Gleichschaltung is a German word with a rich history. It stands for the coerced harmonisation of all forms of public expression with the official line. That concept is currently undergoing a renaissance, but not in the “captive nations” of the East.

Every morning after arriving in his office at the Propaganda Ministry, Dr. Goebbels would devote himself to the important task of disseminating a directive to all German media outlets, outlining what position on principal issues they were expected to take on that particular day. The media were instructed not only on what to say but – of equal importance – what not to mention. The system Goebbels set up worked like a charm. Under his meticulous supervision, in public discourse an imposing harmony of opinion reigned from one end of Germany to another, undisrupted by discordant voices.

One wishes that this mechanically imposed harmony, admired as it may have been by some, had come to an end in 1945. But a YouTube bulletin disseminated a few days ago reminds us that it did not.

YouTube users were curtly informed of the prevailing “Community Guidelines” on a topic which currently is at the top of the list of public concerns: The Covid-19 crisis. Here are the highlights of that guidance:

“COVID-19 medical misinformation policy

“YouTube doesn’t allow content about COVID-19 that poses a serious risk of egregious harm.

“YouTube doesn’t allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities’ (LHA) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19. This is limited to content that contradicts WHO [about the utter corruption of WHO, see here] or local health authorities’ guidance on:

“Treatment,

“Prevention

“Diagnosis

“Transmission

“Social distancing and self-isolation guidelines, and

“The existence of COVID-19.”

Sceptics are encouraged to go directly to the source if they have doubts about the authenticity of these appalling prohibitions:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785

YouTube then goes on to specify:

“What this policy means for you if you’re posting content:

“Don’t post content on YouTube if it includes any of the following:

“Treatment misinformation:

“Content that encourages the use of home remedies, prayer, or rituals in place of medical treatment such as consulting a doctor or going to the hospital.”

Notably, no definition of “egregious harm” or “home remedies” is given, nor is any rationale provided for prohibiting such remedies being recommended by persons who may have had a positive experience after using them. Nor is it explained to millions of religious people throughout the world why prayer and procedures condescendingly termed “rituals” are also on the prohibited list. Will members of the Christian Science religious denomination, who since long before the appearance of Covid have relied exclusively on prayer for therapeutic purposes and avoided medical cures, now be required to alter their beliefs? Not even in the Soviet Union were believers ever made to face such a stark choice. To even the least sophisticated it should now be obvious that the thrust of YouTube’s guidelines is not to promote health but to steer patients toward the extremely expensive solutions that have enabled the pharmacological industry to make a financial killing from Covid-19.

That impression is strongly reinforced by the nauseatingly repetitious proscriptions that follow:

“Content that recommends use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19

“Claims that Hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19

“Categorical claims that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19

“Claims that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are safe to use in the treatment COVID-19

“Content that recommends use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of COVID-19

“Claims that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are safe to use in the treatment COVID-19.”

What evidence is there that they are unsafe? No indications are given. The governments of India, Japan, and the municipal authorities of Mexico City, among others, are quite happy with the results of the application of these treatments. So are their cured citizens who, however, are now prohibited by YouTube from telling others about their successful recovery.

If YouTube were merely a media platform, what possible interest could it have in disparaging cheap and effective alternatives to outrageously expensive, untested, and harmful pharmaceutical preparations of undisclosed composition, for the ill effects of which companies that produce them refuse to accept any tort liability?

The YouTube guideline goes on to disqualify questioning of masks or of their effectiveness and “claims that an approved COVID-19 vaccine will cause death, infertility, miscarriage, autism, or contraction of other infectious diseases,” although it is an amply documented fact that it will do all those things. Also forbidden are claims that “an approved COVID-19 vaccine will contain substances that are not on the vaccine ingredient list, such as biological matter from fetuses (e.g. fetal tissue, fetal cell lines) or animal products.” Never mind that several manufacturers have already admitted that it does, albeit using the weasel concept of “fetal cell lines” to mask the morally objectionable use of material from aborted babies, and so on and so forth, in dreary detail that even Dr. Goebbels would have felt too embarrassed to put in one of his directives.

Readers are again urged to go to the link provided above to confirm for themselves the extent to which a private virtually monopolistic media corporation such as YouTube (along with other similar concerns, such as Twitter and Facebook) is willing to go in dictating to citizens what opinions they are prohibited from expressing.

And now we come to the nitty-gritty: What happens if posted content violates YouTube policy:

“If your content violates this policy, we’ll remove the content and send you an email to let you know… If you get 3 strikes within 90 days, your channel will be terminated.

“We may terminate your channel or account for repeated violations of the Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. We may also terminate your channel or account after a single case of severe abuse, or when the channel is dedicated to a policy violation.”

