The Media is the Message > Project Veritas Wins Against NYT; BBC's Anti-Semitism Confirmed? CBC Reporter Burns Her Bridges

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Project Veritas wins lawsuit against New York Times

A judge has directed the New York Times to return internal documents belonging to Project Veritas that were cited by the paper in an article last month. The report had sparked allegations that the FBI was behind the memos’ leak.

FILE PHOTO: The New York Times building is seen in Manhattan, New York, US. August 3, 2020.

© Reuters / Shannon Stapleton

In his ruling on Friday, Justice Charles Wood of the Westchester County Supreme Court in New York state ordered the New York Times to give Project Veritas back any physical copies of legal memos prepared by the media watchdog group’s attorneys and to erase all electronic copies.

The judge also upheld his temporary order issued last month against further publication of details from the memos. He said that the documents did not constitute a matter of public concern, adding that they fell under the group’s expectations of privacy that outweighed concerns about press freedoms.

“Steadfast fidelity to, and vigilance in protecting First Amendment freedoms cannot be permitted to abrogate the fundamental protections of attorney-client privilege or the basic right to privacy,” Wood ruled.

Project Veritas had raised objections to a November 11 New York Times article that purportedly revealed how the group held discussions with its lawyers to “gauge how far its deceptive reporting practices can go before running afoul of federal laws.

The article’s timing prompted outrage and suspicions that an FBI source might have leaked the newspaper confidential data obtained during recent raids.

It came out in less than a week after an FBI raid of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s home – as part of an investigation into the group’s acquisition of a diary supposedly belonging to Ashley Biden, the US president’s daughter.

In a statement, Libby Locke, a lawyer for Project Veritas, said that the ruling affirmed the view that the New York Time’s behavior had been “irregular.”

The New York Times has long forgotten the meaning of the journalism it claims to espouse, and has instead become a vehicle for the prosecution of a partisan political agenda.

The decision came as part of a defamation lawsuit Project Veritas filed against the New York Times in 2020 when the paper published an article accusing the group of engaging in “deceptive” journalistic practices. The judge said that while these practices may be of public interest, legal communications were not.

Meanwhile, New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger said the paper would appeal the ruling – claiming that it was without “apparent precedent” and maintained that the documents were “obtained legally in the ordinary course of reporting.”

BBC accused of ‘deep-seated’ biases against Jews

Jewish leaders are demanding an apology over the broadcaster’s coverage

of anti-Semitic abuse

© REUTERS / Luke MacGregor

The BBC has been accused of making a “colossal error” in its report on a November attack against Jewish teenagers on a bus in London and is being called on to apologize.

The public broadcaster was one of many outlets covering the November 29 Oxford Street attack against a group of Jewish teens who were sitting in a bus when a group of men started spitting at them from outside. The group made Nazi salutes and hurled threatening abuse at the teenagers.

A BBC London correspondent, while describing the attack, mentioned that “some racial slurs about Muslim people” could be heard from inside the bus, saying it wasn’t clear if that had played a role in the incident.

According to an independent report commissioned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, however, the anti-Muslim “slur” the BBC journalist was referring to, was actually a call for help in Hebrew by a Jewish man in the bus, translated as “Call someone, it’s urgent.”

A separate forensic analysis of the footage and forensic linguistic analysis ordered by the organization also confirmed that there was no slur, the organization said in a press release published on Thursday.

The results prompted the Board to make an official complaint to the BBC, calling the report an example of “deeply irresponsible journalism.” The organization’s president, Marie van der Zyl, called the BBC’s recollection of events a “colossal error” that it should publicly apologize for “at the very least.”

Van der Zyl questioned the BBC’s impartiality and said the story raised “serious questions about deep-seated biases within the BBC towards Israelis, and towards Jews in general.”

She said this and other “ongoing concerns” would be raised with the corporation’s Director-General Tim Davie in the new year.

The BBC, however, said it is standing by its report of the incident.

“There was a brief reference to a slur, captured in a video recording, that appeared to come from the bus,” a BBC spokesman said, as quoted by British media. He said the reference was included “so the fullest account of the incident was reported.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism also raised concerns over the report, writing to the BBC to “demand explanations” over what it called the “outrageous” coverage of the incident. The group said police investigating the attack “have found no evidence” of the supposed slur from the victims.

The controversy comes after the BBC was ranked third on the infamous Global Anti-Semitism Top Ten list by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the US — after Iran and armed Palestinian group Hamas.

Top reporter explains quitting the ‘woke’ national broadcasting corporation

“To work at the CBC is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon

 journalistic integrity,” Tara Henley wrote

FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, seen in Edmonton, Canada,

 August 9, 2021 © Getty Images / Artur Widak

Journalist and author Tara Henley penned a scathing resignation letter to the Canadian state-funded CBC, accusing it of peddling social justice dogma, shutting down debate, and racially profiling guests in the name of equity.

Henley, whose work has also appeared in multiple US and UK outlets, resigned from the news network this week after nearly a decade. In a resignation letter of sorts published on her new Substack blog and by the conservative-leaning National Post, she said that in the years since she started at the CBC, it “went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press.”

Henley, who describes herself as left-wing, claimed that the CBC’s management have wholly embraced “a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States,” forbidding any questioning of “woke” orthodoxy. 

This agenda extends to selecting which guests appear on the CBC’s shows, Henley claimed. According to her letter, reporters booking guests have to fill out “racial profile forms” to ensure they’re booking “more people of some races and less of others.”

