Geen evolutie en ecolutie zonder revolutie!

Albert Einstein:

Twee dingen zijn oneindig: het universum en de menselijke domheid. Maar van het universum ben ik niet zeker.
Posts tonen met het label M. Gaetz. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label M. Gaetz. Alle posts tonen

vrijdag 29 mei 2020

Trump wil sociale media ontdoen van factcheckers die de Republikeinen de bel aanbinden vanwege nepnieuws en andere bagger

De enorme ploert Zuckerberg had het vorig jaar goed gezien, toen hij stelde dat Facebook in aanloop van de verkiezingen leugens van politici zal tolereren, terwijl hij daarvoor maar niet op kon houden te beloven dat Facebook elke bemoeienis met de verkiezingen op haar platform zou verwijderen. Sterker nog: hij ging zelfs zover om toe te geven dat Facebook door de Russen werd gebruikt om de verkiezingen van 2016 in de VS te manipuleren, dit middels zielige advertenties die wat betreft de financiële waarde totaal in het niet vielen bij de enorme bedragen waarmee bedrijven en de superwelgestelden hun presidentskandidaat 'pluggen.....'

Alsof een aantal advertenties voor borsjt en wodka de VS burgers zover hebben kunnen krijgen dat ze op Trump stemden, terwijl ze dagelijks een hele berg stront geserveerd kregen waarmee de één dan wal de ander werd besmeurd als totaal onkundig voor het ambt van president...... En zie wat daarvan is gekomen: een psychopathische seksist en moordenaar met ronduit fascistische uitingen als president van het machtigste land op aarde, de VS....

Deze president die vooral regeert via Twitter was de klos toen men zijn Twitterberichten op waarheid ging controleren en concludeerde dat er geen barst van een paar van zijn berichten klopten en daarbij een waarschuwing plaatsten met links naar berichten uit de media...... Trump beweerde dat stemmen per post fruade in de hand werkt, terwijl daar nooit enig bewijs voor werd geleverd..... Nee, Trump heeft geen zin om alsnog zijn achterlijke uitlatingen te verdedigen als wel waarheidsgetrouw (wat hij niet kan, maar hij had minstens een poging kunnen doen...) Trump kiest 'de strategie' die bekend staat als: 'de aanval is de beste verdediging.....' Als hij wel had geprobeerd zichzelf te verdedigen was hij uiteraard zwaar door de mand gevallen, immers wat krom is kan je niet recht lullen, zelfs Trump niet en dat nog niet met duizend liter ontsmettingsmiddel, al dan niet geïnjecteerd........

De Republikeinen die al lang stellen dat de sociale media vooral door 'links' worden misbruikt om hun partij onderuit te halen, wilden al langer nieuwe regels voor die media.... Weet niet hoe het hier zit, maar in de VS worden platforms als Twitter en Facebook niet gezien als publicisten, maar als een platform waar anderen berichten en andere zaken publiceren. Aan dat laatste wil Trump nu een eind maken, zodat deze platforms zich moeten gedragen als de eerste beste nieuwszender of krant en verantwoordelijk zijn voor wat er wordt gepubliceerd.... Wellicht denk je: wat is daarop tegen? Welnu meer dan genoeg, zo zullen deze platforms worden gedwongen om berichten van hun platform te halen als deze in strijd zijn met de belangen van de Republikeinse Partij*, of als zij schadelijk zijn voor (grote) bedrijven......

Natuurlijk hebben platforms als Twitter niet de kans om berichten dusdanig te brengen dat ze geen bewijs zijn voor een partij als die van de Republikeinen voor het herroepen wat men heeft geschreven, immers Twitter maakt die berichten niet..... Met andere woorden, gebruikers van platforms als Facebook en Twitter kunnen een grote golf censuur verwachten, daar de enige mogelijkheid die overblijft om vervolging te voorkomen zal bestaan uit het eenvoudigweg verwijderen van berichten.......

Het is nu al zo dat Twitter haar gebruikers waarschuwt voor berichten die aangeven waar het aan ontbreekt in de politiek, dan wel berichten waar politici aan de paal worden genageld voor onbeschofte voorstellen en bijvoorbeeld voor het zaaien van haat..... Zag gisteren op Twitter een waarschuwing voor een account van 'Lieve Linkse': 'Caution: This profile may include potentially sensitive content. You’re seeing this warning because they Tweet potentially sensitive images or language. Do you still want to view it?' Ongelofelijk, zeker als je ziet wat Lieve Linkse @LieveLinkse op Twitter zet, wat mij betreft redelijk gematigde kritiek, maar wel volkomen terechte kritiek!!

