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WATCH: Kevin Barrett on the creeping censorship that threatens all of us

Dr. Kevin Barrett, who was pilloried in the media back in 2006 for daring to question the official 9/11 narrative, here talks about the new wave of highly alarming censorship that is seeing alternative news sites closed down and independent media removed from the airwaves. Please share this. You can follow Kevin at @truthjihad.


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Makropulos
Makropulos
Sep 24, 2018 8:21 AM

The glaringly obvious state of panic that the mainstream media has gone into reminds me of that Frank Zappa quote:

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

I’d just change the word “profitable” to “safe” and the word “expensive to “dangerous”. Both substitutions relating to how far the ruling class can permit freedom without threatening their own legitimacy.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Sep 23, 2018 11:18 PM

Wow. As Bil clinton said watching Trump on the stump. The Groan giving full anti JC
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/23/brexit-corbyn-under-pressure-from-all-sides-over-peoples-vote

axisofoil
axisofoil
Sep 23, 2018 7:54 PM

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward Bernays, Propaganda

WeatherEye
WeatherEye
Sep 24, 2018 9:32 AM
Reply to  axisofoil

The invisible government has ensured that no one has a clue who Bernays is.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Sep 23, 2018 7:07 PM

The Obssesive Groans coverage of the Labour conference is a bit selective.

Good to see the AS trope hasn’t been totally discarded by some plucky rebels and promoted by the arch creepy censors.

Ms Creasey should proudly display it on her cv, leaflets, election material, party hq, t- shirts, manifesto…

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/23/conference-at-a-glance-labour-nears-consensus-on-brexit

“Quote of the day
The Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy at a Jewish Labour event:

I was going to say something about how good it is being a Jew in the Labour party at the moment … but someone told me you guys don’t get irony.”

One of the statements in this comment may be irony.

harry stotle
harry stotle
Sep 23, 2018 11:57 AM

Unsurprisingly the Guardian is at the forefront of regular calls for internet censorship.

Those daft bastards seem to think Kippers ranting in a bedsit in Britain’s post-industrial wasteland is somehow more of a threat than the NSA knowing what type of toilet paper people use, or free minds trying to set the public record straight on the endless crimes being committed by our amoral overlords (their treatment of Julian Assange epitomises their lack of moral compass).

What has it come to when the suppression of truth is less of an issue for so-called left wing media than special interests groups being confronted by online frothers – in other words there is a much bigger here, one in which the Guardian should be thoroughly ashamed of its role as censor in chief for the dark forces they are now in thrall to.

WeatherEye
WeatherEye
Sep 24, 2018 9:38 AM
Reply to  harry stotle

The bourgeoisie often respond to crisis by closing its ranks in reactionary unison, hence the Guardian these days sounds like a refined version of The Sun (or even that). Their treatment of Assange lays bare its true colours.

kevin morris
kevin morris
Sep 23, 2018 10:50 AM

Like probably all OffG readers, I deplore censorship.

That said, it never fails to amaze me how the left continues to lionise the People’s Republic of China where censorship is far in advance of that in the west, and where dissidents almost invariably suffer long prison sentences.

Could it be that moves afoot in China to grade its entire population on a scale of reliability will produce the blueprint for the west’s control of its own dissidents? After all since Google will have a major role in China’s plans, there seems no reason why the algorithms it develops there won’t be adapted for here.

vexarb
vexarb
Sep 23, 2018 3:13 PM
Reply to  axisofoil

Backwoods Christian view of China.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Sep 24, 2018 11:14 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Orientalist and racist, from an undisguised Sinophobe.

grandstand
grandstand
Sep 23, 2018 9:51 PM
Reply to  axisofoil

London has per capita far more CCTV cameras than Beijing. London has roughly as many CCTV cameras as Beijing with less than half the population.

axisofoil
axisofoil
Sep 23, 2018 10:14 PM
Reply to  grandstand

Is this a critical observation or a justification of the encroaching surveillance state?

grandstand
grandstand
Sep 24, 2018 12:40 AM
Reply to  axisofoil

It is not a critical observation, it is a “hypocritical” observation.

axisofoil
axisofoil
Sep 24, 2018 1:11 AM
Reply to  grandstand

Oh good. I have a bumper sticker that says….
BE DIVERSE – EMBRACE HYPOCRISY.

