To all of our Library Defenders: Our next Citizens Defending Libraries meeting, will be Sunday, March 6th, 5:00 PM, On Zoom.
Of course, we will talk about a lot of things as usual, but the prime topic for conversation?:
Censorship.
This page will be updated (including possibly with suggestions from you?) with some suggested links to read before you come to the meeting.
(or maybe you want to read some of our past CDL posts on the subject here.)
[Added After The Meeting: For those who did not make it to the meeting a recording of it is currently available here. Plus, at the end of this post there are even more links about censorship that have now also been added post meeting.]
Here is the information to come.
Topic: Citizens Defending Libraries Zoom Meeting On Censorship
Time: Mar 6, 2022 05:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
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Here is recent stuff about censorship:
People may know that when Joe Rogan was being criticized, Spotify took down his episodes about the Saudi Regime and Julian Assange.
This is new from Caitlin Johnstone-
Spotify Purges Dissident Voices In Latest Censorship Escalation, Caitlin Johnstone, March 3, 2022.
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There is a new fascinatingly funny video out that's about censorship. If you watch it, and think for a minute you''l realize how very much about censorship it is, how censorship has become ingrained, part of the air we breath so much so that we've almost stopped noticing it, and notice it more via its sudden absence whenever that is the case. Hence, it's something the video demonstrates in more ways than one, meta included.
Some of us, myself as one, may go back long enough to remember Saturday Night Live when it first started airing and to have tracked, more or less, the show's transitions through various phases over the years.
Although we took SNL to have a more healthy irreverence in earlier days, in recent years many of us have observed that it became very unfunny as it dutifully aligned itself with the rest of corporate and NBC propaganda. This included unfair ad hominum attacks on Julian Assange accusing him of being a Russian asset; it promoted Russigate conspiracy thinking in general. Was a new low just reached when the standard comic opening skit was ditched in favor of opening somberly with a choral group of blue-eyed blonds in Ukranian garb singing a hymn?
Clearly, SLN was once able to be transgressive, so much so that in 1998 it produced an animated song skit about media consolidation and control by our militaristic corporate overlords that NBC immediately excised from any rebroadcast or availability and has been vigorously swatting from the internet ever since. (The 1998 Robert Smigel animated short film "Conspiracy Theory Rock," part of a March 1998 "TV Funhouse" segment is embedded here.)
The question about this brand new, remarkable, genuinely funny, and important video is why was it allowed to be produced and aired given that SNL humor is now so tightly policed and this seems so counter to what is supposedly the official narrative?
Here is the video:
Saturday Night Live COVID Dinner Discussion
Published February 27, 2022
* * * *
We have strongly advocated against not getting suckered into what we see as the divide-and-conquer RedTeam/Blue Team trap.
Now, if we do get sucked into seeing the world in RedTeam/Blue Team divisions, and lots of people partisanly enlist as members of the "Blue Team," then we may now be sunk or at least have a real uphill battle in terms of free speech. People who favor free speech might be immediately in the minority, with the majority in favor of having the government and/or Big Tech censor our news and define our narratives.
See chart below:
This chart was included in Glenn Greenwald's article: Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor "Whistleblower" Frances Haugen is a vital media and political asset because she advances their quest for greater control over online political discourse. By Glenn Greenwald, October 5, 2021.
Our opinion? Government and the Big Tech monopolies are only fictively different, they are really melded and operating as one of the same.
Things are happening very fast. Facebook has recently advocated for new censorship rules to apply to the entire internet. Canada is now looking at legislation that would do exactly that.
Another example of where we are going is that the New York Times ran a piece recently that:
• Proposes to redefine censorship out of existence (as we once did "torture"?)
• Seeks to create a we/they division amongst the populace, the people who `very sensibly' understand that only the mainstream corporate narrative should be believed, and the `bad,' 'inferior' people who are necessitating harm-reduction information control that the rest of 'us' don't actually need, because the inferior people are so susceptible to crazy ideas 'we' would never consider.
See: YouTube’s Ban on Misinformation- And why it isn’t about us.- Restrictive Rules Are Less about Censorship and more about Thwarting Real World Harm, By Shira Ovide, October 5, 2021
This NY Times piece advocating that we redefine censorship out of existence actually proposes some false information as fact within its text. It is also very similar in several ways to the presentation propaganda-meister Cass Sunstein made when he came on WBAI's air cloaking his real identity and associations. See: Jeff Simmons interviewing censorship advocate Cass Sunstein who was saying that we should change our Constitution to allow for greater censorship.