In selecting which topics to cover, Henley said CBC management have no interest in hosting genuine debate on “sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures,” instead prioritizing reporting on “microaggressions” and “ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like.”

Henley said she has for months been receiving complaints from readers and viewers about the editorial direction of the network.

“People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported,” she wrote. “Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as ‘brainstorm’ and ‘lame.’”

CBC is Canada's national broadcaster and is almost completely funded by taxpayers. The Liberal government is much more generous to the CBC than previous Conservative governments. In 2015, the then CBC News frontman, Peter Mansbridge, was so happy when the results of the federal election started coming in showing a Liberal sweep of the Maritime Provinces, that he was literally spitting.

Both examples are real, with the CBC publishing multiple articles and videos this year on the lack of terms for “non-binary” in the Filipino Tagalog language, and describing the terms ‘brainstorm’ and ‘lame,’ as well as ‘blacklist’ and ‘savage,’ as “Words and phrases you may want to think twice about using.”

Henley’s gripes with the CBC aren’t unique, and she is far from the first to lambaste the “woke” mainstream media in recent years. However, she joins a growing number of mainstream journalists leaving the outlets that made them famous and pursuing editorial freedom on platforms like Substack. Former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss and The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald have migrated to Substack in the last year or so, with both accusing their former employers of ideological censorship, and even Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias – an avowed liberal – soon followed suit.

However, another former CBC reporter took to Twitter on Monday to argue the exact opposite to Henley. Ahmar Khan, who left the network in December 2020 after a dispute in which he called ice hockey pundit Don Cherry “xenophobic,” claimed that CBC management “have no idea what poor people, what black people really go through,” complaining that they rejected a race-focused story he pitched them. Referring to Henley’s move to Substack, Khan tweeted that “writing (badly) and shouting about wokeness is the new grift.”

And, yet, Khan is exactly the type of "journalist" Henley is complaining about. Someone who thinks the news media is there for them to use to alter society to their standards. There are programs where such things can be addressed, and should be addressed, but they should be  identified as such, not as the nightly news.

Personally, I watched CBC News for decades, but, a few months ago I stopped watching them altogether as they are a constant source of left wing, Liberal, propaganda, while completely ignoring, or vilifying anything right wing or even centrist. In 6 years, I have never heard a CBC reporter criticize Liberal PM Justin Trudeau, easily the worst Prime Minister in Canada since his father.

Rand Paul quits YouTube over ‘despicable’ censorship

Citing the platform’s rampant censorship practices, the lawmaker said

he was leaving YouTube as part of an ‘exodus’ from Big Tech

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) speaks during a hearing on Covid-19 policy in Washington, DC.

July 20, 2021. © Getty Images / Stefani Reynolds

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has announced that he will no longer be posting content on YouTube, branding the Google-owned platform as the “worst censors” among a host of “Big Tech gatekeepers” that “silenced” opposing views.

Penning his thoughts in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner on Monday, Paul noted that the move would be part of a bigger “exodus” from the “new town square” of “Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram” over rampant censorship and an “almost religious adherence to the edicts of government bureaucrats.”

i.e. Deep State!

“Just because private censorship of speech is allowable under the law, that doesn’t make that censorship any less despicable or illiberal,” Paul wrote, adding that he would be posting video content on rumble.com, an alternative platform that has gained popularity with creators dissatisfied with Big Tech companies’ misinformation policies.

Last year, the outspoken lawmaker received two strikes on his YouTube channel, leading to temporary account suspensions in August and September, for what the platform alleged were violations of its policy regarding Covid-19 misinformation. But Paul countered that the company had “the gall to delete constitutionally protected speech” by taking down his videos challenging prevailing narratives.

It is indeed ironic that the censors likely think of themselves as progressive but their actions are more suggestive of the diktats of the Medieval church.

“In the US in 2021, you are being told there are ideas or opinions that are too ‘dangerous’ for you to see,” Paul said, taking aim at “loud voices” in Congress “on the Left and the Right” who say they want to “break up or regulate Big Tech” without stepping up and doing something about it.

While describing the departure as his “New Year’s resolution,” Paul said he may still post videos on YouTube in order to “criticize them” or promote the competition. He encouraged “other liberty lovers” to follow suit and take their business elsewhere.

“About half of the public leans right,” he noted, adding that if, instead of “conforming to [Big Tech’s] approved opinions,” they “all took our messaging to outlets of free exchange, we could cripple Big Tech in a heartbeat.”

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Five Eyes Countries Fight Back Against Cyber Crimes, But Ignore CSAM

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Canadian spy agency targeted foreign hackers to ‘impose a cost’

for cybercrime

Unfortunately, Child Sex Abuse Images are not one of them

By Alex Boutilier  Global News

Posted December 7, 2021 9:47 am

Canada’s electronic spy agency acknowledged Monday it has conducted cyber operations against foreign hackers to “impose a cost” for the growing levels of cybercrime.

It is the first time the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) has publicly acknowledged the use of “foreign cyber operations” — a category of operations that can include both “active” (offensive) or defensive cyber tools.

The agency said its new mandate “gives CSE the legal authority to conduct cyber operations to disrupt foreign-based threats to Canada, including cybercriminals.”

“Although we cannot comment on our use of foreign cyber operations (active and defensive cyber operations) or provide operational statistics, we can confirm we have the tools we need to impose a cost on the people behind these kinds of incidents,” wrote CSE spokesperson Evan Koronewski in a statement to Global News.

