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Journalism And Democracy In A Time Of Genocide

October 30, 2024 Mary Kostakidis, Consortium News. , , , , , , , ,
Last month in New York at separate forums, two senior Democrat figures – John Kerry and Hillary Clinton – pointed to what they saw as major problems: the First Amendment was “an obstacle to building consensus,” and the “narrative” in the press needs to be (even more) “consistent.” The challenge presented by the free flow of ideas and information in the digital world, to those accustomed to maintaining control of the narrative, defines our moment in history and the fragility of democratic freedoms. Those calls for less freedom of speech and for more consistency in messaging to the public by the Fourth Estate, come at a time when large sections of the public have lost trust in a legacy media too consistent in its messaging, and incapable of providing the information and analysis that will enable them to know and fully understand what’s happening.

Revealed: The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News

October 22, 2024 Alan Macleod, MintPress News. , , , , , ,
One year after Oct. 7 attacks, Netanyahu is on a winning streak.” So reads the title of a recent Axios article describing the Israeli prime minister riding on an unbeatable wave of triumphs. These stunning military “successes,” its author Barak Ravid notes, include the bombing of Yemen, the assassinations of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the pager attack against Lebanon. The same author recently went viral for an article that claimed that Israeli attacks against Hezbollah are “not intended to lead to war but are an attempt to reach ‘de-escalation through escalation.'”

Venezuela In The Crosshairs Of Technological Imperialism

September 5, 2024 Misión Verdad Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , , ,
In August, Venezuela’s re-elected president, Nicolás Maduro, signed a decree blocking access to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for 10 days. President Maduro said of its owner, tycoon Elon Musk, “He has violated the rules by inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death, confrontation among Venezuelans, and has violated all Venezuelan laws.” Musk, who also owns the Starlink satellite broadband network, expressed his support for the far-right Venezuelan opposition and insulted the president, which is a sign of the determination of the new global elites to carry out regime change in Venezuela. This action was accompanied by other attempts implemented through various technological platforms such as Apple, Google, and Meta.

How US Big Tech Monopolies Colonized The World: Welcome To Neo-Feudalism

August 19, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
US Big Tech corporations have essentially colonized the world. In almost every country on Earth, the digital infrastructure upon which the modern economy was built is owned and controlled by a small handful of monopolies, based largely in Silicon Valley. This system is looking more and more like neo-feudalism. Just as the feudal lords of medieval Europe owned all of the land and turned almost everyone else into serfs, who broke their backs producing food for their masters, the US Big Tech monopolies of the 21st century act as corporate feudal lords, controlling all of the digital land upon which the digital economy is based.

How A Strong Messaging Strategy Helped Defeat Brazil’s Bolsonaro

August 15, 2024 George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
The Trump phenomenon in the United States has sharp parallels with the powerful right-wing populist movement in Brazil. Under the leadership of Jair Bolsonaro, who won the presidency in 2019, that movement trampled previous democratic norms, denied climate change, downplayed the risks of COVID-19 and fostered violence against vulnerable communities.   Often called “The Trump of the Tropics,” Bolsonaro lost his re-election effort in January 2023, and quickly followed in Trump’s footsteps by refusing to concede defeat. His supporters then tried to occupy and attack government buildings in the capital, while also calling on the military to intercede.  

Kenya Protests: Gen Z Shows The Power Of Digital Activism

June 25, 2024 Job Mwaura, The Conversation. , , , , , ,
This is a powerful moment for digital activism. The protests have seen significant participation from young Kenyans who are using digital media to organise and voice their opposition. A great number of those driving the protests are Generation Z (often referred to as Gen Z) – individuals born roughly between the late 1990s and early 2010s and characterised by digital prowess and social consciousness. They have created this organic, grassroots movement which has used platforms, like social media, to mobilise and coordinate efforts quickly. Through my work I’ve documented how essential digital media has been in political participation in Kenya in the past decade.

Biden Administration Working With Social Media Companies To Limit Pro-Palestinian Content

May 25, 2024 Ken Klippenstein, Substack. , , , ,
The Biden administration has publicly admitted that it is working with tech companies to “limit Hamas's use of online platforms, including social media,” part of a campaign to suppress pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiment. Though there has been much speculation that the federal government is pressuring social media companies to police their networks, this is the first official confirmation of its counterterrorism efforts. A little-noticed readout for a May 15 Hague meeting between the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism Elizabeth Richard and other governments said that Richard “updated the group on U.S. efforts to engage tech companies in voluntary collaboration to limit Hamas’ use of online platforms, including social media, for terrorist purposes.”

TikTok Law Is An Attempt To Censor, Not A Warning To Big Tech

May 9, 2024 Julianne Tveten, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
As US lawmakers’ agitation over TikTok culminates in a law that threatens a nationwide ban if the social media platform isn’t sold to a US buyer within nine months, an emergent media narrative finds a silver lining. Every legislative move targeting TikTok, the story goes, has the potential to inspire much-needed regulation of tech behemoths like Meta, Amazon, Google and Apple. But by conflating the US’s legal treatment of TikTok—a subsidiary of the Beijing-based ByteDance—with that of its own tech industry, media obscure the real reasons for the law’s passage. This was apparent in a New York Times piece (4/25/24) headlined “TikTok Broke the Tech Law Logjam. Can That Success Be Repeated?”