Je kan er de klok op gelijkzetten dat men ook in andere westerse landen naar mogelijkheden zal gaan zoeken, om niet welgevallige informatie in het geheel te blokkeren op platforms als Facebook en Twitter, terwijl men regelrechte geschiedvervalsing als een normaal gegeven ziet, als het maar in het voordeel is van de gevestigde neoliberale orde..... Over geschiedvervalsing gesproken: hoe is het mogelijk dat Facebook op verzoek berichten over mensen verwijdert, mensen die of e.e.a op hun kerfstok hebben, dan wel politici of anderen die 'met pensioen zijn', te gek voor woorden!! 

Overigens hebben zowel Twitter als Facebook accounts op hun platform gesloten vanwege het brengen van zogenaamd nepnieuws, ofwel nieuws dat ingaat tegen wat de reguliere (massa-) media brengen...... Dit terwijl juist deze media een enorme berg nepnieuws en zonder meer leugens hebben mogen publiceren op deze platforms, neem de leugens in aanloop van- en tijdens de illegale oorlogen die de VS alleen deze eeuw al is begonnen....

Het volgende bericht komt van Zero Hedge, dat overigens in rap tempo verandert in een rechts medium, waar men zelfs ronduit fascistische en racistische kritiek toestaat, zoals onder het bericht over de rellen in Minneapolis n.a.v. van de zoveelste politiemoord op de gekleurde George Floyd, overigens een bericht dat vol stond met alles wat de zwaar gefrustreerde gekleurde burgers aan schade hebben aangericht in Minneapolis, zonder de reden daarvoor te noemen: alle politiemoorden op gekleurde burgers in de laatste 20 jaar, zoveel dat bij elke moord op een gekleurde de vlam in de pan slaat (dat was en is te verwachten na elke politiemoord op een gekleurd mens....).....

Trump To Sign Social Media Executive Order On Thursday After 'Fact-Check', Political Bias Exposed

Thu, 05/28/2020 - 05:36

Update (1830ET): Following up on earlier threats, a White House spokesperson has confirmed that President Trump will sign an executive order on Social Media tomorrow.
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany made the remark to reporters aboard Air Force One, traveling with Trump to Washington from Florida.

There are no details of what the order will contain, however, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said today that he is working with Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee to craft legislation that would strip social media giants of their Section 230 legal immunity if they fact check content on their platforms, according to a copy of his podcast which Breitbart News exclusively obtained.

(psychopaat Trump aan het woord)

Gaetz said:
A lot of people don’t see that Facebook and Twitter … you see Twitter disadvantaging the president, they enjoy liability protections that are not enjoyed by your local newspaper or your local TV station, or Fox News, or CNN, or MSNBC. They have special benefits under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as digital platforms because they’re not creating content for which they should be liable. They’re not making decisions about content, they’re simply saying come one, come all with your content. And as a consequence of that, they’re getting a bunch of protections. 
And as Breitbart concludes, noting that the social media companies have become increasingly biased against conservatives, Gaetz questioned whether social media companies deserve to keep their Section 230 immunity.

All of which raises a serious question about the future of these social media giants under a more "media-esque" regulatory framework and points to an obvious line of attack in any executive order that President Trump could be considering.

Don Bongino tweeted a quasi-confirmation of this angle for the executive order:
"Twitter made a HUGE mistake. They have now injected themselves into a US election and decided to become editorialists, rather than a platform. ALL platform protections should be immediately revoked and Twitter should be treated as a publisher. They did this to themselves."
*  *  *
Update (1025ET): That did not take long. As more and more information is exposed about Twitter's bias, President Trump has tweeted an ominous warning to "Jack" and his crew of social justice warriors...



Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and their other compatriots) is correct. Big action to follow!

And Kellyanne follows up with devastating blows...


Kellyanne Conway: "Twitter cannot suppress voices and others can't suppress votes."

(De video in dit Twitterbericht werkt niet, hierboven praktisch dezelfde video via YouTube)

*  *  *
Update (0845ET): Last night, President Trump slammed Twitter for tagging several of his tweets touting the alleged risks of mail-in ballots as 'misinformation', with the president accusing the social media giant of interfering in the 2020 election.



(deze uiterst agressieve totaal idioot kan met de atoomknop spelen.....)

On Wednesday morning, Trump issued a couple more tweets claiming the federal government will "strongly regulate, or close them down" - referring to social media companies who suppress conservative voices in the name of protecting "the truth" (ie the progressive narrative that Silicon Valley tech giants have promised to perpetuate).