There is no disclosure of who makes these determinations or any hint of due process or appellate procedure.

The perceptive reader must by now entertain the logical question: by what right does a private corporation, chartered to make its services available to all members of the public on a non-discriminatory basis, presume to dictate to its users what they may or may not think or post? The same question, of course, can be put to other private corporations which are also abusing their privileged position in order to impose ideological tyranny. Twitter and Facebook come to mind.

And where are the public authorities to reign in these unhinged private tyrants? The state, indeed, seems to have withered away, exactly as Marx predicted, or it may simply have merged with private corporations to lay the foundations of fascism, as Mussolini is alleged to have said. The state’s unsavoury role in this assault on freedom of expression is of particular concern. While passively subcontracting the dirty work to private corporations, it can perfidiously claim that no formal curtailment of personal liberties is taking place. The First Amendment remains technically intact since it is not the government that is undermining it.

The Covid-19 social control experiment has been running for almost two years. It cannot be denied that it has accomplished some of its objectives, but in important respects it has also been an unmitigated failure. YouTube’s offensive list of “don’ts,” issued after two years of intense global indoctrination, is irrefutable proof of that. In spite of unwavering support by politics, media, finance, and corrupt “science,” the Covid narrative has fallen apart under relentless battering by competent and informed partisans of truth and liberty.

Dr. Goebbels’ inept disciples have overlooked the concept of gute Propaganda, paradoxically one of the key postulates of the doctor’s technique. It means that to be credible, successful, and ultimately persuasive, propaganda must be heavily laced with elements of truth. In their hubris and unremitting reliance on crude force, they failed to do their homework. “Good propaganda,” Goebbels wrote, “need not lie, in fact must not lie. Propaganda which makes use of the lie … cannot have success in the long run … but a right idea must also be set forth in the appropriate way.”

They have obviously failed to find the appropriate way to package Covid-19 for the hesitant and disbelieving masses. Hence, their inelegant solution is to try to ram it down everybody’s throat, which is a risky approach and likely to backfire. Schade … the doctor is probably muttering in his molten lake in hell.

The Google-owned video sharing platform YouTube has demonetized numerous independent media accounts, a jarring escalation in the steadily intensifying campaign against alternative news outlets online.

Progressive commentators Graham Elwood, The Progressive Soapbox, The Convo Couch, Franc Analysis, Hannah Reloaded and Cyberdemon531 have all received notifications from YouTube that their videos are no longer permitted to earn money through the platform’s various monetization features, as has Ford Fischer, a respected freelancer who films US political demonstrations. No explanation has been offered for this decision beyond the vague claim that “your channel is not in line with our YouTube Partner Program policies” due to “harmful content”.

Like all large online platforms, YouTube’s appeals process is notoriously opaque and unaccountable. These accounts could remain demonetized for months, or forever, without any clear explanation at all. Ford Fischer, who has been in this situation before, said on Twitter that his account was left demonetized for seven months before YouTube reversed its decision.

“Last time you demonetized my channel, I spoke out for seven months. I didn’t delete a single piece of content. You admitted you were wrong. I forgive you. Please don’t do this again,” Fischer tweeted.

“No superchats, no ad revenue, no YouTube premium money,” tweeted Elwood, who also said “I have a call with my lawyers later today.”

“You guys have destroyed my channel without legit explanation as to why,” tweeted Jamarl Thomas of Progressive Soapbox. “No videos are given — and frankly there is literally zero ‘harmful’ content on my channel. This is a radically bad error that needs to be corrected.”

The Convo Couch’s Jonathan Mayorca tweeted the notification he received from YouTube which gave the reason as “Harmful content: Content that focuses on controversial issues and that is harmful to viewers,” saying no specific video or subject was named. Nobody receiving these notifications appears to have any idea what is meant by “harmful” or “controversial” or why YouTube is mentioning them in the same breath as though these two things are connected or synonymous in some way.

You guys have destroyed my channel without legit explanation as to why. No videos are given – and frankly there is literally zero “harmful’ content on my channel. This is a radically bad error that needs to be corrected. @TeamYouTube @YouTubeCreators @YouTube

— ProgressiveSoapbox (@theProgSoapbox) February 3, 2021

YouTube has been providing template responses saying “We recommend making the needed changes to your content and reapply in 30 days” while refusing to specify what the “needed changes” even are.

Speaking for myself, I can say with absolute certainty that I would not be able to create content at anywhere near the pace I do were I not making enough money from it to do it full time. Life is far too demanding with far too much else going on for me to be able to maintain anything like daily output; being financially deplatformed and having to get another job would force me down to an essay a week in my spare time, if that. Anyone who works in independent media full time knows this, and so do the powerful people who are steadily ratcheting up the campaign to silence anyone who hasn’t passed through the gatekeepers of the plutocratic media.