“We can also confirm we are using these tools for such purposes, and working together with Canadian law enforcement where appropriate against cybercrime.”

CSE’s acknowledgment of cyber operations against non-state actors is being called a “watershed” moment for the agency, which operated largely in the shadows until thrust into headlines by Edward Snowden’s disclosures in 2013.

The agency was given explicit authority to conduct “active” operations by the Liberal government in 2019 — albeit under considerable restrictions. The example the agency likes to use is taking action to disrupt a terrorist group’s communications networks to prevent them from planning an attack. Another example would be shutting down networks of a criminal or state-backed group that is actively hacking the Canadian government.

Because hacking a criminal group, intelligence agency or terrorist organization based in a foreign country could violate that country’s laws, CSE’s active measures require the sign-off of both the minister of defence and the foreign affairs minister. The actions must not target Canadians or anyone in Canada.

“(This) marks a time where, rather than relying on a criminal justice agency to address criminal behaviours, the Canadian government is instead using its most secretive and best-resourced intelligence agency to impede the activities of criminals,” Christopher Parsons, a cybersecurity researcher with Citizen Lab, told Global News.

“While it is positive that the CSE is admitting it has used these powers — and, in doing so, has joined the ranks of its other Five Eyes intelligence partners — there is still much to learn. … (Does this) signify the Government of Canada will be increasingly reliant on cyber operations to disrupt criminals, without trial or conviction, instead of trying to bring them to justice?”

The cyber intelligence agency, along with the RCMP, warned Monday that ransomware attacks against critical Canadian sectors — such as health care, energy and manufacturing — are on the rise.

The Liberal government released an open letter to Canadians urging organizations to beef up their cybersecurity, noting that the cost of ransomware attacks —where hackers lock down networks and data, and demand a ransom to unlock them — are increasing dramatically over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Together with law enforcement, and other federal and international partners, we are working hard to make threat information more publicly available and provide you with specific advice and guidance to help you stay safe from the impacts of ransomware,” the letter, signed by four Liberal cabinet ministers, read.

“Canada is also working closely with our allies to pursue cyber threat actors and disrupt their capabilities.”

There are signs — including CSE’s public acknowledgment Monday — that those “disruption” efforts are increasing.

On Monday, the New York Times reported that Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, acknowledged the military had turned its sophisticated cyber arsenal against criminal hackers.

“The first thing we have to do is to understand the adversary and their insights better than we’ve ever understood them before,” Nakasone told the Times, indicating ransomware groups were among those targeted.

“Before, during and since, with a number of elements of our government, we have taken actions and we have imposed costs. … That’s an important piece that we should always be mindful of.”

That language of “imposing costs” — which CSE also deployed — is significant, said Carleton University professor and security researcher Stephanie Carvin. Carvin said it implies the actions CSE is taking is not just to stop hacks against Canadian organizations, but as a deterrent.

“It’s a big day in Canadian cybersecurity history,” Carvin, a former intelligence analyst, said in an interview.

“Cybercrime is the primary cyber threat to Canada. … I wonder if the confirmation itself is just kind of the CSE acknowledging the scope of the problem is so severe that they have to become involved as well.”

Unfortunately, the primary cyber threat in Canada and most other countries is child sexual abuse images. But governments don't understand this, nor do they understand the destruction being done especially to a generation of girls by this horrific crime. 

Canada has done literally nothing to address this issue in the 6 years of Trudeau's hapless government.

The Media is the Message > Trust in Media Tanking; WaPos Self-Contradiction; UK's Express and Sun Admit Fake News

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Trust in US media drops near record low with only 36%

of Americans expressing confidence in reporting

7 Oct, 2021 18:38

Protesters are shown in front of a damaged CNN sign at the media outlet's Atlanta headquarters during a demonstration in May 2020. © Reuters / Dustin Chambers

A new Gallup poll shows that Americans’ trust in mass media outlets has tumbled to the second-lowest level on record, and the relatively few US adults who think they’re seeing truth in news reports are predominantly Democrats.

Just 36% of American adults expressed some level of trust in mass media in a survey done last month, down from 40% last year and historic highs around 70% in the 1970s, Gallup said on Thursday. In fact, only 7% of respondents said they have “a great deal” of trust in newspaper, television and radio news reporting, while 29% have “a fair amount” of trust.

The all-time low of 32% was set in 2016, when Donald Trump blasted the political press as “slime” and “lying, disgusting people” on his way to defeating Hillary Clinton in that year’s contentious presidential election.

Trump’s presidency and his disputed election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 appears to have widened the political divide in media perceptions. While 68% of Democrats polled by Gallup said they trust the media, just 31% of Independents and 11% of Republicans still believe in the Fourth Estate.

The media-trust gap between Democrats and Republicans has widened from 23 percentage points in 2015, at 55-32, to 57 points in 2021, Gallup’s polling shows. At the start of the century, that gap was just six points, at 53-47.

This, of course, reveals how far left MSM has gone.

Democrat voters perhaps liked what they saw from the media’s treatment of Trump during his presidency and its coverage of the 2020 election, as their trust level shot up to as high as 76% in 2018 from 51% in 2016. It has remained around 70% for the past five years.