He also linked his accusations of bias with his opposition to mail-in ballots.
"We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can't let a more sophisticated version of that happen again. Just like we can't let large scale Mail-In ballots take root in our Country," Trump said in a series of tweets.



Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that....


....happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!

Weeks ago, anonymously sourced reports claimed that the White House was considering a panel to investigate anti-conservative bias on popular social media platforms and across Silicon Valley, an issue that has been explored in a series of Congressional hearings involving top officials at the biggest tech firms.
*  *  *
Shortly after Twitter announced it would start "fact-checking" President Trump's tweets, yet more evidence has been exposed of the blatant anti-Trump bias at the most senior levels of the social media giant.

In the past we have seen Project Veritas expose the 'fact' behind the so-called 'conspiracy theory' of shadow-banning for conservative voices on Twitter.

A former Twitter software engineer who explains how/why Twitter "shadow bans" certain users:
Abhinav Vadrevu"One strategy is to shadow ban so you have ultimate control. The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don't know they've been banned, because they keep posting but no one sees their content."
"So they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it. I don't know if Twitter does this anymore."
Meanwhile, Olinda Hassan, a Policy Manager for Twitter’s Trust and Safety team explains on December 15th, 2017 at a Twitter holiday party that the development of a system of “down ranking” “shitty people” is in the works:
Yeah. That’s something we’re working on. It’s something we’re working on. We’re trying to get the shitty people to not show up. It’s a product thing we’re working on right now.”
Then there is the company's associate General Counsel, Jeff Rich (his LinkedIn page is here) who in January urged his 1,500 followers to "cull" and "excise" the "cancerous" president Trump from the herd.


YES!! Again, this Excise the Trump cancer, then deliberate over policy differences. He is the single most destructive force against our system of government, way of life and American values EVER! He must be culled from the herd. ASAP! https://twitter.com/DevinCow/status/1223469280471265280 




One wonders, Rich, does this violate Twitter's "Abuse and harassment" rules?
And more recently expressed his biased opinion:


BAHAHAHA!! I love how this perfectly accurate ad has gotten under his thin, orange skin. What a small, pathetic, weak person he is. Such a sad, neglected child. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1257532101966036993 


And now, as Jonathan Turley details below,  the latest controversy concerns the person who has said that he is in charge of “developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules,” Twitter’s “Head of Site Integrity” Yoel Roth.  Critics have highlighted fairly extreme postings from Roth calling Trump and his supporters Nazis.  I do not agree that the problem is Roth’s personal views or postings. The problem is his role and the rules at Twitter. 



The problem is anyone exercising this power of speech regulation. Indeed, as this controversy grew around Roth, Kathy Griffin is the latest poster to face calls for removal for effectively calling for Trump to kill himself.  Again, Griffin should be allowed to post such hateful thoughts and the rest of the world should be allowed to denounce her, again, for her unhinged humor.

Roth has attacked Bernie Sanders supporters and proclaimed how he is working against Trump. He compared senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. He  has referred to Trump and his team as “ACTUAL NAZIS” and called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a “personality-free bag of farts.” As Fox noted, “last August, Twitter suspended McConnell’s Twitter account, prompting the GOP to threaten to cut off advertising on the site until Twitter relented.”


This person is the “head of site integrity” at Twitter
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter


The attacks are numerous, raw, and offensive.  However, conservatives calling for him to be fired or his tweets censored are reaching the wrong conclusion.  

The problem is not Roth but his role.  He has a right to express himself. I have no problem with Twitter hiring people with such political views and I believe it is a good thing for people to express themselves on social media.  Indeed, we have discussed the free speech concerns as private and public employers punish workers for their statements or actions in their private lives. We have addressed an array of such incidents, including social media controversies involving academics. In some cases, racially charged comments have been treated as free speech while in others they have resulted in discipline or termination. It is that lack of a consistent standard that has magnified free speech concerns.  We have previously discussed the issue of when it is appropriate to punishment people for conduct outside of the work place. We have followed cases where people have been fired after boorish or insulting conduct once their names and employers are made known. (here and here and here and here and here and here).

Roth’s comments highlight how bias is always a concern for those who take it upon themselves to decide who can speak or who must be “corrected” in communications with others.  Twitter is notorious for a lack of consistency and coherence in the enforcement of its rules.  However, regardless of such enforcement, there remains a core free speech issue in the regulation of speech. I recently criticized the calls of Democratic leaders like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff for greater censorship of the Internet and social media. Such calls have been growing for years but leaders like Schiff are citing the pandemic as a basis for speech monitoring and censorship. Roth is merely the personification of the problem of such speech regulation.  Again, the real problem is his role and Twitter’s rules.