Financial deplatforming is censorship. People were given an opportunity to devote themselves to the vocation of creating media outside the gatekeeping apparatus of billionaire news institutions, which is arguably the single most important vocation anyone can give themselves to in our world right now, and they built their lives around their ability to do this. Now it’s being ripped away from them; their literal jobs are being taken away. They were offered a reason to think they’d be able to make a living doing very important work, and then they were sucker punched with what amounts to political censorship.

This has been a continually escalating trend for years. The general population is herded onto huge monopolistic social media platforms offering democratization of information where your voice can be heard, and then those platforms proceed to censor an increasing amount of political speech in increasing coordination with the US government.

If the democratization of information online is successfully reversed and the mass media gatekeepers are again the sole authorities on what’s real and true, people will be locked into forming their ideas on how to think, act and vote based on what they are told by the same plutocratic media institutions which have been deceiving them into every war and manipulating them into accepting the status quo for generations.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

YouTube, whose corporate owner Google is arguably the most powerful company on earth, is now deleting user videos which claim the US election was fraudulent.

YouTube’s official statement on its decision to do this is very revealing, not so much for what it says as for what it does not say.

At no point does the video publishing platform attempt to argue that it is removing these videos because they jeopardize anyone’s health or safety, as it did when it began deleting videos deemed to be spreading misinformation about Covid-19.

At no point does it attempt to argue that these videos are inciting violence, as it did when it began deleting QAnon videos.

At no point does it claim that these videos are misleading voters, as it initially began collaborating with the US government to prevent, since all the voting is over and done with.

It’s simply deleting the videos because they are believed to be wrong. This is an important distinction, because it’s a marked deviation from the previous policy of content deletion used by YouTube and other new media platforms.

1/ Our goal this election was to connect people to authoritative info, limit harmful misinfo & remove violative content. Subsequently, authoritative news was widely watched & recommended, and since Sept, we removed 8K+ channels for violating our policies. https://t.co/3It2xphe70

— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) December 9, 2020

“Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect,” YouTube writes. “Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come.”

I neither know nor care whether the sort of election fraud alleged to have taken place in the contest between Joe Biden or Donald Trump actually happened; I know the processes by which candidates are elevated to run in a US general election are corrupt and rigged from top to bottom, so the question of whether additional manipulation took place between two establishment-approved imperialist oligarch lackeys in a pretend election is not particularly interesting to me. But this new move by YouTube is a major escalation in the continually escalating rollout of internet censorship protocols by US government-tied Silicon Valley megacorporations.

Even if America did not have the single most flawed election system in the entire western world (and it does), and even if it had been conclusively proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that no election fraud of any sort took place (and it hasn’t), it would still be a massive escalation beyond previous online censorship protocols to begin censoring people simply because they are wrong. People are allowed to be wrong. A free society allows people the right to voice wrong beliefs because the only alternative is creating a monolithic Ministry of Truth which has authority over what the right and wrong beliefs are.

Those of us who’ve been warning of the dangers of government-aligned plutocratic corporations lowering their standards for silencing speech further and further were not committing a slippery slope fallacy; it’s not fallacious to warn of a slippery slope when the slope is demonstrably real. The fact that we’ve been methodically paced from accepting the cross-platform deletion of Alex Jones a couple of years ago to random internet users being silenced for no other reason than expressing wrongthink today shows us the slope is very real and very consequential, and our slide into information totalitarianism will continue if something major does not change.

“Do I believe the 2020 election was stolen? No. But I also didn’t believe the election was stolen from Hillary Clinton in 2016, when the Internet was overrun with conspiracy theories nearly identical to the ones now being propagated by Trump fans.” https://t.co/nvH0isGvaN

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 11, 2020

Matt Taibbi has written a solid article condemning YouTube’s latest ramp-up and highlighting the double standard in the way Democrats have been pushing narratives about Trump colluding with Russia to fraudulently steal the 2016 election for four years with no consequences whatsoever while Trump supporters are banned from doing essentially the exact same thing. I would add that the primary source of this double standard is not ideological bias (though that’s surely a factor as well) but the coziness these Silicon Valley tech giants have formed with US government agencies who signed off on Russiagate but not on Trump’s claims. It’s not so much a liberal bias as it is a US intelligence cartel bias.

In reality, there was never any more evidence for liberal claims of Russia interfering with the US election in any meaningful way than there is for election fraud in 2020. Actual journalists and impartial social media platforms would have recognized the indisputable fact that the Russian hacking narrative was extremely porous and remains completely unproven, and the narrative about Russian memes swaying the election is a complete joke. The only thing giving the Democrats’ claims more narrative weight than those of the Republicans today is that one was endorsed by the US intelligence cartel (the same US intelligence cartel which just so happened to wind up advancing multiple preexisting agendas using Russiagate) and the other was not. That’s it.