For example, mainstream outlets joined Big Tech in suppressing October 2020 reports on the Biden family’s overseas influence-peddling. Revelations from a laptop that Biden’s son, Hunter, allegedly left at a Delaware repair shop were portrayed as ‘Russian disinformation’. Nearly a year later, with the Democrat safely installed as president, a reporter from one of the outlets that promoted the Russian-disinformation theory, Politico, revealed that he had independently confirmed several of the most damaging emails from the laptop.

And when a January 6 protest over claims of election fraud at the US Capitol escalated into a riot, CNN and other mainstream outlets joined Democrat politicians in touting the event as a deadly and racially motivated “insurrection.” The only person killed during the riot was a Trump supporter who was shot by police, while four others, including one officer, died of natural causes.

While coverage of the Trump era apparently pleased Democrats and alienated many Republicans, Independents are taking an increasingly skeptical view of the media. Trust in the media among Independents has dropped from 42% in 2018 to 31% in 2021, Gallup’s figures showed.

Coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic also may have diminished public trust in the media. A hidden-camera investigation by Project Veritas in April purported to show CNN technical director Charlie Chester saying that the network hyped fears of the virus to boost ratings.

“Covid? Gangbusters with ratings, right? Which is why we constantly have the death toll on the side,” Chester was shown saying in the Project Veritas video.

Gallup’s findings are in line with those of the Pew Research Center, which said in August that Democrats were more than twice as likely as Republicans to say they had at least some trust in information from national news organizations. That gap went from 13 percentage points in 2016, at 83-70, to 43 points this year, at 78-35.

Reaction to Gallup’s latest poll was similarly divided. Greg Scott, a staffer for the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, said the results showed that it’s a “good time for some introspection, journos.”

At the other end of the spectrum, a left-wing Twitter user interpreted the poll as a reflection of Democrats rejecting “Trump- and GOP-enabling lies” and Republicans distrusting the media “every time the press tells the truth.”

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Washington Post's ‘conspiracy theory’ quiz declares existence of

‘deep state’ fake news, contradicting its own reporting

8 Oct, 2021 15:49

FILE PHOTO: A protester holding a sign referring to the QAnon conspiracy theory speaks at a protest against the 2020 presidential election results in Phoenix, Arizona, November 5, 2020 © Reuters / Cheney Orr

If you believe in a “Deep State” embedded in the US government, then you’re falling down the conspiracy “rabbit hole,” the Washington Post claims. Yet the Post believes this theory too. It just doesn’t call it a ‘Deep State’.

Nine in 10 Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory, researchers found earlier this summer. Yet conspiracy theories run the gamut from ‘Bigfoot exists’ to ‘the Holocaust never happened’, and the Washington Post published a quiz this week to remind its readers which ones to believe and which to discard. The answers tell a story in themselves.

In a series of multiple-choice questions, the statement “There is a ‘deep state’ embedded in the government that operates in secret and without oversight” is marked as false. 

“For much of the past four years, Republicans have speculated that a ‘deep state’ was working to undermine President Donald Trump,” the Post explained, adding: “While the FBI and CIA do conduct covert operations, there’s little evidence for a separate Deep State.”

Yet this is untrue, according to the Washington Post’s own reporting. The Post revealed in 2013 that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence maintains a “black budget” of $52.6 billion mapping “a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny,” which spends these funds on spy operations and occasionally lethal action abroad. The public didn’t know that the NSA spied on Americans’ communications for a long time, until the Post published Edward Snowden’s leaks that same year, and the Post was instrumental in drawing attention to the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.

Even before Snowden’s revelations, the Post in 2010 described the US national security and intelligence apparatus as “a hidden world, growing beyond control.” This leviathan, the paper described, is “hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight,” while “no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first reported Snowden’s leaks, described the Post’s about-turn on the existence of the Deep State as an example of “how the Trump era corrupted almost every mainstream institution in the US, especially media corporations.”

The CIA’s experiments with mind-control and psychological torture, which were carried out on Americans during multiple presidential administrations, are not the stuff of conspiracy theory. These experiments took place between 1953 and 1973, with some information on the program, known as MKUltra, only declassified in 2001. Another question in the Washington Post’s quiz even highlights this CIA program as an example of a conspiracy that actually took place.

The term ‘Deep State’ has been used in recent years to describe the bureaucrats and intelligence agency operatives who worked to frustrate and stymie former President Donald Trump’s agenda. When invoked by Republicans and Trump supporters, the term is ridiculed as a conspiracy theory, but those involved openly admit to working against the former president from behind the scenes.

General Mark Milley, commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went behind Trump’s back to assure his Chinese counterpart that he and the national security establishment wouldn’t let Trump do anything “rogue” after his election loss last year. Milley admitted to consorting with Beijing, and with Democrat politicians, in a recent book by Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Bob Woodward.

Time Magazine lionized the “well-funded cabal of powerful people” who worked to ensure that Trump lost his re-election bid. In the words of the magazine, “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.” 

New Yorker author David Rohde, who has written a book on the Deep State and the conspiracies surrounding it, told Vox last year that the Deep State exists, and can be described as “a permanent government or an institutional government” made up of “incredibly large and powerful organizations like the FBI and the CIA and the NSA.” Whether by the FBI’s ‘Russiagate’ investigation – which was predicated on several lies – or unnamed ‘intelligence sources’ planting false stories in the media to hamper Trump’s planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, this “permanent government” did work against Trump before and during his four years in office. 

Curiously, the Washington Post’s quiz now describes the claim that “Donald Trump colluded with Russians to steal the presidency in 2016” as false, after four years of articles pushing the notion that there was, in fact, “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact, it seems, largely depends on who’s in office.

