirpated all things Russian from their lives, Ukrainian state ideology has become synonymous with hating Russians. No less rooted in self-cannibalization, the multicultural society has become synonymous with a hostility towards the American canon and all things Western. Both are depraved, totalitarian, anti-intellectual and anti-democratic dogmas. As Orwell wrote in 1984, “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” Beware the anti-humanities, for they are the handmaidens of totalitarianism.

    Indeed, identity politics and Banderite indoctrination have spawned tens of millions of illiterate, nihilistic, and atomized individuals that are devoid of a legitimate culture, cannot place current events in their appropriate historical context, are inculcated with loathing for an imaginary enemy, and can easily be manipulated by oligarchic forces. Nazi and Zionist indoctrination achieved similar results. Notably, the Russophobia in the West increasingly resembles the Russophobia in Ukraine prior to the Maidan putsch (see here and here).

    The idea that neoliberalism is anchored in “anti-racism” is nonsensical, as not a day goes by without more dumbing down of children of color, mindless hate-filled rants against Russians and white people (excluding Nazis in Eastern Europe and the ones with lots of money); while the anti-white jihad ideology imbues the younger generation with a desire to launch a crusade against all things “racist.” This encompasses everything from Shakespeare to Mozart, to the principle of bodily autonomy, to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to disposable white workers themselves. This is the most dangerous form of bigotry – sectarian hatreds that are knowingly and willfully cultivated in an education system charged with the task of molding impressionable young minds.

    When not smashing unions to the wall, burning books, dismantling informed consent, and fomenting ghettoization, neoliberals can be found spending trillions of dollars dropping bombs on people and supporting death squads. Indeed, the sociopathy of American humanitarian interventionism is glaringly on display with regards to the Biden administration’s support for the Banderite regime.

    Like Pavlov’s dogs, neocons and neolibs alike clamor for hellfire to be unleashed on whoever is the latest to be vilified: anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, Serbs, Russians, the Taliban, the Iraqis. Entire societies are deemed to be somehow synonymous with their alleged dictators. While faux leftists have imaginary conversations about Russiagate, children in Mariupol are acquiring a real-world understanding of the horrors that have been inflicted on their society as a result of the US-backed Maidan coup. Yet we must follow these virtuous crusaders, who applaud their government for giving billions of dollars in weapons (or complain that it is insufficient, for the most fanatical) to a Banderite regime which permits fascists to get on television and openly call for genocide in the Donbass. Meanwhile, a vast swath of American society lacks adequate health insurance, adequate employment, education, the rule of law; and increasingly, even a society. As many a wise babushka can explain, before the specter of Ukrainian nationalism once more reared its ugly visage, western and eastern Ukrainians lived in peace with one another. Undoubtedly they would still, were it not for Washington providing the Banderite entity with enormous amounts of diplomatic aid, arms, military training, and assistance in executing psyops.

    The idea currently being bandied about by a number of presstitutes and congressmen, that we could nonchalantly waltz into a third world war, as it would likely be confined to the use of conventional weapons, is indicative of a society that has lost the ability to engage in rational fact-based discussions. If there is a third world war, it will be nuclear. The Kremlin is not going to allow a repeat of Operation Barbarossa, and senior Kremlin officials have explicitly stated that they are not going to permit another war to be fought on Russian soil. This deranged thinking is yet further evidence of a society that has, over the past thirty years, been transformed into a diabolical cesspit of lies, propaganda, and deceit.

    Some have speculated that there is a cabal in Washington pushing for a third world war, wagering that Europe and Russia would be destroyed, but that the US would somehow escape the carnage unscathed as transpired after the first two world wars, and that the American ruling establishment would then be able to create a new financial system which would cancel American debt and reverse the looming threat of de-dollarization. Should things degenerate to the point where the Russian military is targeting London, Paris, and Brussels is it not likely that major American cities would also be targeted?

    While neoliberals wallow in the pathologies of cult dogma, the Russians are acutely aware of the following facts: the Banderite coup was orchestrated by Washington; battalions and death squads comprised of neo-Nazis and ultranationalists have been armed, funded, and trained by the West; and that Western presstitutes have fallen head over heels in love with Russophobia and are providing the Banderite regime with assistance in carrying out false flag operations. Furthermore, they are aware of the fact that Washington is providing the Banderite entity with information regarding Russian troop movements, a very delicate and dangerous tightrope indeed. In “Russia Formally Warns US to Stop Arming Ukraine,” Dave DeCamp comments on this ominous line that NATO is walking:

    On top of arming the Ukrainians, the US is also providing them with intelligence for attacks on Russian forces. The huge amount of support raises questions about at what point Russia would consider the US a co-belligerent in the war.

    Principles which were once deemed inviolable such as freedom of speech, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, the informed consent ethic, privacy, a healthy fear of nuclear war, integration, and even the notion that a democratic society must have an informed and educated population, are being swept away. The result is lawlessness, despotism, and savagery. Uncontrolled immigration, the anti-humanities, and offshoring, which together with medical mandates neoliberals look to as magical elixirs with which to solve every domestic problem, have commodified human beings and turned workers into interchangeable parts that lack any sense of ethics, class consciousness, a shared history, and can easily be manipulated and controlled. The Weimarization of America is well underway, and all things sacred are in danger of being lost.

    The neoliberal notion of “tolerance” has become a euphemism for extremism, biofascism, book burning, and illegal wars of aggression. Witch hunts against heretics have become normalized, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to have rational discussions about incredibly serious political and socio-economic problems. The idea that the multicultural curriculum and identity studies “fight racism” when they constitute its quintessence is no less divorced from reality than the notion that a democracy can survive without the First Amendment, the Nuremberg Code, or any respect for international law. The lack of any empathy or remorse in the face of countless lives destroyed as a result of “humanitarian interventions” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia is coming home to roost.

    “Education” has become a euphemism for fomenting sectarian hatreds and increasingly specialized job training. Revealingly, Americans with the most advanced degrees are often the most inclined to believe in the infallibility of the legacy media and the public health agencies. With a diseased society that teaches young people to kowtow at the altar of materialism and careerism while blindly following “the experts,” self-imposed ignorance is increasingly necessary to “get ahead.” Except in unusual circumstances, physicians speaking out against the Branch Covidian coup d’état will lose their jobs. The same fate would undoubtedly befall a mainstream journalist attempting to educate their readers about the gruesome realities of US foreign policy, or a professor criticizing identity politics and the scourge of tribalism.

    The Guardian’s squeamishness over London cyclists being too white and male coupled with their fondness for Ukrainian nationalists – real racists – who have wiped entire Donbass villages off the face of the earth and committed crimes against humanity, is emblematic of the unhinged, devious, and wicked nature of neoliberal cult ideology.

    American universities – automaton training facilities which churn out millions of aspiring Karl Brandts, Adolf Eichmanns, and Albert Speers each year – have created a conscienceless technocratic class on the carcass of what was once a sound middle class. As any number of reporters that covered the Nuremberg trials undoubtedly discerned, hyper-careerism and hyper-specialization foment amorality, and like vultures hover menacingly whereon the anti-humanities feed. Even the original Nazi doctors would have dismissed the idea of giving an experimental vaccine series to every German in Europe as utter lunacy. Yet to millions of shameless faux leftists these policies are necessary for “the greater good,” and predicated on “the science.”

    That talking heads are permitted (or perhaps even encouraged by shadowy intelligence agencies) to call for people like Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard to be arrested for questioning the official Ukraine narrative is inextricably linked with the growing illiteratization and the fact that classes in civics have been expunged from the curriculum. This growing pathologization of dissent poses extremely serious risks to the First Amendment, as liberals are increasingly slandering their critics as mentally ill, evidence that biofascism’s war on informed consent poses a grave threat to our survival as a rule of law state. Should Democratic Party devotees attempt to commit (or section, as the British say) people such as Carlson and Gabbard, what legal mechanisms will prevent this from happening now that the informed consent ethic has been all but totally destroyed?

    The authoritarianism of neoliberals is directly proportional to their growing disconnection from reality; and the more delirious the faithful become, the more they believe they are the paragon of reason.

    James Howard Kunstler correctly points out on his blog that, in addition to the mass media, social media has played a significant role in fomenting this epidemic of demented ideation:

    All this coerced insanity has been nurtured by social media’s sly mechanisms for bending narrative into propaganda: their beloved algorithms, all fine-tuned to destroy anything that touches on truth. The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality, and can’t take coherent actions to avert its own collapse.

    It is remarkable that the New Deal, the public education system, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, any semblance of integration, a free press, the Nuremberg Code, and efforts to demilitarize and establish a single-payer health care system were obliterated in the name of “fighting racism,” “fighting sexism,” “fighting white supremacy,” and “fighting misogyny.” These words have become akin to dog commands, except unlike humans canines do not burn books, exploit slave labor, give weapons and military training to death squads, torture, or drop bombs on people.

    Indie conservatives typically understand the dangers of identity politics and the Branch Covidians, yet often lack an adequate understanding of US foreign policy and the threat to democracy posed by unfettered capitalism. Before most leftists were enveloped by a pall of madness, that was their job.

    Assuming we aren’t incinerated in a nuclear conflagration, how will reason and checks and balances be restored in a country run by toddlers, book burners, unscrupulous careerists, and homicidal maniacs? Irregardless of whether we witness the triumph of anti-white jihad, a Confederate white supremacist revival, or a takeover by the Christian Right (unlikely in this environment, as they are no fan of forced vaccination) the left’s self-evisceration threatens our existence as a civilized society and is slowly opening the harrowing portal of perdition.

    Should the pendulum swing back to the traditional far-right and neoliberals dethroned, what laws will be in place to protect those who have been deposed and dispossessed? As neoliberal cultists are no longer living in the reality-based world, and are seemingly incapable of acknowledging the consequences of their actions, the path towards the spires of reason and solidarity will be difficult to forge in the long and arduous days that lie ahead.

    The post The West Has Fallen Into Darkness first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • An Intellectual No-Fly Zone: Online Censorship Of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming The New Norm

    Google has sent a warning shot across the world, ominously informing media outlets, bloggers, and content creators that it will no longer tolerate certain opinions when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Earlier this month, Google AdSense sent a message to a myriad of publishers, including MintPress News, informing us that, “Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.” This content, it went on to say, “includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim-blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.”

    The post An Intellectual No-Fly Zone: Online Censorship Of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming The New Norm appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US/NATO Wants War With Russia

    Here is a speech Vladimir Putin DID NOT make — at least in this specific language — to the Russian people just before initiating the special military operations in Ukraine:

    “It is my responsibility as the president to warn our citizens of secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of US/NATO missiles — in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to Russia and the nations of our hemisphere, in violation of American assurances, and in defiance of treaties and our own policies — this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons on our borders — is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.”

    Does this have a familiar feel to it?

    Here is the speech which President John F. Kennedy DID MAKE to the American people on October 22, 1962, when he warned of:

    … a secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of Communist missiles — in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to the United States and the nations of the Western Hemisphere, in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy — this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside of Soviet soil — is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.

    The Cuban Missile Crisis which resulted from the discovery of this military escalation by the Soviets, almost resulted in a world war and nuclear annihilation.

    The tables have rotated 180º. Now it is the US which is putting the survival of humankind at risk, escalating the conflict in Ukraine by dumping more and more weapons into the conflict zone, demonizing Putin and everything Russian, apparently urging the Ukrainians to avoid a negotiated peace and to fight to the bitter end.

    Do not for a moment forget . . .

    There were solutions in place to prevent the entire Ukrainian situation from evolving into the terrifying mess we now see. First, there was the Minsk II Agreement of February 12, 2015, signed by Ukraine, guaranteed by France, Germany and Russia. It was ignored by Ukraine, never implemented. There is speculation that it was the US which prompted the stonewalling. Then, December of 2020, Russia itself proposed very concrete steps, as draft treaties, that could be taken to defuse the tensions and guarantee greater security for all of Europe and the world. These were formally submitted to both the US and NATO in writing. They were dismissed. Now with the conflict in full swing, Russia has repeatedly made clear its current position on ending this. What the Russians is demand is no different than what Kennedy demanded of the USSR. This has also been flatly rejected.

    From the outset of the crisis, Russia has been maligned, vilified, rejected, canceled, viciously attacked at every opportunity for merely wanting the assurances and concrete reductions to the threat posed by NATO and the US on its borders, just as JFK laid out subsequent to his announcement of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

    (As a revealing aside, the comprehensive scale of the vilification and attempted isolation of Russia across the planet, even in spheres completely unrelated to politics — dance, sports, art, music, cultural exchange programs, space exploration, pet shows — could not have been spontaneous. Any multi-layered attack of this scale had to have been in the works for some time. At least, that’s how I see it.)

    So . . .

    What conclusion can we draw from all of this? What message are we actually hearing from Biden, Blinken, Stoltenberg, Johnson, Scholz, Macron, and the rest of the US puppets around the world?

    I can see only one: US/NATO wants war with Russia. Which frankly, hardly comes as a surprise. From documents, white papers, policy statements, speeches by officials in the State Department and various administrations along the way, all easily accessed by just looking, the dismemberment of Russia and looting its vast and varied natural resources has been on the agenda for at least three decades.

    Yes, folks . . .

    It’s war. Not liberation. Not freedom and democracy. It’s war.

    Please correct me if I’m wrong.

    The post US/NATO Wants War With Russia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How Will Elon Musk’s Ownership Affect Twitter?

    The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is set to become the new owner of Twitter after the company’s board agreed to sell the influential social media platform for $44 billion on Monday. Musk, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” tweeted, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.” We speak with tech industry watchdog Jessica González and Evan “Rabble” Henshaw-Plath, who was part of the team that launched Twitter in 2006, about what the buyout means for the future of digital media and journalism. “Musk or no Musk, Twitter has work to do to ensure that it stops amplifying bigotry, calls to violence, hate speech and conspiracy theories,” says González. Henshaw-Plath says he senses Musk has “no idea what he’s getting into,” and discusses the activist roots of Twitter.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

    The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is set to become the new owner of Twitter, after the company’s board agreed to sell the influential social media platform for $44 billion. The deal is expected to close later this year pending regulatory approval.

    The watchdog group Media Matters criticized Musk’s takeover of Twitter, saying it will be a, quote, “victory for disinformation and the people who peddle it.” Media Matters and other groups have expressed concern that Musk will allow Donald Trump to resume using the platform. Twitter permanently banned Trump shortly after the deadly January 6th insurrection. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich also criticized Musk’s move, saying, quote, “Unlike his ambitions to upend transportation and interstellar flight, this one is dangerous. It might well upend democracy,” Reich said.

    Musk, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” tweeted, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”

    We’re joined now by two guests. Jessica González is with us, co-CEO of the media advocacy group Free Press. She’s also a founder of the Change the Terms coalition. And we’re joined by Evan Henshaw-Plath, a.k.a. Rabble. He was the first employee and lead engineer of the company that created Twitter. He’s now working on Bluesky, a Twitter-backed project to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. He’s the founder of Planetary, a decentralized social media app, also helped build the global Indymedia network. He’s joining us from Wellington, New Zealand.

    We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Well, Evan Henshaw-Plath, you have been described as Twitter’s first employee — well, at least the employee of the company that started Twitter. Can you respond now to the richest man in the world taking over one of the most powerful social media platforms in the world, that you helped start, Rabble?

    EVAN HENSHAW–PLATH: I mean, it’s a bit disturbing, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know where he’s going to take it and what kind of decisions he’s going to make with it. Under the current administration of the company, we’ve had commitments to things like the moderation policies and follow the Santa Clara Principles for better behavior, and we can see where it goes. And Elon Musk has advocated for some things that are big and great, and some things that are really terrible and will harm it. And we simply don’t know anymore where he’s going to take it, but we do know that he has been a bit of an abusive crypto bro on Twitter. And is that the kind of person we want deciding how our public sphere is governed?

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned this issue of cryptocurrency. There are some who believe that this is an attempt for him to be able to spread his support of cryptocurrency through an established worldwide structure. What’s your sense of the relationship between his support of cryptocurrencies and Twitter?

    EVAN HENSHAW–PLATH: We don’t know. He believes in open source. He believes in open protocols. That is what the Bluesky project has been working on. That’s what we’ve been working on with Planetary. But he also believes in — you know, that it should all be monetized. And in some ways, that’s not a huge change from Parag and Jack, the previous two CEOs, who are also pro-crypto and advocate for cryptocurrency. So, whether or not this means that cryptocurrencies are going to be more deeply integrated into Twitter, we just don’t know. He says he wants to do it, but the current Twitter management also has been exploring it.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jessica González of Free Press, what are your concerns? You urged the shareholders of Twitter not to approve this takeover attempt. What are your main concerns about Elon Musk?

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: Good morning, Juan. My main concern is that Musk has demonstrated no commitment to helping to protect our democracy and civil and human rights. Musk or no Musk, Twitter has work to do to ensure that it stops amplifying bigotry, calls to violence, hate speech and conspiracy theories. It also needs to do much more to protect its users across geographies and across languages. So, while there may be a couple of things to like here around transparency, we’ve seen Musk demonstrate time and again that he doesn’t really have a commitment to protecting our democracy. His number one objective is to protect himself and to advance his own interests.

    So, when we hear Musk saying, “I’m a free speech absolutist. Everything goes,” that means also that hate and harassment goes, the kind hate and harassment that shouts down women and people of color. That’s not actually how we achieve the balance of free speech. Moreover, Musk has also really not lived up to his self-proclaimed free speech absolutist values. In fact, he called on the Chinese government to censor folks who were criticizing Tesla. So, this is not the sort of steady, reliable hand that we want making decisions about how our communications infrastructure works.

    AMY GOODMAN: Jessica, can you explain the Fix the Feed campaign that you are now involved with? You’ve just announced this campaign.