“He leads the teams responsible for developing and enforcing Twitter’s rules”
View image on Twitter
Image



As Summit News' Paul Joseph Watson notes, Roth has been head of site integrity at Twitter since July 2018 and is responsible for “election security” and “misinformation,” meaning he almost certainly played a key role in the decision to ‘fact-check’ Trump’s tweets.
In the meantime, We await Twitter ‘fact-checking’ false claims about ‘Russian collusion’ or any other of the erroneous issues pushed by the blue check mark brigade that have proven to be spectacularly wrong.

Don’t hold your breath....
==============================
* De Democraten hebben nu nog een grote bek over de maatregel die Trump wil doordrukken, echter het is maar zeer de vraag (als Trump dit inderdaad voor elkaar krijgt), of zij deze zullen terugdraaien, mocht Biden de verkiezingen winnen. Neem de moorden met drones onder Bush, daarover schreeuwden een aantal Democratische politici moord en brand (en terecht!), echter nadat Obama werd gekozen, heeft hij dit terreurprogramma verder uitgebreid, waarna het stil bleef bij de eerdere critici van deze terreur (terreur waarbij meer dan 90 % van de slachtoffers niet eens werd verdacht....).... In het artikel hierboven wordt overigens al gewezen op de roep om censuur door Democraat Adam Schiff.......

Zie ook:
'Een vaccin tegen COVID-19 voor iedere VS burger zou onhaalbaar zijn en het vaccineren van de hele wereldbevolking zou minstens 3 jaar tijd in beslag nemen' (en zie de links in dat bericht)

'Politie VS infiltreert protesten n.a.v. de dood van George Floyd en zetten aan tot geweld' (en zie de links in dat bericht naar meer artikelen over de politiemoorden op gekleurden in de VS)

'George Floyd: de voortdurende politiemoorden op gekleurden in de VS: de witte overheersing met vervolging van gekleurden.....'

zaterdag 23 maart 2019

Trump dreigt met paramilitair geweld in de VS

Het is het beest Trump nu geheel en al in de bolle kop geslagen, de hufter durfde 13 maart jl. in een interview voor Breitbart te zeggen dat hij het leger, de politie en motorbendes aan zijn kant staan, maar dat ze gelukkig (nog) geen geweld plegen.....* (motorbendes: je weet, wel van die gewelddadig misdadige 'volwassen' jongens met veel te grote brommers en oude stinkauto's) Met andere woorden: als Trump z'n zin niet krijg, of men probeert hem af te zetten, is dat nog lang geen gelopen race, sterker nog die race zal niet eens van start gaan......

In feite dreigt Trump met een burgeroorlog mocht men hem proberen af te zetten, met de lullige toevoeging dat hij aan de sterke kant zal staan met paramilitaire troepen om zijn tegenstanders op te pakken, dan wel te vermoorden.....

Ben het overigens niet eens met wat Sasha Abramsky, de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, zegt over Putin: Rusland zit toch echt nog voor het stadium van een totale dictatuur. Bovendien hebben we aan Putin te danken dat het in Syrië niet volledig uit de hand is gelopen, wat betreft de andere wereldmacht, of beter gezegd terreurentiteit VS. Eén ding is zeker als Trump, of noem nog maar wat VS presidenten, op de plek van Putin hadden gezeten met hun administratie, waren we waarschijnlijk al in een wereldoorlog verwikkeld geweest >> WOIII.....

Steve King, een (fascistisch) ideologische partner van Trump en witte nationalistische ploert, hield vorige maand zijn volgers een cartoon voor en gaf ze de boodschap mee dat een burgeroorlog mogelijk is en dat dit een feest zou zijn voor conservatieven wapenfanaten, 'een feest' om slappe liberalen, 'die niet weten welk toilet ze moeten gebruiken', neer te schieten.....

Zoals gezegd: Abramsky is de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel dat o.a. verscheen op Information Clearing House (ICH). Hij haalt het verleden erbij, o.a. de SA van Hitler, paramilitairen die tekeergingen tegen Joden, homo's, of beter gezegd wat we tegenwoordig Lgbt mensen noemen, maar ook tegen Roma, Sinti en linkse tegenstanders.......

