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Media Research Center study: Online media companies guilty of suppressing conservative speech

Ashley Rae Goldenberg, Dan Gainor
MRC NewsBusters
Mon, 16 Apr 2018 09:06 UTC
Twitter CEO Trump
© YouTubeCensorship of the Right
Like it or not, social media is the communication form of the future - not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Just Facebook and Twitter combined reach 1.8 billion people. More than two-thirds of all Americans (68 percent) use Facebook. YouTube is pushing out TV as the most popular place to watch video. Google is the No. 1 search engine in both the U.S. and the world.

War is being declared on the conservative movement in this space and conservatives are losing - badly. If the right is silenced, billions of people will be cut off from conservative ideas and conservative media.

It's the new battleground of media bias. But it's worse. That bias is not a war of ideas. It's a war against ideas. It's a clear effort to censor the conservative worldview from the public conversation.

The Media Research Center has undertaken an extensive study of the problem at major tech companies - Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube - and the results are far more troubling than most conservatives realize.

Here are some of the key findings:
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Dollar

Trump nixes across-the-board 2.1% federal pay raise in favor of performance-based rewards

Niv Elis
The Hill
Thu, 30 Aug 2018 01:17 UTC
Trump
© picture-alliance/O.DoulieryPresident Donald Trump
President Trump on Thursday announced that he would cancel a scheduled 2.1 percent across-the-board pay increase for federal workers, as well as locality pay increases.

"In light of our Nation's fiscal situation, Federal employee pay must be performance-based, and aligned strategically toward recruiting, retaining, and rewarding high-performing Federal employees and those with critical skill sets," Trump wrote in a letter to the Speaker of the House and the president of the Senate.

The proposal sets up a fight with Congress, which could effectively overturn the action in upcoming spending legislation. Without such intervention, the move would affect most of the 2.1 million federal employees around the nation, about 1.7 million of which live in areas outside of the Washington, D.C., metro area.
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Stop

US stops funding UN Palestinian refugee agency, citing 'irredeemably flawed operation'


RT
Fri, 31 Aug 2018 23:50 UTC
Palestinian students
© Mussa Qawasma/ReutersPalestinian students receive books at UNRWA-run school in West Bank refugee camp.
The White House has announced it's withdrawing all funding from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, describing its approach to handling the issue as "unsustainable" and the US contribution as disproportionate.

The US State Department said on Friday that the installment of $60 million it allocated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in January was its last financial contribution to the organization, which helps provide healthcare and education to millions of Palestinians.

Outlining the reasons for its decision, Washington accused the agency of maintaining an unsustainable business model and practices, in particular providing assistance not only to the 700,000 people displaced from their homes in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but also to their descendants. The total number of registered Palestinian refugees qualifying for the UN assistance is over five million.

"The United States will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation," the State Department said. The US, which has been the agency's biggest donor, would no longer "shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden of UNRWA's costs," it stressed.

Comment: A manipulative ploy by the US to get the Palestinians to accept an upcoming Trump 'deal'?

See also: The US is/was the largest country donor to UNRWA, but certainly not the only one. See here.

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Vader

The US military is all over the African continent, and still expanding

Arkady Savitsky
Strategic Culture Foundation
Thu, 30 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC
Africa troops
© Uknown
Around 200,000 US troops are stationed in 177 countries throughout the world. Those forces utilize several hundred military installations. Africa is no exemption. On August 2, Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier took command of US Army Africa, promising to "hit the ground running."

The US is not waging any wars in Africa but it has a significant presence on the continent. Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and other special ops are currently conducting nearly 100 missions across 20 African countries at any given time, waging secret, limited-scale operations. According to the magazine Vice, US troops are now conducting 3,500 exercises and military engagements throughout Africa per year, an average of 10 per day - an astounding 1,900% increase since the command rolled out 10 years ago. Many activities described as "advise and assist" are actually indistinguishable from combat by any basic definition.

There are currently roughly 7,500 US military personnel, including 1,000 contractors, deployed in Africa. For comparison, that figure was only 6,000 just a year ago. The troops are strung throughout the continent spread across 53 countries. There are 54 countries on the "Dark Continent." More than 4,000 service members have converged on East Africa. The US troop count in Somalia doubled last year.

Comment: US military involvement in Africa of this scale is certainly news to most Americans.

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Vader

Gauleiter Kurt Volker sez US to rebuild Kiev's navy and air force


RFE/RL
Sat, 01 Sep 2018 10:02 UTC
US Envoy Ukraine Kurt Walker
© Serhil Nuzhnenko/RadioSvoboda.orgUS Envoy Ukraine Kurt Volker
The United States is ready to widen arms supplies to Ukraine to help build up the country's naval and air defense forces in the face of continuing Russian support for eastern separatists, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine told The Guardian.

Kurt Volker told the newspaper in an interview published on September 1 that pro-Western, anti-Russian sentiment was growing in Ukraine and that the Trump administration was "absolutely" prepared to go further in supplying weaponry to Ukrainian forces than the antitank missiles it delivered in April.

"They are losing soldiers every week defending their own country," Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in the interview.

"And so in that context it's natural for Ukraine to build up its military, engage in self-defense, and it's natural to seek assistance and is natural that other countries should help them. And of course they need lethal assistance because they're being shot at," he added.
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Star of David

How does Israel's right-wing maintain its grip on the country?

Danny Rubinstein
Middle East Eye
Fri, 31 Aug 2018 16:33 UTC
Neti and wife group
© AFPIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, Likud party members and activists.
In these waning days of summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his certainty that in the approaching but not yet scheduled elections, the Likud party he heads will score a dramatic achievement: at least 35 to 40 Knesset seats.