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: Why, yes, I’d love to. Thank you, Amy. So, I am working with over five dozen partners in the Change the Terms coalition. This is a coalition that was built by and serving women and people of color, who are more likely to face hate and harassment campaigns online. Ahead of the midterms, we are calling on not just Twitter but also TikTok, YouTube, Meta and other social media platforms to stop amplifying conspiracy theories, election interference and disinformation that is targeted at women, people of color and others on the margins. We’re calling on them to do that across languages. We’ve seen time and again that social media, as poorly as they’re moderating content in English, it’s even worse in Spanish and other non-English languages. And we’re calling on them to be much more transparent about their content moderation practices.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Evan, I wanted to ask you: This whole issue of the responsibility of these platforms for content moderation versus the imperative to protect free speech, how do you feel that a Musk-led Twitter will resolve this issue? Because, clearly, there are major, major problems. There’s government attempts now to hold the platforms responsible for their content, and threats of more legislation in that vein. What’s your sense of how Musk will deal with this?

    EVAN HENSHAW–PLATH: My sense is that Musk actually has no idea what he’s getting into. He has no idea of the complexity of it. And he sees just a few examples of it, and so he says, “Ban the box, and verify real names,” without understanding the harm that will do and the fact that it doesn’t improve the quality of conversation. He doesn’t know the perspective of people who are marginalized, because, you know, he’s the son of a man who owned an emerald mine in South Africa. He hasn’t experienced what people who experience systemic attacks on these platforms face.

    And so, yes, he’s been — lots of critics and everything else, but what he doesn’t realize is that these moderation systems and these moderation problems, they make mistakes. It’s hard. There’s a process by which it needs to be improved. But simply removing moderation, that doesn’t help the problem. That’s actually going to make the entire space much more toxic. And we’ll see whether or not he even actually wants to do that, given the fact that when it’s criticizing him, he has no problem silencing speech.

    AMY GOODMAN: Rabble, I wanted to ask you about the early roots of Twitter. Let’s go back to 2004, if you would say TXTMob was an early root of Twitter, helping to organize the protests against the Republican National Convention that were taking place here in New York City, also used during the Democratic convention of that year in Boston. Can you go back then and then just give us a trajectory of what Twitter came out of?

    EVAN HENSHAW–PLATH: Sure. So, the company that created Twitter was originally a podcasting company called Odeo. And a bunch of us who had been active as media activists within Indymedia and in collaboration with Democracy Now! had built a text alert system called TXTMob. Groups of people could text either news or updates to each other in the streets in the protests. And so, that was very successful in 2004 for the protests, and we used it again for the May 1st immigrant rights general strike.

    And because we were building that and working at it out of the office, the rest of the Odeo team got excited about it, and we taught Jack Dorsey how to send SMSes. And the entire team spent a week using TXTMob and then did an analysis of what worked and didn’t work in that system. And that and looking at blogging and looking at status update systems that people had played with were sort of combined together to create Twitter.

    And so, the activist roots behind Twitter were very much part of it. The entire team that created Twitter spent an entire week just using the activist platforms to understand how they work, and then did a design analysis of how to make them better. And that political vision and that energy is part of why Twitter is such an effective organizing tool.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, and has it disheartened you to see what has happened in the years since, the fact that now celebrities can basically buy Twitter followers or that bots can have such enormous influence on people’s thinking of what’s real and not, given the fact that the entire business model came out of a resistance and a pro-democracy movement?

    EVAN HENSHAW–PLATH: You know, there are parts of it that I am incredibly proud of and stunned by — the way in which Black Lives Matter has used it for organizing, the way in which people in the Arab Spring used it to communicate their movement to the outside world — and there’s things that are completely depressing.

    You know, sort of the byline for Indymedia was that you should be the media. And at the time, that seemed like a radical statement. Now that we have people being their own media, we see that there’s a whole ‘nother set of problems that we need to face. And it didn’t change who people were, although we have used it to change the world. Unfortunately, it empowered a bunch of people who had views that were right-wing, authoritarian, racist, homophobic views that had been silenced by the mainstream media, a whole bunch of conspiracy theories. And if we give everybody a microphone, we need better tools to counteract that.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, let me ask Jessica González about President Trump, who was famously thrown off Twitter after the January 6th insurrection. He has said he has no plans to rejoin Twitter. But your thoughts on that? And just overall, Musk saying that — he has used the platform to say that shelter-in-place orders because of COVID were fascist. He also once tweeted that the coronavirus panic is dumb. Does this make you concerned about — there’s nothing wrong with saying those things if he has those opinions, but this whole issue that Media Matters and others are raising of going down a path of misinformation that has massive effect around the world?

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: Yes, I’m concerned, Amy. Listen, individuals have the right to say whatever they want, right? But when you combine that with power, money, presence, that’s something we ought to be concerned about. Can Musk take over Twitter and do what he wants with it? Sure, he can. But he shouldn’t. And it could be very dangerous for our democracy. The fact that he has regularly spread COVID disinformation is extremely concerning. In my opinion, Twitter has a responsibility to protect public health and safety. And if the person running Twitter is a regular purveyor of false information, that gives me great pause.

    As for Donald Trump, I don’t trust for a minute that he wouldn’t jump right back on Twitter if he could. I think Twitter made the right decision to take him down. He was inciting violence. He was using the platform to amplify conspiracy theories and bigotry. That was the right move. I don’t think he should return to Twitter. We saw study after study, after he was taken down, that disinformation went down markedly after he left the platform. So, I hope that he will remain off Twitter. And that’s yet to be known.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you, Jessica, just quickly, if you could — Joe Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to fill the fifth and tie-breaking seat at the Federal Communications Commission in October, but she hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate. What is your sense of what’s going on there?

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: Well, Gigi has been targeted by a right-wing smear campaign, plain and simple. They’ve been drumming up false information about Gigi, painting her in a really cruel light. I know Gigi personally. She’s a good friend of mine. She’s a responsible steward of the public interest, and I hope the Senate will confirm her without further delay. This is really slowing down our ability to pass important policies to get people online, to ensure the internet is affordable, and to reinstate net neutrality principles.

    AMY GOODMAN: And, Evan, what do you make of Elon Musk’s statement that he would like to make Twitter’s algorithm open source?

    EVAN HENSHAW–PLATH: I’m an advocate of open source. I think that opening up the algorithm, so that outside people can analyze how it works and understand it, will be powerful for users and powerful for researchers. The fact that it’s been a black box has been a major problem.

    Whether or not that really improves things is a good question, because part of the reason companies don’t publish their algorithms for their timelines and for who they connect to is that opens up people to game the system even more effectively. And so, the minute you know exactly how it works, you’ll tweak the way in which you publish stuff to do that. And normal users, who aren’t trying to manipulate the system, won’t be able to see that and won’t be able to take advantage of the loopholes, whereas people who have intentional teams set up to figure out how to manipulate these things, either for advertising or disinformation, they’re going to be able to use that information about the algorithm to more effectively dominate the platform. And that’s a major problem and something that we need to address.

    One thing, when Trump was elected, I actually sat down with Jack Dorsey, and we had a conversation about deleting the account in 2016. And my answer, what I said to him, was, “You should have deleted the account before he ran for president, when he was doing abusive things there.” If you did it after that, the stock market and investors were going to claim that he was not following fiduciary responsibility, and so the market was going to overwrite him if he deleted it. And that’s why I think he had to wait until it got too bad, ’til the insurrection. And that’s the problem with running public spaces on the market.

    AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Evan, is it accurate to say you were the first employee of Twitter?

    EVAN HENSHAW–PLATH: Yeah, I was the first employee of Odeo and involved with creating Twitter. Twitter, the company, was actually created about a year after Twitter, the service, was launched.

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Evan Henshaw-Plath, a.k.a. Rabble, founding member of Twitter, and Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press, founder of the Change the Terms coalition.

    Coming up next, we go to Steven Donziger. He has just been freed from house arrest after almost 1,000 days. Back in 30 seconds.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia, Part II

    Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, is experiencing a building boom, which includes all the foreign embassies near the airport. The din of construction is non-stop on weekdays. Lots of sky high office buildings and condos underway.

    Even the Embassy of Bangladesh is building new floors right across the street from my alleyway hotel. Mercedes drive in and out, and I wonder how such a poor country affords them, but Mercedes seem to be the ambassadorial vehicle of choice. Governments like Bangladesh, which don’t maintain embassies in many other countries, no doubt maintain them here because Addis Ababa is the seat of the African Union, and with the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam coming online, Ethiopia is emerging as a regional powerhouse, despite how much that dismays US policymakers.

    The post Notes from Wartorn Ethiopia, Part II appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Kamila Valieva and Eileen Gu:  Young Women Athletes as Enemies of Empire

    Kamila Valieva

    As one who has followed Olympic women’s figure skating, especially since Michelle Kwan (ironically a Chinese-American), I was—as an egalitarian feminist when it comes to sports—excited to learn that there was a 15-year-old Russian woman skater, Kamila Valieva, who could do effortless quad jumps.  Waiting in anticipation of her first Olympic performance, I listened to commentators and former US skaters Tara Lipinsky and Johnny Weir rave about her spectacular talent.  They told the audience that we were about to see “the best skating in the world”…that “a talent like this comes around once in a lifetime.”  They found her first performance in the short skate “incredible… flawless… perfect in every way.”  It was, they said, a rare privilege to watch her perform:  “she will have an amazing legacy.”  Days later they would say nothing watching her perform.

    Weir and Lipinski were disgusted.  They said she should not be there.  It was so unfair to the other skaters.  They were too sickened to even watch her.  What happened?  The Empire and its allies, based on a highly questionable positive drug test, declared her a “doper.”  She was booed, harassed.  And she finally (literally) fell.  The Russians should obviously not have the first female Olympic quad jumper.  The Russians were taking far too many gold medals.  This whole spectacle was an intersection of hegemonic American world politics and ruthless patriarchy.  Women athletes had become enemies, and thus victims, of Empire. USA!  USA!

    The US has always had a need to be first—to put it mildly.  Any coverage of Olympic or international games I’ve ever watched features US athletes and almost never anyone else.  President Jimmy Carter got the ball rolling with his 1980 boycott of the Olympics in the Soviet Union.  Under Carter the Cold War had worsened because of factors like American criticism of Soviet alleged abuses of human rights and the Afghan crisis—therefore the controversial move to ignore the Olympics’ so-called non-political philosophy.  American views of Russian athletics did not improve:  the alleged Russian Doping Scandals began around 2008 and are still going. In 2008, Russian track and field athletes were suspended from competition because of supposed doping, cheating, cover-ups, even “state-sponsored” doping.

    A 2015 New York Times article cited an ex-chief of a so-called Russian anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, who claimed that samples were doctored so that several Russian gold medal winners in the 2014 winter games in Sochi could be victors.  Members of the Russian Sports Ministry thought it an April Fools’ joke, done for “purely political reasons” and threatened to sue the Times. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had asked the accuser, Mr. Rodchenkov, to resign years before, for taking bribes, and since 2012 he had lived in L A.  Because of such allegations, the World Athletics Federation suspended the Russian Athletic Federation in 2015, but let “clean athletes” participate under “neutral status”:  no Russian flags or anthems.  In 2019, 2020 and 2021, more accusations were brought against various Russian sports officials for “falsifying documents” and etc., and thus the suspensions continued.

    President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government have strongly denied the allegations, calling them a political weapon of the West.  Any appeals from Russian athletes have been denied.  Some argued all countries cheated, why single out Russia?  Others thought the Russians were being framed to keep their very strong athletes from competitions.  It does seem odd that once your athletes were so scrutinized you would be careful to stop “doping.”  In fact, the stated goal of the Russian Sports Ministry at the end of 2021 was –once again—to have the Russian Athletic Federation and Anti-Doping Agency reinstated.  The “West” has remained hostile toward Russian athletics.  And this most certainly included Russian ice skaters:  a sport where Russia has been at the very top for years.

    Kamila Valieva had to skate under the same restraints that all Russian athletes face.  But because she was so incredibly good, the skating world simply had to acknowledge her.  In looking at her biographical data—there’s not much!  She’s only 15; born in April of 2006 in Kazan, Russia.  And she has a Pomeranian named Lena, a gift from a fan.  Before she was five years old, her mother had her in gymnastics, ballet and skating, but after age five, it was only skating.   In her first season out of junior ranking she had risen far above her opposition.  She is the fourth woman to land a quadruple jump in competition and the first to do it in Olympic competition.  Valieva set world records on her path to Grand Prix titles in Vancouver and Sochi, and the European Championships in Tallinn in January of this year.  In Beijing the expectations for Kamila Valieva were very high.  As one Russian journalist put it, she was so good in her short skate routine in Beijing that “even some western media outlets often so begrudging with their praise of Russian athletes were forced—perhaps through gritted teeth—to lavish praise on Valieva.” And when she competed next, for the Russian team, she did become the first woman to land a quad in Olympic history. But very soon after that, it was rumored there were “doping allegations” against Kamila Valieva.  A test taken in December was only revealed just then—in the midst of the March Olympics.  It seemed the Russians may not fare so well after all.

    Of course, the US also insisted on besting the Chinese athletes in Beijing, but added a nasty political narrative about their host.  Sports analysts like Mike Tirico were pressed into service as experts on alleged Chinese abuses vs. Uyghurs (abuses debunked by reporters like Max Blumenthal), their “authoritarian” government, misguided Covid protocols, etc.  American politicians and media had already prepped the US audience to be anti-Asian generally, by these supposed abuses and the potential of China becoming an even greater economic power—and unapologetically socialist as well.  The COVID pandemic was their fault too; President Trump calling it “Kung Flu” or the “Chinese virus.”  It was embarrassing to listen to the vitriolic commentary by US “analysts” with their long recanting of Chinese faults and crimes.  Our ugly history with China started with the US involvement in the Opium War through the dangerous gradual encirclement of present-day China with US warships and bases placed on numerous unwilling Pacific islands, as John Pilger’s brilliant film The Coming War on China illustrates.   And the US had tried to help their bad faith anti-China Olympic campaign with a “diplomatic boycott” (which didn’t really catch on).

    Eileen Gu

    Another young woman athlete, Chinese-American Eileen Gu, also became a victim of the Empire’s anger.  Gu is 18; she has a Chinese mother and was raised in San Francisco.  A brilliant world class freestyle skier, she has medalled in X Games, the World Championship and the Youth Olympics.  Gu announced in 2019 that she would represent China in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.  But she wasn’t called a traitor until the Olympics drew near.

    Gu has said that she welcomes the opportunity to draw people to winter sports.  The Chinese cheered her everywhere, but Americans not so much.  She was derided for taking advantage of “premier training” in the US and then abandoning the US for China.  Tucker Carlson said she had betrayed her country and “renounced” her citizenship.  The New York Times portrayed Gu as an “anti-hero of the feminist ideal” since she chose China which supposedly oppresses women.  At the other end of the political spectrum, right-wing social media echoed Carlson’s sentiments in calling for Gu to leave the country for her betrayal.  Gu won three Olympic medals in freestyle skiing, two gold and a silver.  Unfortunately for USA her three medals added to China’s total of 15 (with nine gold), best ever for China in a winter Olympics.

    Eileen Gu also faces anti-female prejudice since extreme sports has always been male-dominated, although women do compete alongside the men.  Gu thinks “as a young biracial woman, it is super important to be able to push boundaries. . . those of the sport and those of the record books because that’s what paves the paths for the next generation of girls.”  So why does the country where she lives give her an incredibly hard time?  As professor of sport Simon Chadwick said, “Her success is being weaponized and used for geopolitical purposes.  This is incredibly unfair because she’s an 18-year-old athlete with a dual heritage family who just wants to try her best and make her parents proud, and yet she’s being turned into a geopolitical weapon.”  Journalist Danny Haiphong has argued that Eileen Gu has chosen the “wrong” side by choosing to compete for a non-white, communist country.  She is assaulting “American exceptionalism” –being a traitor to the “empire’s civilizing mission.”  She should not be skiing for the “Chinese devils.”   But Gu insists (on her Instagram) she hopes “to unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendship.”  And she has said:  “I am also a teenage girl.  I do my best to make the world a better place, and I’m having fun while doing it.”  Not what the Empire is about.

    Vietnamese-American Haiphong also has pointed out that some American athletes were not going for the Empire’s narrative that the Chinese were being bad hosts—inferior food, lodging, unreasonable COVID protocols, and so on.  Snowboarder Tessa Maud refuted American media’s narrative and talked of the warm welcome she’d received by Chinese volunteers and how she loved the local cuisine.   Skier Aaron Blunk went so far as to criticize American media coverage of the games on Twitter as often “completely false.”  He called Beijing one of the better Olympics he’s been in, including the COVID protocols, the hosting:  “It’s been phenomenal.”  So Twitter suspended his account.  As Haiphong put it:  “Humanizing China represents a direct threat to the new Cold War Agenda.”  The US must control the narrative, and that included not allowing China, or Russia, to shine.

    The Empire certainly succeeded in taking the shine from the great Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva.  Commentators Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir, who had just called Valieva the “best skater in the world” with a “talent that comes once in a lifetime,” were about to change their minds.  At Beijing, Valieva’s performance in the short skate was “a thing of great beauty.”  Weir and Lipinski thought it “incredible.”  Weir gushed about the interview he had been granted by the young Valieva.  Her second performance was a free skate for the Russian team.  She fell once but the skate was historic because as noted, she became the first woman in history to land a quad at the Olympics.  She finished 30 points ahead of second place Kaori Sakamoto.  Weir and Lipinski could not find enough superlatives.

