Rachel Blevins, a correspondent for RT America: Today I was locked out of my Facebook account for four hours, and my public page was “unpublished.” There appears to be no explanation for this other than the vague claim from Facebook that my page was taken down because it was “administered by a fake account, misleading users or violating the Facebook spam policies.” I am the only person who publishes posts on my page; the only posts I publish are articles I have written or videos of my reports, and I only post one or two times a day — which rules out all of the claims that I have violated Facebook’s policies. My page had nearly 70,000 followers before it was taken down. I have poured the last four years into building my page as a journalist, and I have noticed recently that the reach seems to have been stifled and that the engagement on my posts was down significantly. I know that I am not the only one who has become a victim of this purge, and there are hundreds of other pages — many of which had millions of followers — that have been taken down with no warning and no explanation.
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Internet Censorship Just Took An Unprecedented Leap Forward, And Hardly Anyone Noticed
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—he best way to deal with a manipulative sociopath is to point and make a lot of noise every time they do something weird and creepy. The more you let them abuse you in private, the more they can rope you in and get you playing along with their sick agendas. If you notice them doing something weird, the best way to nullify all the tools in their wicked little toolbox is to point and yell “Hey! What are you doing?? Why are you doing that? That’s weird!” Get people looking, because such beasts can’t advance their manipulations with a lot of critical eyes on them.
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The US-Led Genocide and Destruction of Yemen
DAVID W. PEAR—The US dominated United Nations adds a fig leaf of legality to the blockade, and a one-sided weapons embargo against Yemen. To ask why there is no UN arms embargo against Saudi Arabia is, of course, a rhetorical question.
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Who Doesn’t Love Identity Politics?
CJ HOPKINS—The corporate media, academia, Hollywood, and the other components of the culture industry are similarly invested in keeping the vast majority of people ignorant and confused. The folks who populate this culture industry, in addition to predicating their sense of self-worth on their superiority to the unwashed masses, enjoy spending time with the ruling classes, and reaping the many benefits of serving them…
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The US military’s vision for state censorship
ANDRE DAMON—The Atlantic Council, a think tank with close ties to the highest levels of the state, has been a key partner in the social media companies’ censorship of left-wing views. Most notably, Facebook acted on a tip from the Atlantic Council when it shut down the official event page for an anti-fascist demonstration in Washington on the anniversary of last year’s neo-Nazi riot in Charlottesville.
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Iran’s definitive account of the Iraq war: Written by a female Iraqi Kurd
RAMIN MAZAHERI—But ho-hum, more misreporting on Iran. In other news: the sun rose this morning. This is just life for all socialist-inspired democratic revolutions – Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, China, etc., have all had their sufferings ignored, their mistakes amplified and their successes denied. To even raise this point makes one an unthinking “apologist”, an Islamofascist, a totalitarian commie, blah blah blah.
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Please Remember Not to Vote!
CJ HOPKINS—Other questions, like whether to invade or just strategically bomb Iran or Syria, or some other non-ball-playing Middle East country, or pour billions more in military aid into Israel, or sell billions in weapons to Saudi Arabia, or foment a coup in Venezuela, or maintain almost eight hundred military outposts in over seventy foreign countries all around the world, are questions that do not require your input.
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60 Minutes Leslie Stahl: Perfect Shill for the Eternal Imperial War Machine
P. GREANVILLE—The exchange should be studied in J-schools for what it shows, but am sure it won’t, as it is in this morally twisted fashion that the American press—and the nation’s journalism schools—discharge their duties to the American population and the rest of the world.
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Facebook Purges US-Based Independent Media For Political Disinformation
WHITNEY WEBB—While MintPress’ Facebook page and Twitter account are still active, reach on both platforms has been reduced dramatically in recent months, as both social-media giants began to ramp up censorship efforts following the 2016 U.S. elections. (1) For instance, MintPress’ Facebook reach — meaning how many Facebook users see MintPress posts — has been only a fraction of the page’s more than 400,000 fans on the platform, with most posts averaging only around 10,000 views according to Facebook’s analytics.
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