Those who understood that whoever controls the narrative controls the world and that plutocrat-controlled mass media is the linchpin of the oligarchic status quo were very excited about the arrival of the internet, because they understood its information-democratizing potential. Now we’re all watching those hopes slowly eroded into nothing as the same power structures which control and influence the mainstream media now work to take full control over online information.

But Not Videos Claiming Donald Trump is a Russian Agent, Because That’s the Acceptable Election Conspiracy Theory https://t.co/gtfz4WZTlX

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 9, 2020

“On average 88% of the videos in top 10 search results related to elections came from authoritative news sources (amongst the rest are things like newsy late-night shows, creator videos and commentary),” YouTube boasts in the aforementioned statement on its deletion of wrongthink election videos. “And the most viewed channels and videos are from news channels like NBC and CBS.”

As though rigging your algorithms to give users results which link to the same plutocratic media outlets who’ve helped deceive the public about every war and continuously manipulate them into believing status quo politics totally work is something to be proud of.

If information which isn’t approved by the powerful continues to be squeezed into smaller and smaller fringe circles, the information-democratizing potential which once gave revolutionary thinkers so much hope will be completely nullified, and all that will remain is a network which allows establishment power structures to distribute propaganda much faster than they could back in the days of the old media. Here’s hoping our rulers fail in their attempts to do this, and that we succeed in our desire to stop them.

caitlinjohnstone.com

We have have been discussing how writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. The erosion of free speech has been radically accelerated by the Big Tech and social media companies. The level of censorship and viewpoint regulation has raised questions of a new type of state media where companies advance an ideological agenda with political allies.  The state media criticism was never more compelling than in the announcement of YouTube this week that it would now remove videos that question the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.  The election is over but YouTube will now scrub away any dissenting views that the election was marred by fraud. It now appears to be protecting history itself from things deemed disinformation — the ultimate calling of the corporate censor.

YouTube (which is owned by Google) announced “We will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election.” The company used the end of the “safe harbor” period for counting votes to justify censor those with lingering doubts or those who want to post explanations of why the count remains suspicious, including presumable an array of members of Congress who have called for investigations.

For free speech advocates, the move is a raw example of corporate censorship but Democrats and many liberals applauded the action. Indeed, the Columbia journalism dean has lamented that these companies are not cracking down on free speech to a greater extent and blaming their own greed for not being greater censors.  It appears that Big Brother is now being embraced as a protector of truth.

Like the “false facts” removed by China’s censors, the Biden victory is treated like a state fact that cannot be challenged or questioned. As someone who has stated for weeks that Biden is the president-elect and criticized conspiracy theories, I do not subscribe to the view that the election was stolen. However, millions of votes — both Republican and Democrat — hold that view. Indeed, some polls show up to 90 percent of Republicans believe that election was not fair and honest.  Roughly half of the country voted for President Donald Trump and many of them hold this view.

The best way to address such views is to expose them to debate and challenge. That is the value of free speech. Otherwise, you end up on a slippery slope of censorship of any views that you deem harmful or misleading.

This action notably occurs just weeks after companies blocked discussion of the Hunter Biden story. It was only after the election that the CEOs then said it was a mistake.  Biden is now under federal investigation and the laptop and its disturbing emails now appear to be legitimate.  Yet, Democratic Senators demanded more censorship as the CEOs were apologizing for spiking a legitimate news story that was damaging to Biden. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal declared that he was “concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.” Accordingly, he demand an answer to this question:

“Will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including fact checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead?”

YouTube has eagerly embraced the call for censorship by Blumenthal and others. It is now protecting not the election but history from what it considers disinformation.  It is the very Chinese model embraced directly or indirectly by some American academics and journalists.  We are watching free speech drain away to the applause of those eager for less freedom.

jonathanturley.org

June 2019 may go down in the history books as the defining moment when the American IT giants – in cahoots with the limping ‘legacy’ media – removed their masks, as well as their gloves, revealing the real threat they have become to the institution of US democracy, fragile as it already is.

The New York Times got the ball rolling when it ran a front-page story (‘The Making of a YouTube Radical’) detailing the trials and tribulations of one tortured Caleb Cain, a college dropout who was “looking for direction” in life but instead tumbled headlong into a rabbit hole of “far-right politics on YouTube” where he eventually found himself “brainwashed” and “radicalized.”

The article, quoting “critics and independent researchers,” which I suppose could mean just about anyone, says the Google-owned platform has created “a dangerous on-ramp to extremism by combining … a business model that rewards provocative videos with exposure and advertising dollars, and an algorithm that guides users down personalized paths meant to keep them glued to their screens.”