Het feit dat Trump met paramilitaire acties dreigt is uiteraard te zot voor woorden, hiervoor zou hij afgezet moeten worden, niet voor het sprookje dat men Russiagate is gaan noemen, maar waarvoor niet één nanometer bewijs is gevonden, zelfs niet na 2 jaar diepgravend onderzoek........ (nieuws van deze dag: aanklager Mueller adviseert de zaak verder te laten rusten, ofwel hij heeft nul komma nada bewijzen voor Russiagate gevonden!)

Beste bezoeker, nog even dit: lullig misschien, maar wat mij betreft mag de pleuris uitbreken in de VS en wel zo erg dat het leger uit andere landen moet worden teruggetrokken, kan de wereld eindelijk een ademhalen, zonder de hete 'bloedige adem' van de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde in de nek te voelen.......

Het artikel verscheen op Information Clearing House (ICH) en werd eerder gepubliceerd op truthout (nam het artikel over van ICH, de foto komt van truth):

Trump Threatens to Unleash Paramilitary Violence in the US

President Donald Trump stands with Bikers for Trump at Trump National Golf Club.

By Sasha Abramsky

March 21, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - This has been one of those whiplash weeks where so many particularly monstrous words have emanated from Donald Trump’s mouth and Twitter-fingers that it becomes almost dizzying.

Where to focus my outrage? Should I be most concerned about the fact that the supposed “leader of the free world” stumbled through a series of non-answers when asked about the growing threat of white nationalism in the wake of the grotesque massacre of scores of Muslims in New Zealand? Or the fact that last weekend, instead of tweeting sympathy to the victims of that massacre, Trump chose instead to tweet out insults and lies about a dead senator? Or the fact that he threatened to sic the Federal Communications Commission onto a comedy show he didn’t like, while at the same time stepping into the editorial fray to urge Fox News to stand behind two particularly noxious commentators whom he does like?

All these are bad, but none is as bloody awful as his musings on unleashing paramilitary violence if things go too wrong for him in the political arena. In his trademark “I didn’t say it” way, Trump talked in a March 13 Breitbart interview about how he had the police, the military and the biker gangs in his corner — and how wonderful it was that they weren’t violent … for now; the clear nudge, nudge, wink, wink, subtext being that all he would have to do is give a signal, and his armed proxies would go after his enemies. A few days later, white nationalist Rep. Steve King, one of Trump’s closest ideological soulmates on Capitol Hill, forwarded to his followers a cartoon about the possibility of a modern-day U.S. civil war, and how gun-toting conservatives would have a field day shooting down wishy-washy liberals who couldn’t even work out what public bathrooms they wanted to use.

None of this stuff is remotely funny, and it has no place in a functioning democracy. Of course, many U.S. politicians in the past have called out the hard-hat brigade when it suited them; segregationist Southern governors during the civil rights struggle routinely stoked white mob violence in an effort to block reforms. In 1968, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley unleashed the police against anti-war protesters with the intent of busting open as many heads as possible. In the Tammany Hall days, machine politicians weren’t averse to making unholy alliances with street gangs. More recently, demagogues from Louisiana politician Huey Long to Red Scare architect Joe McCarthy have all-too-well understood the power of the crowd and the potency of the threat of political violence in an already combustible situation.

But for the most part, presidents have tended to stay away from such a dark and dangerous path. They have done so not necessarily because of moral scruples, but out of an awareness of the ferocious (and ultimately uncontainable) forces that can be unleashed when a person with the power and reach of the president of the United States abandons all pretext of democratic governance; of respect for the rule of law; and of an understanding that the game of politics has to be bound by a set of rules or else it will degenerate into strong-man rule, and, eventually, the unfathomable horror of civil conflict.

Trump has, since he first announced his candidacy back in 2015, shown little patience for the limits, the nuance and the necessity of compromise that constitutional governance necessitates. He has, from the get-go, shown himself temperamentally to be an autocrat, a man with dictatorial ambitions who is far more comfortable in the presence of rulers such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, than democratic leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Over the last two years, the Trump regime — and it is far more a regime than an administration — has bent the GOP firmly to his will on this.

Were Trump’s outrageous comments about biker gangs and military intervention in domestic politics just the random utterances of an egocentric authoritarian, things would be grim enough. But over the last two years, various GOP organizations around the country have invited white supremacist groups including the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepersand the Proud Boys to either provide “security” at their rallies or to “spice up” their events with speakers who advocate violence. All of these groups are paramilitaries-in-the-making; all are — or at least were before being brought into the mainstream by Trumpite Republicans — on the far margins of the political process, their worldview more closely aligned with fascist visions of society than with what passed as GOP mainstream beliefs in the pre-Trump era.

