34

How Social Media Platforms Suppress Key Truths

by Eric Zuesse


On April 23rd, the great independent investigative journalist, Craig Murray — a former British diplomat — headlined at his blog, “Condemned By Their Own Words”, and he posted there the translated-to-English transcript (excerpted below) to this Israeli radio Hebrew broadcast on April 21st, in which an Israeli Brigadier-General, named Fogel, explained why Israel’s troops are doing the right thing to shoot and even to kill Gazans who come (an unspecified) too close to the wall which separates Israel from Gaza:

FOGEL: Any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order [the soldier thinks possibly] to hide an explosive device or [to] check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us…
NESIEL [the interviewer]: Then, then his punishment [for being suspected] is death?
FOGEL: His punishment is death. As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there …
NESIEL: But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger. … It does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world.
FOGEL: Look, Ron, we’re even terrible at it [at suppressing those pictures]. There’s nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. … It will drag us into a war. I do not want to be on the side that gets dragged. I want to be on the side that initiates things. I do not want to wait for the moment where it finds a weak spot and attacks me there. If tomorrow morning it gets into a military base or a kibbutz and kills people there and takes prisoners of war or hostages, call it as you like, we’re in a whole new script. I want the leaders of Hamas to wake up tomorrow morning and for the last time in their life see the smiling faces of the IDF [Israel’s army]. That’s what I want to have happen. But we are dragged along. So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by [that Israel’s soldiers are jury, judge, and even executioner, when suspecting a Gazan — Gaza is Israel’s free-fire zone].

The interviewer didn’t challenge any of that, though he didn’t like “those pictures are distributed around the world.” Israel wants all nations to block the truth.
Murray closed by adding a very brief comment of his own:

There is no room to doubt the evil nature of the expansionist apartheid state that Israel has now become. Nor the moral vacuity of its apologists in the western media.”

Since this was, of course, a damning statement about mainstream ‘news’ media in The West, these mainstream ‘news’ media, including Facebook, can be expected to dislike that — and they evidently do.
On April 25th Murray headlined “Blocked By Facebook and the Vulnerability of New Media”, and he reported:

This site’s visitor numbers are currently around one third normal levels, stuck at around 20,000 unique visitors per day. The cause is not hard to find. Normally over half of our visitors arrive via Facebook. These last few days, virtually nothing has come from Facebook:
What is especially pernicious is that Facebook deliberately imposes this censorship in a secretive way. The primary mechanism when a block is imposed by Facebook is that my posts to Facebook are simply not sent into the timelines of the large majority of people who are friends or who follow. I am left to believe the post has been shared with them, but in fact it has only been shown to a tiny number. Then, if you are one of the few recipients and do see the post and share it, it will show to you on your timeline as shared, but in fact the vast majority of your own friends will also not receive it. Facebook is not doing what it is telling you it is doing – it shows you it is shared – and Facebook is deliberately concealing that fact from you.
Twitter have a similar system known as “shadow banning”. Again it is secretive and the victim is not informed. I do not appear to be shadow banned at the moment, but there has been an extremely sharp drop – by a factor of ten – in the impressions my tweets are generating.
I am among those who argue that the strength of the state and corporate media is being increasingly and happily undermined by our ability to communicate via social media. But social media has developed in such a way that the channels of communication are dominated by corporations – Facebook, Twitter and Google – which can in effect turn off the traffic to a citizen journalism site in a second. The site is not taken down, and the determined person can still navigate directly to it, but the vast bulk of the traffic is cut off. What is more this is done secretly, without your being informed, and in a manner deliberately hard to detect. The ability to simply block the avenues by which people get to see dissenting opinions, is terrifying.
Furthermore neither Facebook nor Twitter contact you when they block traffic to your site to tell you this is happening, let alone tell you why, and let alone give you a chance to counter whatever argument they make. I do not know if I am blocked by Facebook as an alleged Russian bot, or for any other reason. I do know that it appears to have happened shortly after I published the transcript of the Israeli general discussing the procedures for shooting children.