Byron Jones
Byron Jones
Sep 23, 2018 12:10 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

Can you quote an example of where the left “lionise the People’s Republic of China?”. That sounds like it comes straight out of the Daily Mail. We criticise censorship everywhere…but when we do so re the US or UK, someone like you comes along with whataboutery to deflect the issue.

kevin morris
kevin morris
Sep 24, 2018 1:39 PM
Reply to  Byron Jones

How long have you got? The left praised China’s invasion of Tibet and still claim that China brought civilisation there, whilst ignoring the forced sterilisations and the massive ecological damage committed by the Chinese in Tibet. They ignore the Chinese colonisation of Tibet where Tibetans are now a minority in their own country and are unable to receive a secondary education in their own language. Frankly, China’s treatment of Tibetans is on a par with the US’ treatment of native Americans. They ignore China’s water use policies in Tibet which is causing great nervousness in most south Asian countries whose rivers all rise in Tibet.

The Chinese treatment of Uiighurs is compared with the UK ‘Prevent’ strategy in the comments pages of this esteemed journal. In the fifties, the left praised Mao’s ‘Letting a Hundred Flowers Bloom’ policy, ignoring what was a pretext for smoking out dissidents. Many praised the Great Leap Forward but tended to ignore the millions who died as a consequence.

Frankly, I could go on and on, but I get the diistinct impression that people are so disenchanted with the US that they feel China would be better as top nation.They forget China’s own sense of divine right and its utter ruthlessness in pursuing its own advantage. I argue that in actual fact the early days of the US empire have a great deal in common with China now. In the early days of the twentieth century, the US, a mercantilist nation, saw the freedom of the seas as being its way of developing its superiority. Now China pursues a similar goal by becoming ‘workshop of the world’ and developing new routes to the west of its goods. The US deliberately undermined the left and unionised labour in order for its industrialists to pursue its goals. China has the advantage of its workers having very little by way of rights to begin with.

China is shrewdly presenting its plans as being for the benefit of the whole of mankind, and this has its appeal to progressives who tend to ignore the price that third world countries are paying and will continue to pay for the investments which China makes in their countries. Look at what happened when Sri Lanka asked China to build a deep water port for them at Hanbantota. China has the financial muscle to force third world countries to accept similar treatment. Harbantota sounds like the beginning of a Chinese policy of developing bases that will ring its enemies and looks very similar to policies put in place by the US since the second world war.

These are relatively calm times- unless you live under Chinese colonial rule- but as the power of China increases we will see China increasingly flexing its muscles. There are dangers for China in doing so, but the signs are growing that it will increasingly do so.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Sep 24, 2018 11:17 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

Vicious and ENTIRELY mendacious racist garbage, as ever. The entire Western media sewer reviles China and publishes nothing positive about it. As for Tibet, it takes a real racist Orientalist to denounce the end of serfdom in Tibet, the liberation of women, the end of theocratic rule, the introduction of modern amenities, the end of illiteracy etc. But you are down to that task, aren’t you.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Sep 25, 2018 2:21 AM
Reply to  kevin morris

I missed your dirtiest Big Lie on first reading. Tibetans and other minorities were NOT covered by the ‘one child’ policy. Keep on lying-it really suits you.

Stonky
Stonky
Sep 25, 2018 4:38 AM
Reply to  kevin morris

“They ignore the Chinese colonisation of Tibet where Tibetans are now a minority in their own country…”

Oh don’t be so bloody stupid. The population of Tibet is 3 million, and 90% are ethnic Tibetan. Han people have no desire, or any possible incentive, to go and live outside Lhasa and a few other towns and cities.

“unable to receive a secondary education in their own language…”

Oh don’t be so bloody stupid. The actual problem is the opposite – a dearth of people to teach Mandarin to the locals. Tibetans speak a language spoken by nobody else on the planet, and large numbers of them are still illiterate in that language. The only way to bring economic development is to teach them Mandarin.But next to no Han people want to go off and teach Mandarin in the back of beyond, and any local Tibetans fortunate enough to acquire an education and fluency in Mandarin immediately hoy off to the city to earn a decent living.

Perhaps they should go back to the good old days pre-1950, when there wasn’t a single school in Tibet and all of the 90% of the population who weren’t monks or gentry were illiterate?

“Frankly, China’s treatment of Tibetans is on a par with the US’ treatment of native Americans…”

Seriously? The population has been decimated? There are six million Tibetans in China now, so there were 60 million in 1950? Even the Central Tibetan Administration doesn’t make that stupid claim. The truth is the Central Tibetan Administration deosn’t actually know how many Tibetans there were in 1950, as they didn’t care enough about the 90% of the population who were bonded serfs to even bother counting them.

And just for the record, the fortunate 10% who have survived have not in fact had 90% of their land stolen from them. They are not in fact penned up on reservations, prisoners of unemployment, poverty, drugs, alcohol, disease and despair.