Bild roasts YouTube for stifling free speech in Germany after

court rules it was wrong to delete Covid-19 interviews

12 Oct, 2021 13:45

Screenshot © allesaufdentisch.tv; (inset) © Reuters / Lucy Nicholson

YouTube censorship of Covid-19 debate is a “dangerous encroachment” on the freedom of speech, an editor at leading German tabloid Bild has said, after the platform deleted two videos of an online debate on the pandemic.

The preliminary injunction was issued by the Cologne Regional Court in response to a legal challenge filed by the people behind the #allesaufdentisch (#EverythingOnTheTable) online campaign. It’s basically a collection of interviews with various experts and public figures about the Covid-19 pandemic that the initiators touted as a “wide-ranging, fact-based, open and factual discourse” on their website. Some of them challenged the government handling of the pandemic and raised all sorts of controversial vaccine-related issues.

YouTube found two of those interviews unfit for its hosting and erased them. The flagged videos showed discussions with mathematics professor Stephan Luckhaus and the neurobiologist Gerald Huther. The court called YouTube’s move “unjustified”, saying that the platform failed to explain which exact parts of the interviews it deemed in violation of its community rules for health-related content, according to German media.

The explanation of why the videos were deleted was kept pretty vague, claiming that some opinions about the vaccination against Covid-19 went against the scientific consensus. Overall, the videos contained “a large number of clearly permissible statements”, the court said, which gave credence to the plaintiffs’ argument that YouTube had unfairly restricted their freedom of expression. The injunction said the court decision can be appealed.

The #allesaufdentisch campaign was launched in late September and was considered a spiritual successor of a similar #allesdichtmachen (#CloseEverythig) anti-lockdown online movement, which tilted more to satirical content.

Critics say the newer interviews are a mixture of justified criticism, trivialities and “targeted disinformation”, as the daily Die Zeit described it. But many people believe the public deserves the right to see those opinions and judge their validity for themselves, without interference from American tech giants.

Jan Schafer, the political director of the influential German tabloid Bild, hailed the court’s decision, calling YouTube’s increasingly broad use of censorship a “dangerous encroachment” on public discourse in Germany.

Bild was the first to obtain and cover the court injunction on Sunday evening. It remains unclear how much influence the opinion of the German justice system will have on US-based Google, the owner of YouTube.

Basically, none, unless there is strong legislation, or very large fines or lawsuits.

Last month, YouTube shut down two popular channels of RT DE, the Berlin-based German-language version of RT, using the same “Covid-19 misinformation” justification. The decision caused a major rift in German-Russian relationships, as Moscow accused Berlin of tacitly approving the move, if not orchestrating it behind the scene. Germany denied the allegation.

RT DE has been facing an increasingly hostile environment in Germany, with local banks refusing to serve it and some media outlets branding it a Russian propaganda arm bombarding Germans with misinformation. RT DE turned to German courts to defend its reputation from what it argued to be slanderous accusations, securing injunctions in its favor.

Bild was in no rush to defend RT DE from YouTube censorship. In fact, it described the erasure of its channels as a blow to “the central component of [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] disinformation campaign” and lamented that the channels’ content remained available on other platforms, reaching “hundreds of thousands” of viewers.

Daily Express retracts story on Russia ‘stealing’ Sputnik V vaccine recipe, but the original fake-news publisher the Sun persists

12 Oct, 2021 18:40

(L) Screenshot © express.co.uk; (R) Screenshot © thesun.co.uk

The Daily Express has retracted the claim Russia stole the coronavirus vaccine recipe from UK’s AstraZeneca, replacing it with a statement by Sputnik V’s developers. The Sun merely appended a quote and stands by its false story.

In a Monday ‘bombshell,’ the Sun claimed UK spies “have proof” that Moscow’s flagship Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, was actually inspired by documents “swiped” from AstraZeneca “by a foreign agent in person.” The Express later published its own story, citing the Sun.

On Tuesday, however, the latter tabloid retracted the story entirely – leaving the original headline, but replacing the copy with the text of a statement by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the outfit that funded Sputnik V’s development at the Gamaleya National Research Center in Moscow.

“The article also contained false information. As an apology, we are happy to set the record straight,” the Express noted in the correction. 

The RDIF statement explains that Sputnik V uses two human adenovirus vectors, whereas the AstraZeneca jab opted for a chimpanzee adenovirus. Sputnik V, which is the world’s first registered vaccine against the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, was also based on years of prior research in the field – a fact that’s easily verifiable via public records.

“Rather than spreading fake stories, the UK media and Government services should better protect the reputation of AstraZeneca, a safe and efficient vaccine that is constantly attacked by competitors in the media with facts taken out of context,” the RDIF said.

The Sun has not retracted or corrected Monday’s article, however. The tabloid merely added a one-sentence quote from a London PR firm representing the RDIF to the end of the article, describing the original story as “another fake news and blatant lie based on anonymous sources.”

Monday’s claims by British spies, laundered by the tabloid of Hillsborough infamy, drew sharp criticism in Moscow. Gennady Onishchenko, a lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party who previously served as head of Russia’s health authority and a presidential aide, said that the people involved in the story ought to be fired and to seek psychiatric help.

“I suggest they send the Sun’s journalists for a psychological evaluation,” he told RIA Novosti. “And the MI6 employees should be fired for losing the ability to do their jobs.”