Not everyone leaning to the left is in favor of censorship as Glenn Greenwald is warning about. When one Friday morning Democracy Now recently ran what was widely viewed as another pro-censorship story, after running others tilting that way, by Sunday evening there were over 2,700 comments (far more now) on the YouTube version of that segment excoriating Democracy Now for losing its compass and betraying its original brand and mission.
Censorship or Achieving Its Equivalent With “Cancel Culture,” “Kill The Messenger” (Various Means Used), Or Toxifying The Messenger And/Or Debate And Message-
Cancel Culture Censorship
One reason we keep recommending episodes from Pacifica's "Project Censored Show" (where Citizens Defending Libraries has been covered) is because there are so many of them that are really good.
We recommend this recent discussion of censorship and efforts at information and public discourse control that can hit closest to home for us- The kind of censorship we ourselves often author and potentially launch from the left, so-called “Cancellation Culture”:
Dan Kovalik Speaks About his Latest Work, Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture, July 20, 2021
There is also an earlier, shorter, worthwhile Project Censored Show segment with anti-war activist Dan discussing his book: Shahid Buttar and Dan Kovalik, April 7, 2021 (Dan's interview starts the second half hour of the program at the halfway mark: 28:50)
Kill The Messenger
The precepts and practices of “Cancel Culture” placing certain thoughts out of bounds, bleeds over into a time honored method of narrative control: “Kill The Messenger.” While “Cancel Culture” involves a narrowing orthodoxy of what is permissible to think or say and how to express it, kill the messenger is directed at keeping what might be said unheard and unconsidered, precluding those then unheard thoughts and ideas from surviving based on their own merits.
“Kill the Messenger” can take many forms including actually assassinating important spokespersons like Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, or Martin Luther King, Jr.
It can involve locking people up and holding them incommunicado, cut off from normal means of communication, like Journalist and peace pursuer Julian Assange, anti-war whistleblower Daniel Hale, Journalist and former UK ambassador Craig Murray who was covering the Assange trial.
It can involve ad hominem vilification and often maliciously false or unfairly prejudicial discrediting attacks like those against Greta Thunberg (derided for being, like Assange, on the autism spectrum), Ralph Nader (responsible for some of the most important legislation in the 1970 and 80s- including Clean Air and Clean Water acts), tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand (the film “The Insider” documents this along with how the tobacco industry caused CBS news to censor and skew its reporting of a story harmful to the industry), Gary Webb, and environmental justice lawyer Steve Donziger. In the entertainment realm personages attacked this way include: Charlie Chaplin, Josephine Baker (another civil rights threat), John Lennon and Paul Robeson. We won’t include the attacks on the Dixie Chicks, because, instead of being ad hominem, they were attacked so vigorously specifically for what they said: Expressing sentiments against the US going to war in Iraq.
Such vilification and malicious discrediting attacks can be punishing enough, but “Kill The Messenger” can also involve simple outright efforts to punish, as with environmental justice lawyer Steve Donziger now imprisoned for over 900 days the only real reason being that he won a case against Chevron for oil company pollution of the Amazon. The imprisonments that keep people incommunicado also effect such punishing. When such punishings are high profile enough to be well known within a profession then they also serve as examples that will cause others to self-censor and refrain the professional integrity of actually doing their job. That’s even the case when any outrage associated with such punishings goes widely unreported to the public by the corporately owned mainstream media as is the case with Steve Donziger and journalist Julian Assange. But after seeing the kind of psychological torture to which Julian Assange has been subjected, what journalist would not think twice about whether to follow his footsteps in being so bold and forthright in speaking truth to power and revealing its secret crimes?
Toxification of Messengers and Messages
Closely related to “Killing The Messenger” is toxification of the messenger. After that, the message itself my be toxified.
One way to toxify messengers is to use agent provocateurs. For instance, a nonviolent Black Lives Matters demonstration after the murder of George Floyd might be infiltrated by poseurs who provoke and engage in violence and behavior that will viewed as objectionable. In much the same way, someone who is not entirely sincere might try to distract from certain legitimate theories by proposing a deliberately inane variation on the thinking that can be mocked. Or they might even be sincere in their inane thinking (or just trying to be sensational to grab a quick buck), and get propped up by moneyed interests insincerely trying to promote the inane alternative for for purposes of confusing and toxifying the message.