Some people would call that the very same business model that keeps the wheels of capitalism rolling: Keep the product hot and spicy so that the consumer comes back for more. The so-called “alt-right,” however, is not serving up extremist beliefs or Nazi ideology to attract viewers, as the New York Times claims, but rather coherent arguments that challenge the tenets of modern Liberal thinking. It may shock a lot of people, but a person does not have to be a Neo-Nazi to want strong national borders, for example, and laws that prohibit children from being taught about transgender lifestyles in grade school. Yet that is exactly how the right-leaning creators are being portrayed. And it is worth noting that these conservative ‘citizen journalists’ are doing a much better job at attracting audiences than the mainstream media, which is hemorrhaging both viewers and profits.

At the same time, the Times’ article assumes many things about YouTube users, none of which are remotely flattering. First, customers of the video platform, according to the Times, lack any sort of free will and independence. Thus, when a video appears in the recommendation box the user – not unlike a helpless heroin addict – will automatically press ‘play’, thereby involuntarily becoming subjected to yet another right-wing indoctrination session. Soon enough there’s a veritable vegetable sitting in front of the computer, helpless to pull itself away from the recommended video selections.

The article also assumes, with amazing naiveté, that people could not have had uneasy feelings about some issue until a crafty content creator came along and presented it to them. That is simply absurd. Such assumptions infantilize the user, making him appear incapable of making rational judgments on everyday social and political issues. The real reason, of course, that many users find a particular video on a particular subject is because they had been searching for answers to the very questions presented. Nevertheless, it is necessary, Google believes, that these YouTube creators be demonetized and banished from the platform, lest the unsuspecting user fall prey to their dastardly ways and radicalize an entire generation to loathe open borders, marijuana, abortion, transgender lifestyles, and any other controversial issue that is dear to the heart of Liberals.

But the Times hit piece was not the only whiff of grapeshot to grab the headlines. YouTube also demonstrated that it will swiftly move to defend other social media giants when it removed a video by the undercover investigative group, Project Veritas, that showed how Pinterest suppressed conservative talking points.

James O’Keefe, Project Veritas founder, slammed YouTube’s decision in a statement posted on Twitter.

“The established media and technology are so afraid of investigative journalism they need to censor it. YouTube calls REPORTING on someone by showing their face and name, and how they added a pro-life group to a porn blacklist, a ‘privacy complaint.’ Would they do this to NYT?” he wrote.

So here we have a situation where the largest American social media companies are able to shame and ban users with impunity, while also deleting efforts by any outside agency that demonstrates their political bias.

This leads us to the crux of the matter: As the social media companies hide behind their ‘private’ corporate status in order to curb political speech on their platforms with total impunity, they are exerting, at the very same time, powerful influence on the political process. In other words, they are empowered to do the very thing that many of their platform users are not, and that is to support their political convictions without fear of reprisal, banning and censorship. They want to have their private cake and eat it too.

Needless to say, such hypocrisy and double standards on the part of the social media behemoths cannot continue in the so-called ‘land of the free.’ And with US presidential elections approaching in 2020, tensions over such arbitrary power by the social media companies will only intensify when the people come to understand their voices are being silenced. The situation may get bad enough that the question of social media freedoms will even be heard on the debate floor during the campaigns. At least we can dream; it seems to be all we have left these days.

Before we talk about the video it must be stated that this piece was paid for by the US State Department as part of the “ShareAmerica” Youtube channel. The official description of the channel is as follows.

“This channel delivers videos on American life, culture and politics. Produced by the US Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs, the videos illustrate values that underlie US policies and explore interests shared by Americans and people around the world.”

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a government using Youtube as a means of explaining its policies or doing PR for its nation. In fact the United States should make explanations as to why it has certain policies so a broad audience can understand them. That is completely reasonable, however this video about Venezuela does not explain anything about American culture, in fact it has nothing to do with America at all. It sort touches on that point about “illustrat(ing) values that underlie US policies” but in the most counterproductive means possible.

The very first words of the video, by US Special Representative for Venezuela Elliot Abrams hit the viewer hard like a baseball bat to the forehead coated in pure smugness.

“The current state of affairs is not normal for Venezuela, it is not acceptable for Venezuelans. I am absolutely convinced it is not Venezuela’s destiny…”

The smugness mentioned above comes from the position from which Mr. Abrams it talking to the audience. How can any foreigner from a completely different civilization, say that they know what is “normal” for a people that is not their own and that they probably do not understand. Moreover how some suit in a biased position in a foreign government possibly know the destiny for a far-off nation with a radically different culture and history, especially since the destiny of America is a much debated topic even among Americans.

