Listen to a reading of this article:

Twitter has imposed a weeklong suspension on the account of writer and political activist Danny Haiphong for a thread he made on the platform disputing the mainstream Tiananmen Square massacre narrative.

The notification Haiphong received informed him that Twitter had locked his account for “Violating our rules against abuse and harassment,” presumably in reference to a rule the platform put in place a year ago which prohibits “content that denies that mass murder or other mass casualty events took place, where we can verify that the event occured, and when the content is shared with abusive intent.”

“This may include references to such an event as a ‘hoax’ or claims that victims or survivors are fake or ‘actors,’” Twitter said of the new rule. “It includes, but is not limited to, events like the Holocaust, school shootings, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters.”

That we are now seeing this rule applied to protect narratives which support the geostrategic interests of the US-centralized empire is not in the least bit surprising.

Haiphong is far from the first to dispute the mainstream western narrative about exactly what happened around Tiananmen Square in June of 1989 as the Soviet Union was crumbling and Washington’s temporary Cold War alignment with Beijing was losing its strategic usefulness. But we can expect more acts of online censorship like this as Silicon Valley continues to expand into its role as guardian of imperial historic records.

This idea that government-tied Silicon Valley institutions should act as arbiters of history on behalf of the public consumer is gaining steadily increasing acceptance in the artificially manufactured echo chamber of mainstream public opinion. We saw another example of this recently in Joe Lauria’s excellent refutation of accusations against Consortium News of historic inaccuracy by the imperial narrative management firm NewsGuard.

As journalists like Whitney Webb and Mnar Adley noted years ago, NewsGuard markets itself as a “news rating agency” designed to help people sort out good from bad sources of information online, but in reality functions as an empire-backed weapon against media who question imperial narratives about what’s happening in the world. The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal outlined the company’s many partnerships with imperial swamp monsters like former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and “chief propagandist” Richard Stengel as well as “imperialist cutouts like the German Marshall Fund” when its operatives contacted his outlet for comment on their accusations.

Lauria compiles a mountain of evidence in refutation of NewsGuard’s claim that Consortium News published “false content” about the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine, copiously citing outlets which NewsGuard itself has labeled accurate sources of information with its “green check” designation system. It becomes clear as you read the article that NewsGuard’s real function is, as John Kiriakou put it, “guarding the country from the news.”

Then you’ve got Wikipedia, which blacklists the same sites as NewsGuard and whose operatives run relentless smear campaigns on anti-imperialist voices, thereby guaranteeing a view of history that is wildly tilted in the favor of empire-authorized narratives. Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, also happens to serve on NewsGuard’s advisory board.

This idea that anyone can ever be an impartial arbiter of objective reality is logically fallacious and is invalidated by facts in evidence. It is clear that imposing regulations on people’s efforts to understand world events on the platforms where people have come to congregate to share ideas and information will necessarily lead to an information ecosystem that is skewed to the benefit of whatever power structure is imposing those regulations. When that power structure is an alliance of oligarchs and government proxies whose interests are served by the ongoing dominance of the US-centralized empire, the information ecosystem will be biased in favor of that empire.

The most impressive feat of engineering in the 21st century has been of the “social” variety. The social engineering necessary to continually keep people confused and blinkered about what’s going on in the world despite a sudden influx of information availability is one of the most astonishing achievements in the history of civilization, despite its depraved and destructive nature.

The empire has had mixed feelings about the internet since its creation. On one hand it allows for unprecedented surveillance and information gathering and the rapid distribution of propaganda, which it likes, but on the other it allows for the unprecedented democratization of information, which it doesn’t like.

Its answer to this quandary has been to come up with “fact checking” services and Silicon Valley censorship protocols for restricting “misinformation” (with “facts” and “information” defined as “whatever advances imperial interests”). That’s all we’re seeing with continually expanding online censorship policies, and with government-tied oligarchic narrative management operations like NewsGuard.

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32 responses to “Silicon Valley Corporations Are Taking Control Of History”

  1. Harry S Nydick Avatar
    Harry S Nydick

    Now you know why I had a twitter account a year ago – for no more than 5 minutes. I found about as offensive to my brain as I find Starbucks’s coffee equally offensive to my taste buds.