Over these last few years, the GOP has increasingly come to resemble a political party whose raison d’étre is simply to nurture the cult of the personality around Trump rather than to contribute anything genuinely resembling ideas into the political discourse; a political party willing to embrace the most violent and thuggish elements for partisan advantage. The scale of this degeneration was on display last month, when Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz publicly threatened congressional witness and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, and then blithely claimed he was just contributing to “the marketplace of ideas.”

Let’s be real. Publicly blackmailing a witness is no more about “the marketplace of ideas” than a mobster’s threat to make someone “sleep with the fishes” if they cooperate with the police. Using the presidential bully pulpit to goad an already angry and wrathful “base” to consider violence against political opponents is, again, no more simply part of the democratic rough and tumble, the contest for hearts and minds, than would be the burning of a cross on the lawn of a perceived enemy.

Unfortunately, history is littered with examples of power-hungry rulers turning to paramilitary violence when it was politically expedient. The Sturmabteilung (SA) were the backbone of early Nazi power in Germany. Their sadistic foot soldiers were unleashed against Jews, trade unionists, communists, LGBTQ folks, independent journalists, artists, academics and so on. In Latin America, paramilitaries were instrumental in the dirty wars that decimated a generation of progressives. Elsewhere, paramilitaries have been turned to in recent times by leaders such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as by genocidal leaders such as those in Rwanda and in the Balkan states in the early 1990s.

In his powerful essay, “In Defense of the Word,” written during a decade when most of Latin America had fallen to dictators backed up by paramilitary forces, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano wrote that the combination of authoritarian leaders and armed militias had paved the way for “the development of methods of torture, techniques for assassinating people and ideas, for the cultivation of silence, the extension of impotence, and the sowing of fear.”

We think we are different; we are, after all, Americans, and in the U.S., we say to ourselves with a healthy dose of hubris, that we don’t do things that way. But how different are we really? How thin is our veneer? How vulnerable are we to the siren calls of political violence issued from the biggest dais on Earth and amplified by the instruments of social media?

Trump and his acolytes are now truly playing with fire. The more Trump’s legal woes mount up, the more he seems willing to embrace his own Götterdämmerung vision, a willingness to create maximum chaos simply to insulate himself from justice.

In an essay titled “Fascism in Latin America,” Galeano observed that, “In the slaughterhouses of human flesh, the hangmen hummed patriotic songs.” Trump, with his musings about the army, the police, the biker gangs, his literal hugging of the flag at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and his repeated conflation of dissent with treason, is humming loud and clear these days.

Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist and a part-time lecturer at the University of California at Davis. His work has appeared in The NationThe Atlantic MonthlyNew York MagazineThe Village Voice and Rolling Stone. Originally from England, he now lives in Sacramento, California, with his wife, daughter and son. He has a masters degree from Columbia University School of Journalism, and is currently a senior fellow at the New York City-based Demos think tank.

This article was originally published by "truthout" - 
==========================================
* Gezien het enorme en onevenredige geweld van de politie tegen gekleurde VS burgers en andere ambtenaren tegen vluchtelingen, is die uitspraak een gotspe!

vrijdag 15 maart 2019

Stephen Colbert probeerde zonder enige humor Tulsi Gabbard in het rechtse kamp te drukken n.a.v. de illegale VS oorlog tegen Syrië

De show van Stephen Colbert is een propaganda orgaan voor de rechtse democraten en is dat in feite al heel lang. Daarmee staat Colbert ook achter de illegale oorlogen die onder de democratische 'vredesduif' Obama werden aangegaan, dit onder regie van zijn rechterhand destijds Hillary Clinton (minister van BuZa), een oorlogsmisdadiger van formaat.....

Colbert had onlangs de democraat Tulsi Gabbard in zijn show en in tegenstelling tot de omgang met andere politici van de Democratische Partij, was dit geen gesprek met opgeklopte 'humor'.

Colbert probeerde Gabbard zelfs in het kamp te duwen van fascist David Duke (voormalig Ku Klux Klan top), en dat van rechtse rotzakken als Steve Bannon en Matt Gaetz......

Wat betreft de illegale oorlogen van de VS, liet Colbert ten overvloede in zijn gesprek met Gabbard blijken dat hij die volledig steunt, ondanks het enorme aantal doden en landen die in puin achterblijven als de VS klaar is met haar grootschalige terreur tegen in feite de bevolking van de landen die het illegaal aanvalt.....