    All awaited what would no doubt be another historic performance by Valieva in the ladies singles event.  But then rumors began that the medal ceremony, with Russia winning gold and the US silver—would be delayed.  And then that “a Russian skater” had a positive doping test.  Then it leaked it was Kamila Valieva, in spite of IOC rules that any accusation against a “minor” must remain secret.  A test taken on December 25, sent to a Swedish lab, showed minute traces of trimetazidine, an “illegal” heart drug which may have some positive effect on athletic performance, although many argue it would not help skaters.  Valieva’s family and coaching team believed she may have been exposed to it through her grandfather, who took the drug.  The Russian team also said she had repeatedly tested negative before and after the positive sample.  They said she was innocent.  The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) panel ruled she would not be suspended from the competition.  A further investigation would happen later, now scheduled to conclude by mid-August.

    Kamila Valieva rallied to lead the field in the ladies short program.  This was when stalwart patriots Lipinski and Weir were too disgusted to watch.  I remember these stalwarts as being very nasty in speaking of the Russian skaters both during the Sochi (Russia) Olympics in 2014, and the 2018 PyeongChang  (South Korea)  games (where “cleared” Russians could skate).   Some observers found them “a breath of fresh air,” but others as “mean, obnoxious, distracting.”  At any rate, they were outraged Valieva was allowed to perform.  She was “ruining everything.”  Their only comment after her performance was “she skated.”  Getting their wish for her downfall, the scandal finally impacted her free skate and she finished fourth after stumbles and falls.  Unfortunately for USA! Russian Alexandra Trusova won silver.  Former Russian ice dancer champion Alexander Zhulin has said that international sports authorities will have to live with “ruining” Kamila Valieva’s Olympic dreams.  He had never “seen Kamila so lost.”  The IOC and WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) “destroyed and removed the biggest star of figure skating.”  The December 25 test was revealed after team Russia’s brilliant performance, capped by Valieva’s skate, won gold.  It does seem like an American Empire kind of move.

    Valieva’s coact Eteri Tutberidze, who, along with Kamila’s team, was (incredibly) criticized by the IOC’s Thomas Bach, for being “too cold.”   Tutberidze said Kamila was “our star.”  “Those who smiled yesterday—today left the stands demonstrably ignoring and pouncing like jackals.”  There were reporters, especially the British, who followed her around at practice, yelling “Are you a doper?”  Valieva addressed her Beijing experience in two “emotional instagrams” in late February.  She thanked her coaches for “helping me to be strong.”  And she thanked all who “were with me during this tough period . . who did not let me lose heart. . and who believed in me.”  A few weeks later she was on the ice again.

    Kamila participated in the “Channel One Cup”  Russian skating (competitive) exhibition, since Russian skaters were banned from the Worlds.  Valieva skated a “simplified” program, but said the experience of being out on the ice was “exhilarating.”  Anna Shcherbakova won the women’s event.  Valieva has said that the Olympics should not be “idealized” and her “journey is just beginning.” In a recent interview with “People Talk” she said she can be “cocky, obnoxious, stubborn, insecure.”  But also “sociable, cheerful, active, and of course, romantic…”  In skating programs, her coaches see her in “lyrical images,” but she wants to be “different in programs:  a hooligan, daring, bold.”  She is a typical teenager, but also very intelligent, a brilliant athlete and a targeted enemy of Empire.

    Sportswriters can be very effective operatives for Empire.  My favorite is probably Christine Brennan.  I had admired Brennan as one of the team of reporters on HBO’s “Real Sports,” although unfortunately now they seem more apt to take a corporate line than do the critical reporting they used to do.  Brennan accused Valieva, and Russia, of turning the Winter Games “into a bizarre and troubling fiasco” because of their “state-sponsored doping.”  She said Valieva “would have been favored to win” the Worlds in Montpelier, but she “crumbled under the scrutiny of her positive drug test.”  When Americans won the pairs skating title at Worlds, their first since 1979, Brennan wrote:  “No Russia?  No China?  No problem.”  And “few will miss them.”  The Beijing medal count had USA with 25 medals, behind Norway, Russia, Germany and Canada, much like their finish at PyeongChang.  The Russians had 32 medals, with six gold; the Chinese had 15, with nine gold; USA! had a paltry 25, with eight gold, well behind Russia.  Totally unacceptable.

    Of course, by the World Championships, more than Valieva and her fellow skaters were ousted from competition.  It was all Russia, all the time—everyone Russian was out because the World Federations of all the sports, influenced and/or bludgeoned into it, had banned them all because of the Russian military action in Ukraine.  This was the Russian response to being encircled with troops and NATO forces, and a Nazi-led government provided by the US in Ukraine in 2014, which had been attacking the Russian-language population of eastern Ukraine since that 2014 coup.  An unprecedented campaign of Western propaganda and lies is in full swing, definitely McCarthyite in its depth and with parallel lasting and dangerous results to come.  In the 1950s Ethel Rosenberg was executed for being a communist wife—a wife who either evilly influenced her husband Julius to reveal atomic secrets to the Russians or did not, as was her duty, stop him from doing so.  Julius Rosenberg, executed with his wife, was reputedly worried that if the US gained too much power without a balance from the Soviets, it would lead to a dangerous situation.  And he was right.  The US government has become an Empire that will tolerate no state competitor, nor even states who will not line up and stay with the American Empire’s plans.  This is very clear in the world of sport—certainly in the supposedly apolitical Olympic world.

    To punish Russia, the US/Europe have gone totally insane with their bans and sanctions.  Many sanctions such as Russian energy, will only punish Europe; others involve outright piracy as in US allies helping themselves to Russian yachts.  The list goes on, but in the world of sport—athletes from Russia and its close ally Belarus are banned “until further notice” from international skiing, track and field events, tennis, basketball, aquatic sports, volleyball, curling, hockey, rugby, football (soccer), and of course, skating.  Many of these sports have Russian champions, and they, as Christine Brennan put it, “will not be missed.”  A few officials have objected, and paid for it.  Russian sports officials say they will “temporarily” develop their own competitions, with foreign athletes.  They say the western world is committing “sporting genocide” against its athletes.

    So Kamila Valieva and company will skate at home, and Eileen Gu will still be considered a traitor by many Americans.  The hate expressed by Tara Lipinski and Christine Brennan is too easily tapped by the American sports world.  Here is hegemonic politics, and ruthless patriarchy and racism, coming together.  And here are two remarkably strong and level-headed young women athletes who are braving the results of being who they are.  In its overwhelming power, the US Empire has made evil all things Chinese and Russian, and women athletes have not been spared the weaponizing of that hate.

    The post Kamila Valieva and Eileen Gu:  Young Women Athletes as Enemies of Empire first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Fiji ministers ‘held on tight leash’ – afraid to speak up, claims Sharma

    By Pekai Kotoisuva in Suva

    Some Fiji government ministers are “held on a tight leash” and afraid to make open ended statements in public, claims former health minister Dr Neil Sharma.

    He said this during a live video interview on Sashi Singh’s Talking Point page on Facebook.

    Dr Sharma claimed that the perception of the public that this country was governed by a “one man rule” was true.

    “A lot of government ministers are fearful of making open ended statements to the public,” Dr Sharma said.

    “They will read from prepared statements and speeches and those speeches go through the government’s communications unit.”

    He said government ministers feared being reprimanded for sharing their personal or ministerial views.

    “Let me put it this way, they are on a tight leash,” he said.

    Dr Sharma also alleged that the perception by the public that government ministers were “just mere puppets” in Parliament was true.

    Questions sent to the Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, and Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama remained unanswered.

    Pekai Kotoisuva is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Twitter IS “State-Affiliated Media”

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    British politician and broadcaster George Galloway has made headlines in the UK with his threat to press legal action against Twitter for designating his account “Russia state-affiliated media”, a label which will now show up under his name every time he posts anything on the platform.

    “Dear @TwitterSupport I am not ‘Russian State Affiliated media’,” reads a viral tweet by Galloway. “I work for NO Russian media. I have 400,000 followers. I’m the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament. If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action.”

    Galloway argues that while his broadcasts have previously been aired by Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik, because those outlets have been shut down in the UK by Ofcom and by European Union sanctions he can no longer be platformed by them even if he wants to. If you accept this argument, then it looks like Twitter is essentially using the “state-affiliated media” designation as a marker of who Galloway is as a person, rather than as a marker of what he actually does.

    Regardless of whether you agree with Galloway’s argument or not, this all overlooks the innate absurdity of a government-tied social media corporation like Twitter labeling other people “state-affiliated media”. Twitter is state-affiliated media. It has been working in steadily increasing intimacy with the United States government since the US empire began pressuring Silicon Valley platforms to regulate content in support of establishment power structures following the 2016 election.

    In 2020 Twitter was one of the many Silicon Valley corporations who coordinated directly with US government agencies to determine what content should be censored in order to “secure” the presidential election. In 2021 Twitter announced that it was orchestrating mass purges of foreign accounts on the advice of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which receives funding from many government institutions including the US State Department.

    “ASPI is the propaganda arm of the CIA and the U.S. government,” veteran Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh told Mintpress News earlier this year. “It is a mouthpiece for the Americans. It is funded by the American government and American arms manufacturers. Why it is allowed to sit at the center of the Australian government when it has so much foreign funding, I don’t know. If it were funded by anybody else, it would not be where it is at.”

    Twitter has also coordinated its mass purges of accounts with a cybersecurity firm called FireEye, which this 2019 Sputnik article by journalist Morgan Artyukhina explains was “founded in 2004 with money from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel.”

    It has been an established pattern for years that whenever Twitter reports that it has purged thousands of accounts which it suspects of inauthentic behavior on behalf of foreign governments, you know it’s never going to be accounts from US-aligned countries like the UK, Israel or Australia, but consistently from US-targeted nations like Russia, China, Venezuela or Iran. You can choose to believe that’s because the US only aligns with saintly governments who would never dream of engaging in unethical online behavior, but that would be an infantile position which defies all known evidence.

    Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Twitter has been aggressively boosting US narratives about the war by frequently showing users a Twitter Topic without their having subscribed to it which is full of imperial spinmeisters, including The Kyiv Independent with all its shady CIA-affiliated origins.

    Twitter also promotes US narratives about the war by keeping a “War in Ukraine” section perpetually on the right-hand side of the screen for desktop users, which runs stories that are wildly biased toward the US/NATO/Ukraine alliance. There was a full day last month where any time I checked Twitter on my laptop I was informed that “Russia continues to strike civilian targets in Kyiv and across Ukraine.” The claim that Russia had been “targeting” civilians during that time was dismissed as nonsense shortly thereafter by US military experts speaking to Newsweek.

    When the invasion began Twitter also started actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is “reducing the content’s visibility” and “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter”. It also began placing warning labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even ‘like’ a post linking to such outlets on the platform.

    Twitter also began placing the label “Russia state-affiliated media” on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of Russian media platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. This labeling has led to complaints of online harassment as propaganda-addled dupes seek out targets to act out their media-instilled hatred of all things Russian.

    As more and more people find themselves branded with the “Russia state-affiliated media” label, Twitter has concurrently announced that it will be hiding the visibility of any account that wears it, announcing on Tuesday that the platform “will not amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict.” Which is a bit rich, considering the fact that the US does both of those things.

    “This means these accounts won’t be amplified or recommended to people on Twitter, including across the Home Timeline, Explore, Search, and other places on the service. We will first apply this policy to government accounts belonging to Russia,” Twitter said.

    This diminished visibility has been verified by people who’ve been slapped with the “Russia state-affiliated media” label. So you can understand why imperial narrative managers whose job is to quash dissent want that designation applied to as many critics of the US empire as possible.

    If you are curious why the “state-affiliated media” label has not been applied to Twitter accounts associated with government-funded outlets of the US and its allies like NPR and the BBC, it’s because Twitter has explicitly created a loophole to exclude those outlets from such a designation.

    “State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy,” Twitter’s rules say.

    Which is of course an absurd and arbitrary distinction. Whether you like George Galloway or not, I think anyone who’s familiar with his personality would agree that if anyone ever tried to take away his editorial independence and tell him what he is or isn’t permitted to say, it would take an entire team of surgeons to remove Galloway’s footwear from their personal anatomy. Many people who’ve worked with Russian media have said they’ve never been told what to say, and Galloway is surely one of them.

    The audacity of a social media company which works hand-in-glove with the most powerful government on earth to go around branding people “state-affiliated media” is appalling. Twitter is state-affiliated media. It is an instrument of imperial narrative control, just like all the other billionaire Silicon Valley megacorporations of immense influence. Putin could only dream of having state media that effective.

    _____________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Pinterest Becomes First Major Digital Platform to Remove Climate Change Misinformation

    pinterest climate change

    3 Mins Read Image sharing platform Pinterest says it’s the first major digital platform to adopt a misinformation policy aimed at misleading claims about climate change. Under its new guidelines, Pinterest says it will remove content from the platform that promotes climate change denial. “Pinterest believes in cultivating a space that’s trusted and truthful for those using our […]

    The post Pinterest Becomes First Major Digital Platform to Remove Climate Change Misinformation appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Fabricating Putin Quotes and Banning Paraplegic Athletes to Undermine Russia

    Mobilizing a population to vilify and hate a targeted enemy is a tactic that leaders have used since before the dawn of human history, and it is being used to demonize Russia and Vladimir Putin in the current conflict. If we want to join the march to war, we can join the hate fest.  But if we want a more objective and honest assessment of events, we must rely upon facts that our government and its cheer-leading mainstream media are not anxious for us to view.

    In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,  all things Russian are being punished. Russian athletes, including paraplegics, are barred from international sports competition. Century old Russian writers and musicians such as Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky are being removed from book shelves and concerts. Even Russian bred cats are not exempt.

    If such actions are justified, why was there no such banning of US athletes, musicians or writers after the US invasion of Iraq?  Moreover, why are so few people outraged by the bombing and killing of 370,000 Yemeni people?  Why are so few people outraged as thousands of Afghans starve because the United States is seizing Afghanistan’s national assets which were in western banks?

    Why Ukraine?

    There has been massive and widespread publicity about Ukraine. It is a simple Hollywood script:  Ukraine is the angel, Russia is the devil, Zelensky is the hero and all good people will wear blue and yellow ribbons.

    Maintaining this image requires propaganda to promote it, and censorship to prevent challengers debunking it.

    This has required trashing some long held western traditions. By banning all Russian athletes from international competition, the International Olympic Committee and different athletic federations have violated the Olympic Charter which prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality.

    Censorship

    The West prides itself on free speech yet censorship of alternative viewpoints is now widespread in Europe and North America.  Russia Today and other Russian media outlets are being blocked on the internet as well as cable TV.  Ironically,  numerous programs on RT were hosted by Americans, for example journalist Chris Hedges and comedian Lee Camp.  The US is silencing its own citizens.

    Censorship or shadow banning is widespread on social media. On April 6, one of the best informed military analysts, Scott Ritter @realScottRitter, was suspended from Twitter. Why?  Because he  suggested that the victims of Bucha may have been murdered not by Russians, but rather by Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and the US and UK may also be culpable.

    The 2015 Netflix documentary titled “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” deals with the Maidan (Kiev central square) uprising of 2013-2014.  It ignores the most essential elements of the events: the management provided by the US  and the muscle provided by ultra-nationalists of the Right Sector and Azov Battalion. The attacks and killing of Ukrainian police are whitewashed away.

    By contrast, the 2016 documentary “Ukraine on Fire“ provides the background and essential elements of the conflict.  It is not available on Netflix and was banned from distribution on YouTube for some time.

    Most people in the West are unaware of the US involvement in the 2014 Kiev coup, subsequent US funding and training of ultra-nationalist and Neo Nazi battalions, and the eight year war in eastern Ukraine resulting in fourteen thousand deaths.

    Sensational Accusations

    Backed by US and UK intelligence agencies, Ukraine knows the importance of the information war. They make sensational accusations that receive uncritical media coverage. When the truth eventually comes out, it is ignored or buried on the back pages. Here are a few examples:

    – In 2014,  eleven civilians were killed in eastern Ukraine when an apartment was hit in rebel held territory.  Ukraine tried to blame Russia even though no bombs were coming from Russia and the population is ethnically Russian.

    – At the beginning of the current conflict, Ukrainian President Zelensky claimed that soldiers on Snake Island died heroically rather than surrender. Actually, all the soldiers surrendered.

    – Ukraine and western media claim a maternity hospital in Mariupol was bombed by Russia. Evidence shows the hospital was taken over by Ukrainian military forces on March 7, two days before the bombing on March 9.

    – The latest sensational accusations are regarding dead civilians in Bucha,  north of Kiev. Again, there is much contrary evidence. The Russian soldiers left Bucha on March 31, the mayor of Bucha announced the town liberated with no mention of atrocities on March 31, the Azov battalion entered Bucha on April 1,  the Ukrainian Defense Ministry published video of  “Russian” atrocities on April 3.

    In most cases, western media does not probe the accusations or use simple logic to ask if they make sense.  However, in the case of Bucha story, the NY Times had to acknowledge they were “unable to independently verify the assertions by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.”

    Self Censorship

    In addition to actual censorship, there is widespread self-censorship. Instead of reading what the Russians are saying, western political “analysts” engage in outlandish amateur psychology and speculation. With no factual basis, they speculate about what Putin wants and his mental state.

    This is convenient if one does not want to deal with the real issues and arguments.

    Most western analysts and journalists are afraid or unwilling to read or listen to what the Russian leaders say. That is unfortunate because those speeches are more clear and direct than those from western politicians who rely on public relations, spin and platitudes.

    Fabricating quotes

    Ignorance of Russian foreign policy is such that Truthout online magazine recently published an article which contains a sensational but completely invented quote from Putin. It says,

    Putin here is clear enough: “Ukraine has no national rights that Russians are bound to respect. Prepare for reunification, reabsorption, or some other euphemism for subaltern status with Mother Russia.”

    Putin said no such thing and any moderately knowledgeable person would recognize this to be fake.