Fediverse Model Offers Social Media A Second Chance

April 30, 2024 Kenzie Love, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
The problems with the big social media platforms are well known: the concentration of ownership, the lack of control or privacy, the ability to spread misinformation, and more. Despite these and other problems, however, “their use is still practically compulsory in order to advertise a person’s work or spread urgent news.” The result is that many businesses (worker co-ops included) continue to use the major platforms even if they run counter to many of their values. But an alternative does exist: the Fediverse. The Fediverse, as Jakob Sitter Midttun writes, is an ensemble of interconnected – yet independent –  free, open source social media platforms utilizing federated protocols to seamlessly integrate with one another.

How The United States Is Waging Economic War On China

April 11, 2024 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , ,
In our last two shows, we looked at China’s economy and where it was headed, busting major Western myths about it, and highlighting the differences between the Chinese and US economies that explain the dynamism of the former and the productive decline of the latter. We spoke about how China was embarked on engineering the next industrial revolution through a major structural transformation, not only to continue its high growth, but also to improve its quality, technologically and in human terms. And in doing this, China is increasingly taking the technological lead in more and more frontier sectors, including green technology, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology.

Film Activists Better

April 9, 2024 Zoe Broughton, Peace News. , , ,
If you film your campaign group in action, the footage can be used on social media or even broadcast news to get the message out to a wider audience. By filming it yourself, you are being part of DIY (Do It Yourself) culture and not relying on the mainstream media to turn up. Here are a few hints to get you going, using a smartphone. Before you go out Try and make sure your phone is fully charged. Pack your charged battery pack and charging cable if you have one. Make sure you have space on your phone to record onto.

Tales From The Pages Of COINTELPRO

February 16, 2024 Eugene Puryear, Liberation News. , , ,
“Circulate, to educate, to liberate!” This was the constant intonation of Sam Napier, circulation manager of The Black Panther newspaper. As one Panther leader noted, Sam was “the main reason” why shortly after it began, the paper had “a 200,000 plus copies per week distribution.”2 Napier was a beloved member of the party, which is why many were taken by surprise when his body was found in March of 1971, tied to a chair, showing bullet wounds and signs of torture. After they left, perhaps while he was still alive, his killers set the building on fire. Sam Napier was one of the victims of a concentrated effort to destroy the Black Panthers by the U.S. government, as part and parcel of an effort to destroy the entire Black liberation movement and any other radicals who dared raise their voices against the U.S. ruling class and their imperial policies.

The Billionaire-Backed Campaign Attacking The Palestinian Cause

February 7, 2024 Jessica Buxbaum, MintPress News. , , , , , ,
A week after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, the social media page Facts For Peace was created with the message, “Get the facts on Hamas, Israel, and peace in the region.” A few days later, the page began advertising its content. “Here is Hamas’ Founding Charter in Their Own Words,” one sponsored post reads alongside video clips of Hamas leaders speaking and snapshots of the document. The page has spent more than $945,000 on Facebook ads since the war began nearly four months ago, and according to POLITICO, was the single largest pro-Israel advertiser between November 2 and December 1, spending over $450,000 on Meta ads.

Musk’s Lawsuit Is About Destroying Free Speech

November 24, 2023 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
He wasn’t bluffing. After threatening to sue liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America (CNBC, 11/18/23), Twitter’s principal owner Elon Musk did just that, arguing in papers filed in a Texas court that the group “manipulated” data in an effort to “destroy” the social media platform, causing major advertisers to pull back (BBC, 11/20/23). The world’s richest human was responding to an MMFA report (11/16/23) about Twitter—which Musk has rebranded as X since purchasing the once publicly traded company—and its promotion of far-right, antisemitic content. It said that while “Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” the social media network has been “placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.”

Revealed: Fossil Fuel Giants Are Using British Influencers To Go Viral

July 31, 2023 Dimitris Dimitriadis, Joey Grostern and Sam Bright, DeSmog. , , , , ,
Oil and gas supermajors including Shell and BP are using UK influencers to push false solutions to the climate crisis and manufacture a more family friendly image, DeSmog can reveal. The influencers have included a popular former BBC presenter, a polar explorer, and an exasperated father of five who needs a break and finds it in the form of BP’s rewards app. The campaigns have been deployed across a number of social media platforms and are part of a global effort to give “millennials a reason to connect emotionally” with oil and gas firms, and to tackle their perception as “the bad guys”. DeSmog analysed examples of more than 100 influencers being paid to promote fossil fuel firms worldwide since 2017, from the US to Malaysia, in campaigns that have reached billions of people.
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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

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Keep independent media alive. 

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