The same way that a Black Lives Matters demonstration can be discredited if infiltrated by nonlegitimate participants, a parallel sort of thing can probably be done at the financial level, where amounts of money, not necessarily large, can be sent to support a legitimate demonstration or movement, while carefully laying a trail of breadcrumbs back to a perhaps illegitimate financier with a reputation than can be attacked.
The divide and conquer divisions of the country in all sort of various ways, one of the biggest and most important being the Red Team/Blue Team divisions in politics, sets the country up for wholesale toxification of messages. Despite the fact that, cutting across the dividing duopoly party lines, supermajorities of American agree and want the same thing with respect to more than a score of the most important issues, we are not supposed to be talking across party lines and/or divisions and agreeing about things. And that means thoughts and ideas should not stand and be considered on their own merit. Why? because they are toxified by the division. If Trump said something, then for some people it automatically meant the opposite must be true, even if Trump were to say something that was right.
So, for instance, we know of a sermon/homily given by a certain Catholic priest that eloquently expresses a warning and caution based on the well documented history of Big Pharma companies and the U.S. government experimenting grievously on our citizens without their knowledge or consent. Yet as eloquent or accurate as that social justice oriented sermon is, it cannot be readily shared because that priest has positions about abortion and labor unions that are unacceptably right wing to too many people.
In that case the message is toxified because the particular speaker has other idea viewed as unacceptable. As with the Red Team/Blue team divisions we've been coaxed into, ideas and messages can also be toxified by their association with groups that tend to hold other ideas. And, just as conclusions of guilt by association can readily apply to our conclusions about people, ideas, messages and beliefs can be toxified via guilt by association: One idea or message can be toxified by associating it as frequently being in the same company of another idea viewed as toxic.
One of the sets of ideas that our government is now working feverishly to toxify is any idea that our government or establishment media can label as a "conspiracy theory." In basic terms, a conspiracy theory is that powerful people may have gotten together in secret to make plans for their own benefit, the public benefit or harm perhaps being largely disregarded. Now, with power increasingly concentrated in just a few people around the world (during Covid the wealth, and presumably power, of the ten wealthiest men in the world doubled), the powerful want to tell us that such things just don't happen. . at least not whenever they choose to label them "conspiracy theories."
The Department of Homeland Security tells us that the "United States remains in a heightened threat" because of "false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories," which it now labels with a shorthand acronym ("MDM") standing for "mis- dis- and mal-information." These, they say come from "threat actors" who can "exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest." That, it is important to note, they say can lead to "violence." They say the threat of violence is presented and heightened because "false or misleading narratives, and conspiracy theories" converge with "violent extremist ideologies."
Their for instances? It threatening when the public believes in "election fraud" (like in Bush v. Gore?), and threatening when the public doesn't believe what the government and Fauci tells it about Covid (which is a problem since Fauci has been so inconsistent, changing his story, often wrong, and has admitting to lying more than once.)
DHS says it "is working with public and private sector partners, as well as foreign counterparts, to identify and evaluate MDM, including false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms that endorse or could inspire violence."
DHS tells the public that it should "recognize and build resilience to false or misleading narratives," and that the the public will be exercising "media literacy" if it works to listen mainly to the corporately owned mainstream media, which it characterizes as "well-known" and "trusted," and maybe like NBC as the example DHS gives.
Unlimited Hangout- Technocracy: The Operating System For The New International Rules-Based Order - The International Rules-Based Order (IRBO) is under threat and global power is shifting. As East and West rekindle old enmities we are led to believe that this struggle will determine the future of international relations and the direction of nation states. However, the global transformation is not led by national governments but by a global network of stakeholders and global technocracy is their goal. by, Iain Davis, February 22, 2022
. . . Recently the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that undermining trust in the government was achieved by individuals spreading “false” narratives and that this was tantamount to terrorism. In other words, no US citizen has any right to question government policy. If they do, they are spreading disinformation. Consequently, the DHS suggests that not trusting the government should be prosecuted as a crime.
This is the claimed justification for the focus of the new domestic terrorism unit working alongside the US Justice Department’s National Security Division. Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen told a Senate Judiciary Committee that the unit was created to combat the growing threat of “extremism,” which apparently includes “anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”
To question either “authority” or “government” is an extremist position, according to the US Justice Department and the DHS. There is no room for freedom of speech in the government’s extremist ideology. Without freedom of speech, US democracy is finished.