This hidden, never-explained, but clearly systematic, news-suppression, exemplifies the widespread and coordinated operation by the major media, against any independent sites which document things that the Establishment, the aristocracy, the “Deep State,” or however you call the controlling owners of the corporations that advertise in and own the media, hire their journalists and editors to block from reaching the public.
This is a multifaceted but coordinated operation, of censoring-out the key truths, which are those truths that none of the controlling owners want the public to know (such as Craig Murray has now, apparently, done once too often for Facebook to continue allowing). It’s how they are enabled to use the government so that it serves them, and not the public-at-large. This is, likewise, the source of the obscene inequality of wealth that results, the vast economic inequality that they all benefit from at the public’s expense.
Money is power, and they have it. And they use it, against the powerless. Though the controlling owners compete amongst themselves to sell to the public, they all suppress these key truths from reaching the public; because, if they did not, then the ‘wrong’ politicians would get elected to public offices. Whereas some of the ‘right’ politicians are Republicans, and some are Democrats, they all serve the same aristocracy, just different sides of it. Because, otherwise, they wouldn’t stand even a chance to be elected.
Here’s another example of how this works: The CIA is a branch of the U.S. federal government that virtually only serves America’s aristocracy, which is why it lies — consciously misrepresents — in almost everything it says publicly about international relations, such as it did in 2002, when it asserted that Saddam Hussein still had and still was building weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. government, of which the CIA is a part, used that ‘information’ to ‘justify’ invading and occupying a nation (Iraq) which had never invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States.
That’s aggression. They’re doing the same in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, etc. It’s key truths that are kept hidden from the public. The key truths are the ones that expose and disprove the lies that the Establishment push.
Wikipedia is an example of this. Wikipedia is edited by the CIA, not only in the sense that anyone (including you) can edit what is on Wikipedia, but also in the sense that Wikipedia itself blocks edits or changes that introduce facts and evidence which disprove some of the allegations that are made in Wikipedia articles, and that Wikipedia doesn’t tell such a person why a revision or addition to the article was rejected and will not be considered by Wikipedia: the secret people who control the articles, and the secret process by which they do it, are secrets, disclosed to no outsiders, but known to the people who control Wikipedia. The perpetrators know what the key truths are, but the public do not, because the media hide the key truths.
Furthermore, major news media that report things which aren’t so, are no longer simply burying their after-the-fact ‘corrections’ so that perhaps only 1% of the people who were deceived by an article get to see that it had been false, but now also by simply refusing to issue any ‘correction’ at all — they’re totally ignoring the reader’s right not to be deceived by that major news medium. (Most such ‘news’ media have also terminated or else severely limited their reader-comments section, because otherwise a reader-comment could slip through that disproves the given ‘news’ article, and the aristocratically controlled media’s goal is to block those truths from reaching their audience.)
The Washington Post, which made famous the accusation that non-mainstream newsmedia are fake news, is itself a leader of fake ‘news’, and was so during 2002 and early 2003, by stenographically reporting to its readership the George W. Bush administration’s falsehoods about “Saddam’s WMD” and the rightfulness for America to invade a country (Iraq) that had never invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States.
The entire major media, and almost all of the ‘alternative’ media, are owned or otherwise controlled by the ruling aristocracy and censor out crucial facts which disprove allegations that the government (the ruling aristocracy) wants the public not to know. Above all, they exclude articles like the present one, which (like all articles I do) is being submitted to all of them for publication free-of-charge.
So: wherever this article is not published, you know that fake ‘news’ is published. For example, that’s how America now is invading and occupying many countries — all on the basis of lying, because none of these nations invaded the United States, ever, and none is invading the United States now; America’s invasions, in recent decades, have all been blatant violations of international law. If the American people knew this, then would we vote for the politicians who tolerate it, and who vote for it? That explains the ‘news’ media.
And this explains America as the permanent-war-for-permanent-‘peace’ champion of the entire world. Of course, if international law were equitably enforced, then every U.S. President in recent decades would be and die in prison. So, obviously, only the few (and none of them are anything close to being “mainstream”) honest newsmedia will publish this article. You can web-search for this article to find out which ones they are. All the others don’t want you to know the truths that this article reports and (via its links) documents.
Is this article alleging a conspiracy? No major corporation exists that doesn’t carry out conspiracies, because doing that is essential to their success. The very allegation that conspiracies don’t exist amongst the most powerful people and even within and between the most powerful organizations, is ludicrous, but the aristocracy everywhere brainwashes the public everywhere, to think that only the ‘they’ perpetrate conspiracies, the ‘we’ don’t. They all do; it’s the way that the world actually works, which is the reason why the aristocracy hide this — the most basic fact about the world.
They do it in order to block the public from understanding how things actually happen. And they block the public from understanding that no mere mass of people conspires — ‘the Jews’ ‘the Masons’, etc. — but that only the very few people at the very top can, and do, and that they actually must, in order to remain successful and in power. It’s called, and it is, in fact, “strategizing.” That is what a conspiracy does, anywhere: it develops and executes strategy. To keep the public dumb and misled, the hired propagandists allege the exact opposite.
So: just web-search for this article, and you will see yet more evidence that what it says is true — that it is hidden, not published, by all the ‘respectable’ news-outlets. Like most of the articles I write, it is sent to all of them as a dare — and none of them accepts the dare and publishes anything from me. This is one of the ways I know that what I write about the way that the ‘news’ media work, is true, and that what they say about the way that they work, is false. I am continually testing them, and hoping for one of them to prove me wrong, just one time. It hasn’t happened, yet.