Ook de illegale oorlog van de VS tegen het bewind van Assad kwam ter sprake, waar Gabbard Colbert fijntjes liet weten dat de CIA in 2011 de 'opstand' tegen Assad heeft georganiseerd en geregisseerd en dat de oorlog van de VS in dat land niet gericht was tegen IS, maar tegen het bewind van Assad, waar ze ook de wapenleveringen aan terreurgroepen als IS en militaire training door de VS aan die terreurgroepen noemde..... 

Jammer dat ze Assad wel een dictator noemt, terwijl hij met grote meerderheid democratisch tot president werd verkozen in 2014, een verkiezing die door internationale waarnemers als eerlijk en goed werd beoordeeld...... 

Vergeet voorts niet dat onder Assad alle geloven hand in hand naast elkaar leefden, een zaak die door handelingen van de VS bijna de nek werd omgedraaid.... Gelukkig leven de teruggekeerde vluchtelingen, in de gebieden die door het reguliere Syrische leger worden gecontroleerd, weer vreedzaam naast elkaar, ongeacht het geloof dat men aanhangt......

Helaas voor Colbert, maar hij is geen partij voor Gabbard die hem flink bij de lurven had >> lezen en zien mensen!!


Colbert Smears Tulsi Gabbard To Her Face While Telling Zero Jokes



Hawaii Congresswoman and Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where instead of the light, jokey banter about politics and who she is as a person that Democratic presidential candidates normally encounter on late night comedy programs, the show's host solemnly ran down a list of textbook beltway smears against Gabbard and made her defend them in front of his audience.

Normally when a Democratic Party-aligned politician appears on such a show, you can expect jokes about how stupid Trump is and how badly they're going to beat the Republicans, how they're going to help ordinary Americans, and maybe some friendly back-and-forth about where they grew up or something. Colbert had no time to waste on such things, however, because this was not an interview with a normal Democratic Party-aligned politician: this was a politician who has been loudly and consistently criticizing US foreign policy.


After briefly asking his guest who she is and why she's running for president, Colbert jumped right into it by immediately bringing up Syria and Assad, the primary line of attack employed against Gabbard by establishment propagandists in American mainstream media.

Colbert: Do you think the Iraq war was worth it?

Gabbard: No.

Colbert: Do you think that our involvement in Syria has been worth it?

Gabbard: No.

Colbert: Do you think that ISIS could have been defeated without our involvement and without our support of the local troops there?

Gabbard: There are two things we need to address in Syria. One is a regime change war that was first launched by the United States in 2011, covertly, led by the CIA. That is a regime change war that has continued over the years, that has increased the suffering of the Syrian people, and strengthened groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, because the CIA was using American taxpayer dollars to provide arms and training and equipment to these terrorist groups to get them to overthrow the government. So that is a regime change war that we should not have been engaging.

Colbert: So, but if it is someone like Bashar al-Assad, who gasses his own people, or who engages in war crimes against his own people, should the United States not be involved?

Gabbard: The United States should not be intervening to overthrow these dictators and these regimes that we don't like, like Assad, like Saddam Hussein, like Gaddafi, and like Kim Jong Un. There are bad people in the world, but history has shown us that every time the United States goes in and topples these dictators we don't like, trying to end up like the world's police, we end up increasing the suffering of the people in these countries. We end up increasing the loss of life, but American lives and the lives of people in these countries. We end up undermining our own security, what to speak of the trillions of dollars of taxpayer money that's spent on these wars that we need to be using right here at home.

Like I said, this is not a normal presidential candidate. How often do you see a guest appear on a network late night talk show and talk about the CIA arming terrorists in Syria and the fact that US military interventionism is completely disastrous? It just doesn't happen. You can understand, then, why empire propagandist Stephen Colbert spent the rest of the interview informing his TV audience that Tulsi Gabbard is dangerous and poisonous.


This was unwatchable. Colbert just went down the list of scripted Gabbard smears (Assad, David Duke) then sermonized about how US military intervention is a force for good in this world. All without telling a single joke. Late night "comedy" shows are propaganda for livestock.


Colbert: You got some heat for meeting with Bashar al-Assad. Do you not consider him a war criminal? Why did you meet with that man?

Gabbard: In the pursuit of peace and security. If we are not willing to meet with adversaries, potential adversaries, in the pursuit of peace and security, the only alternative is more war. That's why I took that meeting with Assad. In pursuit of peace and security. 

Colbert: Do you believe he is a war criminal? Do you believe he gassed his own people or committed atrocities against his own people?

Gabbard: Yes. Reports have shown that that's a fact.

