Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Facebook's secret censorship rulebook exposed after platform removes video calling Palestine 'Israel's weapons-testing lab'

Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams
Fri, 28 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Journalist Rania Khalek, whose video was restored after public outcry, says the ability of social media giants "to disappear content as they please" is "creepy and alarming and should be loudly opposed."
Facebook censorship Israel
© Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesThe New York Times on Thursday published a report on Facebook's censorship policies.
After the New York Times on Thursday published an exposé of Facebook's global censorship rulebook, journalist Rania Khalek called out the social media giant for taking down a video in which she explains how, "on top of being occupied, colonized territory, Palestine is Israel's personal laboratory for testing, refining, and showcasing methods and weapons of domination and control."

Tweeting out the Times report-and noting that while, according to the newspaper, "moderators were told to hunt down and remove rumors wrongly accusing an Israeli soldier of killing a Palestinian medic," Israeli soldiers did fatally shoot an unarmed 21-year-old female paramedic earlier this year-she announced Friday morning that Facebook had "just removed" her video.


Comment: Facebook has never been reticent about showing its allegiance to Israel:

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X

Seymour Hersh: Blacklisting journalists, banishing truth

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Mon, 24 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
See More (Seymour Hersh)
© Mr. FishSee More
The investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, in his memoir Reporter, describes a moment when as a young reporter he overheard a Chicago cop admit to murdering an African-American man. The murdered man had been falsely described by police as a robbery suspect who had been shot while trying to avoid arrest. Hersh frantically called his editor to ask what to do.
"The editor urged me to do nothing," he writes. "It would be my word versus that of all the cops involved, and all would accuse me of lying. The message was clear: I did not have a story. But of course I did." He describes himself as "full of despair at my weakness and the weakness of a profession that dealt so easily with compromise and self-censorship."
Hersh, the greatest investigative reporter of his generation, uncovered the U.S. military's chemical weapons program, which used thousands of soldiers and volunteers, including pacifists from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, as unwitting human guinea pigs to measure the impact of biological agents including tularemia, yellow fever, Rift Valley fever and the plague. He broke the story of the My Lai massacre. He exposed Henry Kissinger's wiretapping of his closest aides at the National Security Council (NSC) and journalists, the CIA's funding of violent extremist groups to overthrow the Chilean President Salvador Allende, the CIA's spying on domestic dissidents within the United States, the sadistic torture practices at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by American soldiers and contractors and the lies told by the Obama administration about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Yet he begins his memoir by the candid admission, familiar to any reporter, that there are crimes and events committed by the powerful you never write about, at least if you want to keep your job. One of his laments in the book is his decision not to follow up on a report he received that disgraced President Richard Nixon had hit his wife, Pat, and she had ended up in an emergency room in California.

Comment: See also:

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Question

The Mattis Dilemma and what it means

Philip M. Giraldi
Strategic Culture Foundation
Thu, 27 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Mattis
© UnknownFormer US Secretary of Defense, James Mattis
The resignation letter of Secretary of Defense James Mattis that was published last Thursday revealed much of the Deep State mindset that has produced the foreign policy catastrophes of the past seventeen years. Mattis, an active duty general in the Marine Corps who reportedly occasionally reads books, received a lot of good press during his time at Defense, sometimes being referred to as "the only adult in the room" when President Donald Trump's national security and foreign policy team was meeting. Conveniently forgotten are Mattis comments relating to how to "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." His sobriquet in the Corps was "Mad Dog."

In the media firestorm that has followed upon General Mattis's resignation, he has been generally lauded as a highly experienced and respected leader who has numerous friends on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Of course, the press coverage should be taken with a grain of salt as it is designed less to praise Mattis and more to get at Trump over the decision to leave Syria, which is being assailed by both neoliberals and neoconservatives who believe that war is the health of the state.

Comment: Hopefully times are changing, and with it the caliber, focus and mandate of leadership.

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Arrow Up

'The devil you know': Old foes India and China strengthen ties as US deemed too unreliable

Darius Shahtahmasebi
RT
Thu, 27 Dec 2018 18:11 UTC
Indian-Chinese soldiers
© ReutersSoldiers from Indian Army and China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) take part in joint military exercise in Chengdu.
China and India have had a rocky relationship for years and are continuing to find areas of dispute. However, the two countries have managed to end the year on an amicable high-note, proving that rival nations can cooperate.

Together, China and India account for just under 3 billion of the world's total population. The decisions that the leaders of these two countries make is therefore relevant for approximately a third of the global population. Whether or not these two regional players are on a path to peace or war is something the western mainstream media should pay its undivided attention to.

While outrageously underreported in the corporate media, India and China experienced a brief skirmish on the Indo-Tibetan border in August last year. Video footage of the skirmishes shows soldiers kicking, punching and throwing stones at each other on the border, which appeared to symbolize a potential escalation between the two Asian powers. The two nations maintain a tense border dispute with hundreds of soldiers stationed just meters apart.

Comment: Scorecards - incessant assessments and comparisons. Where is the leading edge leading us?

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Pirates

'UK, US see jihadist groups as useful, so just how against terrorists are they?


RT
Thu, 27 Dec 2018 15:30 UTC
Chechen deathbattalion
© scmp.comChechen Death Battalion
A Times' article portraying Chechen jihadists as freedom fighters because they are anti-Russian is an attempt to whitewash a connection between the Ukrainian government and terrorist groups, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT.

The British newspaper published a highly controversial interview with a Chechen who is fighting against anti-government forces in Eastern Ukraine. The head of his battalion earlier admitted that his fighters waged jihad in Syria and that the leader was even part of a terror group committing atrocities in Russia.

"Some of the battalion's gunmen admit to having honed their combat skills at Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) training camps in Iraq and Syria," the article says.