War on Christianity - Google: 'Christian' Banned as Keyword on YouTube; 'Muslim' OK

Unacceptable content? YouTube ad policy bans keyword ‘Christian’

© Reuters / Dado Ruvic

When the founder of a Christian veterans group tried to upload a YouTube ad for his organization, he received an odd rejection, informing him the keyword “Christian” was no longer acceptable under the site’s ad targeting policy.

Chad Robichaux, founder of the Mighty Oaks Foundation, a charitable group that helps veterans overcome wartime trauma, took to Twitter with a screenshot detailing his encounter with the tech giant.

So one of the keywords to boost the ad was the word ‘Christian,’ which we use regularly. The ad was denied specifically because of the use of the word ‘Christian.’

Chad Robichaux

@ChadRobo

 We ran a @YouTube ad for our veterans ministry outreach for those  in need & it was denied for the word “Christian”.  Insane! #Censorship should terrify every American; conservative or liberal, Christian or Muslim. This bias is a dangerous course for America. @MightyOaksFDN

“This is the first time we'd seen this,” Robichaux told Faithwire in an interview. Within hours of Robichaux’s post, YouTube attempted to explain the situation in a tweet of its own.

“We know that religious beliefs are personal, so we don’t allow advertisers to target users on the basis of religion,” the Google-owned platform said. “Beyond that, we don’t have policies against advertising that includes religious terms like ‘Christian.’”

The veteran fired back, arguing the company’s statement was demonstrably false and that he had used the same keyword in previous ads without problems “for years.” Moreover, he claims when he tried running the same ad but with the keyword “Muslim” instead, there was no issue.

TeamYouTube✔

@TeamYouTube

Replying to @ChadRobo and 2 others

We know that religious beliefs are personal, so we don’t allow advertisers to target users on the basis of religion. Beyond that, we don’t have policies against advertising that includes religious terms like “Christian”.

Chad Robichaux

@ChadRobo

We ran the exact same ad with the keyword “Muslim” & it was approved but “Christian” was not. Additionally, we’ve ran ads with the keyword “Christian” for years. This year alone we had 150,000 impressions on that word in our ads. As per your support line this is a new restriction

“We’ve ran ads with the keyword ‘Christian’ for years. This year alone we had 150,000 impressions on that word in our ads,” Robichaux responded, adding “We ran the exact same ad with the keyword ‘Muslim’ & it was approved but ‘Christian’ was not.”

After speaking with Google’s help desk, however, Robichaux was told the policy was new. Google has yet to comment publicly on the matter.

Social Media Halts Social Engineering for Irish Abortion Referendum

Abortion ad ban: Google surpasses Facebook stance on Irish referendum

The Google logo. ©Dado Ruvic / Reuters

Google will ban all adverts related to the Irish abortion referendum following fears online campaigns could sway the vote.

From Thursday, the search giant will suspend ads related to the referendum on core legislation that currently blocks the termination of pregnancies in Ireland in the vast majority of cases.  

“Following our update around election integrity efforts globally, we have decided to pause all ads related to the Irish referendum on the Eighth Amendment,” Google said in a statement.

The pause on adverts includes Google Adwords and YouTube, which is owned by the search engine’s parent company, and comes after Facebook decided to block ads on its platform which come from organizations and individuals outside of Ireland.

Irish law

In Ireland, rules surrounding online political advertising is not as rigorous as traditional mediums like print, television or radio.

A draft bill on online ad transparency is currently being considered in the Dail (Irish parliament) and could compel companies such Facebook or Google to include notices with the exact details of organizations or individuals behind a particular advert.

Irish citizens will go to the polls to decide whether the Eighth Amendment of the constitution should be repealed. The 1983 law gives the unborn an equal right to life as the mother. With the exception of situations where the life of the mother is at serious risk, the rule effectively outlaws abortion in Ireland.  

Facebook block

Facebook made their announcement on Tuesday, citing anxieties that the integrity of the vote on May 25 could be compromised by foreign interest groups. In recent months, Facebook has been hit by a series of scandals, including the Cambridge Analytica data breach, as well as claims that Russia and other influencers used online methods to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.

Concerns that Facebook was being used to interfere in the democratic process saw Zuckerberg hauled in front of the US Congress last month, during which he admitted the company “didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility.”

As a result, Facebook says it’s building “transparency tools” such a ‘view ads’ feature to combat foreign interference. A verification process has just been rolled out to ensure that political adverts come from residents of Ireland, where the vote on a key piece of legislation that currently blocks the termination of pregnancies will take place.

Last month, Irish journalist and transparency advocate Gavin Sheridan highlighted problems in finding out information about organizations behind Facebook pages and sponsored ad campaigns on the Eighth Amendment referendum.

The Transparent Referendum Initiative as Sheridan mention's above, is working to highlight the source of funding behind social media ads in the lead up to Ireland’s vote. Manned by a group of volunteers, it aims to identify ways to make advertisements more transparent for voters.

YouTube - Part of Deep State? Seriously?

‘Economic censorship’:

YouTube bans advertisers from Ron Paul videos

YouTube stands accused of censorship, following the company’s decision to bar former Congressman Ron Paul and his online news program from receiving advertising revenue for a number of videos which Paul recently posted.

Upon “manual review,” the website has found a series of videos posted by the Ron Paul Liberty Report “unsuitable for all advertisers,” effectively denying Paul and his online news program potential revenue from views.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange called it “economic censorship,” noting that the ‘unsuitable’ videos featured the former congressman’s criticism of president Donald Trump’s decision to send more American troops to Afghanistan, as well as criticizing the US Senate Intelligence Committee for terming Wikileaks a hostile foreign intelligence service last week.