This article was originally posted at strategic-culture.org
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.

SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

34 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Tony M
Tony M
May 4, 2018 10:39 AM

Craig Murray and his moderators censor heavily too, Guardian-style, allow devious house-pet lying trolls peddling establishment claptrap to run amok, to viciously attack: “fuck off and die you retard cunt”, other commenters and penalise/ban those who call out those trolls egregious lies. All justified, I would guess by some vague and lame notions of permitting ‘balance’. While Muuray’s articles sometimes hit the spot he has blindspots and an ingrained pathological hostility to Russia typifying much of the British establishment, of which he was for a long time a willing and witting part. It’s nothing new that Facebook/Twitter/Google are evil and manipulate and control the masses, I’m surprised andsomewhat sceptical that so much of his traffic would have come from those sources, do some people seem to think that websites like craigmurray.org.uk have no independent existence, have they never heard of bookmarks, have they the memory of a goldfish and cannot remember the address of a website, and need some sort of portal/channel to hold them by the hand and guide them to his site? Does he really want such visitors looking straying to his site during their quest for cat-videos and other such trivia? I’ve read his site for almost a decade and was aware of who he is, and admired his belated stand for far longer, and have never used or even vistited facebook, twitter etc. having seen them for what they really are since they first penetrated public awareness, I’ve never owned a mobile phone either, and most likely never will.
I’m amused he’s now been flagged by these social-media sites as a 24-carat wrong ‘un, respect is due, he’s made it, either that or his ‘rebel’ credentials are looking rather tarnished and needed a boost which only the establishment can provide. I’m surprised and concerned it hadn’t happened a long time ago, but only now. As for censorship, a case of the biter bit I think, the bloody hypocrite.

FS
FS
May 4, 2018 6:54 PM
Reply to  Tony M

I’ve also noticed Craig Murray’s “ingrained pathological hostility to Russia” and been more than a little amused that his beloved establishment has been casting him as a Russian troll.
Karma does indeed take many forms.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 5, 2018 4:26 AM
Reply to  Tony M

I agree with you to a great degree. Murray has many fine articles, but he allows some shabby hasbara trolls free rampage, and censors even mild criticisms of Israel and Zionism.