    When I emailed the co-author, Carl Davidson, asking where the quotation came from, he admitted inventing it. This is significant because the statement goes to the core of what the conflict is about. Is Russia trying to absorb all of Ukraine? Do they intend to occupy Ukraine?  Anyone who reads the speeches of Putin and Lavrov, such as here, here and here,  knows they do not. Davidson’s fabricated quote suggests he has not read the speeches himself.

    Ukraine in the Global Context

    The article with the made-up quote contends that “Putin is part of a global right-wing authoritarian movements that seeks to ‘overthrow’ the 20th Century.” This analysis is close to that of the US Democratic Party, which sees the major global division being between “authoritarianism” vs “democracy”.

    It is highly US-centered and partisan, with Putin somehow lumped with Trump. It  is also self-serving, with US Democrats as the embodiment of “democracy”.  It is completely contrary to a class analysis.

    This faulty analysis has major contradictions. It is well known that Biden is unpopular. Biden’s latest approval rating is under 42%. It is less well known in the West that Putin is popular in Russia. Since the intervention in Ukraine his approval rating has increased to over 80%.

    Also largely unknown in the West, most of the world does NOT support the Western analysis of the Ukraine conflict.  Countries representing 59% of the global population abstained or voted against the condemnation of Russia at the UN General Assembly. These countries tend to see US exceptionalism and economic-military domination as a key problem. They do not think it helpful to demonize Russia and they urge negotiations and quick resolution to the Ukraine war.

    Cuba said:

    History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine beyond NATO’s borders which threatens international peace, security and stability…. Russia has the right to defend itself.

    South African President Ramaphosa blamed NATO saying:

    The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region.

    The Chinese representative said:

    The final settlement of the Ukraine crisis requires abandoning the Cold War mentality, abandoning the logic of ensuring one’s own security at the expense of others’ security, and abandoning the approach of seeking regional security by expanding military bloc.

    Many western anti-war movements are critical of Russia’s invasion. Others, such as the US Peace Council, see the US and NATO as largely responsible. However, they all see the necessity of pressing to stop the war before it gets worse.

    In contrast, the western military-industrial-media complex is fueling the war with propaganda, censorship, banning, demonization and more weapons. It appears they do not want a resolution to the conflict. Just as they supported NATO pushing up against Russia, knowing that it risked provoking Russia to the point of retaliation, they seem to be pushing for a protracted bloody conflict in Ukraine, knowing that it risks global conflagration.  Yet they persist, while crying crocodile tears.

    The post Fabricating Putin Quotes and Banning Paraplegic Athletes to Undermine Russia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Two of the “Brains” Behind Trump’s Failing Social Media Company Abruptly Resign

    Two tech executives abruptly resigned this week from Truth Social, the social media company launched by former President Donald Trump as a right-wing alternative to mainstream platforms.

    The resignations of the executives — Josh Adams and Billy Boozer, who were hired less than a year ago to serve as Truth Social’s chiefs of technology and product development — further highlight the continued struggles the social media site has faced since its public launch earlier this year.

    The former executives were reportedly aligned with the main tenets of Truth Social’s mission: to provide a place for Trump loyalists to interact online without regulation, or to avoid “cancel culture,” as many have described the enforcement of rules on other sites. (Notably, Trump was banned from Twitter last year after spewing incendiary rhetoric regarding the 2020 election.)

    According to Reuters, which first reported on the executives’ departures, Adams was considered the “brains” of the technology side of the company, while Boozer had a leadership role in the management and development of the app.

    The circumstances behind their resignations are currently unknown.

    After the executives resigned, the site’s parent company, Trump SPAC Digital World Acquisition, saw its stock drop by 14 percent, continuing a trend of losses in the company’s stock that began after the app went live.

    Since its launch in mid-February, Truth Social has been riddled with problems and mishaps. Hundreds of thousands of users are still on a waitlist to access the site, which is currently only available on the Apple store; the platform is so far completely inaccessible to Android users and through web browsers.

    These issues remain in spite of assurances from former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, who now manages Truth Social’s parent company, and who previously said that the app would be “fully operational” by the end of March. According to an analysis from market research firm SensorTower, Truth Social presently ranks 35th overall among social networking apps, despite Trump’s promise that the platform would be a direct competitor to both Facebook and Twitter.

    Criticisms about the app abound, even among those who can access the site. Rosie Bradbury, European Tech Fellow at Business Insider, recently noted that the site lacks actual users, including prominent conservative voices who were supposedly planning to have a big presence on the app. The feed is also full of auto-generated messages.

    “It was like a conservative ghost town that had been overrun by bots,” Bradbury said of her one-week experience using Truth Social.

    The app’s layout appears to be a carbon copy of Twitter’s layout — but instead of tweets and retweets, Truth Social has “truths” and “retruths.”

    Although Truth Social was advertised as a platform that would be free from censorship, users have already reported being booted from the site. Indeed, Truth Social’s terms of service actually allow the company to remove any user “for any reason or no reason.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Parliament protest donations went to bank account of man with history of unpaid debt

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Tim Brown, RNZ News reporter

    A man whose personal bank account was used to receive donations for New Zealand’s Parliament protest is bankrupt and has been declared insolvent three times.

    The protest lasted for 23 days before ending in a riot on March 2 when police cracked down on the protesters.

    Jamie Patrick Mansfield has built a social media following by posting antivax and conspiratorial content as Jae Ratana.

    He often livestreamed events from the protest in Wellington, but also posted similarly conspiratorial content for months before the occupation.

    However, the 35-year-old, who is also known as Jamie Murray, has a history of unpaid debt.

    Mansfield was first declared bankrupt after applying for the process himself in the Rotorua District Court in December 2008, at which time he listed his occupation as unemployed.

    Mansfield was automatically discharged as bankrupt in December 2011 but again applied for bankruptcy in July 2012, this time listing his occupation as a student.

    He was again automatically discharged three years later and remained solvent for five years until again applying to be declared bankrupt in June 2020.

    Mansfield’s latest bankruptcy remains current.

    He also had a tenancy terminated in early 2020 after failing to pay rent.

    The Tenancy Tribunal awarded the landlord $2770 — $1650 of which was recovered via a bond, but the balance remains outstanding.

    Parliament protest
    The Parliament protest lasted for 23 days before ending in a riot on March 2. Image: RNZ

    Despite Mansfield’s background, his bank account was used to receive donations for Convoy NZ 2022, the group which instigated what became the protest and later occupation at Parliament grounds through February and early March.

    RNZ understands Mansfield never disclosed his financial history to the group, and used the name Jae Ratana.

    It was by no means the biggest group seeking donations in New Zealand’s antivax and anti-mandate circles, however, RNZ has seen evidence that thousands of dollars of donations to the group came flooding into Mansfield’s bank account by early February.

    At least $14,000 had been deposited in just a few days.

    How much was ultimately deposited into Mansfield’s bank account, where that money ended up and how it was spent remains unclear.

    Mansfield and the organisers of the convoy group fell out, and just a few days into the occupation were not communicating.

    Donations ‘signed off, triple checked’
    RNZ attempted to contact Mansfield to get his side of the story.

    When we first approached him via social media he responded there was “absolutely nothing to discuss”.

    Parliament protest 2022
    Jamie Patrick Mansfield’s bank account was used to receive donations for Convoy NZ 2022. Image: RNZ

    When pushed about the money raised and how it was spent, he responded: “There were so many people/groups collecting the pūtea [funds] and there also is a difference between koha and donation and as far as the groups I’m part of have [sic] concerned [sic] they have been signed off and accounted for and it’s been tripled check so as far as I’m concerned there is nothing further to talk about nor will the team be happy me speaking to a reported [sic] but I unfortunately do not trust any reporters either as story’s [sic] love to be twisted.”

    When asked what he meant by the groups he was part of having things signed off, accounted for and triple checked, he responded: “No further questions thank u”.

    He followed up with: “When u are ready I would love to see the so called information u have got”, “Then we will correct what is needed because I can guarantee you you do not have truthful information” and “I can probably stomp on what Information-hearsay you have”, before subsequently blocking this reporter from contacting him on Facebook.

    Rumours have swirled on social media about the whereabouts of the money raised since the early days of the occupation.

    Mansfield took to Facebook on March 8 to address the rumours: “Just to clarify and get that story straight, obviously the Convoy and occupation of Parliament I did help fund out of my personal money. For anyone who knows me personally, can back me up there.

    “So I did help sponsor and donate to convoy. I did not steal any money. I did not help myself to any money,” he claimed in the livestream.

    RNZ spoke to people who had known Mansfield personally and they say he has a long history of leaving people out of pocket.

    ‘An exceptionally bad tenant’ – landlord
    One such person was the landlord who took Mansfield to the Tenancy Tribunal and ultimately had him evicted for unpaid rent and bills, and damage to the property.

    He told RNZ he had still not seen the balance of the money he was owed by Mansfield.

    “Jamie … was an exceptionally bad tenant who continually made promises he didn’t keep … I hope to never see him again,” the landlord, who RNZ agreed not to name, said.

    Problems with the tenancy became clear almost as soon as Mansfield moved in as he was late with his rent for five of the first six weeks he lived in the rental and arrears grew from there, the landlord said.

    “I knew he was a bad egg from the start and I was like ‘What the hell have I done letting this guy move into my house’ and then it was just a matter of following due process to get him out.

    “He left the place in an absolute state. There was broken furniture and broken beds. I’ve got photos of a mountain full of rubbish that I had to drag out of the house, then get a company . . . come to pick it up to the tune of $300.

    “He made no attempt to clean up after himself and just doesn’t give much regard to other people.”

    RNZ again tried contacting Mansfield through his back-up accounts on social media to clarify how he came to be the one receiving donations, what aspects of his history he disclosed to the Convoy group and to find out how much money was received and how it was used.

    He did not respond to those messages.

    Group raises more than $60,000 by early March
    The financing of the Parliament protest and occupation remains murky.

    Weeks ago RNZ asked Voices For Freedom and The Freedoms and Rights Coalition for information on their finances — they did not respond.

    One group that did give a glimpse into the huge sums of money involved was Profest.

    Profest NZ Limited was incorporated on February 21 with Paul Currie as its sole director and shareholder.

    Profest’s website publicly showed it raised more than $20,000 in online donations in just a few days and had raised more than $66,000 by March 4.

    Currie, a Whangārei resident with business and property interests around New Zealand, said Profest was created to try to tie together the disparate and sometimes differing voices and movements at the protest.

    He said he set it up because it was necessary to give the occupation “a little bit more of a format”.

    Profest did not start collecting donations until over a week after the occupation began.

    “Profest was late in the piece, involved more for directing some of the donations that were contributed but was by no means the most significant — financially — donation collector,” Currie told RNZ.

    Police undertake an early morning operation to restore order and access to the area around Parliament.
    Profest says it did not start collecting donations until more than a week after the occupation began. Image: RNZ

    Unlike Voices For Freedom, The Freedoms and Rights Coalition or Jamie Mansfield, Currie spoke to RNZ freely and over a 38-minute conversation offered details about how donations to Profest were spent.

    He could not offer a definitive sum on how much money was raised between on-the-ground cash donations, online donations and BitCoin, however, he said the group was committed to providing a financial summary to all who donated and that would occur in “due course”.

    Only a “nominal” sum of what was donated remained and accounts were still being settled, Currie said.

    Some of the larger infrastructure costs and ongoing food costs of the protest had fallen on Profest to pay, Currie said.

    A sausage sizzle and coffee and tea station, with a generator being set up for protesters.
    A sausage sizzle and coffee and tea facilities set up during the protest. Profest says its fundraising was paying for some of the food costs of the occupation. Image: RNZ

    He had not taken any director’s fees or remuneration related to Profest NZ Ltd.

    “I’m not in it for any personal financial gain,” Currie said.

    When the protest ended Profest stopped calling for donations and closed the donation function on its website, unlike Voices For Freedom and The Freedoms and Rights Coalition which were still collecting donations.

    Currie also said he was unaware of who Jae Ratana or Jamie Mansfield was. He did not believe he met him at the protest and he did not believe Mansfield had contributed financially to Profest.

    RNZ understands a complaint was made to police regarding the whereabouts of money given to Mansfield.

    “While investigations are ongoing we are not in a position to provide any comment relating to particular individuals/ groups,” police said in a statement to RNZ.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • 1 in 6 Election Officials Say They’ve Faced Threats on the Job, Survey Shows

    As Amer­ican demo­cracy finds itself under assault from lies about the 2020 pres­id­en­tial race being “stolen, ” elec­tion offi­cials are a prime target in the attempt to under­mine future elec­tions. In 2020, in the face of a pandemic, record-high turnout, and a flood of disin­form­a­tion about the elec­tion process and its integ­rity, these offi­cials managed to run “the most secure elec­tion in Amer­ican history.”

    But now, a new Bren­nan Center poll of local elec­tion offi­cials around the coun­try shows how damaging the sustained attacks against them and their colleagues have been, putting apolit­ical elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion and our demo­cratic system in seri­ous danger. Here are some key find­ings from the survey.

    Elec­tion Offi­cials Are Facing Threats, and Safety Concerns Are in Part Why Some Have Left Their Jobs

    One in six elec­tion offi­cials have exper­i­enced threats because of their job, and 77 percent say that they feel these threats have increased in recent years. Ranging from death threats that name offi­cials’ young chil­dren to racist and gendered harass­ment, these attacks have forced elec­tion offi­cials across the coun­try to take steps like hiring personal secur­ity, flee­ing their homes, and putting their chil­dren into coun­sel­ing.

    As elec­tion work­ers attempt to keep our demo­cracy afloat amidst these condi­tions, over half of poll respond­ents repor­ted that they are concerned about the safety of their colleagues. More than one in four are concerned about being assaul­ted on the job.

    Under­stand­ably, some elec­tion work­ers have decided these threats are too high a risk: 30 percent of the offi­cials in our poll know of one or more elec­tion work­ers who have left at least in part because of fear for their safety, increased threats, or intim­id­a­tion. In the long term, 60 percent of offi­cials are concerned that threats, harass­ment, and intim­id­a­tion against local elec­tion offi­cials will make it diffi­cult to retain and recruit elec­tion work­ers. Elec­tion offi­cials and staff have a heavy work­load with a slew of tasks that must be regu­larly under­taken and expert­ise that must be developed — combined with limited staff and resources. Recruit­ing and reten­tion chal­lenges would further burden these offices.

    Most elec­tion offi­cials like their jobs, with three in four agree­ing that they find “real enjoy­ment” in their roles. However, 20 percent plan to leave before the 2024 elec­tion, with one-third of those citing polit­ical lead­ers’ attacks on a system they know is fair and honest as one of their top reas­ons for leav­ing. And nearly one-third cite unne­ces­sary stress as one of their top reas­ons for leav­ing.

    Elec­tion Offi­cials Fear That Conspir­acy Theor­ies Will Infect Admin­istra­tion and Are Worried About Polit­ical Inter­fer­ence

    As conspir­acy theor­ies continue to grip a signi­fic­ant portion of the elect­or­ate, over half of elec­tion offi­cials are concerned that some incom­ing elec­tion offi­cials might believe there was wide­spread voter fraud during the 2020 elec­tions.

    As elec­tion offi­cials work hard to repeat the successes of the 2020 elec­tion, nearly two-thirds of them repor­ted being worried about polit­ical lead­ers inter­fer­ing in how they do their jobs in future elec­tions. Since the 2020 vote, partisan actors have interfered with apolit­ical elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion as part of the broader elec­tion sabot­age move­ment. For example, states have passed laws that allow partis­ans to seize control of elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion and crim­in­ally punish elec­tion offi­cials for minor infrac­tions.

    Further, nearly one in five local elec­tion offi­cials are concerned about facing pres­sure to certify elec­tion results in favor of a specific candid­ate or party.

    Elec­tion Offi­cials Are Partic­u­larly Unhappy With Support Provided by the Federal Govern­ment

    Nearly 80 percent of elec­tion offi­cials think the federal govern­ment is either doing noth­ing to support them or taking some steps but not doing enough. While Congress has provided cash-strapped state and local elec­tion offices with some support in recent years, that has repres­en­ted a frac­tion of what is needed. Although they feel the most support at the local level, nearly a third of local elec­tion offi­cials still feel that their local govern­ment could be doing more to support them.

    The poll also shows that the Justice Depart­ment’s Elec­tion Threats Task Force, which invest­ig­ates and prosec­utes threats against elec­tion offi­cials, has work to do when it comes to reach­ing elec­tion offi­cials and local law enforce­ment. Ninety percent of elec­tion offi­cials never heard of or didn’t know much about the task force. After hear­ing about it, 57 percent were some­what or very confid­ent that it would make them feel safer.

    It’s clear that the Depart­ment of Justice should conduct more outreach to local elec­tion offi­cials. It should also increase coordin­a­tion with local law enforce­ment, who receive the major­ity of threat reports, accord­ing to our poll. Only a frac­tion of local elec­tion offi­cials who have been threatened because of their job repor­ted the threat to law enforce­ment, but 89 percent of those who did repor­ted it to local law enforce­ment.

    Social Media Is Seen as a Major Contrib­utor to Prob­lems

    Over three in four local elec­tion offi­cials think that social media compan­ies haven’t done enough to stop the spread of false inform­a­tion, and over one in three of those who exper­i­enced threats have been threatened over social media.

    Answer­ing ques­tions from voters who have been misled by inac­cur­ate elec­tion inform­a­tion can be over­whelm­ing and time-consum­ing, strain­ing elec­tion offi­cials and their staff. Social media compan­ies should do more to promote accur­ate inform­a­tion over false inform­a­tion and work directly with elec­tion offi­cials to address press­ing concerns.