Or maybe it was his recent column on 'deep state'? Ron Paul: Vote All You Want, the Secret Government Won't Change

Dr. Paul, a 12-term ex-congressman and three-time presidential candidate, is known for views that often contradict those of Washington’s political establishment, especially on issues of war and peace.

“We have no violence, no foul language, no political extremism, no hate or intolerance,” Daniel McAdams, co-producer of the Ron Paul Liberty Report, told RT America. “Our program is simply a news analysis discussion from a libertarian and antiwar perspective.”

'Antiwar perspective' is 'anti-deepstate' perspective!

McAdams, who also is executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, added that the YouTube demonetization “creates enormous financial burdens for the program.”

YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it decided to exclude Paul’s videos from gaining advertising benefits.

However, the website’s guidelines say YouTube reserves the right to demonetize videos on “controversial issues and sensitive events,” further explaining that it could be “video content that features or focuses on sensitive topics or events including, but not limited to, war, political conflicts, terrorism or extremism, death and tragedies, sexual abuse, even if graphic imagery is not shown.”

YouTube has done the same to a number of political commentators. Most recently, those affected by the advert ban include left-wing online blogger Tim Black and right-wing commentator Paul Joseph Watson. Their videos have registered millions of views on the website.

“Demonetization is a deliberate effort to stamp out independent political commentary – from the left or the right,” Black told the Boston Globe’s Hiawatha Bray. “It’s not about specific videos... It’s about pushing out diversity of thought and uplifting major news networks such as CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.”

Previously, YouTube demonetized popular videos by Diamond and Silk, two black women who strongly support Trump, as well as the work of left-wing humorist Jimmy Dore.

“YouTube needs to take a hard look at its own extreme political intolerance before preventing alternative, peaceful political views from being shared as advertising partners on its platform,” McAdams told RT America.

Video producers can appeal demonetization, a YouTube spokesperson told the Boston Globe.

“Many creators, including Diamond and Silk, have submitted and successfully won appeals.”

However, the Ron Paul Liberty Report was “not given answers but rather canned non-responses,” when the program asked for an explanation from YouTube, McAdams said.

How is it that unelected, basically unknown people with no serious oversight and no accountability have removed free speech from American society. Is it time to nationalize social networking, or create a bureaucracy to oversee it?

Images of Aleppo Suffering Often Fake Like This One Shot in Egypt

Caught Red-Handed (Red Paint not Blood) 

It seems 'truth' is almost irrelevant these days. Technology combined with a complete lack of the fear of God has created an atmosphere where truth is virtually impossible to determine in many areas. What we know about the Syrian war is what we are told and what we are told frequently is completely unrelated to the truth.

For me, I am glad the Aleppo siege is virtually over. I may not like the way it was done, but I honestly cannot believe half of what I have heard about it. But, at least it's done! Without Russian involvement it might have gone on for several more years as western forces had no actual plan to win the battle or the war. That would have been a far greater tragedy.

Red paint not blood: Photographer nabbed shooting

fake images of ‘Aleppo suffering’ in Egypt

© MoiEgy / Facebook

It was destined to be an iconic image: a small girl holding a teddy bear in a white dress marked by blood splotches with the ruins of Aleppo behind her. However, it was also a set-up, shot hundreds of miles away in a different country, with help of a posing child and some paint.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry has revealed on its Facebook page that it arrested a group of five people caught in the act of producing images purportedly depicting scenes of suffering in Aleppo that they had planned to pass off as real pictures from Syria.

© MoiEgy / Facebook

The ministry said that the residents of Port Said, a city on the Suez Canal, were caught in the middle of their shoot as the 12-year-old star, Ragd, was posing for 21-year-old Mustafa, who told the authorities that he “normally photographed weddings and ceremonies, but had an idea for something else.”

© MoiEgy / YouTube

“In a conversation with them, the suspects revealed that they had shot a series of scenes to be spread on social media, as actual pictures from Aleppo,” said the ministry, which posted a video of the arrest, and interviews with the suspects online.

The stand-in for Aleppo was “the ruins of a house that had been slated for demolition by the authorities some time earlier.” The blood was obtained from a “tin of red paint” that was liberally smeared on the girl, her fake bandages, and her stuffed animal.

The girl herself was known to the photographer beforehand, and came to the session with her mother, the photographer, and three other local men.

Mustafa is being detained in jail for an initial four days, while the others have been set free, and Ragd has been returned to her guardian.

While it is unknown whether Mustafa’s staged photo would have gained social media traction, vivid photographs – some of them fake – have been powerful tools in shaping public opinion since Aleppo was re-captured by Syrian government forces earlier this month.

The most notorious hoax picture, which has been shared thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook, features a girl running through a debris-filled street. The caption reads “Girl running to survive, all her family have been killed. It’s not in Hollywood. This real in Syria.” In fact, the image was cut from a 2014 Lebanese pop video.

Another video, called “Executions have begun in the middle of the street in Aleppo,” which has also been widely shared, depicts supposed government forces allegedly taking out retribution on civilians. In reality, the video dates back from 2012, and contains unverified images.