  2. You wrap a lot of legitimate concern about U.S. creating propaganda to bolster their own positions with the Tienanmen Square protests. Tienanmen Square was the focus of U.S. media, but there was a broader rebellion at the time against totalitarian practices in China that spanned many provinces. We don’t want to condone any government’s abuse of it’s people.
    ~
    What we really don’t want is for Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft emulating the Social Credit system that is now in place in China, and those platforms seem bent on emulating that Chinese invasion of personal privacy.
    ~
    That is the real story about the Social Media platforms in the United States. Google has already censored content on behalf of China. Expect more to come.
    ~
    We need to resist invasion of privacy and censorship regardless of which government is doing the invasion or censoring.
    ~
    This is NOT a United States only affair, many countries around the world are on board with this including your country Australia.

  3. Hurry Up Panquake!!

    (Though it still makes me think of pancakes, but I’ll get over it.)

  4. Here’s another Jimmy Dore masterpiece that speaks volumes, with the entitled shitlibs on The View spewing CIA propaganda while calling for full-blown fascism:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI4YNiV_B4E
    Give them Guantanamo and Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson and all the public figures that don’t explicitly push for World War III to eliminate “dictator” Putin (in The View’s lexicon, a duly elected Russian president translates as a “dictator” – especially if his government – sorry, his regime – is supported by 83% of his population according to… hostile polls :o) are in for incarceration and possibly waterboarding for dissent – which is not allowed in the BlueAnon “democratic” universe:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI4YNiV_B4E
    As the saying goes, when people think you look stupid, why immediately open your mouth to prove them right?

    1. Sorry, same video. Dunno why it showed twice.

      1. PS: As for Tiananmen, it’s been pretty mainstream for years that the whole shebang was a CIA attempt at color revolution, with specialist Gene Sharp having even been seen in Beijing and the US ambassador being a former (?) CIA agent:
        1989 Tiananmen Square “Student Massacre” was a hoax (criticalsocialworkpublishinghouse.com)
        https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/06/tiananmen-square-do-the-media-say-what-really-happened.html

        1. Sorry, faulty (first) link again. This should be better:
          https://www.criticalsocialworkpublishinghouse.com/post/1989-tiananmen-square-student-massacre-was-a-hoax
          Extraordinary document!

  5. I strongly suspect that Caitlin no longer has full control of her blog.
    Buyer beware.

    1. We’d been troll-free for almost a week, which started to feel kinda weird. So come on friend, don’t be bashful!. What else do you strongly suspect while levitating?

      1. I’ll forgive you this time for your bad aim.
        Check my history here.

        1. Where?

      2. By the way, I watched the Jimmy Dore masterpiece you referenced above and have promoted it elsewhere.

        Good one!

      3. You don’t know what history Caitlin deletes here in the comments…because she has deleted it!

        She talks about Silicon Valley Corps controlling history
        but “she” does it herself. *That* is what makes me suspect she no longer fully controls her own blog.

  6. Never fear! “Anonymous” will expose the corrupt deep state and free us all. OOps! Last I heard they were attacking forces opposed to NATO.

    The People’s Party will give us an alternative! Oops! No candidates.

    Panquake will give us an alternative to all the deep state platforms! Oops, no platform after all.

    I guess there will be an unending parade of alternative freedom initiatives to combat the authoritarianism that will always keep us from having any true alternatives. You know, the Democratic Party model.

  7. Ted Christian Avatar
    Ted Christian

    The more they squeeze the more obvious it will be become, and they still won’t be able to stop the truth from squishing out. It seems like at some point they’re going to have to really take out the knives, but it will be like slashing at water. It will be interesting to see how many rings the circus will have.

    1. I’m sure they have lists that would facilitate the takedown of every slightly suspicious member of every platform in a day.

      We’ll be free to stand on the local corner hoping to find a friend until we actually find one. Then they’ll shut down the corners with loitering laws.

      1. Ted Christian Avatar
        Ted Christian

        If push comes to shove people can put up their own sites. I had one back when I did politics, it costs me $10/yr with free hosting. Taking down a registered url would presumably require government intervention, and would probably generate more attention than the site would have attracted otherwise. Maybe I’m being a bit overoptimistic but it seems like trying to stop free speech on the internet with algorithms and whatnot is like trying to stop a swarm of locusts with a picket fence.

  8. I started using Substack when Google deleted my blog and email. They eventually reinstated it, but in the past couple of months they have deleted 3 blog post for unspecified content-violations. It appears to be Ukraine-war information, not information about effective treatments for COVID and deaths from “vaccines” these days. I still run both blog formats with the same content.