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The democratic tradition of sovereign individuals, exercising their rights and coming together to pursue their shared interests is what the UK government call the “democratic deficit.” Their intention, with their proposal for their new Bill of Rights, is to allow those who comply with their diktats some “elbow room” to live a relatively “normal” existence.
However, by defining what is in the “broader public interest,” they will curtail the liberties which they deem to be useless or harmful. “[T]he individual cannot be the judge, but the State only.” For example, the explanatory notes for the imminent Online Safety Act, The UK government announced:
“The Online Safety Bill establishes a new regulatory regime to address illegal and harmful content online, with the aim of preventing harm to individuals.”
The current Bill defines whatever the government deems to be disinformation or misinformation as “content that is harmful to adults.” Freedom of speech and expression online will effectively be terminated by the forthcoming legislation. The UK state will not allow social media users to share any information without official approval. This is equivalent to the current situation in China.
PS: Everything below is being added after the meeting we held, but is all quite relevant to what we talked about.
DuckDuckGo announces it will change its algorithms with respect to Ukraine and becomes #DuckDuckGone. There is a huge amount of discussion about the situation in Ukraine going on right now. In fact, to a large extent it is supplanting other significant discussions. Infused into that Ukraine discussion is a vast amount of propaganda and misinformation that includes propaganda and misinformation from the United States and NATO countries and from Russia. The DuckDuckGo search engine, an alternative to Google, has long marketed itself as having the benefit that searches conducted through DuckDuckGo are theoretically private and not tracked. However, people have also been particularly attracted to using the alternative search engine because its searches weren't skewed like Google's increasingly are to eliminate narratives and information that may be more antiestablishment in nature.
DuckDuckGo may therefore have really hobbled is business prospects, disappointing those who were drawn to it from the latter reason, because it just announced that it is adjusting its algorithms: Now the only Ukraine war propaganda it will let see when you search with it will be U.S. and NATO propaganda, and everything DuckDuckGo deems Russian propaganda or misinformation will be suppressed by its algorithm. That's why we became aware of it when the #DuckDuckGone hashtag started trending on Twitter. The search company was apparently responding to government initiatives on required information suppression that may similarly affect other tech companies. Will a company that is so compliant about propaganda be resolute when it comes to privacy protection? Here a link to a video with more analysis:
One of the victims of a new round of censorship that YouTube is justifying for purposes of managing the narrative respecting the war in the Ukraine is Lee Camp. Here are his tweets about having his being censored, about how YouTube deleted his years of anti-war and anti-corporate work in a
matter of minutes, and how with Facebook, Spotify and YouTube all censoring him
he is pretty sure he’s
“the most censored comedian in America who hasn't sexually assaulted someone.” Also censored and loosing 600 posted interviews and reports is ant-war journalist Abby Martin. Here is her tweet about that:
Here is Jimmy Dore’s analysis of YouTube’s war censorship standards (
`Would reporting that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was faked have been banned under such a policy?’):
YouTube Censoring Anti-Ukraine War Coverage, March 13, 2022. Here's Dore's take on #DuckDuckGone:
DuckDuckGo DESTROYS Brand By Embracing Censorship, March 13, 2022.
Meanwhile, in another arena of censorship. . . .Kim Iversen was censored. Kim Iversen has risen on The Hill’s “Rising” show to become something close to the show’s regular centerpiece after the corporate media Washington D.C. show had to rejigger to replace hosts after Krystal and Saagar departed (to go independent- and less censored?- with “Breaking Points”). The Hill ran a segment where Kim Iversen reported on the what the court ordered release of Pfizer documents (only the first tranche of many more documents ordered to be released over the next year) revealed about potential adverse effects from the company’s mRNA vaccine and what Pfizer and likely the FDA knew about them but had not been informing the public about. Was it an an especially good Rising episode?: Because it was quickly censored! "Kim Iversen: Pfizer Vax Docs Released By COURT ORDER, Data Will Tell The STORY About Side Effects (after a 309K views 1 day ago (Now it's "private" and disappeared!)
Somehow the broadcast was preserved in a friend's Facebook post (interesting!), and from the segment's opening we learn that this censorship is the second time a version of this Iversen Pfizer vaccaine side effects segment was taken down so, last checked, you can still see it.