Lethbridge Professor Accused of Anti-Semitism Suspended

Tenured professor denies responsibility for anti-Semitic post on his Facebook page

CBC News 


Anthony Hall, a University of Lethbridge professor, co-hosts a weekly YouTube show called 'False Flag Weekly News.' (B'nai Brith/YouTube)

B'nai Brith wants Alberta professor fired for allegedly

anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

A professor alleged to be promoting conspiracy theories and denying the Holocaust has been suspended without pay by the University of Lethbridge.

Anthony Hall is suspended pending the outcome of an internal investigation into possible violations of the Human Rights Act, university officials said in a statement.

B'nai Brith Canada called for Hall's termination after questions about an anti-Semitic Facebook post made on his page by a third party. The group also alleges the professor uses his academic credentials to deny the Holocaust and promote various conspiracy theories.

The university has "reassigned" his classes, according to the statement released Thursday.

"As well, any graduate students supervised by Dr. Hall have been assigned a new faculty supervisor to ensure there is no disruption to the academic program of students. Students affected by this decision have been notified of this change already."

    University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada

Earlier this week, Hall said there is a smear campaign against him.

"I'm being slandered, the University of Lethbridge is being slandered," Hall told CBC Radio's Calgary Eyeopener.

"Right now, it's on my shoulders to defend the University of Lethbridge and to defend for all the faculty in Canada, the principle of academic freedom, because that responsibility has been abandoned by the administration at my university and it's been left for me and it's appropriate that I do so."

Hall co-hosts a YouTube show called "False Flag Weekly News," which allegedly promotes the notion of a Zionist conspiracy to foster hatred of Muslims through "false flag" terror events, beginning with the Sept. 11 attacks. He also runs his own news website.

Islamic Invisible Women Promote IS from Within UK

“Islamic Women’s Group in UK Defends Islamic State, Predicts Expansion to Western Countries,” 

by Alyssa Canobbio, Washington Free Beacon

Aws Al-Jezairy of Vice met with the group of women who run Campaign Islam, a UK-based organization that defends the Islamic State and maintains a strong YouTube presence.

The group uploads videos of its interruptions of Islam and criticisms of policies, government, and society of the West.

“The symbol of oppression is not the Muslim woman—it is, in fact, the Western woman,” one of the members of Campaign Islam said in a video from Vice.

Their beliefs originate from the teachings of Islamic scholars based on the Quran. The Quran is Satan's response to the Bible, and its teachings are completely demonic. Muslims are brainwashed into believing the Quran, consequently, you have invisible women speaking through a black cloth telling you that they are the free ones and western women are oppressed. It would be easy to call them incredibly stupid, but, in fact, they are brainwashed and incapable of thinking for themselves.

Campaign Islam holds weekly meetings were they discuss life under Islam and the utopian vision of a perfect Islamic State. Umm Dujanah, one of the campaign’s organizers, said she believes that the dream state is in its infancy in both Syria and Iraq. The group draws its teachings from Islamic scholars and talks about every detail down to the measurements of their homes.

One group attendee said they would have to demolish everything in Britain and start over to achieve this. The comment was met with giggles from Dujanah, who agreed that within the UK but the group did not need to do that because IS would expand into other Western countries.

Watch the Interview

Islamist invisible women's group

As the talk progressed Dujanah discussed non-Muslims that would be in their utopian state that they would have to pay a tax, if non-Muslims did not want to pay the tax they would need to convert or be killed. Dujanah argued giving them a choice.

Al-Jezairy asked Dujanah about how she knew IS regulations were working, and Dujanah defended the videos and material that IS puts on the Internet, slamming the Western media for creating propaganda against IS.

Al-Jezairy asked the group if the girls wanted to go to Iraq or Syria to join IS and if they would be disappointed if it was not what they expected. The group said that it would not even have to go anywhere because they know from the evidence from the Sunnah that Islam will prevail over the Earth.

“We are grateful to live and see one of the great prophecies come true,” said Dujanah.

Russia Jails 3 Women over Twerking Video at WW2 Memorial

A Russian court has jailed three women for performing a twerking dance in front of a World War Two memorial.

The Orenburg dance school video has been a huge YouTube hit

The court in Novorossiysk gave two of the dancers 10 days in jail each, a third 15 days and two others received fines on charges of petty hooliganism.

Prosecutors had said their "erotic and sexual twerk dance" was disrespectful to historic memory and unacceptable.

Earlier this month, Russian officials closed a dance school (Orenburg) after a similar dance video emerged on the internet.

The latest incident involves six dancers - one of them a minor who was not convicted - who had posted a video on YouTube.

"This incident of disrespect for the memory of war history is unacceptable and any attempts to desecrate sites of military glory will be stopped immediately," prosecutors said.

Aside from the questionable, old Soviet attitude that the military can produce glory, the memorial represents soldiers who laid down their lives for their country. Twerking was not the image of the country they had in mind when they went to fight. Having their memory used and abused in a vulgar, dance video is beyond contemptible. 

The sentences come as Russia prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the World War Two victory.

They also follow the incident early in April when a video clip from the Orenburg dance school on YouTube was viewed millions of times.

The video clip, entitled Winnie the Pooh and the Bees, showed a group of teenage girls dancing on stage in striped leotards, long socks and mini-skirts,

They perform hip-thrusting moves characteristic of twerking. Not to mention sex.

A committee is investigating whether the performance amounts to negligence or even "debauched action", which is punishable by a range of sanctions from community service to three years behind bars.

Thank you Miley Cyrus for taking vulgarity to another level. Can there be anything worse in society than a fallen Christian?