He is not exaggerating by much. The situation for Likud, like that of Israeli right-wing parties in general, looks as good as it ever has since the founding of Israel 70 years ago. Political competition in the country today is not between right and left, but among the right-wing parties themselves.

Likud, which has become an established party for the masses, is contending against the religious right wing and the ultra-Orthodox right wing. Alongside these, barely afloat, is the nationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu, founded by immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Comment: Israel was always going to tend extreme-right; sending European Jewish colonialists into a sea of Muslim Arabs could turn out no other way.

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Card - MC

Google, Mastercard secret deal tracks offline shopping to online ad clicks


RT
Sat, 01 Sep 2018 03:52 UTC
Mastercard Inc. credit cards
© Benoit Tessier/Illustration/ReutersMastercard Inc. credit cards
Google has reportedly partnered with Mastercard, the second largest credit card network in the US, to get millions of dollars worth of data on its customers, according to a bombshell report by Bloomberg.

The existence of a clandestine deal between the two market giants was first reported on Thursday. Citing "four people with the knowledge of the deal, three of whom worked on it directly," the magazine reported that the agreement, which is bound to stoke new privacy concerns, was the fruit of four years of negotiations.

The alleged deal allows Google to link ads that a user clicks to what they buy in stores using their card. If there's a match, Google provides feedback to the advertiser. The scheme works only if a customer is logged into a Google account and has not switched off Google Ad Tracking, a rather tricky process that takes several stages to accomplish.
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Star of David

Kerry: 'Netanyahu told me that all Mideast states lie all the time'


Sputnik
Sat, 01 Sep 2018 19:32 UTC
Netanyahu
© Times of IsraelIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
According to the former US secretary of state's memoirs, the Israeli prime minister expressed his willingness for significant compromise in talks with the Palestinian Authority - but that didn't stop him from rejecting a US-proposed security deal on the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Middle East states are constant liars in talks with then Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013, the former US top diplomat has revealed in his memoirs, entitled Every Day Is Extra. Kerry noted that the Israeli prime minister had shown "willingness to make tough compromises," but added that Netanyahu had recognized that even this might not have been enough for Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas.

"I met with Bibi at the King David Hotel. He looked me dead in the eye and said, 'John, I'm willing to give this effort a try, but there are two things you should know: first, everyone in this region lies all the time and you Americans have a hard time understanding that; second, the most I can do may be less than the least Abbas could ever accept,'" Kerry recalled.

At the same time, the former secretary of state said that it was Netanyahu who had at the last minute turned down the deal on withdrawing the IDF from the West Bank and replacing them with US troops. Kerry wrote that it showed him that the Israeli prime minister was not interested in the deal.

Comment: Lucy and the football: Every time a forward-moving proposal involving Israel and the Palestinian crisis gains traction, Netanyahu yanks the deal. Willingness? No. It is one of Israel's standard diplomatic forms of lying of which Bibi is the master.

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Megaphone

Bloomberg breaks confidentiality and leaks Trump's "off the record" remarks about trade war with Canada


RT
Fri, 31 Aug 2018 09:07 UTC
Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto
© Chris Helgren / ReutersWorkers remove letters from the "TRUMP" sign on top of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto, Canada July 18, 2017.
Donald Trump again blasted the media for 'dishonest reporting' after 'off the record' remarks about Canada he made in an interview with Bloomberg somehow made it into the Toronto Star newspaper.

Trump took to Twitter on Friday, saying that the "powerful understanding" between Bloomberg and him was "blatantly violated" by the leak of his comments that weren't intended for public dissemination. He said that it was yet another example of "dishonest reporting," which he already got used to since moving into the White House.

"At least Canada knows where I stand," Trump added, thus confirming the authenticity of the leak.


Comment: Politicians make these kind of off the record remarks all the time - although Trump often just says them on Twitter - and reporters generally honour this agreement, however this time someone decided to break with protocol and leak them - perhaps to coincide with the other media concocted Trump 'scandals' in a bid to further calls for his impeachment: Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Senator McCain is Dead! Trump Impeachment For Real? Imminent Syria 'Chemical Attack'

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Dollars

Crushing currencies spreading chaos

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Sat, 01 Sep 2018 18:49 UTC
Dollar and Rial
© iStockIran oil exports will likely drop to just over 2 million barrels a day pushing the rial lower.
The Iranian rial: crash. The Turkish lira: crash. The Argentine peso: crash. The Brazilian real: crash. There are multiple, complex, parallel vectors at play in this wilderness of crashing currencies. Turkey's case is heavily influenced by the bubble of easy credit created by European banks.

Argentina's problem is mostly to do with the neoliberal austerity of President Mauricio Macri's government admitting it won't be able to fulfill payment targets agreed with the IMF less than three months ago.

Iran's has to do with harsh United States sanctions imposed after the Trump administration's unilateral pullout from the Iran nuclear deal.

Brazil's has to do with what the Goddess of the Market considers anathema: a victory by the imprisoned Lula (former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) or his appointed candidate in the presidential election next October.

This is a serious currency crisis affecting key emerging markets. Three of these - Brazil, Argentina and Turkey - are G20 members, and Iran, absent external pressure, would have everything to qualify as a member. Two - Iran and Turkey - are under US sanctions while the other two, at least for the moment, are firmly within Washington's orbit.

Now, compare it with currencies that are gaining against the US dollar: the Ukrainian hryvnia, the Georgian lari and the Colombian peso. Not exactly G20 heavyweights - and all of them also inside Washington's influence.
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