    • • •

    These poll results should raise the alarm for anyone who cares about profes­sional, apolit­ical elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion, espe­cially because they’re coming from the people who know it best. All levels of govern­ment must act to protect our elec­tions and the people who run them.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Leaked draft China-Solomon Islands security pact causes Pacific stir

    By Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor, RNZ Pacific manager

    A draft security cooperation agreement between China and Solomon Islands has been leaked on social media.

    The unverified document includes seven articles, which discuss the scope of cooperation between both nations.

    Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security senior lecturer Dr Anna Powles has seen the agreement on social media.

    She told RNZ Pacific that the document is presented as a draft: “It doesn’t have any dates, nor is it signed.

    “There are still questions around its authenticity but if it is authentic, it raises some serious questions and if it’s not authentic then it also provides some interesting insights into the way in which the geopolitical dynamic is playing out domestically in the Solomon Islands,” she said.

    Dr Powles said that the draft document includes a request between the Solomon Islands government and China to send armed police personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces to the Solomon Islands.

    “Now that raises a lot of questions obviously, what is the distinction between police and armed police, and who are the other law enforcement and armed forces that are referred to in the agreement.

    ‘Maintaining social order’
    “It also talks about what kind of tasks that a Chinese contingent would be involved in such as maintaining social order, it’s not clear what that means, it also talks about providing assistance on other tasks and it’s also unclear what those other tasks would be.”

    A senior lecturer at Massey University's Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Dr Anna Powles
    Massey University’s Dr Anna Powles … “There are still questions around [the draft agreement] authenticity but if it is authentic, it raises some serious questions.” Image: RNZ

    Dr Powles points out that the agreement refers to protecting lives and property, humanitarian assistance and disaster response.

    In February, a team of Chinese police officers began working in Solomon Islands. This was two months after the Solomons government accepted Beijing’s offer to help restore law and order following anti-government riots in November 2021.

    Dr Powles believes that if the draft agreement is authentic, then the deployment was a natural extension of the document.

    The document also contains some concerning provisions which allow China to send ships to the Solomon’s “according to its needs”.

    “The agreement states that China may, according to its own needs and with the consent of the Solomon Islands government make ship visits to the Solomons and carry out logistical replenishment and stopover and transition in the Solomons.”

    She said that such provisions would need to be clarified as it was unclear what “China’s own needs” refer to.

    Concerns over ‘strategic interests’
    Are those strategic interests for instance? If so, that would raise a number of concerns. Particularly as to what would happen if China’s interests cut across the interests of the Solomon Islands or of its key regional partners such as Australia or Papua New Guinea.

    The Adkonect printing complex in Ranadi was among dozens of businesses destroyed in the riots.
    The Adkonect printing complex in Ranadi was among dozens of businesses destroyed in the riots last November. Image: Namoi Kaluae/RNZ

    “And it also suggests that logistical support would be provided for ship visits in the Solomon Islands and suggests that perhaps China could seek to establish a logistical supply base in Solomon Islands to support those ship visits.

    The document does not specify what types of ships, but Dr Powles said “we could safely assume that they are referring to the People’s Liberation Army Naval (PLAN) ships.”

    “In the Pacific, we have seen PLAN ship visits to the region. China has a strong interest in maritime issues and in the Pacific maritime domain. And so that probably is not surprising and there have been long-standing concerns and very public long-standing concerns about the potential for increased ship visits for China increasing its engagement in the Pacific maritime domain and potential implications that may have for a potential base to support those ship visits.”

    Dr Powles also drew attention to one particular provision of the agreement, which raised alarm bells with respect to the control of information around security cooperation.

    That provision stated that information between the Solomon Islands and China could only be released on mutual agreement by both parties.

    “And that suggests that there would be the intent to control public information, to control media briefings, to control what access media has to information about security arrangements between the two countries.

    “We can be legitimately concerned about lack of transparency about a degree around this agreement,” she said.

    Solomon Islands switched allegiances from Taiwan to China in 2019.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Bringing our Socialist Baby to Life: History of Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    Part I – Pre-History of Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    Waking Up

    In 2001 Barbara had her awakening to the disasters that capitalism caused. This started as part of the 9/11 events, beginning after the response to the supposed attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It became immediately clear the US would respond to the attacks with military action against whatever country seemed most vulnerable and had access or proximity to resources, in this case oil. The attacks were supposedly coordinated by al-Qaeda, a radical Islamic group founded by Osama bin Laden and headquartered in Afghanistan. We firmly believed, with documented evidence, that the US attacked Iraq instead even though Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks. The US wanted control of Iraq because of their large reserves of oil. In fact, they were the second largest oil exporting state at that time.

    As soon as the news came of the World Trade Towers being hit, Bruce said that something was fishy. From that time forward Barbara’s political life began. Watching the news was surreal and terrifying. Over and over again, images of the towers collapsing were televised. Talk of war began almost immediately, with George “W” Bush putting the blame on Iraq – with absolutely no proof. What was even more alarming was watching how people reacted to it. So many of them jumped on the bandwagon of war.

    Making signs

    Shortly after the attack Bruce – who had been a socialist for 30 years – talked Barbara into going to her first demonstration. Together we made signs to bring with us – “No War on Iraq”, “War is not the Answer”. Making the signs was so much fun. We got old cardboard cartons from the grocery stores along with some long lightweight sticks from lumber stores to hold them up. We brainstormed ideas for what to write. Bruce’s signs always had much more content than Barbara’s. Barbara went for the fewer words, the better.

    First demonstration

    The gathering, or demonstration, was held in Palo Alto, CA, just outside the Stanford University Campus. We had to park our car some distance from the crowd, and Barbara felt self-conscious carrying our signs. A radical political science faculty member, Joel Benin, who was pro-Palestinian, gave an impassioned speech. It was so sane, so true. People around us began chanting and we joined with them – NO WAR – NO WAR. This wasn’t a big demonstration, only a couple of hundred people, but everyone was in agreement that we could see where this drive to war was going, and we wanted to try to stop it. Barbara didn’t fully grasp the full implications of where the US was headed or what would be her involvement in the fight to stop it. Ultimately, that was the beginning of her journey to socialism.

    Barbara has already written about much of this in My Journey to Socialism, some of which we’ve quoted here, which began after these attacks. Bruce was so happy to see her waking up.

    Attending anti-war demonstrations

    We went to anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco and Oakland, chanting “No Blood for Oil”. Many of the demonstrations and meetings were organized by San Francisco ANSWER, an anti-war group formed in San Francisco shortly after 9/11. On March 20, 2003, we marched with tens of thousands of people to protest the war on Iraq that Bush started that very day. We shut down the city. Aside from ANSWER, there seemed to be no large, unified movement to take action against the existing paradigm of US imperialism and capitalism. That is, there was no large movement until the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011 which was designed to protest income inequality and the use of influence of money in politics by occupying public spaces.

    2004 – 2011 Looking for a Foothold

    During this time period, we were searching for the best place for us to fit in and work towards changing the existing capitalist system. We had a book club together, just the two of us. We read and discussed The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Gregg Palast, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, The powers That Be, and Who Rules America, both by G. William Domhoff. We met every other week on the weekends for 2 hours. This helped to develop Barbara’s understanding of capitalism.

    In 2008 the economic crash hit almost everyone.  We each lost ¼ of our savings in our IRA accounts, even though we had our money invested in socially responsible companies. Since this was money we hoped to use to supplement Social Security, this was a very personal wake-up call, not just for us, but for many. Were we witnessing the collapse of capitalism, and its effects on ordinary people?

    In 2009 we attended a KPFA townhall meeting. KPFA was our local radio station, representing a mix of New Deal liberals and Social Democrats. They featured people like Amy Goodman, Sasha Lilly, C.S. Soong, and Bonnie Faulkner. At that meeting Bruce spoke about why KPFA is supporting the Democratic Party. When the meeting was over, he was approached by a labor organizer who wanted to start an organization to try to coordinate the public education unions. We stayed with this group for about a year, attending meetings about once a month, but nothing ever came of it, so we left.

    Part II – 2011 – 2012 – Turning Point – Occupy

    Excitement of General Assemblies:

    We were happy to see Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland blossom in October of 2011 which lasted until the spring of 2012. We initially attended assemblies at the amphitheater in Frank Ogawa Plaza, right on the doorstep of Oakland City Hall. In San Francisco they were near the Ferry Building and at the bottom of the financial district.

    The General Assembly (GA) meetings in both San Francisco and Oakland were electrifying. There were some extremely skilled facilitators. The GAs met every day and discussed how to regulate the public space that they had occupied and integrate the homeless community, which turned out to be a very difficult task. In San Francisco there were people who rode on a ferry that would stop by and watch the meetings. This was a good way to draw people in. Some of the members of the organizing committee of Occupy led tours around the Occupy camp to combat the propaganda against it.

    Shutting Down the Port of Oakland

    November 2, 2011, Occupy Oakland coordinated to shut down West Coast ports to make a statement that we would not go back to “business as usual”. The shutdown was a way of protesting the treatment of longshoremen and truck drivers, who were forced to work as independent contractors. They were then fired by port owners EGT and Goldman Sachs for wearing union t-shirts. We marched with 200,000 others from Oscar Grant Plaza to the ports. While the ILWU did not openly support the blockade, the rank and file and many former labor leaders did. Clarence Thomas, secretary/treasurer of the ILWU, was fully committed to this blockade, as he had been for many past blockades. We’ll never forget the power of the first speech we heard from him which began – “I’m Clarence Thomas – the REAL Clarence Thomas”. Jack Heyman, also with the ILWU, was another powerful and persuasive speaker.

    The Challenges of the Working Committees

    We joined some of the committees, but we noticed there was a real gap in ages in the members. The overwhelming majority of people were in their 20s, with the exception of the Committee for Solidarity with Labor. There were virtually no people in their 30s and 40s and only a handful of people like us in our 50s and 60s. We were both working full time and tried to join committees that would work with our schedules, but the organizers kept changing the days and times of the meetings. It seemed like, at best, most of the Occupy participants worked part-time or might have been upper middle-class people whose schedules were more flexible. The committees were not very solid.

    People would float in and out. Any group could start a committee – even conservative committees like those who wanted to work with merchants were allowed. Committees were dissolved without letting the Occupy leadership know so you could join a committee and discover that it no longer existed. We found many of the meetings off-track and with members who didn’t have the basic social skills like asking a person “How are you? How are things going?” They lacked skills for building solidarity with strangers like tracking things a person may have told them and following up with a question like “what’s happening with that project you were working on?” They are skills like showing up to meetings on time and remembering to tell others if a meeting is cancelled. The Occupy movement was the best and the worst of anarchism.

    Monday Night Occupy Meetings in the Women’s Building

    When the police drove Occupy in SF and Oakland away from Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland and the area outside the Federal Reserve building in SF the Occupy organizers decided to meet indoors. Speakers were arranged every Monday night to talk on various political and economic topics. On average, 50-75 people attended. We noticed how the cliquishness of Occupy in the public are continued into the events in the Women’s Building in SF. Bruce told Barbara that when he was meeting with the organizers of an economic forum that Barbara was standing by herself. Nobody introduced themselves or tried to introduce themselves. These folks were calling themselves socialists and yet they lacked the most elementary friendliness to others who were on the same page. We decided it was then that we felt we needed to stop trying to join other organizations and start our own.

    Part III – History of Socialist PBC

    2012 – 2014 Building Political Documents and Our Website

    We began to develop our own organizational documents, including a manifesto, mission statement, our attitude towards politics, and developed a political practice. At first that seemed like a lot of work to Barbara, and she also wondered how we would get people to join us. We had many meetings, just the two of us, to hash out the development of our perspective. Our main purpose was to provide a forum for exposing capitalism and spread the word to the public.

    In spite of this challenging work, the creation of this site was so much fun. The first area we wanted to cover included telling people who we are and what we’re about. It included our mission statement – which was to become one of many eddies for:

    • “Exposing the predatory, incompetent, and irrational practices of capitalists to direct human social life.
    • Engage in collective political actions that throw a monkey-wrench into and slow down or disrupt the profit-making mechanisms of the system.
    • Weave and expand the fabric of a growing body of workplaces under worker self-management.”

    Barbara switched from full-time to part-time work, allowing her more time to work on developing our book clubs that were focused on educating people about the reality of capitalism and the havoc it’s wrecked in the world. From 2012-2014 we tried to do outreach by having in-person book groups.

    In April 2014 our first step was to create a website, Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism. Through our Occupy contacts we found a wonderful tech guy named Jeremy who, with our input, created the website that we still have today. Our baby was gestating. It was scary for Barbara to learn how to manage a website. While she had considerable work experience using numerous platforms, managing a website is a whole other ballgame. At a ridiculously low cost, Jeremy built our WordPress site. He patiently showed Barbara the basics and was the best tech teacher we have been able to find since then. He never spoke to her in tech-speak. Sadly, he has disappeared from our lives, even though we’ve tried hard to reach him. Since then, we have struggled to find someone to help us with our site, as well as with social media.

    In November 2014 we wrote our first post – titled The Collapse of Capitalism. In it you will see that our economic situation has only gotten worse since then. In addition to all the things we listed, we’re now dealing with the economic fallout of Covid, hyper-inflation, and a rush to war with Russia.

    We added a slider at the top of our page that, in addition to The Collapse of Capitalism, included the Personal Impact of Crisis. In that section we asked the question “What caused the crisis?” We gave 4 reasons for this. We then proposed “Making adjustments within the system” asking 6 questions of readers. Finally, we asked the question “Are there alternatives”?

    The next section was titled Alternatives to Capitalism. We gave examples of workers’ self-management, workers’ control, and worker cooperatives – all of which currently exist and often are more successful than capitalist businesses.

    The next section was titled History of Workers’ Councils so readers could see this is not just an unrealistic pipe dream. There is a 150-year history of worker self-management.

    Finally, we included a section titled Local Workplace Democracy that allowed readers to learn about some of the local cooperatives in the US.

    On our site we included sections on Our Manifesto, Our Process Politics, Our Mission Statement, Calendar of Radical Events, Submission Guidelines, Films, Books, Our Mythological Story, Our Allies, and Getting Involved.

    2014 – 2016 Richard Wolff – Democracy at Work

    Around the same time, Richard Wolff, the Marxist political economist, began to give public talks about the crisis in capitalism and workplace democracy as an alternative. In one of our book clubs, we began reading his book, Capitalism Hits the Fan. We attended one of several talks by Wolff and met our soon-to-be comrade, K.J. Noh, who was petitioning for some local cause. We asked him to join our book group and he did, adding an international perspective from his own personal experience of growing up in South Korea. We also discovered he was an extraordinary writer. We cited some of his publications on our site. One of the best was “The Economic Myths of Santa Claus“, published in CounterPunch on Christmas day, 2014.

    After a year in our book clubs, which drew between 4 and 6 people, K.J. said to us that the book clubs really were not the way to go in this day and age. He said we needed an electronic presence. He recommended 3 newsletters we could write for and said our focus must be international in order to keep his interest. We followed his suggestions, and our website and FB page likes grew.

    We also became involved with Richard Wolff’s Democracy at Work project in 2014. This was an organization developed by Richard Wolff that had chapters in numerous cities and states to support and teach people about the theory and viability of worker cooperatives to combat capitalism by democratizing our workplaces. People were either encouraged to study cooperatives, provide educational forums for cooperatives, or even start a cooperative.

    Why We Left Democracy at Work

    We discovered that Democracy at Work was very loose in its structure. People like us who were long-time socialists were mixed in with people who neither cared nor knew nothing about socialism, and simply wanted to start a small business. Many of the groups throughout the country were uneven in terms of their commitments and we were disappointed that Rick did not take a firmer stand in directing what we were doing. In fact, the management of these groups was left to someone else, and Rick had very little engagement with the groups.

    2016-2022 Coming into Our Own

    Social Media Ups and Downs – FB and Twitter

    Since Jeremy set up our website, we have had consistent problems finding someone to help us. Jeremy was so good at explaining things clearly, teaching us how to create posts and perspectives, add to our pages and change our images. Since that time – in 2014, Barbara has mostly figured stuff out on her own and has become our house techie. WordPress is not a user-friendly platform and learning how to manage it is not obvious or intuitive. We need a professional, who we’ve only recently found, who can help us navigate that.

    Someone who earlier helped us enormously was Sameer, who lived close to us in Oakland. He was also great at explaining things in non-tech speak. However, he’s moved on to bigger and more lucrative projects. We’ve since discovered that it’s very hard for technical experts to be able to communicate to non-experts in an understandable way what they’re trying to do – or trying to teach us to do.

    Sameer introduced us to Susan Tenby in 2016 – who was able to help us with our social media. She taught us how to make our Facebook and Twitter pages more visible and appealing. We are so lucky to have found Susan. We were a small, community organization trying to get our message out. When we started working with Susan our visibility was very low. Susan did a comprehensive audit of where our social media stood when we started working with her and helped us track its rapid change. We were not getting a whole lot of attention on our website or through our social media. She gave us a crash course on how to turn that around and in a very short period of time our visibility skyrocketed. Each session with her was packed with techniques and ideas we never would have known about.  She’s also terrific at adapting to each individual’s learning style.

    Susan also introduced us to Colleen Nagel, an SEO expert and digital marketing. These terms were completely unfamiliar to us. SEO means Search Engine Optimization and is the process used to optimize a website’s technical configuration, content relevance and link popularity so its pages can become easily searchable, more relevant, and popular, and as a consequence, search engines rank them better. In other words, it’s the process of making a website better for search engines, like Google. We began to understand how to make more sense of our analytics, although we’re still struggling to figure out WHY our followers like some of our posts and tweets better than others.

