..
‘No warning, no strikes, no evidence’: Ron Paul Institute’s
YouTube channel deleted
30 Sep, 2021 20:17 / Updated 37 minutes ago
Former Congressman Ron Paul (September 30, 2021 file photo) said his Institute's YouTube channel
was deleted without warning © RT/Boom Bust
Former US Congressman Ron Paul has revealed that YouTube has deleted, without explanation, the main channel of his Texas-based institute. The move comes amid a mass censorship spree by the Google-owned video platform.
“Very shocked that YouTube has completely removed the channel of my Ron Paul Institute: no warning, no strikes, no evidence,” the retired Texas congressman tweeted on Thursday. “Only explanation was ‘severe or repeated violations of our community guidelines.’ Channel is rarely used. The appeal was automatically rejected. Help?”
In a follow-up message, Paul said the Ron Paul Liberty Report channel remains available. The institute’s main channel is “a seldom-used account and its termination is perplexing,” he added.
Paul established the institute when he retired from Congress in 2013, after decades of representing Texas in the House. He ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1988 and in the Republican primaries in 2008 and 2012.
Jeffrey Tucker, a libertarian scholar who runs the recently established Brownstone Institute, called the move by YouTube “an attempt to purify all platforms of dissent” that’s “getting worse by the hour.”
The Google-run video platform announced new rules on Wednesday, banning all “harmful vaccine content” – not just of the recently developed Covid-19 jabs but vaccines in general.
The announcement was followed by bans on several people named by a UK-based nonprofit in July as purveyors of ‘disinformation’. The list compiled by the Center for Countering Digital Hate was then used by the Biden administration to call for social media censorship.
The day before, YouTube deleted two German-language channels of RT DE, accusing them of “medical misinformation” in four videos and attempting to circumvent a ‘community guidelines’ strike by publishing new videos on another channel.
Paul’s son Rand, a Republican senator from Kentucky, was also targeted by YouTube censorship recently. In early August, he revealed that the “leftwing cretins” at Google gave him a week-long ban for quoting peer-reviewed articles about the efficacy of face masks in stopping the spread of Covid-19.
Senator Paul called the censorship “a badge of honor” and said it amounted to “anti-free speech, anti-progress of science” behavior. However, as a libertarian, he chose to publicly express disagreement and promote companies that valued free speech, instead of calling for their regulation.
While YouTube has not commented on why the Ron Paul Institute’s main channel was deleted, the former congressman has an upcoming book critical of the current administration’s fiscal policies.
===========================================================================================
Trump calls for Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke award given to
NYT & WaPo for reporting on Russiagate ‘hoax’
3 Oct, 2021 21:47
© REUTERS/Dustin Chambers
Former President Donald Trump has demanded the Pulitzer Prize Board rescind a 2018 prize awarded to the New York Times and Washington Post for their coverage on the Russian collusion “farce.”
In a Sunday statement, Trump called the outlets’ reporting on the theory that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and colluded with Trump’s team – something an investigation ultimately found no actual evidence of – a “false narrative.”
“As has been widely publicized, the coverage was no more than a politically motivated farce which attempted to spin a false narrative that my campaign supposedly colluded with Russia despite a complete lack of evidence underpinning this allegation,” the former president wrote in a letter addressed to Bud Klimet, interim administrator of the awards. He previously called for the awards to be revoked in 2019.
Trump also criticized media outlets for using sources with vague knowledge of a situation, calling out articles citing "‘people with knowledge,’ ‘current and former officials,’ ‘some senior U.S. officials,’ and other vaguely defined individuals."
He went on to cite the indictment of Michael Sussman as proof of his accusation against the papers. Sussman, a lawyer who had worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, was accused of lying to the FBI when he tipped them off in 2016 to a potential tie between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Kremlin.
The Times and Post were given the National Reporting award in 2018 for their reporting on the ‘Russia collusion’ story, and Trump called for the outlets to be given a chance to “voluntarily surrender” the prize back to the Pulitzers.
“When it becomes apparent that a Pulitzer Prize-winning work was based on shoddy, dubious and manifestly false reporting – as is the case here – the Pulitzer Prize Board must react accordingly,” he wrote.
Former special investigator Robert Mueller has said his report on alleged Russian collusion did not “exonerate” Trump, as the president has claimed. The report, however, ultimately did not substantiate the more sensational stories covered in the media.
The president has often chalked Mueller’s years-long and expensive investigation up to a “witch hunt” that the rest of the world was “laughing” at.
“The single greatest Witch Hunt in American history continues. There was no collusion, everybody including the Dems knows there was no collusion, & yet on and on it goes. Russia & the world is laughing at the stupidity they are witnessing. Republicans should finally take control!” he tweeted in 2018 while the investigation was ongoing.
==========================================================================================
Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp down for thousands of users,
tracker shows
By Aaron D'Andrea Global News
Posted October 4, 2021 12:58 pm
Facebook and Instagram have been reported as down for hours, impacting thousands of users, tracker downdetector.ca shows.
On Twitter, the tracker said the two social media platforms, as well as WhatsApp, were experiencing outages just after 11:40 a.m. eastern time Monday.
One site reported that Zuckerburg has lost $6 Bn already. One thing is for sure, there will be less child sexual abuse material posted on the internet today.
===========================================================================================
Twitter labels obituary ‘misleading’ as American woman dies
of rare Covid ‘vaccine-induced’ reaction
4 Oct, 2021 10:20
The obituary of a Seattle woman who tragically died from a rare blood clotting event after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine mandated by the US government has been labelled as “misleading” by Twitter fact checkers.
