Free speech on the ropes

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.     —George  Orwell

What the Arab world needs most is free expression.    —Jamal  Khashoggi

In his famous dystopian novel, 1984, George Orwell describes a world in which people’s actions and words are closely monitored in order to detect and punish thoughtcrime.  It is a world in which the ruling power structure has the means to preempt the expression of any idea or story that might challenge the official narrative of events and reality. Though a little late by Orwell’s reckoning, that world has all but arrived.

The development of the internet and the worldwide web brought, for a time, tremendous power to ordinary people to communicate and inform one another directly, bypassing the established news filters and centralized control of information. But in recent years, new corporate megaliths have emerged that have the power to shift control back in favor of “Big Brother.” We have become so dependent upon private corporate media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube, that they are able to manipulate our thoughts and behavior. To be banned from those channels means to effectively be banished from participation in political discourse. Corporate power on such a scale inevitably ends up being complicit with political oligarchies in controlling  public perceptions and defining “reality.” The hyped-up battle against “fake news” is really a battle against free speech.

Facebook teams up with the “Thought Police” to purge dissenting voices

Facebook’s purging of hundreds of pages and accounts in recent days has been widely reported. The purges have been done based on allegations of “spam,” and “inauthentic behavior,” or of providing  “Russian propaganda.” But there’s much more to it than that.

An article in the online journal, Global Research, describes the arrangement that Facebook made five months ago with the Atlantic Council to,  “prevent [their] service from being abused during elections.” And who is the Atlantic Council? According to the article, the Atlantic Council “is a think tank that is essentially funded by NATO, weapons manufacturers, Middle-Eastern oil-state monarchies, billionaires and different branches of the US military. In short, it has been described as being nothing less than NATO’s unofficial propaganda wing. The Atlantic Council doesn’t shy away from its political intents across the world, which can be seen solely by looking at who sits on its directors board – the crème de la crème when it comes to US neocons & war criminals: Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Carlucci, James A. Baker, R. George P. Shultz, James Woolsey, Leon Panetta, Colin Powell, Robert Gates, and many more.”

The article goes on to say that, “Many of the pages and accounts taken down have been political (often leftist), anti-war, independent journalists and media outlets that are known to go against the grain of mainstream media outlets.” You can read the complete article here.

So, what can we do? Let’s all dump Facebook, as well as Twitter, YouTube and all the other  massive, proprietary, data mining and propaganda platforms. I know that is not so easy to do, but alternatives do exist, and more of them are emerging every day. Here is a list of 6 Alternatives to Facebook. This article provides a list of 11 Facebook alternatives, and Fox News, surprisingly, provides a list of, Secure alternatives to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. My search engine, DuckDuckGo, turns up several more.

One Facebook alternative that has gotten significant funding support of late is MeWe. A recent article reports that MeWe has thus far managed to raise $10 million to support its development. The article quotes MeWe founder and CEO, Mark Weinstein: “It is clear that the world wants a better social network that treats its member as customers to serve, not data to sell. We’ve built a social networking experience that has a remarkable suite of features people love and none of the BS. MeWe has no ads, no spyware, no content manipulation, no facial recognition, and no Russians (or anyone) paying to show you fake news.”

Well, that sounds promising, but time will tell how real it is.
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Jamal Khashoggi’s murder and the U.S./Saudi connection

The sensational case of the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, underlines just how desperate the power elite is to control the narrative and manipulate our perceptions and beliefs. It would be a mistake to view this horrendous atrocity in isolation from the wider geopolitical propaganda campaign, much of it emanating from the U.S. government and their NATO and middle-eastern allies.

Two weeks after Khashoggi’s disappearance, The Washington Post published his last editorial, in which Khashoggi wrote:

“Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. There was a time when journalists believed the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media. But these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet. They have also arrested local reporters and pressured advertisers to harm the revenue of specific publications.”

The reaction of Donald Trump to this affair has been what we would expect. While paying lip service to justice and accountability, he immediately tried to provide cover for the Saudi regime by suggesting that the murder may have been the work of “rogue killers.” He also made it clear that he would not halt weapon sales to the Saudi government, a clear signal that money trumps “American values,” and belies the myth of the United States as champion of democracy and human rights.

But the cozy relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States goes back way before Trump. Recall that, according to the official report on the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 15 of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. Why then did the United States attack Iraq and Afghanistan instead? It is also established fact that the Bush family and the bin Laden family were longtime business associates. Furthermore, according to this article by Cindy Rodríguez in the Denver Post, “While all flights were halted following the terrorist attacks, there was one exception made: The White House authorized planes to pick up 140 Saudi nationals, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, living in various cities in the U.S. to bring them back to Saudi Arabia, where they would be safe. They were never interrogated.”

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