Tony M
Tony M
May 5, 2018 10:54 AM

There are lots of new articles I wish to read, digest and assess, here on this site and around the web today, I’m not getting bogged down here on this issue.
It hurts me to criticise Murray so trenchantly, I’ve learned so much from his articles and insights and would love to read his latest book on Alexander Burnes which is clearly a labour of love and a rollicking good read for warped admirers of perfidious empire’s depravity and cheek, as well as its detractors keen to learn how to thwart and stifle its modern-day manifestations. I know or at least hope he can take mud thrown at him, can take it and perhaps it might even make him even stronger, $deity forbid!
However
Freedom of speech must include the right to call an irredeemable hard-core ill-motivated liar a liar when they lie, if that is not permitted all is lost. I’ve never there called for anyone to banned, as many have done, but cannot comprehend why certain others acting over a long period of time in bad faith are permitted to blight his site unchecked all the same. ‘Do Not Feed the Trolls’ is the approach I apply and encourage in others, I try not to read their calculating vile dishonest outpourings and monstrous frauds, and the disruptive, crude distracting exchanges that result, most often scrolling past, but cannot stand by when blatant and devious malicious untruths are perpetrated upon less hardened readers. I certainly do not expect to be penalised for doing so while said lying trolls carry on as before without censure, and therefore with tacit approval of their serial lying and disruptive conduct.
An Admin wrote on this off-guardian site, on another thread, on another day recently “We don’t censor lies”, but I’m hoping unlike Murray’s site they don’t censor those who challenge lies posted here and the liars who post them.
Murray’s site for the last few years has resolved upstream for me to 127.0.0.1, i.e localhost, self-censorship to thwart any temptation or accident on my part, and after a recent brief respite then shocking recent experience there, it has returned to that state of non-existence again for the forseeable.
However likeable, vulnerable, human, gentle, endearingly flawed, diplomatic and intelligent Craig Murray undoubtedly is, his opinions on some issues are not and cannot be beyond reproach, nor can the asylum-like incomprehensible, opaque manner in which his website (which he is of course free to run in whatever manner he pleases, even if without logic, reason, or explanation), is conducted below-the-line avoid due and just criticism.
Ideas and causes are immortal and when their time comes have unstoppable momentum, however much the friction and how forcefully they are held back. If some see success, relief of the suffering mass of have-nots from the depredations of the psychopathic elite and their incurably like-minded hirelings as dependent on, more difficult or impossible without one individual being, be it Craig Murray, or Jeremy Corbyn, or even some fantasy deity his/her/itself from some holy book of fables and tall-tales, we have or most certainly will fail utterly and we might as well each of us pack our baggage and form orderly queues outside the gates of our nearest gulag. I’ll leave such obsolete hero-worship to those other, less discerning robots seen often enough marching in step with their idols (difficult as it to march when high on a pedestal) towards and into an abyss.
The predominant view of most pro-indy sites, Wee Ginger Dug, WingsOverScotland, even Craig Murray it seems is not to use the EU as a lever or a springboard to obtain independence for Scotland, but for Scotland to become an EU member and dependent minion of the EU as an end in itself. That should not be the end of the process it is but one possible beginning, a way-station en-route not the final and terminal destination. That would be no independence but simply a doubling-up of our chains.
Harping on too about UN-recognition merely gives the UN legitimacy and power it does not, or ought not to possess, as if nationhood is something the UN and only the UN can bestow, an independent Scotland, or any country exists quite independently of the UN or its other members, anything else is monstrous tyranny, it is for nations first and foremost to recognise the UN and not the other way around and that doesn’t entail ceding any power to the UN or vesting in it the power to bestow nationhood or not. Scotland is one of the oldest recorded nations in human history, the UN merely some johnny-come-lately upstart to cement the undue power, the war-crimes immunity and the propaganda mythology of the victors in WW2.
Scotland has no need to be recognised by anyone or anything, we simply are. We are the last English colony taken by force and genocide, still under their exploitative imperialist yoke and our independence is something to be taken back unconditionally, it is not something in the gift of the malign occupier or any other party, not something to humbly beg and scrape we be given back. The United Kingdom’s purpose is and has always been simply to suck the wealth, the resources and the sweat of the brows of all of Britain’s people into the grabbing hands of the south-east corner of England’s hereditary elite parasitic elite and their bankers, and the riches derived thereby pissed away in gambling-den that is City of London and spirited abroad into tax-havens
Without a doubt a wise first step, for we cannot hope to influence other countries and peoples except by good example from hereon – and supra-national bodies are very much a big part of our problems too, I favour exit, from the EU, from NATO and why not the UN too. The solution to much of our woes then is to go local, to break up the failed and rogue state that tops them all in unitigated evil, the United Kingdom itself, into its constituent countries, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and possibly even then further still. Imagine England the nation once again! The flip-side and bonus of Scottish Independence is Independence for England from the bastard composite-state UK too, An artificial construct the UK/Britain is the edifice behind which those committing monstrous crimes of state hide behind, and in which England predominates and is therefore the entity upon which blame for such crimes surely belongs and referring to them as England’s crimes should soon enough cause enough discomfort to start a similar party-less classless dogma-less grass-roots independence movement for the relief and empowerment of the poor put-upon downtrodden peoples of England living under the Scottish and Welsh jackboot.
On another matter I cannot comprehend why comments here are upside-down, that is in a very unintuitive reverse chronological order, can anyone enlighten me why this should be. With indented replies it is even more confusing and difficult if not impossible to tell which posts are newer than others, without perfect recall and re-reading the whole thing from bottom to top again. I can’t see any advantage to this bonkers layout, but lots of disadvantages stand out.
Reminds me of the old usenet saw on top-posting:
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