You embody a substantial part of Western opinion on China and Tibet – a big bag of arrogance, stuffed full of ignorance, and tied at the neck with prejudice.

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Oct 1, 2018 6:10 AM
Reply to  Stonky

Victor Marchetti wrote in the CIA and the Cult of Intelligence that the Dalai Lama requested donations from his impoverished subjects to build a gold throne as a “special offering” LOL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArmL6SNPlTQ

Jen
Jen
Sep 25, 2018 7:36 AM
Reply to  kevin morris

Kevin, do you mind giving us links to the sources you must have consulted to write this screed?

If you’re not prepared to do so, or if you tell us to look them up ourselves, we can take your answer to mean that you’re merely repeating the garbage you see in mainstream Western news media.

If you can’t even spell the name of the deepwater port in Sri Lanka properly, how can you expect us to take the rest of your comment seriously?

bevin
bevin
Sep 23, 2018 1:34 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

” it never fails to amaze me ”
Your comment is typically ethnocentric. In China the left is very much abreast of this issue and campaigns against censorship. You might not know this because those involved make no contributions to websites like this.
Why? Because their business is with the people of China. They aren’t trying to incite us to put sanctions on them or arm the Uighurs to hasten the arrival of freedom. They are minding their own business. They know that nothing would discredit them, in the eyes of the people of China and the world in general, more than to ally themselves with the imperialists.
So they struggle against their own government in their own way and want nothing to do with The Guardian reporter or the International Socialist reporting on the success of the anti-authoritarian war in Libya.
There must be a lesson in this somewhere.

Antonyl
Antonyl
Sep 23, 2018 2:46 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

Or the censorship of the “progressive left” of any criticism of Islam, again with the Graun in front. All other religions are fair game for them. This emanates from the archaic kingdom of Saudi Arabia with their oil $$$$$, happily lapped up by these “journos’.
The UK (and US) are known for supplying hired guns but now also for media mercenaries.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Sep 25, 2018 2:25 AM
Reply to  Antonyl

A particularly filthy lie coming from an arch Zionazi. Islamophobia is RAMPANT in the West, and not just on the margins, and Judaism is utterly sacrosanct. And much of the Islamophobia is funded and directed by the Zionazis, particularly in the USA. A really trade-mark ‘Big Lie’ whose author matches the tactic’s original creator.

vexarb
vexarb
Sep 23, 2018 3:12 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

Or vice versa, more likely.

Stonky
Stonky
Sep 23, 2018 4:21 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

China is fighting an existential battle against powerful foes who would happily see it (and its people) reduced to a chaotic impoverished mess like India, or even better, broken up into a parcel of warring statelets that could be pitted against each other or destroyed as and when.

I have lived in China for most of the last ten years. My wife is Chinese. She and her family are ordinary blue-collar working class people from a nondescript city in north-eastern China. The China I inhabit is full of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, for the most part concerned with the ordinary concerns of ordinary people – putting a roof over their head, making sure there is food on the table, ensuring their children have a decent education and prospects of a better future. And for the most part being able to achieve these aims with the minimum of interference from a government that has better things to do than hassle ordinary people going about heir ordinary business.

I dare say if I spent more time in the company of wealthy bum-licking middle class poseurs like Ai Weiwei, I might have a different perspective.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Sep 23, 2018 5:55 PM
Reply to  Stonky

@Stonky. You’ve hit the nail right on the head. Currently certain extremist socialist elements in China are spouting about how bad things are and comfortable academics are receiving this as representative of the majority of working class(blue collar as you call it)Chinese peoples. Needless to say it is far removed from ordinary Chinese workers attitudes and perceptions because they are not extremist or fanatical about the socialist ideology – something the socialist academics cannot seem to get their head round. One of my contacts is Chinese and working class and really objects to the criticisms from lefties who do not represent him or so many other working class Chinese, he knows the system is not perfect, but their lives are far better than elsewhere in the world.

Ross
Ross
Sep 24, 2018 9:45 AM
Reply to  mohandeer

You could give a similar answer to the situation in the UK.

One of my contacts is English and working class and really objects to the criticisms from lefties who do not represent him or so many other working class English, he knows the system is not perfect, but their lives are far better than elsewhere in the world.

That doesnt mean that those with their brain switched on, who can see the ominous direction the authorities are taking, shouldnt try and raise awareness.

Mrs Benn
Mrs Benn
Sep 24, 2018 12:01 PM
Reply to  Ross

‘One of my contacts is English and working class’. That says it all really you don’t actually know any English working class then?

I hope your last paragraph isn’t suggesting that the working class are thick.