    I’m reluctant to make predictions without a lot of evidence to support them, but there is now a lot of evidence showing the near-term trends of energy use in industrial societies, with good historical comparisons.
    The currently stated objectives of western governments are not compatible with near-term real-economic requirements for societal survival. They can’t be carried out. They are a bluff, or some kind of strange trick to create a crisis, before a “new-solution” is magically presented to us.

    Gonzolo Lira just pointed out what happened to the US during the Arab Oil Embargo , starting in 1973. It caused Stagflation in the US, because prices went up and the economy imploded when the core commodity, oil quadrupled in price. America still produced almost all the oil it needed, and Americans used a lot less oil than we do now. Lira points out that Europe is now doing that to itself (at America’s behest).
    It’s worse for Europe, because Europe produces very little oil or gas without Russia. Global economy is so tightly knit, and running right at capacity, that there is not slack to be given from elsewhere, even if the oil were the same, and the refineries could just use it as-is. It’s not. They can’t. It also has to come long ways by ship, with long transit delays, and shipping shortages are already a big problem. Pipelines that work 7 days per week are the best. Russian pipelines and oil are the best for European refineries and industry.

    American and Qatari liquefied natural gas are a pipe-dream, because the billions of dollars required won’t exist when the economy shuts down for the decade to build that infrastructure. Japan and other Asian economies already buy that stuff, are set up for it, and will outbid Europe.
    A pipeline from Iran is a good idea, blocked so far by USA/NATO, since Syria wants to collect for Syrian participation, and is getting pounded for that affront.
    Here in Texas, with the summer driving season already underway, people now let me drive just under the speed limit, maybe even follow me for 30 miles, instead of tailgating, flashing their brights in my mirror, and punching the accelerator to jump past me at 90 mph, like usual.
    WTI is $120/bbl. The bank that used to show that price on the time & temperature display quit doing so in late March.
    It went from being interesting to threatening, I guess.

    I suspect the WEF/Globalist/Bilderberg plan was to spring a global financial crisis all at once, with the miracle solution of global central bank digital currency, with initial free-money, and a free smartphone to go with your free biometric ID, which could be used anywhere, and only by you, as long as you remained on good-behavior.
    The failure of Russia to financially collapse, coupled with the advanced preparations for a shared trade-currency with organizations like the Eurasian Economic Union, BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, seem to make that plan too risky now. The choice would be a real choice, and a lot of people in a lot of countries are already prepared to opt out of the nefarious biometric CBDC scheme. It has been outed.
    Global biometric CBDC is a trap that won’t catch all of us, and like the Kool-Aid, it won’t work without full participation, because everybody will shortly want out.

    Russia and China have the opportunity to be good guys this summer for an affordable price. Russia can make a profit on oil and meet the national budget when it is $40/bbl (maybe lower). Russia is already channeling big middleman-fees to Chinese tankers and Indian refiners for taking Russian oil at night, refining, rebranding and selling it at a handy profit for all, even including the final customer. Russia and India have both expressed intentions to sell grain preferentially to countries whose populations need it to survive, like Egyptians… These charitable acts will reduce profits of Oil-Majors and Agribusinesses like Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and even Bayer/Monsanto, since Russian grain eschews their patented seeds and necessary inputs.

    Cheating and accepting cheap grain are the low-hanging-fruit. This will throttle-back the extractive cash flows to the imperial financial machine, which is set to grab all the productive assets of countries that can’t make their interest payments to banks, hedge funds and the IMF, like in the Asian Economic Crisis. It’s that time of the credit-cycle again, unless it’s not…

    How beguiling, to be spared from the fate you have dreaded for 30 years, when you know it is an evil, tyrannical, downright unjust fate, cast onto your country by a cynical global parasitic class… “Odious debt” is the legal term. It’s ok to default on it, and you might gladly do so, if you only had a choice.
    Russia shares your pain…
    China is likewise sympathetic, and willing to give you a clean slate, a fresh credit card, to replace the Bank-of-America VISA card you are about to cut up. You won’t be able to use it at every gas station (Rosneft and Valero, not Texaco), but you can get by without the slavery of unpayable debt hanging over your head.