OMG
OMG
May 6, 2018 12:25 PM
Reply to  Tony M

Too long, but a well-written response.
Murray is an establishment-created figure gone rogue, but he still clings to many of the old values (for example, he believes the establishment explanation of 9/11, among others, and threatened to ban anyone supporting Marie Le Pen because she was so “right wing”).
But – otherwise – his heart does seem to be in the right place, especially in his defence of free speech. Interestingly, this notion has obviated some of his institutional defence of/ deference to Israel of which he was earlier a willing partner.
Like Paul Craig Roberts and others defamed by the MSM and blackballed by Facebook and the like, he is slowly turning to opinions shared by critical readers of the Off Guardian.

johnplatinumgoss
johnplatinumgoss
May 4, 2018 9:42 AM

Of course Eric Zuesse is right. I suspected it long ago and only got to prove it a couple of days ago.
https://johnplatinumgoss.wordpress.com/2018/05/02/skripal-petition-and-the-deep-state/

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
May 3, 2018 11:45 PM

Craig Murray et al are behind the times. For months now – maybe as much as a year – the World Socialist Web Site (http://wsws.org/) has been analyzing and trying to co-ordinate a broadly-based coalition of “left-leaning” parties and persons to oppose the censorship of the sort reported by Murray that is increasingly being exercised by the Internet “technology” giants. The wsws is a daily publication of the anti-Stalinist, “hard left” (Marxist/Leninist/Trotskyist) ICFI with the exceptional value of putting forward an extraordinarily consistent political/ideological view on a wide range of current affairs and, as such, provides one of the few reliable benchmarks for anyone wishing to calibrate their own thinking on such matters. Agreement with their politics or viewpoint is absolutely not a requirement for finding that aspect of their output of significant intellectual value.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 4, 2018 12:02 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

The WSWS leaves the fakestream media sewer so far behind in simple journalism, the reporting of facts, that comparisons are quite odious. The sewer Fraudian, the re-animated corpse of the late Guardian, revivified in a manner that would startle even Herbert West methinks, has a couple of quite deranged articles today, one by the loathsome Luke Harding, that fumarole of Russophobic fanaticism, DEMANDING an information war on ‘Russian propaganda’ and generalised Badthink among the proles. ‘Western liberal values’ with the mask off. Scratch a ‘liberal’ and you’ll find a fascist.

stevehayes13
stevehayes13
May 4, 2018 1:54 PM

Luke Harding accusing anyone of propagating disinformation is beyond hypocritical.
http://viewsandstories.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/guardian-accuses-russia-of.html

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
May 6, 2018 8:53 AM

While their content is usually very good, I wouldn’t advise getting histrionic about it. As I wrote, the unique value of the wsws lies the extraordinary internal consistency of it’s position on a wide range of issues; a quality of value to readers of any political persuasion seeking to sharpen their insight into the political process with a view to effecting any sort of honest, non-deceptive change, and one that a consideration of the vapid mish-mash of current “social democracy” cannot provide.

onceagain489
onceagain489
May 3, 2018 8:07 PM

I find it funny that people who object to all the shenanigans of our so-called “social media” even use them. Why bother? We all know they’re manipulated for reasons with which most of us would disagree. For me, anything dealing with “social media” is not worthy of attention. It’s all belly button gazing.

TheSociologicalMail
TheSociologicalMail
May 3, 2018 7:26 PM

Disgusting that Facebook would do such a thing, but what did I really expect.

stevehayes13
stevehayes13
May 3, 2018 4:52 PM

On CNN’s “New Day” Chris Cuomo interviewed James Clapper. They were smugly denouncing President Trump for lying. They both repeatedly agreed that facts are important and truth is essential to democracy. And they did all this with straight faces.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 3, 2018 6:33 PM
Reply to  stevehayes13

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LK3Jc8YZXjs/TAhpHRWQ3ZI/AAAAAAAAX28/HSms_DaTAxE/s400/fish-human-expression-face-10.jpg
The fact that James Clapper (shown above) held office under Obama highlights the essential problem of American politics – that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. This unhinged

tomiejones
tomiejones
May 3, 2018 4:32 PM

Reblogged this on circusbuoy.