Well, if you look at the world from the perspective of a pro-Western bigot absolutely convinced of his own inherent superiority and the universalism of is beliefs then it seems perfectly reasonable to be able to tell any people in any country outside the West that they need to get with the program.

Since Abrams believes there is only one correct, moral, effective destiny for all of humanity then it makes perfect sense that he would chose to preach the one true faith to the heathen barbarians without thinking a second thought.

Looking again at these words from other angles, the question of “normalcy” in Venezuela right now is very much related to US meddling. If there was no big media pressure being put on the nation to overthrow Maduro then there would probably be a much higher level of “normalcy” in the nation. Political stability is critical to a strong economy.

Regarding whether the state of affairs in Venezuela is “acceptable” depends on your political leanings, but since Maduro continues to have very strong support from the masses the majority does apparently find things to be acceptable with the moustached one at the helm.

Just a few sentences in to the video and any viewer with even a basic knowledge of history and current affairs will be frothing at the mouth from the arrogance and irrationality of the Special Representative’s generic Beltway presentation.

As the video goes on Abrams explains his/America’s vision for Venezuela. Again, it begs the question, why should a foreigner and a foreign nation have a vision for Venezuela? But in short makes the overall argument that the video conveys is that if you back our guy Guaido then Venezuela will get nice things, like better medical care, stable electricity etc.

One of the biggest offers that the West presents to the world is simply materialism. Adopt our way, or submit to it and you will live well. This type of simple submission-for-wealth scheme worked very well in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and is surely partially responsible for the fall of Communism.

At that point in history many people behind the Iron Curtain were convinced that by submitting to the West they would get all the good things from stable dull Communism plus the fantastic cars, vacations and blue jeans they saw in movies they officially weren’t supposed to be watching. They were sure they would get “200 kinds of sausage” and all the Adidas track suits they could ever want, but the problem is that they didn’t realize that most of them would have to become migrant workers serving Brits their coffee to buy those nice things struggling far away from their homes like my cousins do.

To an extent, even today, poor people in the former Soviet Union are convinced that if they go to the West they will get instantly wealthy because those nations do things “for the people”. Talk to any Uzbek taxi driver and they will tell you it is so.

But we are not living in 1989 and we can see that the submit-for-wealth strategy has very high costs. Despite Soviet “repressions” in the Baltic states at least their populations grew, whereas with their new freedom these and other Western nations’ native populations are dying out and being replaced by migrants who despise them. Furthermore, despite completely submitting to the West nations like Slovakia are Romania are still very poor and nations like China and Singapore who reject many Western values are on the rise.

Without going into a diatribe it is now becoming obvious that the submit-for-wealth offer is far less sweet than it used to be. Maybe 30 or 40 years ago the Venezuelans en masse could have bought this, but no sane person is going to think that if they bring in Guaido, Venezuela will be as rich as 1950’s America in 5 years. This video’s Cold War tactic is no longer the home run hit that it used to be, but how could the State Department redo this video to make it much more effective while relaying the same message?

How to improve this video:

ShareAmerica’s big problem is smugness and arrogance. It is very possible to say the same thing from a position of humility and respect to the Venezuelans. A text written in this way would probably do the trick…

“The US has chosen to back President Guaido as the true leader of Venezuela because of many of the positions that Maduro holds. He pushes a sort of quasi-Communist agenda of propping up failed government policies with the riches of the nation, and this is very bad for our business, our trade and our relations with Venezuela. Of course, Venezuelans are free to choose their destiny, but Maduro is impossible to work with from an American standpoint especially since he uses our nation as some sort of boogeyman to distract the population from his own governmental failures. The United States will stand with any Venezuelan leader who does not refute our morality and is willing to work with us. Maduro has irrational beliefs that block us from working with the nation he oversees. As it stands today Guiado meets the criteria we need for productive relations and he is the man we support in Caracas, because Maduro is Anti-American and will not work with us, and we simply cannot respect a man who does not respect us.“

This approach is far less intellectually insulting and basically says in official language, that America only backs those who play ball. That is not a surprising or illogical position for a powerful civilization to have and a text like this one above would relay that to the reader’s subconscious.

If the same video were done with a drop of humility and respect to the intelligence and cultural differentness of the Venezuelans, then this video could achieve its intended results. As it stands now this video “A new Venezuela” is Youtube fuel for anti-Americanism.

This month, disgraced Buzzfeed performed yet another astonishing feat of shoddy, agenda-driven journalism by reporting that it took just nine mouse clicks on YouTube to go from a PBS report on the 116^th Congress to a video entitled ‘A Day in the Life of an Arizona Rancher,’ produced by a Washington immigration reform group known as The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

The video that so enraged Buzzfeed details the story of Richard Humphries, an Arizona resident and former narcotics officer living just miles from the US-Mexico border. Humphries, increasingly concerned with the number of illegals traversing his 75-acre ranch, built a watchtower on his sprawling property to help him and federal border agents track illegal aliens. Considering the ‘extremist nature’ of the content, is it any surprise that the CIS was branded in 2016 a ‘hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group itself that has been portrayed as touting a leftist agenda, yet is quietly partnering with YouTube to flag ‘hate’ content?