Colbert: So you believe the intelligence agencies on that. Because I head that you did not necessarily believe those reports.

The reason I call Colbert a propagandist and not simply a liberal empire loyalist who happens to have been elevated by billionaire media is because these are carefully constructed narratives that he is reciting, and they weren't constructed by him.

Trying to make it look to the audience as though Gabbard is in some way loyal to Assad has been a high-priority agenda of the mainstream media ever since she announced her presidential candidacy.

We saw it in her recent appearance on The View, where John McCain's sociopathic daughter called her an "Assad apologist" and demanded that Gabbard call Assad an enemy of the United States. We saw it in her recent CNN town hall, where a consultant who worked on Obama's 2008 campaign was presented as an ordinary audience member to help CNN's Dana Bash paint Gabbard's skepticism of intelligence reports about an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government as something that is weird and suspicious, instead of the only sane position in a post-Iraq invasion world. We saw it in her appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe last month, where the entire panel piled on her in outrage that she wouldn't call Assad an enemy of the United States. It's such a common propaganda talking point that the New York Times' Bari Weiss famously made a laughingstock of herself by repeating it as self-evident truth on The Joe Rogan Experience without having the faintest clue what specific facts it was meant to refer to, just because she'd heard establishment pundits saying it so much.

This is an organized smear by the mass media attempting to marry Gabbard in the eyes of the public to a Middle Eastern leader whom the propagandists have already sold as a child-murdering monster, and Colbert is participating in it here just as much as the serious news media talking heads are. It's been frustrating to watch Gabbard fold to this smear campaign by acting like it's an established fact that Assad "gases his own people" and not the hotly contested empire-serving narrative she knows it is.

Gabbard is being targeted by this smear because she challenges US political orthodoxy on military violence (the glue which holds the empire together), so no amount of capitulation will keep them from trying to prevent the public from trusting her words.

(de video in het volgende Twitterbericht kan ik niet overnemen, zie hiervoor het origineel)
The journalist interrogating Tulsi seems to believe that US forces in Syria are fighting Assad. Tulsi corrects her, says those troops were deployed there to fight ISIS. These people don’t even know what’s happening in the places they want the US to occupy



2:11
640K views

"I don't know whether America should be the policemen of the world," Colbert said after Gabard defended her position.

"It is my opinion that we should not be," Gabbard replied, causing Colbert to launch into a stuffy, embarrassing sermon on the virtues of interventionism and US hegemony that would make Bill Kristol blush.

"If we are not, though, nature abhors a vacuum, and if we are not involved in international conflicts, or trying to quell international conflicts, certainly the Russians and the Chinese will fill that vacuum. And we will step away from the world stage in a significant way that might destabilize the world, because the United States, however flawed, is a force for good in the world in my opinion. Would you agree with that?"

Again, this is a comedy show.

Gabbard explained that in order to be a force for good in the world the United States has to actually do good, which means not raining fire upon every nation it dislikes all the time. Colbert responded by reading off his blue index card to repeat yet another tired anti-Gabbard smear.

"You've gotten some fans in the Trump supporter world: David Duke, Steve Bannon, and, uh, Matt, uh, Gaetz, is that his name? Matt Gaetz? What do you make of how much they like you?"

This one is particularly vile, partly because Gabbard has repeatedly and unequivocally denounced David Duke, who has a long-established and well-known history of injecting himself into the drama of high-profile conversations in order to maintain the illusion of relevance, and partly because it's a completely irrelevant point that is brought up solely for the purpose of marrying Tulsi Gabbard's name to a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Colbert only brought this up (and made Newsweek totally squee) because he wanted to assist in that marrying. The fact that there are distasteful ideologies which also happen to oppose US interventionism for their own reasons does not change the undeniable fact that US military interventionism is consistently disastrous and never helpful and robs the US public of resources that are rightfully theirs.

This interview was easily Colbert's most blatant establishment rim job I've ever seen, surpassing even the time he corrected his own audience when they cheered at James Comey's firing to explain to them that Comey is a good guy now and they're meant to like him. Colbert's show is blatant propaganda for human livestock, and the fact that this is what American "comedy" shows look like now is nauseating.

When Tulsi Gabbard first announced her candidacy I predicted that she'd have the narrative control engineers scrambling all over themselves to kill her message, and it's been even more spectacular than I imagined. I don't agree with everything she says and does, but by damn this woman is shaking up the establishment narrative matrix more than anybody else right now. She's certainly keeping it interesting.
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Caitlin Johnstone | March 13, 2019 at 12:38 pm |

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