Former US diplomat Jim Jatras, commenting on the timing of the article to RT, said that the editorial decision to let this information out now is perhaps because "somebody just discovered the significance of it" especially in light of President Trump's announcement to withdraw US troops from Syria after Islamic State's defeat.


Comment: Next stop on the US/UK's terrorist train: Ukraine.

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Arrow Down

Sheldon Adelson was a huge loser in midterms and Trump is letting him know it

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Fri, 28 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
SheldonAdelson
© UnknownSheldon Adelson
A lot of people are scratching their heads over Trump's recent moves distancing himself from Israel. He announced that he was pulling troops from Syria, thereby nettling Israel's friends who counted on him to take on Iran in Syria. Iran, Iran, Iran, say Chuck Schumer, Lindsey Graham, and Bret Stephens. Trump overrode John Bolton, his neoconservative national security adviser, in announcing the withdrawal. Jonathan Tobin writes that Trump just gave the finger to his Jewish voters.

Then Trump held a briefing in Iraq the night after Christmas and complained about all the money we give Israel, exaggerating the sum to $4.5 billion a year.

I think there's a simple explanation for Trump's shift. He was counting on his biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, to deliver the House to him in the midterm elections; and Adelson failed, bigtime. Donald Trump is sore about that.

Remember that in the runup to the election last spring, the transactional president did his part: He tore up the Iran deal and moved the embassy to Jerusalem and installed Adelson's friend John Bolton as national security adviser- after declining to do all these actions in his first year in office, he saved them for the election year.

What did Trump get for those moves? Bupkus. Yes Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam gave upwards of $87 million to the Republican congressional effort, including some $50 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund. More than half that money came in last May, just as the embassy was opened. All to save the House.

Comment: In some elections, money can't buy you love. Will the president return to Adelson's control or finally do what he really wants?

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Brick Wall

Trump: 'Build the wall or close the border' the new ultimatum to Democrats


RT
Fri, 28 Dec 2018 12:30 UTC
Trump
© Unknown
US President Donald Trump has doubled down on fiery rhetoric aimed at his political opponents, threatening to close the entire southern border of the US if the government shutdown continues.

"We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with," Trump tweeted in the early hours of Friday morning.

Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!

At the current rate, the partial US government shutdown will likely continue into 2019 as Democrats dig in amid an impasse over funding for Trump's controversial border wall.

Trump added that the US loses "over 75 billion dollars" per year in trade with Mexico under the NAFTA agreement. So egregious is the disparity on trade that Trump claimed he would view the border closure as a "profit making operation."
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Brick Wall

Hey President Trump! Russia finished 'The Wall' on Crimea-Ukraine border


RT
Fri, 28 Dec 2018 23:45 UTC
Russian Wall
© Ruptly
While certain politicians are still having difficulties getting their walls built, Russia has announced it had finished a border barrier between Ukraine and Crimea. Construction took just over a year and less than $3 million.

Bids for building the two-meter tall, 60-kilometer long fence separating the peninsula from Ukraine opened in September 2017. The Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the project's completion on Thursday. The contract was estimated at approximately 200 million rubles, or $2.87 million at current exchange rates.

The fence is also reportedly equipped with high-technology surveillance devices, from vibration sensors to night vision cameras.

Russia's ability to build a fence so quickly and at a fairly low cost has already prompted some snarky commentary about US President Donald Trump and his inability to even start construction of his wall on the border with Mexico.


Comment: Ah, but a wall IS being built in America! The US 'wall' is on the border between Republicans and Democrats within Congress, and growing taller day-by-day.

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Star of David

IDF: Israeli helicopter attacks Hamas in Gaza, response to rocket fire


RT
Sat, 29 Dec 2018 01:05 UTC
Israeli chopper
© Reuters/Amir Cohen
The Israeli military has deployed a helicopter to attack Hamas positions in the southern Gaza Strip, in retaliation to an earlier rocket attack on Israeli territory. "In response, an IDF attack helicopter targeted a Hamas military post in southern Gaza," the Israeli military said on Twitter.

Earlier, a rocket launched from Gaza landed in Israel, in the first such attack in over a month, the IDF spokesperson's office said. The projectile allegedly hit an open area in southern Israel and so the Red Alert alarm warning system was not activated.

The exchange of fire followed the killing of a Palestinian during Friday's border protest clashes with the IDF. Hamas had earlier warned that it will retaliate with rocket and sniper fire if Palestinians are killed on the Gaza border.

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Newspaper

Names of BBC journalists in Russia publicized after Sunday Times doxxed, shamed Sputnik staff


RT
Thu, 27 Dec 2018 23:37 UTC
BBC sign
© Reuters / Andrew Winning
A list of BBC reporters and other personnel working in Russia has been published online, after Britain's Sunday Times newspaper published a "name and shame" hit piece about Sputnik agency employees in the UK.

The list featuring 44 names of BBC employees and their pictures first appeared on a public group page on the Russian social network Vkontakte - a sort of Russian version of Facebook - and in one of the posts on Pikabu, which is similar to Reddit.

It was apparently then published by a news website Segodnia.ru. The list includes correspondents, TV reporters, producers and camera operators, with pictures seemingly taken from their social media profiles or from other open sources.

This comes after the Sunday Times published a hit piece on the Edinburgh bureau of the Russian-funded news agency Sputnik, with names and pictures of its employees. The list included eight people - reporters, management and a person in charge of the IT department.

The article called the agency a "Kremlin stooge" in its headline, cited a Scottish MP who accused Sputnik of seeking to "destabilize" the UK, and called on the British authorities to seize the journalists' assets.

Comment: Another layer of despicableness tapped and exploited. It only works if believed.

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