The Buzzfeed article took exception with many other ‘right-wing’ videos that had the audacity to rear their racist heads in YouTube’s auto-select function. One of those channels is called PragerU, which hosts popular liberal bugbears, including Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, James Damore and Charlie Kirk. The channel, which filed a lawsuit to stop Google and YouTube from illegally censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech, operates on the principle of providing “knowledge and clarity on life’s biggest and most interesting topics… ranging from history and economics to science and happiness.”

Sounds pretty radical, yes? Well, only if you happen to be situated on the left of the political spectrum, as the overwhelming bulk of the IT undoubtedly is. Then yes, all that free right-wing speech may seem radical and worth tweaking the almighty algorithm to ensure they never see the light of day. Never mind that the original YouTube algorithm was built on a market-driven principle where the most popular videos shot to the top in the feeds, a phenomenon that presented a direct threat to the mainstream media message. Given the Left’s hot embrace of Cultural Marxist principles, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Silicon Valley shuns the free market when it works against its own interests.

Now YouTube, obeying the Buzzfeed dog whistle, has pledged to turn the screws even more on ‘conspiratorial’ (i.e. right-wing) creators by “taking a closer look” at how the “Up Next” videos that autoplay after each video ends can lead viewers astray into the dense field of conspiracy-theory, pockmarked as it is with rabbit holes of various sizes and shapes.

Google announced it will begin “reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”

Although Google said the changes will not affect “whether a video is available on YouTube,” judging by the personal experience of several popular YouTube commentators, for example, Mark Dice, the new algorithm is so effective that even when the exact title of one of his ‘controversial’ videos is entered into the channel’s search field it will not yield the correct result.

The New York Times reported on this latest crackdown against social media creators by saying YouTube and other communication platforms have faced rising criticism for “failing to police the content” that creators share.

That is an extremely disconcerting comment when it is considered that we are not talking about hate speech, but rather ideas that have not been awarded the stamp of approval by both the government and the mainstream media. Yet it is the media – the hallowed Fourth Estate – that was originally designed to keep government in check on behalf of the people. The mainstream media, due to its incestuous relationship with Corporate America has failed dramatically on that score. Now we find the two agencies closely aligned in not only promulgating a particular narrative on every major story that surfaces, but cracking down on those alternative voices that would dare suggest a different version of events.

The number of YouTube commentators that have been purged from the video platform is simply staggering, and reveals the true nature of ‘American democracy,’ which is more concerned with fortifying the status quo than bothering itself with truth and justice.

Tragically, the American Founding Fathers, when they were setting down the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights, which has been in force since December 15, 1791, could not have foreseen the development of two major obstacles that would greatly offset their freedom-loving legislation.

The first is the advancement of powerful private corporations, which fly under the radar of the First Amendment. This would have tremendous implications on free speech since corporations, which have largely cornered the market on all communications, are free to establish their own rules with regards to what they want their customers to see and hear. They are powerful enough to tell their customers ‘if you don’t like our policies, you don’t have to use our services,’ while knowing full well that there are not many alternative options. And since the major IT companies all tend to hold neo-Liberal political views, it is their vision of the world that is being pushed to the forefront.

Meanwhile, and this leads us to the second obstacle to free speech, an increasing number of voices from the political right are being smeared and silenced on the pretext of promoting ‘conspiracy theories.’ It should be kept in mind that no police detective worth his or her salt would stop following a particular lead in a case for fear of being branded a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ Indeed, the world-famous detective Sherlock Holmes would not have been able to solve a single crime had he been accused of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’ by his colleagues, many of whom could not follow his subtle train of thought.

In closing, allow me to just reproduce, for those who have forgotten its essence, the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

When will corporations be forced to live up to the law of the land, especially considering they have in many cases become an actual arm of the government?

Alphabet/Google-owned YouTube is a censoring machine like its parent company – waging war on speech and media freedom, in cahoots with dark US forces waging war on humanity.

Google transformed itself from a search engine to gatekeeper/censor, eliminating what it calls extremist content, its YouTube subsidiary operating the same way – wanting information conflicting with the official narrative eliminated, the hallmark of totalitarian rule.

The Internet is the last frontier of digital democracy, the only reliable independent space for real news, information and analysis – threatened by social media, Google, YouTube, ISPs and tech giants in cahoots with Washington.

