Caleb analyses the mainstream media reaction to Nina Jankowicz’s bizarre TikTok video, and DHS’ creation of a “Disinformation Governance Board”, evoking Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—“I’m concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda,” US Senator Mark Warner tweeted on Friday.
Since then YouTube has announced that it has suppressed videos by Russian state media channels so that they’ll be seen by fewer people in accordance with its openly acknowledged policy of algorithmically censoring unauthorized content, as well as de-monetizing all such videos on the platform. Google and Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta both banned Russian state media from running ads and monetizing on their platforms in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Twitter announced a pause on ads in both Russia and Ukraine.
“Glad to see action from tech companies to reign in Russian propaganda and disinformation after my letter to their CEOs yesterday,” Warner tweeted on Saturday. “These are important first steps, but I’ll keep pushing for more.”
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MATT EHRET—After seven years of civil war in East Ukraine, 14 thousand casualties, broken peace deals and countless appeals by those living in the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics for independence from the Nazi-infested militias embedded in the Kiev defense forces, Russia decided to finally recognize the East Ukrainian republics as sovereign nations. A few days later, Russia unleashed a program of de-militarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine featuring targetted military strikes that (as of this writing) have annihilated over 74 military bases, US biolabs and entrenched radical neo-nazi forces that have been entrenched in the Ukrainian military since 2014.
But despite this completely understandable humanitarian intervention which is provably NOT an annexation, we see endless instances of western sock-puppet statesmen denouncing Russia’s “imperial ambitions and antagonism to western democratic values.”
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P. GREANVILLE—Being the most rabidly capitalistic, the Anglo-American business class and its political allies bear the most responsibility for this tragedy. Domestically, and for generations now, administration after administration has dragged its feet in terms of decisive environmental protection and restoration, when not actively behaving as a pimp handing over the nation’s natural assets to the business suits for what amounts in most cases to a pittance.
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ALEX RUBINSTEIN—On Tuesday, billionaires Reid Hoffman and George Soros launched Good Information Inc., a “public benefit corporation” to serve as a conduit of funds to newsrooms that “cut through the echo chambers with fact-based information.” On its website, Good Information further describes itself as a “civic incubator” aimed at fostering and financially backing projects that “counter disinformation where it spreads by increasing the flow of good information online.”
But more than merely providing an alternative to bad information through their own reporting, the company suggests that censorship is also on the menu: “We believe there is an urgent need for regulation of social media platforms,” their website states.
