Cencorship

I just got  this email from Antiwar.com. No link so I have reprinted most of it. The West prides itself on freedom of speech, but the MSM, mainly owned by six corporations, puts out fake news (propaganda) and wants to close down the real news. Millions of people go to alternative news outlets to get their news and they know what's going on. This makes life difficult for the warmongers and neoconservatives. When I read the Guardian I see how ordinary people are brainwashed into hating Putin.  Washington has flattened Afghanistan, Iraq, caused a bloodthirsty colour revolution in Libya, and is doing the same in Syria. Putin put a stop to their rampage so now he's made out to be evil. Even my liberal friends think he is evil, while what Washington did to the Middle East is considered a lesser evil, even though millions are dead and millions more have had their lives ruined.  

Antiwar.com Fights Censorship

Dear Readers of Antiwar.com.

I'm a big fan of Twitter, where I spend an inordinate amount of time, and so I was quite surprised – and even shocked – to find that they're censoring my tweets. One of my Twitter followers tweeted at me that he couldn't read my tweets because Twitter was blanking them out, with the warning that they contained "sensitive material." He had to click on a special button in order to read them: then he had to go to his settings and agree to receive my oh-so-"sensitive" tweets.


What's going on?


It's "sensitive" to tell the truth these days. It can get you in trouble. It can get you censored. And that's exactly what the Establishment is aiming for: total and complete censorship of the Internet, whether done by corporate titans or by governments.


The Internet is the biggest threat to the War Party ever: the fact that anyone can be a publisher, and potentially reach millions of people, has broken their monopoly on the media. And control of the media has always been the key to their success in pulling the wool over our eyes.


That control is now ended – but they aren't admitting defeat. Instead they're launching a counter-offensive. No, they can't abolish the Internet: it's too late for that. Instead, they seek to tame it, to rein it in, and make of it an instrument in their hands. In Europe, governments are moving to outright censor offending material. Here in America, their tactics are more subtle, but the effect is the same: they're getting the cooperation of corporate giants like Facebook and Google to suppress "fake news.": the big corporate collaborators with power are "filtering" the news so that it buries dissenting voices.


Well, they won't bury Antiwar.com.


We've been a thorn in the side of the War Party since our founding in 1995. They'd like nothing better than to see us go away. Our audience and our reach has expanded exponentially in the past twenty years. Today we are the biggest most influential site devoted to foreign affairs.


And power just can't stand it. The FBI even wrote a memo some years ago characterizing us as "agents of a foreign power" – they didn't say which foreign power – and launched a "preliminary investigation." Since that time, we've appeared on several blacklists compiled by the usual suspects: we're "unreliable," "extremist," "anti-American"! The Washington Post gave front-page prominence to one of these blacklists, compiled by an anonymous group of smear-mongers, claiming we were "Russian agents of influence."


This is a very ominous trend: their goal is to criminalize critics of American foreign policy. Congress is now moving to "investigate" the "subversive" activities of those they deem to be "pro-Russian." WikiLeaks has already been demonized and sanctioned. The next step is to go after all those other "agents of influence" who ask uncomfortable questions about America's role in the world.


Do you oppose NATO? You must be a "Kremlin stooge"!


So you want the US to mind it's own business and not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations? You're "anti-American"!


Legislation establishing a "Russia Commission" is already in the works: a "special counsel" to "investigate" "foreign influence" in the United States. It brings to mind the old House Un-American Activities Committee, which brought dissidents up on charges – and jailed them. And their focus is "subversive" activities on the Internet.


Yes, we here at Antiwar.com are subversive! We're challenging and proudly subverting the narrative that the United States must police the world. We're questioning the justification for 16 years of uninterrupted warfare. We want the US out of the entangling alliance the Founding Fathers warned against – and we won't be happy until the many tripwires that that inevitably lead to war are pulled up and discarded.


If this is "subversion," if this makes us "agents of a foreign power," then so be it. Let the War Party make the most of it!


As a US President once said in a different context: "Bring it on!"