Ahead of what may be the mother of all battles to liberate US-supported terrorists in Syria’s Idlib province, YouTube banned Damascus state-run and other pro-government channels – including the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), channels belonging to the country’s presidency and Defense Ministry, each closure accompanied by one of these shameful statements saying:

“This account has been terminated due to a legal complaint,” or 

“This account has been terminated for a violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service.”

A message on SANA’s takedown said: “This page isn’t available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.”

Banning Syrian media occurred on Saturday after Joint Chiefs chairman General Dunford said Trump was told about “military options” in response to a looming (false flag) “chemical weapons” attack – wrongfully blamed on Damascus.

Banning Syrian media on YouTube is all about silencing information conflicting with US anti-Syria propaganda – likely knowing a false flag CW attack is imminent.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said “irrefutable” evidence it obtained confirmed it’s coming. Syria’s UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari said the same thing during a Security Council session, presenting documents to SC members on what’s planned.

US-launched aggression in March 2011 appears set to escalate more than already, risking possible East-West confrontation.

stephenlendman.org

He asserts that, “This change is essentially an attack on independent journalists who cannot afford the video and sponsorship infrastructure used by the corporate media.”

He says that a “contact within Google [which owns Youtube]” has “checked into this for us,” and received from higher-ups the explanation that, regarding “the issue of your videos being de-monetized, your hunch about the video topics being war related is correct. According to our advertising policy, we do not run ads on certain types [i.e., on this  type] of content. …If you’d like to create advertising friendly content or need help with your channel, please let us know.”

His response to that is, “I’m not going to be silent about war-crimes just to avoid financial difficulties.”

However, “This latest move by Youtube comes at a very bad time for my family. For the last several months, we’ve been investing all of our time and resources in setting up a [inaudible] education center in a developing country in a very rural location,” and he is now tapped-out. “All of our savings went into getting that project started.” “Right now, we aren’t making enough money to cover food and rent, and our rent is only $700 a month.”

So, he reluctantly has decided, “We’re not going to hit the ‘Monetize’ button on this channel” (called Storm Clouds Gathering), “ever again.” He explains: “Money is being used as a weapon, so it doesn’t make any sense to hand them bullets.”

Therefore, he is “putting the future of this project in your hands” — the hands of the hundreds of thousands of people who use his site. His implication is that either he and his family will now survive on donations for the work they are doing to produce and post new videos and to keep the current ones up, or else he’ll have to abandon the project.

Google/Youtube isn’t telling him that they’le cut him off, only that — for a reason they refuse to state (other than that, “the issue of your videos being de-monetized, your hunch about the video topics being war related is correct. According to our advertising policy, we do not run ads on certain types [i.e., onthis  type] of content”) — they won’t allow advertisers on it.

In other words: advertisers who have books, bumper-stickers, or anything else they want to sell to his large and rapidly growing audience, will no longer be allowed to advertise there. His former sole source of income — those advertisers — has been cut off.

This incredibly brilliant and uncorruptible person — and, for proof of that, I refer you to this, for example, and to this, and this, all of those being about Ukraine; or else to this on Syria; as examples of the type of work that he has been pumping out entirely on his own, which have contained insights that led the way, things that he figured out before anyone else did, and which have been foundational for me and for many other  of the best investigators who post to the Web — he either will stop, or else will be audience-supported in order to be able to continue this work.

What Google is doing here is to squeeze-out a major resource for not only many of the most intelligent news-consumers, but for the independent journalists who have found him to be the first person to make the clinching case that exposes government lies as being lies. He is, arguably, the best investigative journalist working today. And he refuses to buckle to the mega-corporate agenda in international affairs. He is brilliant enough to be a growing threat to the manipulators of public opinion; and, so, they are now clamping down upon him.

The Executive Chairman of Google is Eric Schmidt, who, as wikipedia notes, “is a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Bilderberg conference in 2011,[86] 2012 and 2013.[87] He also has a listed membership with the Trilateral Commission.[8]” In my article, “How and Why the U.S. Has Re-Started the Cold War (The Backstory that Precipitated Ukraine’s Civil War),” I also documented that he attended the 2014 Bilderberg meeting, which was largely consumed with the Ukraine war and all the rest of the aftermath of Washington’s Ukrainian coup which in February 2014 installed a rabidly anti-Russian government right on Russia’s border, in Ukraine. I also listed there many other top executives and former government officials, such as David Petraeus and Richard Perle, who likewise attended in all of those years.

The individual who has been and is Storm Clouds Gathering, has now become a sufficient threat to their plans, so that the top member from Google (a company upon which he relies) is doing the joint work of all of them, by making difficult if not impossible for Aaron Hawkins to continue his work for the public — his work which threatens the collective goals of all of them against the public.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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