On Saturday, Twitter user Kelly Bee shared an obituary of Jessica Berg Wilson, a 37-year-old Seattle woman who reportedly died from “Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT).” VITT is considered a very rare adverse event which may occur following the administration of adenovirus vector Covid-19 vaccines, such as the AstraZeneca and J&J shots.
In her tweet, Bee, referencing the attached obituary, claimed that Berg Wilson was an “exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions.” She also adds that Wilson was vaccine-hesitant.
According to Berg Wilson’s obituary, she passed away “unexpectedly” on September 7 from “Covid-19 VITT.” It says that Berg Wilson was “vehemently opposed” to taking the Covid-19 vaccine because she was in “good health,” and believed she was not at risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus.
“In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat,” the text reads.
The obituary claims that her freedom to choose whether or not to take the vaccine was “stripped away.” Berg Wilson was a ‘Room Mom’ – someone who took responsibility for events in her children’s school classes – and the vaccine mandate prevented her from doing this without a jab.
Eventually, the 37-year-old mother-of-two took the vaccine, although it is not noted which one she received. It is suggested that she died after getting the jab, although the time between the two events is not stated in her obituary.
However, shortly after posting, Bee’s tweet regarding Berg Wilson’s death was flagged by Twitter as “misleading,” and an end note redirected users to resources underlining why Covid-19 vaccines are not dangerous. This “misleading” label has since been removed, but other tweets using the same text have since been flagged by the tech giant.
Bee followed up on her own tweet, contending that Twitter had shadow-banned the post and encouraging people to retweet it. She also scalded local media for not reporting the case.
Texas Congressman Chip Roy was among those who blasted the tech firm for flagging an obituary. Twitter is not afraid to follow the truth, Roy wrote, adding “unless of course it contradicts what Dr. Fauci or the enlightened government and tech overlords say you must do for your healthcare.”
American writer, blogger, and editor Ben Domenech asked who at Twitter even thought it was appropriate to label an obituary as “misleading.” He added that when Twitter boss Jack Dorsey eventually dies, “any obit that doesn't include ‘created a pointless lie-filled hellsite that ruined the lives of millions’ should be flagged as misleading, too.”
Outspoken actress, TV personality, and former MMA fighter Gina Carano also shared Bee’s post, adding that she knew someone who had died from the vaccine and claiming President Joe Biden’s mandates were “murdering” people. Her tweet was swiftly labelled “misleading” by Twitter.
Others pointed out that these vaccine-related stories aren’t widely reported by the media because they are so rare. Blogger and YouTuber Nicholas Gray contended that “It’s sad that she passed away and in a perfect world without Covid, this would never happen,” adding that research has been undertaken and people are aware of the risks in certain cases.
Another concurred, noting that such deaths were “very VERY rare.” “I wonder, statistically, how many people have died listening to you scare them about vaccines,” they added.
While vaccine-related deaths are tragic, governments around the world have been keen to highlight the number of lives saved by Covid-19 immunization programs. The latest figures from London suggest that Covid-19 vaccines have saved around 123,000 lives in England alone.
Although Berg Wilson’s obituary does not specify which vaccine she received, both the AstraZeneca and J&J shots have been flagged for incredibly rare side effects, most notably related to blood-clotting.
"Incredibly rare", that language would originate at J&J or Astra-Zenica.
Missing reporter who vanished from Moscow turns up in Belarusian
prison, as Kremlin hits out over Minsk’s ban on Russian newspaper
4 Oct, 2021 15:57 / Updated 1 hour ago
© vk.com / Геннадий Можейко
A reporter for one of Russia’s best-read news outlets has been detained and is being held by authorities in Belarus. While details of the arrest are unclear, his editors at Komsomolskaya Pravda claim he was abducted in Moscow.
Over the weekend, Gennady Mozheiko’s mother told journalists her son was being held in an isolation cell in Minsk. Mozheiko, a Belarusian national working for the local branch of the paper had been staying at a hotel in the Russian capital when his apartment back home was raided by police on charges of incitement to hatred and insulting a government official.
Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that its correspondent had been detained in Moscow. “Nobody tells us anything and we’re asking everyone,” the tabloid’s editor-in-chief Vladimir Sungorkin said. “We expect this from Minsk, but we can’t get any confirmation from Moscow.”
The Kremlin has since denied any involvement in Mozheiko’s detention, with President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, refusing to rule out the possibility that he had been captured and taken abroad. “We do not have any reliable information about where the arrest of the journalist took place,” he said. “We simply do not know.”
Peskov also bluntly stated that "there is no feeling, right now, that our position is being heard in Minsk." He confirmed that Putin himself was aware of the situation around the journalist, outlining that such actions against the press should not be approved, but the Kremlin does not know the details.
At the same time, Peskov explained that, because Mozheiko is a Belarusian citizen, Moscow had no rights to request consular access. “We don’t have the possibility of making inquiries through our diplomatic mission or to protect his interests,” the Kremlin press secretary said.
He added that the Kremlin has clearly outlined its position on the banning of Komsomolskaya Pravda in Belarus and that it expects the restrictions to be lifted promptly.
Last month, IT consultant Andrey Zeltser opened fire on security agents when they attempted to raid his apartment in Minsk, killing KGB officer Dmitry Fedosyuk before being shot dead himself. The Belarusian government has since declared him to have been a terrorist, and arrested dozens of people over their social media comments in the aftermath of the incident, which comes after months of the authorities cracking down on activists and supporters of the opposition.
In the days that followed, Mozheiko published an interview in Komsomolskaya Pravda with a school classmate of Zeltser, who described Zeltser as having always stood up for himself and claiming his political views were not well known. The next day, Belarus’ Ministry of Information ordered Komsomolskaya Pravda to be blocked in the country.
Moscow has since expressed concern over the step, with both Peskov and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova calling for the decision to be reversed.
No comments:
Post a Comment