    Where we needed help was in translating the analytics into verbal meaning. The deeper step, after understanding what these numbers mean, was to understand the causal dynamics which produce an increase or decrease in viewers and attention span. The next step was to develop a plan for increasing the number of followers after we were able to analyze what’s actually happened up to then. We never felt that we got that help

    All of this cost money, of which we didn’t have a lot. We have never asked for donations or “supporters” for our site. Barbara’s income at that time consisted of a small retirement fund, Social Security, and a modest IRA. Bruce worked as an adjunct faculty member. As he’s written in his article “Capitalist Economic Violence Against Road Scholars: Now You’re Hired, Now You’re Not” his income was never completely stable and, of course, they paid adjuncts at a much lower rate than they paid faculty. In fact, today there are adjuncts who are living in their cars because they can’t afford to pay rent. We simply couldn’t afford to pay what Colleen was charging.

    We then moved on to 2 more people whose entire focus was to install SEO optics. While we got some help from this, we found that both of them explained things in tech-speak and were not easy to communicate with.

    Finally, we tried working with Liz and her sister. Liz was an editor of one of Bruce’s books and claimed to have some technical skills. But she didn’t have a Mac like we do and was not good at explaining things so that wasn’t much help. Her sister did have a Mac and was good at explaining things but worked full time, had small kids and was erratic in her response time.

    Flying High

    Between 2014 and 2016 we worked hard on learning how to get our message out through Facebook and Twitter. We learned how to “boost” our articles, Facebook’s language for paying them to promote it. We were able to select what type of audience we were trying to reach and where they were likely to be geographically. As we started to boost articles either we or one of our comrades had written, we began getting a lot more attention on Facebook. Our Facebook boosted posts for our articles ranged from 5,000 to 10,000 readers. A couple of them reached 20,000. Between 2016 and 2019 we were getting about 1,000 page likes a year, reaching thousands of people each week. At that point we had gained a total of 3,400 page likes.

    Twitter was much slower to get off the ground. We began to understand the importance of hashtags and which hashtags were more likely to get attention. We also came to see the importance of liking, commenting on and retweeting the tweets of people who were following us. Our followers have increased steadily since we’ve been doing this. However, we still lag behind the attention we were getting on Facebook, and we would like to understand why.

    Facebook Attempts to Clip Our Wings

    In early 2020 Facebook stopped allowing us to boost our articles. The reason they gave was that since we are posting “political content” we must be registered as a political organization with the IRS. As you can imagine, we did not want to do that. When Facebook first started doing this, we were able to mount arguments that not all of our articles were, in fact, political. Well, of course they were, but not “political” in the way they were framing it. After a while, they simply stopped allowing us to boost them at all, no matter what our argument was. About the same time, we noticed that our typical daily reach (how many people saw the article) was shrinking dramatically. Whereas our daily reach used to be in the thousands, they are now in the hundreds. The same thing has happened with our engagements (how many people actually look at our post or click on a link we’ve provided) Our total page likes have gone from an average of 30 a month to less than 10. That’s because the only people who see our posts are the ones who have already liked our page! Our reach now is about one third of what it used to be. We have read that the same dramatic drop happened to World Socialist Website, The Greanville Post, and many other socialist sites.

    Our Work Schedules for PBC

    Since the very beginning, we each put in a minimum of 15 hours a week, often more, including Saturdays and Sundays. We have 2-hour weekly meetings to discuss what we’ve done during the week and what we want to do for the coming week. We give ourselves “homework”, then report in on the results of that homework at our weekly meetings. We jokingly call these meetings, our “Central Committee” meetings.

    We write almost all of our own articles. After editing them and finding images for them we publish them and then also send them to other websites for publication. We have tried to find other comrades to write articles for publication for us also. We wanted to be able to include authors on our site beyond just the two of us. While we did, in fact, get a few people to write for us, it often required a lot of work on our part to help them frame their work. Of course, we did all editing the articles. We publish an average of one article every three weeks.

    For our daily posts, every morning Bruce searches for an article online from a number of trusted sources, that usually focuses on the decay of capitalism. We also want very much to spread the word of the success of worker-owned cooperatives to the public. This lets them see that there is a way to work other than for “the man” and create a new society. He writes a post about the article, finds an image to go with it, and then sends it to Barbara. Barbara edits his post, puts it up on our site and shares it to FB and Twitter. We then share that article to our Facebook groups.

    We have been doing all of this every day, every week, every month since we began our electronic outreach. This is a joy for us. We call Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism “our baby”. She’s now almost 10 years old and stable. She will be thriving when we can get the technical and social media support we need. When people ask us if we’re retired, we start laughing. Barbara always says she’s working harder than she ever did, she just doesn’t get paid for it! There are few things we would rather spend our time on than Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism.

    Thank you for reading our history, and please consider joining us by reading and sharing our articles and posts. Together we are strong. Together we can change the world.

    The post Bringing our Socialist Baby to Life: History of Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • From ‘pretty communist’ to ‘Jabcinda’ – what’s behind the vitriol directed at Jacinda Ardern?

    ANALYSIS: By Suze Wilson, Massey University

    With recent polling showing National edging ahead of Labour for the first time in two years, Jacinda Ardern’s previously strong support has eroded rapidly since winning a remarkable outright majority at the 2020 general election.

    But the dip in electoral fortunes is only part of the story. It’s probably not an overstatement to say Ardern is presently one of the most reviled people in Aotearoa New Zealand, attracting vitriol that violates the bounds of normal, reasoned political debate.

    During the recent illegal occupation of Parliament grounds, the apparent hatred was fully evident. There were ludicrous claims the prime minister is a mass murderer, and demands she be removed from office and executed for “crimes against humanity”.

    Even on the supposedly professional social networking site LinkedIn, false claims that Ardern is a “tyrant” or “dictator” have been increasingly commonplace. For those making such claims, factual, constitutional, electoral and legal realities seemingly hold no weight.

    So, what fuels these levels of antagonism? I suggest three factors are at play.

    Fake arrest warrant
    A protester with a fake arrest warrant in Christchurch. Image: The Conversation/GettyImages

    Context matters
    How a leader is judged and what they can achieve is never simply a reflection of their individual characteristics and abilities.

    Rather, as leadership scholars have long emphasised, the expectations of followers and the wider political, economic, social and historical context influence both how they are judged and their ability to achieve desired results.

    In Ardern’s case, the public’s main concerns right now — food and fuel prices, rental and home ownership costs, and the effects of the omicron outbreak — are beyond the direct control of any political leader. Some will require years of transformative effort before significant improvements are seen.

    A paradox of leadership is that while followers will often hold unrealistic expectations that leaders can solve complex problems quickly, they are also quick to blame leaders when they fail to meet those unrealistic expectations.

    Ardern is caught in the maw of these dynamics, and that’s one of the factors fuelling the attacks on her.

    Covid controversies
    The second obvious reason lies in the covid-related policies — including vaccine mandates, crowd limits and border controls — that have disrupted people’s lives and been heavily criticised by vested interests such as expat New Zealanders and various business sectors.

    Anti-mandate protests, in particular, have become a front for wider anti-vaccine movements and extreme right-wing conspiracists. While the prime minister must balance restrictive policies with the greater public good, detractors are not bound by such considerations.

    Ironically, by demonstrating a firmness of resolve to act in the nation’s best interest — something leaders might normally expect praise for, and for which Ardern has won international admiration — leaders become open to accusations of being inflexible and unresponsive.

    Echoed by opposition politicians and some media commentary, these elements combine to feed a sense of growing frustration.

    National Party leader Christopher Luxon
    National Party leader Christopher Luxon … up in the polls and a good fit for traditionalist voters? Image: The Conversation/GettyImages

    Old-fashioned sexism and misogyny
    But these first two factors alone, while significant, don’t explain the full extent of the violent and hateful rhetoric directed at Ardern, albeit by a minority. Rather, it’s clear this is rooted in sexist and misogynistic attitudes and beliefs, further amplified by conspiratorial mindsets.

    Research shows both men and women with more traditional views desire “tough”, “bold” and “authoritative” leadership. A man displaying traditionally masculine behaviours, who is an assertive risk-taker, dominating and commanding others, is their ideal leader. This aligns with an assumption that women should follow, not lead.

    Ardern’s emphasis on traditionally feminine ideals, such as caring for vulnerable others, and her strongly precautionary covid response run counter to what traditionalists respect and admire in leaders.

    What’s known as “role incongruity theory” further suggests that Ardern jars with what traditionalists expect of “good women”. Overall, the sexism and misogyny inherent in these traditionalist beliefs mean Ardern is treated more harshly than a male prime minister pursuing the same policies would be.

    Worryingly, the 2021 Gender Attitudes Survey (carried out by the New Zealand National Council of Women) showed such traditional views about leadership and gender are on the rise.

    Traditionalist myths
    Insults and abuse commonly directed at Ardern on social media reflect the generally gendered nature of cyberviolence, which disproportionately targets women. These insults translate traditionalist beliefs into sexist and misogynistic acts.

    Referring to Ardern as “Cindy”, for example, infantilises her. Calling her a “pretty communist” not only reflects the sexist and misogynist view that a woman’s worth is measured by her appearance, but also suggests her looks disguise her real aims.

    This plays on the traditional trope of woman as evil seductress. From there it’s a short leap to the conspiracy theories that depict Ardern as part of an evil international cabal.

    Unfortunately, for traditionalists and extremists alike, the evidence shows that effective leaders do not conform to their ideal or play by their rule book. Instead, they tend to be collaborative, humble, team-oriented and able to inspire others to work for the common good — qualities women often exhibit.

    Of course, Ardern’s performance is not beyond criticism. But a fair-minded analysis, free from sexist and misogynist bias, would suggest the hatred directed toward her says more about the haters than Ardern.The Conversation

    Dr Suze Wilson is senior lecturer in Executive Development/School of Management, Massey 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.

  • TVNZ, RNZ merger a watershed moment for NZ media

    COMMENTARY: By Paul Thompson

    The New Zealand government last week unveiled the creation of a new public media entity that will incorporate RNZ and TVNZ. It will pave the way for digital innovation as well as adding new capability and services.

    This is a big shift and is a lot to get your head around.

    In particular, the public media focus of the new entity is a watershed.

    New Zealand has had various combinations of public and publicly-owned commercial media entities in the past, but this takes the public media remit to a new level.

    The new entity is designed to ensure New Zealand has one well-resourced, comprehensive public media entity that can weather the ongoing disruptions caused by the almost unbridled power of the FANGS (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google).

    Over recent years the media sector has been in flux, with commercial models under strain and audiences fragmenting and often favouring the products provided by the FANGS. This has contributed to increased misinformation and polarisation.

    The government hopes the new entity will be strong and flexible enough to adapt to those challenges in a way a stand-alone RNZ and TVNZ would not be able to achieve.

    Four key building blocks
    To understand what the government is trying to do it is useful to focus on four key building blocks it is putting in place.

    First, the new public media entity will be exactly that — an organisation that is centred on public media services that inform and connect the nation, celebrate our culture and identity and equip people to participate in our democracy.

    Commercial activity will play an important role and will be required to support this public media focus.

    Second, the entity will operate under a public media charter that will enshrine in law its editorial independence. The Charter will be the north star for the organisation, requiring it aspire to and deliver the best attributes of public media.

    The draft charter that is proposed in the Cabinet paper looks promising. This, more than anything else this, will ultimately determine the direction of the new entity, its tone and culture and the services it provides.

    Third, the policy places a strong emphasis on the new entity’s obligation to support and recognise the “Māori Crown relationship”. This is another big change. Indeed, the purpose of the new entity will require it to contribute to a “valued, visible, and flourishing te reo Māori me ngā tikanga Māori”.

    This is vital as the new entity, from day one, needs to capture what makes Aotearoa New Zealand unique, including Te Tiriti. The new entity’s board will include at least two members with Te Ao Māori and tikanga Māori expertise.

    And fourth, the new entity will be required to collaborate with other media and support the overall health of the wider media system. This recognises the critical importance of sustaining a plurality of media sources and perspectives in the years ahead.

    Trusted media underpin democracy
    Trusted, independent news and current affairs underpin our democracy. The only way to ensure trust in the media is to ensure people have a range of sources and perspectives to choose from.

    The new entity will need to support that diversity in meaningful ways, for example, by training the next generation of reporters, producers, presenters, and programme makers for the benefit of the wider industry.

    Public media institutions around the world have been on the back foot recently.

    In many countries publicly-owned and funded broadcasters have been reined-in, leaned on and co-opted to serve political ends.

    This is happening to a shocking degree in Hong Kong, Turkey, Slovenia,and Hungary, and in southern Africa as authoritarian regimes flexed their muscles.

    But even in Australia and the UK it has been tough for the ABC and BBC with attempts to question the pivotal role played by feisty, independent public media in a time of crisis and heightened polarisation.

    This all points to the value of strong public media to our democratic processes. Both RNZ and TVNZ carry strong reputations internationally. The rebuilding of our public media mandate will enhance that.

    Much is still to be determined, including funding levels, and no doubt there will be intense public debate when the draft legislation is opened for public submissions.

    RNZ is up for the challenge and will work hard to contribute our valued services and our public media ethos and expertise to the new entity.

    The bottom line will be ensuring all the people of New Zealand benefit.

    Paul Thompson is chief executive and editor-in-chief of Radio New Zealand. He is also president of the international Public Media Alliance. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. It was first published on the Stuff website.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Business as Usual: Facebook, Russia, and Hate Speech

    Seedy, compromised and creepy, the surveillance machine of Facebook, now operating under the broader fold of its parent company Meta Platforms, is currently giving out the very signals that it was condemned for doing before: encourage discussions on hating a group and certain figures, while spreading the bad word to everyone else to do so.

    The Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin, and Russians in general emerge as the latest contenders, the comic strip villains who those in the broadly designated “West” can now take issue with. According to a Meta spokesperson, the Russian attack on Ukraine had made the company make temporary “allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’” Cryptically, the same spokesman goes on to say that, “We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.” Meta gives us no guidelines on what would constitute a “credible call”.

    Twitter has also permitted posts openly advocating homicide and assassination. US Senator Lindsey Graham was caught up in the bloodlust of permissiveness, using the platform to ask whether Russia had its own Brutus. “Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” The only way to conclude the conflict was “for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

    The cartoon villainy approach of the Meta group also has precedent. In July 2021, the policy on incitement and hate speech was eased with specific reference to Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei. The firm decided to permit posts featuring “death to Khamenei”, or videos of individuals chanting the phrase for a two-week window. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai wrote pointedly at the time that this permission was “a bizarre choice that highlight’s Facebook’s power and often confusing content moderation rules.”

    The Russia-Ukraine policy is only startling for being an open admission to a practice that Facebook has embraced for years. With the company’s astronomical growth, accusations about how it utilises hate speech and deceptive content have reached a crescendo without deep effect. Mock efforts have been taken to deal with them, never deviating from the firm’s market purpose.

    An example of this zig-zag morality meet reputational damage was given in 2018. In August that year, the company employed 60 Burmese-language specialists to review posted and distributed content, with a promise to employ another 40 more by the end of the year. Product manager Sara Su called the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar “horrific and we have been too slow to prevent misinformation on Facebook.”

    A more accurate appraisal of the company’s conduct was revealed by an internal trove of documents showing how harms were closely monitored but algorithmically exacerbated. The documents, disclosed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission by whistleblower Frances Haugen, revealed a number of things, including the gulf between CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public statements on improvements and the company’s own findings.

    In testimony given to Congress in 2020, Zuckerberg claimed that 94 percent of hate speech was removed before a human agent reported it. The picture emerging from the internal documents showed that the company did quite the opposite: less than 5 percent of hate speech on the platform was actually removed.

    Haugen summed up the approach in her opening statement to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security in October last year. Conceding that social networks faced “complex and nuanced” problems in dealing with misinformation, counterespionage and democracy, she was blunt about the “choices being made inside Facebook”. They were “disastrous – for our children, for our public safety, for our privacy and for our democracy – and that is why we must demand Facebook makes changes.”

    The platform has also been the target of legal suits for encouraging hate speech. In December, Rohingya refugees, having little time for the firm’s promises to turn a new leaf, instigated legal action in both the United States and the United Kingdom for $150 billion. The San Francisco lawsuit, filed by Edelson and Fields Law on behalf of an anonymous plaintiff, alleges that Facebook’s introduction in the country in 2011 encouraged “the dissemination of hateful messages, disinformation and incitement to violence” which led to genocide of the Rohingya.

    The Ukraine War has revealed a familiar pattern. On February 26, 2022 Facebook initially announced that it had “established a special operations center staffed by experts from across the company, including native Russian and Ukraine speakers, who are monitoring the platform around the clock, allowing us to respond to issues in real time.” The company promised that it was “taking extensive steps to fight misinformation and implementing more transparency and restrictions around state-controlled media outlets.”

    Then came the easing of policies on hate speech regarding Russian figures, with the predictable and, given the context, understandable reaction. The Russian embassy in Washington called the policy “aggressive and criminal […] leading to incitement and hatred and hostility”. It gave Moscow a good basis to claim that this was yet another feature of an “information war without rules”.

    Disinformation experts adopt a bit of hair splitting in approving Meta’s approach. “The policy calls for violence against Russian soldiers,” insists the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab’s Emerson Brooking. “A call for violence here, by the way, is also a call for resistance because Ukrainians resist a violent invasion.”

    This policy of intervening on the side of the Ukrainian cause to Russia’s detriment is encouraged by Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg. In his March 11 statement, Clegg makes the case for selective violence even more pronounced. “I want to be crystal clear: our policies are focused on protecting people’s rights to speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country.” Had standard content policies been followed, content “from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces would have been removed.”

    This immoderate stance does not have universal agreement. Media sociologist Jeremy Littau has made the pertinent observation that, “Facebook has rules, until it doesn’t.” It claims to be merely a platform above taking sides, “until it does.” To not permit hate speech except in designated cases against certain people of a certain country was “one hell of a can of worms.”