Jen
Jen
Sep 23, 2018 11:31 PM
Reply to  Stonky

“China is fighting an existential battle against powerful foes who would happily see it (and its people) reduced to a chaotic impoverished mess like India, or even better, broken up into a parcel of warring statelets that could be pitted against each other or destroyed as and when.”

That sentence describes the situation China was in during the first half of the 20th century and which both my parents’ families escaped in the 1940s by coming to Australia. The sentence would even more accurately reflect the country’s past and reflect the plans of China’s enemies if it were slightly edited to say:

“China is fighting an existential battle against powerful foes who would happily see it (and its people) reduced to a chaotic impoverished mess broken up into a parcel of warring statelets that could be pitted against each other or destroyed as and when.”

WeatherEye
WeatherEye
Sep 24, 2018 9:42 AM
Reply to  Jen

It also describes Grand Chessboard designs on Russia, starting with the shock therapy years.

Antonyl
Antonyl
Sep 24, 2018 2:51 AM
Reply to  Stonky

If China would stay within its present borders I could agree. Alas the 9 dash sea grab and its Himalayan imperialism show that the Chinese top is on a different line than the majority of blue collar Chinese…
Who want to be China’s direct neighbour today?

Stonky
Stonky
Sep 24, 2018 1:13 PM
Reply to  Antonyl

I’m not going to bother arguing about the “nine-dash sea grab” with someone whose knowledge of the history of the South China Sea and the countries that surround it stretches back almost all the way back to the start of this century.

But I will invite you to remove your impenetrable lead-lined blinkers of Western moral superiority just for a second, and try to consider things from the Chinese perspective, for once in your life. What you style as China’s “Himalayan imperialism”, appears to them as a determined effort to ensure that the CIA, the warmongering neocon lunatics in Washington, the moneygrubbing greedmongers of Wall Street, and their slavering hangers-on, do not actually achieve their goal of creating an Afghanistan-style failed state on the Chinese side of the Himalayas, exporting as much chaos and disorder as possible, preferably with plenty of bloodshed, into the rest of China.

“Who want to be China’s direct neighbour today?”

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria, for a start. Nowadays the USA is a little more circumspect about bombing the shit out of China’s direct neighbours than it was back in the 1960s and 70s

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Sep 25, 2018 2:36 AM
Reply to  Antonyl

Coming from a Zionazi that takes the cake for vicious hypocrisy. China has more land neighbours than any other country, and has settled all territorial disputes from the days of European Imperialism with all but one-poor old India, now a puppet of the West and the Zionazis. China would also amicably settle things in the South China Seas if left in peace by the US death-machine, that is itching for war. Compare that to the ceaseless aggression of the USA, devastating country after country, killing millions, and subverting and sanctioning half the planet for not obeying orders from Thanatopolis DC. Or the racist, terrorist, apartheid state Israel, constantly attacking its neighbours, supporting takfiri terrorists and keeping the Palestinians in perpetual, brutal, incarceration. Your hypocrisy is reaching new heights, but this is existential, isn’t it. Having taken over the West, completely, the Zionazis are scared rigid by the prospect of China, that merely treats Jews as fellow human beings, not ‘Gods Upon the Earth’, as the Zionazis prefer, rising to global power. It would possibly even hinder the establishment of Eretz Yisrael, ‘…from the Nile to the Euphrates’, and we can’t have that, can we?

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Sep 25, 2018 2:27 AM
Reply to  Stonky

Well said! Ai Wei-wei, in my opinion, is the pluperfect compradore Quisling-and utterly talentless as an ‘artist’ to boot.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Sep 24, 2018 8:47 AM
Reply to  kevin morris

I take it that you don’t like China’s internal political practices. Well, that’s your prerogative. What do you think ‘we’ should do about it? I suppose one could ‘deplore’ it and feel all self-righteous, but hey that’s not good enough. We perhaps ought to take a leaf out of the Samanatha Power R2P manual and start bombing. Yes, that’s what China, Russia, Iran, N.Korea need: bomb them into democracy.

Personally I would settle for a normalisation of relations with these states and non-aggression pacts. But of course that is sooooo Westphalian. Why is it that these soi-disant do-gooders see fit to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign states? Quite apart from being a paticularly pernicious type of manichean idiocy it causes no end of trouble as is evident in today’s geopolitical environment.

Your intentions may be noble and good, but in the cynical amoral world of geopolitics, such intentions will be and are twisted out of all recognition by sovereign actors in pursuit of less exalted goals.

Machiavelli 101

WeatherEye
WeatherEye
Sep 24, 2018 9:48 AM
Reply to  Francis Lee

Feeling self-righteous is a Western prerogative, especially when there’s an opportunity to obliterate and thieve people in the name of helping them.