vexarb
vexarb
May 3, 2018 3:40 PM

This is an important issue. Electronic media are the greatest advance since the printing press. In fact Plato, in an aside, remarks that The Laws will have to be rewritten when the time comes that everybody will be able to communicate with everyone else instantaneously. So our question is the same as Plato’s question about Democracy: Who will be the Guardians? Quis custodiet ipsos custodiens? These social media are, like the BBC and the Post Office, too valuable to be controlled by a few greedy monopolists. Alternative Sites are at best a palliative; their real function is to strike new streams, or to trickle along little specialized streams — not to replace the Main Stream. Ever since the resurgence of The Gospel of Greed, under Maggie Snatcher, democracy has been consolidating into kleptocracy. Now the Wells of Truth are being poisoned, and the World has become sick. There ought to be severe penalties for this sort of thing; but there won’t be unless we start by hanging Tony B.Liar.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 3, 2018 4:51 PM
Reply to  vexarb

In fact it was the 1st-century AD Roman poet Juvenal who wrote the phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” (nb the correct spelling of custodes. Juvenal did not write it referring to democracy – but as a witty admonition to wealthy oligarchs of his day. who cast off their wives in order to wed trophy brides instead. Seeking to ensure the fidelity of their new brides. these same men hired muscular young bodyguards to safeguard their homes from would-be lotharios. But who will watch over those guards?” , quipped Juveval.
Plato had much of great interest to say about democracy – but this remark isn’t among them,. Plato lived in Greece, nearly four centuries earlier than Juvenal – who lived in Rome.
I do, however, entirely agree that since the court system has signally failed to impose justice, it’s time for the demos</> to stop waiting for a bunch of silly old men in nylon periwigs to take action – and hang Tony B Liar in the name of the People.

wardropper
wardropper
May 3, 2018 5:57 PM
Reply to  reinertorheit

“Who will guard the guards?” perhaps catches the point more idiomatically.
Plato knew what he was talking about.
We need him now, except that he would be unemployed on account of being too bright…

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 3, 2018 5:59 PM
Reply to  wardropper

Yes, Plato’s advanced ideas and principles for how society could govern itself are sorely needed nowadays.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
May 3, 2018 11:52 PM
Reply to  wardropper

Be careful what you wish for (at least in public).

vexarb
vexarb
May 3, 2018 6:49 PM
Reply to  reinertorheit

@purefoolishness. Many thanks for the correct Latin, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” . And the story of rich old Roman Trumpeters hiring some mucular young Custodians to guard their ex-model wives lends spice and humour to Juvenal’s classic conundrum re The Guardian.
Have you read The Laws? Almost unreadable, not only because of its unwieldy size but also because Plato was still working on it when he died — so I presume he was going to pare it down to his usual elegant presentation. I was listening to it on LibriVox in Jowett’s translation, and found it interesting for its brilliant asides. One of them is the prediction I mentioned: that The Laws will have to be changed in an age of instantaneous mass communication.

vexarb
vexarb
May 4, 2018 7:31 AM
Reply to  vexarb

still @reinertorheit. Hang him by all legal means; it is far more important to purify the Courts of Justice than to hang even a high AZC banker such as our Tony has been elevated into. Because the Liar was got off the hook by a High Court Judge. Today everyone knows that judge as Lord Dodgy of Dodgy Dossier; but older people remember when he was Lord Blood of Bloody Sunday. Until a British regime cleans out Lord Dodgy and similar “safe pairs of hands” that were appointed to pervert the course of justice, things will go on as in past ages.
“Thou shalt deliver righteous judgment”. — Old Testament

Kaiama
Kaiama
May 3, 2018 3:22 PM
reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 3, 2018 4:58 PM
Reply to  Kaiama

We’re still waiting for the Panama Papers titillation Puke Harding promised on Putin nearly 2.5 years ago (“to be published shortly!”) – which has never, of course, seen the light of day.
Coming soon – “Volodya Putin ate my hamster”, Exclusive! by Luke Harding.

wardropper
wardropper
May 3, 2018 6:00 PM
Reply to  Kaiama

The entire paper follows the latest fashion of making reality real by repeating yourself a lot.