    Meta’s latest move is disturbingly refreshing in calling out a policy that remains haphazard, selectively applied, but always driven by the firm’s own amoral calculus. The Ukraine conflict now gives the group a cover for practices that enfeeble and corrupt democracy while picking sides in war. The company is clearly not above encouraging posts advocating homicide and murder after testing the wind’s direction. With Russia being rapidly cancelled culturally, politically and economically throughout the fold of Western countries, Zuckerberg is bound to think he is onto a winner. At the very least, he has found a distracting alibi.

    The post Business as Usual: Facebook, Russia, and Hate Speech first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump Outraged That His Social Media Site Has Had Many Problems So Far

    President Donald Trump talks to members of the media before boarding Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House on October 30, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

    Donald Trump’s social media site Truth Social continues to have issues, and the former president is not happy about it.

    According to reporting from The Daily Beast, Trump has been berating aides and others close to him about the social media app’s poor rollout — contradictory to the glowing praise he’s given the site in public comments over recent weeks.

    At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) two weekends ago, Trump lauded the site, saying that “people are getting on and they’re loving the product.”

    “It’s been an incredible success,” he added.

    In reality, the social media site has faced a number of problems, ranging from glitches on the app itself to a waitlist in the hundreds of thousands. According to analytic measures, Truth Social is only garnering around 300,000 visits per day, an amount that is minuscule when compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter, which Trump said that he would compete with.

    Trump’s profile on the site, @realDonaldTrump, has only amassed 140,000 followers as of Saturday, a derisory figure compared to the tens of millions that followed him on Twitter before he was banned from the site (although the veracity of half those users was questionable at best).

    Sources told The Daily Beast that they’ve overheard Trump discussing the platform on the phone.

    One person recalled hearing Trump ask, “What the fuck is going on?” on a phone call talking about Truth Social’s status. The former president, whose social media site is one of his most talked about ventures outside of his potential run for office in 2024, has also whined about negative media reports on the app, and has asked why more people aren’t using it (despite the fact that it’s not yet available on non-Apple products).

    Critics have noted other issues with Truth Social. An analysis from Politico, for example, noted that there are a number of parody accounts on the site poking fun at left-wing voices. However, parody accounts that are critical of right-wing figures have already been banned.

    Matt Ortega, who manages the parody Twitter account @DevinNunesCow, announced late last month that he’s already been blocked from accessing Trump’s social media app.

    “I may be the first officially ‘cancelled’ Truth Social user,” Ortega said in response. (Former member of Congress Devin Nunes was placed in charge of Truth Social by Trump last year.)

    For a site that purportedly prides itself on free expression, the banning of Ortega and other leftist voices is quite telling. Indeed, Truth Social’s terms of service don’t live up to Trump’s promise to promote free speech on the internet, as the site maintains the right to boot any person, for any reason at all.

    Due to glitches during the first weeks of its launch, experts have cautioned people against signing up for Truth Social, saying that the site poses a number of security risks.

    The “ineptitude of the rollout” is troublesome, and should cause potential users to think twice before joining the site, said Bill Fitzgerald, a privacy researcher who spoke to The Washington Post on the matter last month.

    “There is no better sign of a rushed implementation than the fact that you can’t onboard anybody,” Fitzgerald said. “So I’m hard-pressed to understand why anyone would trust that these people would keep their information safe.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • People of colour fleeing Ukraine attacked by Polish nationalists

    Non-white refugees face violence and racist abuse in Przemyśl, as police warn of fake reports of ‘migrants committing crimes’

    Police in Poland have warned that fake reports of violent crimes being committed by people fleeing Ukraine are circulating on social media after Polish nationalists attacked and abused groups of African, south Asian and Middle Eastern people who had crossed the border last night.

    Attackers dressed in black sought out groups of non-white refugees, mainly students who had just arrived in Poland at Przemyśl train station from cities in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. According to the police, three Indians were beaten up by a group of five men, leaving one of them hospitalised.

    Continue reading…

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

  • The extremism visible at NZ’s Parliament protest has been growing for years – is enough being done?

    ANALYSIS: By Paul Spoonley, Massey University

    It has been interesting to watch media and public commentators come to the realisation — sometimes slowly — that the siege of Parliament was not simply an anti-vaccine mandate “protest” but something with more sinister elements.

    While researchers and journalists have noted the toxicity of some of the politics on display, as well as the presence of extreme fringe activists and groups, it should have come as little surprise.

    These politics have been developing for some time, heavily influenced by the rise of a particular form of conspiratorial populism out of Donald Trump’s America, and by the networking and misinformation possibilities of social media.

    Internationally, researchers noted a decisive shift in 2015-16 and the subsequent exponential growth of extremist and vitriolic content online.

    This intensified with the arrival of conspiracy movement QAnon in 2017 and the appearance of a number of alt-tech platforms that were designed to spread mis- and disinformation, conspiracy theories (old and new), and ultranationalism and racist views.

    While local manifestations developed slowly, there was evidence that some groups and activists were beginning to realise the potential.

    The Dominion Movement and Action Zealandia embraced these new politics — white nationalism, distrust of perceived corrupt elites and media — along with the relatively sophisticated use of social media to influence and recruit.

    Covid and conspiracy theory
    These anti-authority, conspiratorial views have been around in New Zealand for some time within the anti-1080, anti-5G and anti-UN movements.

    But we began to see the formation of a loose political community around the 2020 general election. It was notable, for instance, that online material from the Advance NZ party had 30,000 followers and their anti-covid material was viewed 200,000 times.

    A protester in a bio-hazard suit
    A protester in a bio-hazard suit holds an anti-Pfizer vaccine placard during an anti-mandate protest in Christchurch. Image: The Conversation/GettyImages

    Covid gave new impetus to these movements, partly because the pandemic fed many of the now well-established tropes of those inclined to believe in conspiracies — the role of China, government “overreach”, the influence of international organisations like the UN or WHO, or the “malign” influence of experts or institutions.

    Covid not only encouraged others to be convinced that conspiracies were at work, the lockdowns also meant more were online and more were likely to engage. QAnon proved to be a key influence.

    The election saw Advance NZ (and the NZ Public Party), along with the New Conservatives, the Outdoor Party and Vision NZ all peddle versions of covid scepticism, the distrust of elites or of ethnic and religious “others”.

    Combined, they received 2.73 percent of the party vote and 3.01 percent of electorate votes. Not large, but related online activity was still troubling.

    The alt-right in NZ
    By mid-2021, when the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD, a UK-based research organisation) undertook a study for the Department of Internal Affairs of New Zealand’s extreme online activity, things had ramped up yet again.

    The ISD looked at 300 local extremist accounts and 600,000 posts. In any given week, 192 extremist accounts were active, with 20,059 posts, 203,807 likes or up-votes and 38,033 reposts/retweets.

    When it came to far-right Facebook pages, there were 750 followers per 100,000 internet users in New Zealand, compared to 399 in Australia, 252 in Canada and 233 in the USA.

    Those numbers should give us all pause for thought. The volumes, the relatively high density, the extensive use of QAnon and the mobilisation of a not insignificant part of the New Zealand community indicate the alt-right and its fellow travellers were now well and truly established here.

    The ‘sovereign citizens’ at Parliament
    This is reinforced by the Department of Internal Affairs’ digital harm log. Not only are the numbers growing, but the level of hate and threats directed at individuals and institutions remains high.

    In this context, it’s not surprising to see these ideologies surface at the occupation of Parliament grounds, or the fractious and divided nature of those attending, and that their demands are so diverse and inchoate.

    Nor should it come as a surprise that the protesters display a complete unwillingness to trust authorities such as the police or Parliament.

    For some time, the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement has been apparent in New Zealand, again heavily influenced by similar American politics. Laws and regulations are regarded as irrelevant and illegal, as are the institutions that create or enforce them.

    What’s perhaps more surprising is that New Zealanders have generally not known more about these politics and the possibility they would produce the ugly scenes at parliament.

    Information and action needed
    While there has been some excellent media coverage, there has been a sense of playing catch-up. The degree of extremism fuelling the protests and the various demands appeared to catch parliament and the police off guard.

    Our security and intelligence agencies are devoting more resources to tracking these politics – but they need to be more public about it. The Combined Threat Assessment Group and the SIS provide updates and risk assessments, but these often lack detailed information about local activists and actions. We need to be better informed.

    The police are enhancing existing systems to better record hate crimes and activities (Te Raranga), which should become an important source of information.

    And the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet will be announcing some of the details of the new centre of excellence, He Whenua Taurika, that will provide evidence of local developments.

    If many New Zealanders have been surprised and saddened about the extremist politics visible at the parliament protest, there is now little excuse for not understanding their background and momentum. The challenge now is to ensure further hate crimes or violence do not follow.The Conversation

    Dr Paul Spoonley is distinguished professor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Massey 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.

  • AJI slams hacking of group chief’s accounts as attack on press freedom

    By Vitorio Mantalean in Jakarta

    The Indonesian Independent Journalist Alliance (AJI) has condemned the hacking and disinformation attacks against the group’s general chairperson Sasmito Madrim as a serious threat to media freedom.

    In a written release, the AJI stated that the incident was a “serious threat to press freedom and the freedom of expression”.

    “This practice is a form of attack against activists and the AJI as an organisation which has struggled for freedom of expression and press freedom,” the group stated.

    “The hacking and disinformation attack against AJI chairperson Sasmito Madrim is an attempt to terrorise activists who struggle for freedom of expression and democracy”, the group said.

    The AJI stated that the hacking attack began on February 23 and targeted Madrim’s personal WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook accounts as well as his personal mobile phone number.

    All of the posted content on his Instagram account was deleted then the hacker uploaded Madrim’s private mobile number.

    Madrim’s mobile number was subsequently unable to receive phone calls or SMS messages.

    Pornographic picture hack
    On his Facebook account, Madrim’s profile photograph was replaced with a pornographic picture.

    On February 24, the AJI monitored a disinformation attack which included Madrim’s name and photograph on social media.

    The narrative being disseminated was that Madrim supported the government’s 2020 banning of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), supports the government’s construction of the Bener Dam in Purworejo regency and has asked the police to arrest Haris Azhar and Fatia Maulidiyanti, two activists who were criminalised by Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.

    The AJI Indonesia asserts that these messages are false and such views have never been expressed by Madrim.

    “These three [pieces of] disinformation are clearly an attempt to play AJI Indonesia off against other civil society organisations, including to pit AJI against the residents of Wadas [Village] which is currently fighting against the exploitation of natural restores in its village,” wrote AJI.

    AJI Indonesia is asking the public not to believe the narrative of disinformation spreading on social media and to support them in fighting for press freedom, the right to freedom of expression, association, opinion and the right to information.

    Translated from the Kompas.com report by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Kecam Peretasan Terhadap Ketumnya, AJI: Ancaman Serius Bagi Kebebasan Pers“.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Fears that NZ Parliament protest turning into political ‘free-for-all’

    By Jake McKee, RNZ News reporter

    Misinformation researchers are concerned the protest at New Zealand’ s Parliament is becoming a “free-for-all” as the idea of any leadership within the blockade area slips away.

    In recent days, the messaging among the occupation has noticeably fractured and with a number of people joining in, including influential personalities such as yachtsman Sir Russell Coutts, singer Jason Kerrison, and New Zealand First Party leader Winston Peters.

    Kerrison did a series of Facebook Live videos on Tuesday, where he said he was capturing his own experiences — noting he did not “quite know what’s happened”.

    He later ended up on Molesworth Street, where a man was earlier arrested for driving a vehicle towards a line of police officers, stopping just before he would have hit them.

    Other than being aware of a “commotion”, Kerrison instead referred to an incident from Monday where police officers had human faeces thrown over them, claiming it did not happen and that people should stop being “hypnotised” by mainstream news and “that stupid scripted rhetoric”.

    Kerrison is correct when he suggests throughout his livestreams that there are calm people in the crowd.

    But Te Punaha Matatini misinformation researcher Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa said the presence of extreme or far-right views could not be ignored.

    It was more noticeable in online channels connected to the protest, Dr Hattotuwa said.

    ‘Gone in a bad way’
    “And I empathise with individuals who don’t know that because it requires a certain degree of subscription to, and connection to and engagement, with the online fora to realise the degree to which this has gone — and gone in a very bad way.”

    He said people only present “in front of the Beehive” could be “fooled into thinking that this is about balloons and children …. and good vibes.”

    Dr Hattotuwa wanted to know who, from the protest and their supporters, could “distance themselves, disavow and decry the violent ideation online”.

    “Those two things, we haven’t seen to date.”

    RNZ has spoken to a number of protesters in recent days, and asked if they thought it was okay to be in a crowd that was not necessarily as peaceful as it preaches.

    There are signs targeting politicians, media and scientists.

    Some did not like that there were death threats. One woman said those people “needed to go” and another said it was “terrible” to get personal and attack politicians.

    Others not bothered
    But others were not bothered (“That’s all around us mate, that’s every day. You can go to Auckland or Christchurch, or a little town – Eketahuna, you don’t know who’s around.”) or said the threats did not exist (“We haven’t seen anything like that. Everyone’s peaceful, when you go inside there, all you feel is love, all you feel is the emotion of the passion of the people.”).

    These fractures appear to be growing in the increasingly individualised crowd and disinformation researcher Byron Clark said it was “becoming a free-for-all”.

    Police have acknowledged there was no real leadership, and Clark said there was also more conflicting information and ideas among protesters.

    “It makes it very difficult because it means that there’s not really anyone who police can negotiate with or if any politicians were to come out and meet the protesters, there’s not really anyone who can truly claim to represent them.”

    He said people were being influenced on mainstream social media, like YouTube and Facebook, before migrating to platforms with less moderation, like Telegram and Rumble.

    “So I think social media has been been slow to act and it’s the case now of we probably can’t put that genie back in the bottle. And we have to find other ways to deal with the issue of misinformation online,” Clark said.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF condemns threats, violence against media from NZ’s ‘freedom convoy’ protest

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the threats and violence against news media by protesters during the 16-day anti-covid-19 vaccine mandates occupation of Parliament grounds, and called for prosecutions of those responsible.

    The media are among favourite targets of some of the 500 or so protesters still camped in front of the Parliament building, known as the Beehive, after arriving from various parts of the country in “freedom convoys” akin to those causing chaos in parts of Canada for the past month, reports the Paris-based media freedom watchdog in a statement tonight.

    The violence against journalists trying to cover the protest had included being regularly pelted with tennis balls with such not-very-subtle insults as “terrorists” and “paedophiles” written on them, said RSF.

    “Media = Fake News” and “Media is the virus” are typical of the slogans on the countless signs outside protesters’ tents.

    Journalists who approach have also been greeted with drawings of gallows and nooses, as well as insults and threats of violence ­– to the point that most of them now have bodyguards, says Mark Stevens, head of news at Stuff, New Zealand’s leading news website.

    ‘Your days are numbered‘
    Stevens sounded the alarm about the attacks on journalists in an editorial published on February 11.

    “They’ve had gear smashed, been punched and belted with umbrellas,” he wrote. “Many reporters have been harassed […], including one threatened with their home being burned down.”

    The violence has not been limited to Wellington.

    In New Plymouth, an angry crowd tried to storm the offices of the local newspaper, Stuff’s Taranaki Daily News, two weeks ago, as reported by Mediawatch. Some of the protesters even managed to breach the newspaper’s secured doors and attack members of the staff.

    “After the police intervened, [conspiracy theorist] Brett Power urged the protesters to return in order to hold the editor ‘accountable for crimes’ — meaning the newspaper’s failure to report their protests in the way they wanted,” the RSF statement said.

    “The verbal and physical violence against journalists is accompanied by extremely shocking online hate messages.”

    Stuff’s chief political reporter Henry Cooke tweeted an example of the threats he had received on social media:

    Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, said: “The virulence of the threats against journalists by demonstrators, and the constant violence to which they have been subjected since the start of these protests are not acceptable in a democracy.”

    He called on authorities to “not allow these disgraceful acts to go unpunished. There is a danger that journalists will no longer be able to calmly cover these protests, opening the way to a flood of misinformation.”

    In a recent article, Kristin Hall, a reporter for 1News, described her dismay at discovering the level of “distaste for the press” among protesters who regarded the mainstream media as nothing more than “a bunch of liars”.

    “People have asked me why I’m not covering the protests while I’m in the middle of interviewing them,” she wrote.

    A Wellington Facebook page publisher attacked
    A Wellington Facebook page publisher attacked at the protest, as reported by 1News. Image: 1News screenshot APR

    ‘Headlocks, punches’
    Protester mistrust is no longer limited to mainstream media regarded as accomplices of a system imposing pandemic-related restrictions, as Graham Bloxham — a Wellington resident who runs the Wellington Live Community local news page on Facebook – found to his cost when he went to interview one of the protest organisers on February 18.

    “We just wanted to show people that it is peaceful … then bang. They just yelled and whacked. They were just all on me and they basically beat me and my cameraman to a pulp,” he told 1News.

    “Headlocks, punches… they were really violent.”

    A photo of a dozen Nazi war criminals being hanged at the end of the Second World War has been circulating on social media popular with the protesters for the past few days, accompanied by the comment: “Photograph of hangings at Nuremberg, Germany. Members of the media, who lied and misled the German people, were executed.” Definitely not subtle.

    Attacks against journalists have rarely or never been as virulent as this in New Zealand, which is ranked 8th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

    • Henry Cooke reported an apology from some of the protesters over the “treatment” of some journalists, but incidents have continued to be reported.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • It only took one tweet to correct the Tories’ employment lies

    The Tories were trotting out lies and misleading stats about employment across social media on Tuesday 15 February. Fortunately, a trade union organisation was on hand to correct their falsehoods.