While there was no direct mention of the Hill’s censorship of the two versions of this segment, The Hill quite interesting published (two days after the censoring taking down of the last version) a segment (read between the lines?) where Iversen reported (“YouTube has struck again”- “Free Speech Dead?) on the suspension of her own YuoTube channel for violation of YouTube’s “medical misinformation policy” for reporting about Covid. The Hill segment provides an insight into the intimidating structure of YouTube’s censorship. See: Kim Iversen Is SUSPENDED From YouTube Over Segment On Covid Therapeutic Study, March 14, 2022
Here is another form of selective censorship we've noticed in the last several days. If civilian causalities are reported as the result of Ukrainian shelling of eastern (ethnically "Russian") portions of the Ukraine, Twitter is labeling it
"sensitive content" you probably don't want to view and won't be allowed to view without changing your Twitter settings, but if there are civilian causalities reported as the result of Russian shelling in the Ukraine, it will not get this
"sensitive content" suppression treatment.
Aqirah Stanley, Deputy Director of Alliance of Families for Justice- Aqirah Stanley, has been an active member of Alliance of Families for Justice since January 2018. She started out as AFJ’s first Shirley Chisholm Fellow, and then became AFJ's Project Manager before stepping into the role as Deputy Director. As a directly impacted person, Aqirah fully understands the trauma and challenges of incarceration on families and children and wholeheartedly supports the use of collective action as a driving force of change, healing, and empowerment. Aqirah has been a passionate visionary and an asset to AFJ since day one, and looks forward to continuing to create opportunities for AFJ to unite and empower directly-impacted families and friends, as well as allies and volunteers.
Victor Pate, New York Campaign For Alternatives To Isolated Confinement Statewide Campaign Organizer - Victor Pate brings years of organizing experience into his role as a NY statewide organizer and a formerly incarcerated individual. He is a founding member and chairman of the National Action Network NYC Chapter Second Chance Committee, and an active coalition member of several criminal justice, prisoner advocacy and legislative reform organizations. He has and is overcoming the many barriers and hurdles systemically in place that prevent people with current and previous criminal justice involvement from fully and completely reintegrating into society.
Angel Solis, is the Project Coordinator for the Youth Empowerment Project at the Alliance of Families for Justice. The Youth Empowerment Project is a youth community leadership training program. Mr. Solis was born and raised in the Bronx and was previously incarcerated for a total of ten years. While in prison, Mr. Solis was fortuitously placed in a prison with a college program and took advantage of a free education. In 2016, Mr. Solis, desirous of a college degree, was released from prison and was accepted at Columbia University. He graduated in 2021 with a B.A. in Sociology. Mr. Solis is a firm believer in the revolutionary power of education and truth and it is because of this belief that he has committed his life to its proliferation
Uwimana Aisha Radellant, Currently, attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a full-time student in the Public Administration in Public Policy, Master’s Program specializing in Criminal Justice Reform. Began a second specialization in Management and Operations in the fall of 2021, to be completed December of 2022. David Rockefeller Fund Fellow. Won the Victor Hassine Memorial Award. Mentor at the Institute for Justice and Opportunity, formerly known as the Prison Reentry Institute, and Mentor for both the Justice Institute and College and Community Fellowship. Former participant of the College and Community Fellowship WISH Policy Program. A survivor of the American criminal injustice system. “My traumatic first-hand interactions with the misrepresentation cloaked in the falsehood of American justice infuriated me into action. I felt I had no choice but to dedicate my life’s work to addressing this shameless, unrelenting system of inequality systematically designed to forever suppress and subjugate all people of color. My personal experience of `innocent until proven guilty’ proved this phrase is simply that, nothing but hollow words that only applies to the wealthy.
Elder Louis D. Rodriguez, MPS, A native Brooklynite who served 26 years of a 20 years to life sentence. Past Lead Mentor, Edenwald Arches, FEDCAP Rehabilitation Services, Past vice president of Jefferson & Sons LLC, a real estate management firm, Ruling Elder & Clerk of Session, The Church of Gethsemane, (PCUSA), General Board, New York City Presbytery, Co-Chair, Self-Development of People (SDOP) committee, New York City Presbytery, Lifetime Member, Uptown Democratic Party, New York City Election Poll Worker, New York County Board of Elections