JudyJ
JudyJ
May 3, 2018 3:15 PM

News suppression, censorship, distortion – all real tactics used by the ‘free’ Western media, including social media controllers, to manipulate our knowledge and opinions. There is a complete obsession within Western media to employ these tactics and to obsess about alternative media outlets, at the expense of reporting real news and its significance to the world at large. I was interested to see on RT the other day a report about the recent celebrations which took place in Lvov, Ukraine with photographs widely available of militias and their supporters sporting swastikas and joyously waving swastika bearing flags in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the formation of the murderous 1 Galician Division. This sort of traditional (Nazi) occasion and parade is of course something that happens regularly and openly in Ukraine and other former Soviet states and is considered a happy and proud time. Not something the West would condone, in fact one would presume the opposite. But no. Not only do our media never cover such events but, in the case of the recent occasion, the Telegraph’s Russia correspondent Alex Luhn didn’t appear concerned about the wider implications of Nazi celebrations but he WAS concerned enough to tweet that “it was playing right into the hands of Russian media”. Our media really needs to reflect on its priorities.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 4, 2018 12:52 AM
Reply to  JudyJ

The ruling classes in the West and their propaganda toads are fascists, and worse. The West gave shelter and succour to the defeated fascists of eastern Europe after WW2. Within years here in Austfailure they, Jew-killers, butchers of children, slaughterers of Poles and Soviet citizens, were being hailed as ‘Captive Nations’ under the yoke of ‘Communism’. The Balts were active, as were the Croats, who even detonated terrorist bombs in Sydney, protected by our ‘security’ organs, controlled then, as now, by the USA. Then after Yeltsin’s hyper-treachery of breaking up the USSR on orders from his US bosses, the fascists’ descendants swarmed back to Ukraine, Croatia, Slovenia, Ukraine, every bit as foul and bloodthirsty as their forbears. A true triumph of ‘Western moral values’. And it’s not over yet. Quite often in this country you see Vietnamese thugs parading with the banner of the puppet death-squad regime of ‘South Vietnam’ flying aloft.

bevin
bevin
May 3, 2018 2:27 PM

An excellent article
I hate to change the subject-I’m not really doing so- but it appears that the UK has almost a division sized contingent working with the Saudi government to bomb Yemen. Specialist armourers, seconded from the armed forces, even load banned cluster munitions for use against a country half of which was British occupied and ruled for 150 years.
That’s nice isn’t it?
https://www.mintpressnews.com/report-7000-uk-personnel-involved-in-saudi-led-bombing-of-yemen/241467/

Brutally Remastered
Brutally Remastered
May 3, 2018 2:15 PM

I lasted three months on FacialBook and three days on Twitter (during the last “war” on Gaza) before being kicked. I wear this as a tiny badge of honour. I do notice that comments and hashtags abusive of the IDF or israel or Zionism become impossible to post on Instagram.
But I also notice there are a great, great many people like me who are not fooled and are becoming far less able to be fooled. Time is up.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 4, 2018 12:57 AM

What do you expect? The ruling heights of the Internet are controlled by Zionists, many Israeli, many in the Diaspora, and so too is much of the apparatus of surveillance and information gathering. They know all the Badthinkers, ‘troublemakers’, ‘Russian bots’, and, of course, ‘antisemites’, and this is information that they undoubtedly use to blackmail, harass, intimidate or simply vilify, those who ‘…get in our way’.

Admin
Admin
May 4, 2018 12:27 PM

Stop reducing every topic to a monomania about Zionists and Israel!

Brutally Remastered
Brutally Remastered
May 4, 2018 3:24 PM
Reply to  Admin

Is this directed at me? If so, then perhaps read the comment, in reply, after mine. I think the topics of Zionism and israel hugely important as one keeps on coming across links: everywhere.
Many will agree with me.
At a time when Palestinian children are being murdered by sniper fire while protesting (on what is left of their land) their inhumane subjugation and slow genocide then I think it fully justified to highlight nefarious intrusion and manipulation of media and social media.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 5, 2018 4:30 AM
Reply to  Admin

It’s a FACT, ‘Admin’ hasbara-meister. Are there any other facts you plan to ban, to indicate your dedication to ‘Free Speech’?

Brutally Remastered
Brutally Remastered
May 5, 2018 10:12 AM

Quite. Very odd this.