    Latest employment stats: not good

    Conservative Party social media has been focusing on employment. This is because the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published new jobs data for the UK. ONS headline figures showed:

    • The UK employment rate was estimated at 75.5%… 1.0 percentage points lower than before the coronavirus pandemic (December 2019 to February 2020).
    • The UK unemployment rate was estimated at 4.1%… 0.1 percentage points higher than before the coronavirus pandemic.
    • The UK economic inactivity rate was estimated at 21.2%… 1.0 percentage point higher than before the coronavirus pandemic.
    Real terms wages: fucked

    Meanwhile, real terms wages (how people’s pay tracks with inflation) have flatlined. As a graph from Sky News showed, the money people earn has been stagnating for years:

    A graph showing real terms wages

    And the ONS backed this up. As it reported, while actual pay has increased:

    In real terms (adjusted for inflation), in October to December 2021, total and regular pay fell on the year at negative 0.1% for total pay and negative 0.8% for regular pay.

    People in work: disastrous

    It also said the number of people employed by companies was up by about 400,000 pre-pandemic:

    A graph showing the total number of payrolled employees

    But the number of self-employed people was down by over 850,000:

    A graph showing the total number of people working by employment type

    Seems clear, yes? Well – not if your the Tories’ social media. Because it completely misrepresented the facts.

    The Tories? ‘Everything’s great!’

    As it tweeted:

    As the info in this article shows, the Tories’ claims are either lies or misleading. Luckily, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was on it.

    As the TUC tweeted:

    The TUC was not the only one correcting the Tories’ falsified post:

    Some people were very to-the-point:

    Never trust one

    There’s an old saying which goes: ‘never trust a Tory’. It seems that under Boris Johnson and Co. that phrase remains as true as ever.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube and the Conservative Party – Twitter 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The Guardian propped-up the Tories latest internet crackdown

    Boris Johnson’s Tory government is cracking down even further on our internet freedoms. It’s doing it under the guise of children accessing porn. Yet the ever-clueless Guardian propped their nonsense up anyway.

    Authoritarianism under the guise of child protection

    The Tory government wants Twitter and Reddit to introduce age checks for users. It says it’s because of the amount of porn on these sites. The government therefore wants Twitter and Reddit to force users to give them passport, driving licence, or bank details to prove their age. Obviously, at present, anyone can use these platforms over the age of 13. And sites like Twitter would have the option to remove porn altogether. But this would really impact sex workers.

    The planned rules will form part of the contentious Online Safety Bill. But the Tories plan to ‘protect’ children is little more than a smokescreen.

    Paul Bernal is a professor of IT law. On Wednesday 9 February, he tweeted about the Tories’ planned changes. Bernal called it a “slippery slope”. He said:

    The real idea is to make the whole internet subject not just to age checks but identity checks. It’s an authoritarian wet dream.

    He also said that it would affect people’s anonymity. And as Bernal noted:

    authorities can determine what content is and is not acceptable is a recipe for disaster.

    Furthermore:

    So, did the Guardian question the government’s reasons for this policy? Did it hell.

    The Guardian: shilling for the Tories?

    Writer Jim Waterson framed most of the article around the Tories wanting to stop children accessing porn. As he wrote:

    Ministers said that social networks “where a considerable quantity of pornographic material is accessible” will have to conform to the same age verification rules as other commercial pornography websites.

    Waterson also noted that:

    The proposed law will see individual British internet users required to hand over a form of identification – such as a passport, driving licence or credit card – to an age verification provider, which would then tell a website hosting porn that the user is over 18. Outlets that fail to prove they have robust age checks could be fined 10% of their global revenue by the media regulator Ofcom, or risk being blocked altogether by British internet service providers.

    He got quotes from people in the age verification business. And he did highlight the potential impact on sex workers and smaller websites. But not once did Waterson mention any of Bernal’s crucial points. Nor did he get comment from anyone with expertise in privacy or civil liberties issues.

    Tories: policing the internet

    As Bernal alluded to, the Tories’ proposed rules for Twitter and Reddit are really about control of the internet. The Canary previously wrote:

    As if censorship on the internet wasn’t bad enough already, the Online Safety Bill will just entrench and further it. It arms both the government and social media companies with extra tools. They could use these to even more actively crack-down on dissent, legitimate protest, and opposition.

    Now, the Tories’ using access to porn as an excuse to restrict Twitter and Reddit adds to this. Not only will this hit sex workers hard, but it also shows our freedoms on the internet are becoming more and more at risk. Now, more than ever, we need an independent critical media, not one happy to whitewash this government’s increasingly draconian plans.

    Featured image via the Telegraph – YouTube and Asvensson – Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • US Facebook news has been taken over by the right wing

    Facebook in the US is dominated by the right wing across news and political posts. A media monitoring group has found that the majority of the top posts are from right-wing websites. But it also found that right-wing people are now the most engaged with news and politics on the platform. And worryingly, this has all been the case for several years.

    Media Matters

    Media Matters is a media research organisation. Since it launched in 2004, it says it has:

    put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation – news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda – every day, in real time.

    As part of this, Media Matters monitors what’s going on over on Facebook. And its latest report is worrying.

    The right wing: dominating Facebook news?

    As it tweeted, right-wing sites dominated news and political posts between February 4-6 – having nine of the top ten posts:

    On February 7, politically non-aligned posts dominated. But right-wing ones were more prevalent than left-wing ones:

    A graph showing the percentage of posts by political ideology

    Media Matters also found that year to date, people with right wing views had the highest engagement on Facebook:

    So, it appears that the right-wing dominating Facebook news and politics is not new. Media Matters found a similar trend in both 2020 and 2021. But why?

    Facebook: knowingly promoting right-wing content?

    It reported in October 2021 about Facebook’s algorithm changes over several years. Media Matters noted how Facebook ‘broadly knew’ that the changes helped right-wing sites and posts gain prominence. This in turn would lead to right-wing pages having the highest engagement. As The Canary previously reported:

    when Facebook engineers altered the newsfeed algorithm to reduce political news, changes had a larger impact on left-wing sites. The WSJ reported that Mark Zuckerberg personally approved the changes.

    The alterations were made after executives raised concerns that right-wing sites would be affected more by plans to reduce political news.

    The anti-social network?

    Given Facebook is still promoting and prioritising toxic right-wing views across its platform, it’s really time that people started looking at new models of social media. It and Zuckerberg’s other social media platforms dominate many of our lives. Maybe it’s time to start questioning that.

    Featured image via Anthony Quintano – Flickr, reduced to 770×403 under licence CC BY 2.0, and Gage Skidmore – Flickr, adapted under licence CC BY 2.0

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Journalism academics question News Corp’s deal with Google and Melbourne Business School

    ANALYSIS: By Andrew Dodd, The University of Melbourne; Alexandra Wake, RMIT University, and Matthew Ricketson, Deakin University

    News Corp Australia and Google have announced the creation of the Digital News Academy in partnership with the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne. It will provide digital skills training for News Corp journalists and other media outlets.

    Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

    The academy won’t provide full degrees, just certificates and a chance to upgrade digital skills in a fast-changing media environment.

    Many companies in various industries have partnered with universities to deliver what used to be in-house training programmes. Strengthening the links between industry and the academy has been welcomed in many sectors and certainly encouraged by governments for many years.

    Why then are we as journalism academics concerned?

    There are several reasons. The first and most obvious is the incursion of a high-profile and controversial media company into the higher education sector and the extent to which that is funded by a large disruptive digital search company.

    Antagonism towards academia
    It is telling that the Digital News Academy will be housed in the University of Melbourne’s private arm, the Melbourne Business School, rather than its Centre for Advancing Journalism within the Arts faculty.

    Australia’s largest commercial media company has long criticised university journalism education, and journalism academics, including each of the authors of this article and many of our colleagues.

    The company even once sent an incognito reporter into a University of Sydney lecture to uncover criticism of News Corp in the classroom. That reporter, Sharri Markson, is now investigations editor at The Australian and a member of “the panel of experts” that will oversee the Digital News Academy.

    Source: Digital News Academy
    Source: Digital News Academy

    So it comes as no surprise that News Corp has avoided journalism programmes.

    News Corp Australasia’s executive chairman Michael Miller has said part of the academy’s role will be building a stronger Australia by keeping society informed through “strong and fearless news reporting and advocacy”.

    Yet partnering with a journalism programme would have facilitated that. It might also have helped assuage News Corp critics, some of whom have been active online during the week with reminders about News Corp’s unethical conduct during the hacking scandal and its disregard for scientific evidence in its reporting on climate change.

    University journalism courses teach ethics and critical thinking alongside practical skills such as new digital ways of fact checking, gathering information and telling stories.

    Google Australia already offers free tutorials to journalism programmes about smart ways to use its search engine to find and check investigative stories.

    University journalism programmes also distinguish between training and education; the former is predominantly about skills, the latter places those skills in context and teaches students how to think critically about the industry and environment in which they work.

    By placing this course in a business school and not a liberal arts or humanities faculty, the venture gets the kudos of the University of Melbourne’s backing without the challenging academic culture News Corp dislikes.

    News Corp and Google are corporate clients, paying the university for these courses, so the capacity for independent criticism of Australia’s most dominant newspaper company is eroded even further.

    The Digital News Academy will be within the Melbourne Business School, rather than the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism.
    The Digital News Academy will be housed within the Melbourne Business School, rather than the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism. Image: The Conversation/Shutterstock

    What will the Digital News Academy do?
    All we know so far about the academic credibility of the Digital News Academy comes from its promotional announcement, in press releases reported in the Media section of The Australian (published by News Corp).

    The publicity says the nine-month course will take 750 enrolments from journalists at News Corp Australia, Australian Community Media (the stable of 160 regional publications formerly owned by Fairfax) and smaller media partners.

    A “governance committee” will select candidates (who nominate themselves or are put forward by their employers). These students will be expected to use the Google suite of tools as they collaborate online at the Melbourne Business School, to generate, build and sell stories to the course’s “Virtual Academy Newsroom”.

    Each year there will be what is being billed as a major journalism conference and a US study tour for a select group of trainees.

    There are no public details yet of the academic credentials of the certificate programme but the academy has drawn on a “panel of experts”, almost all of whom come from inside News Corp and Google.

    Google gains influence
    It’s easy to see why Google was motivated to fund a News Corp training academy above and beyond what it is required to do as part of its bid to stop further intervention in its workings by the Australian government under the terms of the News Media Bargaining Code.

    But there are some deeper questions about why a company that has such a stranglehold on the new digital economy is involved. By funding the academy Google may be undercutting full university degrees specialising in journalism.

    Relying on Google to make up the shortfall in news organisations’ training budgets is a problem. It allows Google to shape curriculum while appearing to be a champion of the same journalism industry it has been accused of undermining.

    As journalism academics we respect the need for specialised training and skills development. But journalism programmes should never be captured or constrained from being critical of the industry for which they prepare students.

    They should continue to embed ethics in their courses. The aim, after all, is to improve journalism, for everybody’s benefit.

    As it is often said, news is not just another business. While studying journalism often involves the study of business, business imperatives should not drive the study of journalism itself.The Conversation

    Dr Andrew Dodd is director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne; Dr Alexandra Wake is programme manager, journalism, at RMIT University, and Dr Matthew Ricketson is professor of communication at Deakin University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    Dr Dodd has worked as a journalist at The Australian newspaper and has provided in-house legal and news writing training for News Corp. Dr Wake has provided in-house training for the ABC and for Australian Provincial Newspapers. She is the elected president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA). Professor Ricketson has worked on staff at The Australian, among other news outlets. He was a member of the Finkelstein inquiry into the media and media regulation which was sharply criticised in News Corp Australia publications. His appointment as the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Press Council was also criticised by News Corp Australia. Full disclosures at The Conversation.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Is it already too late to say goodbye?

    It seems we may have reached the moment when it is time to say goodbye. It has been fun, educational and sometimes cathartic – for me at least. I hope you got something from our time together too.

    I am not going anywhere, of course. Not for now at least. I love to write. For as long as I feasibly can, I will continue to rail against injustice, call out corporate power and its abuses, and demand a fairer and more open society.

    But I have to be realistic. I have to recognise that a growing number of you will not be joining me here on this page for much longer. And it feels rude after so much time together not to bid you a fond farewell before it is too late. I will miss you.

    Many of you may have assumed it wouldn’t end this way. You probably imagined that I would get banned by Facebook or Twitter. You would be able to rally round, send in complaints worded in the strongest possible terms, and lobby for my reinstatement. Maybe even sign a petition.

    But it isn’t going to end like that. There will be no bang. I have been too careful for that to be my fate. I have avoided rude and crude words. I have steered clear of insults (apologies if my responses have sometimes been a little caustic). I have not defamed anyone. I have avoided “fake news” – except to critique it. I have not peddled “conspiracy theories”, unless quoting the British Medical Journal on Covid now counts as misinformation (yes, I know for a few of you it does).

    But none of that has helped. My blog posts once attracted tens of thousands of shares. Then, as the algorithms tightened, it became thousands. Now, as they throttle me further, shares can often be counted in the hundreds. “Going viral” is a distant memory.

    No, I won’t be banned. I will fade incrementally, like a small star in the night sky – one among millions – gradually eclipsed as its neighbouring suns grow ever bigger and brighter. I will disappear from view so slowly you won’t even notice.

    Which is why I am saying my goodbyes now while I can still reach you, my most obstinate followers.

    But this isn’t really about one small light being snuffed out. This isn’t just about our relationship coming to an end. Something bigger, and more disturbing, is taking place.

    Journalists like me are part of an experiment – in a new, more democratised media landscape. We have developed new reader-funded models so that we can break free of the media corporations, which until now ensured billionaires and the state controlled the flow of information in one direction only: to speak down to us.

    The corporate media need corporate advertising – or their owners’ deep pockets – to survive. They don’t need you, except as a captive audience. You’re both their prisoner and their product.

    But the lifeblood of a reader-funded journalist, as the name suggests, are readers. The more of you we attract, the better chance there is that we can generate donations and income and make the model sustainable. Our Achilles’ heel is our dependence on social media to find you, to keep reaching you, to offer you an alternative from the corporate media.

    If Facebook (sorry, the Meta universe) and Twitter stop independent writers from growing their readerships by manipulating the algorithms, by ghosting and shadow-banning them, and by all the other trickery we do not yet understand, then new voices cannot grow their funding base and break free of corporate control.

    And equally, for those like me who are already established and have significant numbers of readers, these tech giants can whittle them away one by one. Ostensibly, I have many tens of thousands of followers, but for several years now I have been reaching fewer and fewer of you. I am starved of connection. The danger, already only too obvious, is that my readership, and funding model, will slowly start to shrivel and die.

    Joe Rogan, Russell Brand and a handful of titans of the new media age are so big they can probably weather it out. But the rest of us will not be so lucky.

    Readers will lose sight of us, as our light slowly fades, and then we will be gone completely. Vanished.

    I have lost count of the followers who – because, god knows, an algorithm slipped up? – tell me they have received a social media post many months after they last saw one from me. In the cacophony of media noise, they had not noticed that I had unexpectedly gone quiet until that reminder arrived or else they assumed I had given up writing.

    Which is why, if you want to keep seeing posts from me and writers like me, if this is not soon to be a final goodbye, if you think it important to read non-corporate analysis and commentary, then you need to act. You should be bookmarking your favourite writers and visiting their sites regularly – not just when you are prompted to by Mark Zuckerberg.

    You need to be an active consumer of news – not a passive one, as you were raised to be when the choice was between three TV channels and a dozen print newspapers.

    You need to search out and maintain those connections before they are gone entirely and the window has closed. Because those voices you prize now will wither and decay like autumn leaves if they have no audience. If you leave it too long, even when you finally remember to go search for them, you may find they are no longer there to be discovered. You will have missed the chance to say goodbye.

    So let us say it now, while we still can: Farewell.

    UPDATE:

    Writing is a solitary activity, and it can be easy to imagine that what was obvious inside your head will be clear to others when that idea takes its place in the outside world. But a proportion of early readers of this post have mistaken it for an actual goodbye, rather than as a cautionary tale of what has been happening and what is still to come. So let me reassure you: I am going to continue writing and you can continue reading me, so long as either Twitter and Facebook direct you to me or you make the effort to find me.

    Here’s hoping that my goodbye will prove unnecessary.

    The post Is it already too late to say goodbye? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Three PNG government agencies have power to censor Facebook

    By Phoebe Gwangilo in Port Moresby

    Censoring of Facebook in Papua New Guinea can be addressed by three mandated government agencies, says Chief Censor Jim Abani.

    He was responding to the Post-Courier on how his office was dealing with indecent content posted on Facebook in view of a controversy over a video of an alleged child molester.

    “FB censoring is to be addressed by three agencies with relevant responsibilities that are mandated to carry out policies and regulations,” Abani said.

    He added: “In the event that pictures and sexual references and connotations are published then the censor will say its objectionable publication.”

    Abani said the Cyber Crime Code Act defined penalties for cyber harassment and cyber bullying.

    “NICTA (National Information and Communications Technology Authority) may look into electronic devices used to commit crime or offence while Censorship Office will vet or screen the content of materials and determine whether it’s explicit, or not explicit and allowed for public consumption.”

    He said police under the Summary Offences Act are equally responsible to censor illicit material posted online.

    “Indecent publication published is in the amended Summary Offences Act.”

    No comment on specific case
    Abani could not comment on the specific video of the alleged 16-year-old child molester, saying that his officers were still working on gathering information.

    However, he added that the approved 2021-2025 National Censorship Policy called for partnership and a collaborative approach from each responsible agency.

    Abani said a new trend in the digital space had meant the Censorship Office to build its capacity to monitor and control apart from developing the recently launched policy it had been currently doing by reviewing the Censorship Act 1989.

    The office was also working on signing an agreement with an internet gateway service provider.

    Phoebe Gwangilo is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.