    When will this transition happen and how long will it take. “Slowly at first, then all at once”? What will that mean?
    Cheating is underway, and will have to increase and become the basic business model for EU oil and gas purchases. It will be a hassle, but as long as the pipelines are still running, it just means pretending you don’t know that the petroleum products on that tanker originated in Russia. Easy.
    Cheating will rapidly refine as a business model. Funds to build LNG ports and transport ships in Germany will hit snags in committee. It will just go so slowly that it does not happen. Nordstream-2 just sits there, calling to you… “Profits, profits, warm winters, social approval from friends and family…”

    What I don’t know is how close to the precipice the western financial machine is, and when it will trip over that edge.
    I personally think that the east does not want to give it that push. The east is also invested in that machine. The controlled-demolition of western finance by western financial elites appears non-viable now, and it was their main option.
    WW-3 is always a button they can push. It just needs to keep being a slightly worse option than something else, anything else. Walk it down slow…
    I think everybody can keep not-rushing-the-crackhead-with-the-detonater for awhile longer, indefinitely.
    Just ignore all that stuff about your mom.

    While the world is lying and cheating, and paying less to western financial institutions, and starting to default on $US debts (I’m looking at You too, “Eurodollars”)
    western central banks can play their money-printing games, and they might try some kind of CBDC, but they will lack total-buy-in, and it will be part of a crumbling system, and the neighbors will have this other gig going across the street, which won’t look bad by comparison. The neighbors won’t be paying on that credit card, mortgage, and SUV, either. (It’s just my pension. I need my pension. I earned my pension. The neighbors borrowed my pension..)

    This will go on for longer than I can imagine. Everything always does. That’s my prediction.

    1. Jonathan Pratt Avatar
      Jonathan Pratt

      This was very nice and informative, thanks. Several things here to think about.

    2. Ted Christian Avatar
      Ted Christian

      If a site deleted a blog post of mine I’d dump them and rehost the blog and then blog about it. I’m not going to restrict my writing to what others allow.

  9. Caitlin how do we protest Danny’s banning to Twitter? I remember they did something similar to you a few years ago, and people protested and we got you back. Can those things still be done?

  10. “On one hand it allows for unprecedented surveillance and information gathering and the rapid distribution of propaganda, which it likes, but on the other it allows for the unprecedented democratization of information, which it doesn’t like.”

    This is why Obama put the US army in charge of the internet.

    Or who did you think the real internet police were? Did you really think it was Silicon Valley all by themselves? I’d show you proof but that would require internet links and they are all gone.

    Anything that remains only hints at the truth: https://thepetroglyph.com/obamas-national-police-security-force-plan-5fb0bad296b3https://thepetroglyph.com/obamas-national-police-security-force-plan-5fb0bad296b3

  11. Because of its need to constantly try to fool the public, its foreign adversaries and even its allies, and because of the need to cover its ass for all the lies it has already told about its policies, actions and world events in general, any “news” originating from or disseminated by the American government is probably the least credible and most suspect amongst the various and sundry entities that dispense what we call news. As an old colleague once remarked, about the only “news” you can really accept at face value are the sports scores. The rest is mostly just opinion and narrative.

    1. I am starting to understand Americans sports fans.

  12. “But Plato, the lawmaker, knows that, and knows that a certain “lie” must be employed even for a culture that values truth above everything, because even the idea that “truth is supreme” is not based on anything but a decision of the human will.”

    Those who follow Plato, like Leo Strauss and his followers, will twist themselves into such pretzel logic in order to justify acting like a fascist. It’s hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBokuP3oicA

  13. Surely not Caitlin! Why only this morning the Socialist Morning Herald in Sydney quoted the Ukraine Govt saying “Today’s missile strikes at Kyiv have only one goal – kill as many as possible,”

    Because Russia fired 4 cruise missile at the railway repair yards where they were repairing tanks. “the head of the Ukrainian railway, confirmed that four missiles had hit the Darnytsia rail car repair facility in eastern Kyiv, ”

    But it turns out Russia is doing a very bad job of killing as many people as possible, as-

    “At least one person was hospitalised, the mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, said.”

    I’d attribute as much truth to the next statement too-

    “Ukrainian officials said the country’s troops had recaptured a swathe of the city of Sievierodonetsk in a counteroffensive.’

  14. The exit door from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp is always open but people don’t want to leave.

    1. I understand the idea, that you want to reach as many people as possible to make your point of view heard, but why wouldn’t you at least copy yout tweets to your own Mastodon server, or your meta-posts to your own diaspora server, just so they aren’t lost when you are eventually banned? People have started doing that with their YT-videos and i support that.
      If you don’t show them, that there are other options available, you don’t have any leverage whatsoever.

  15. Extraordinary, and at the same time highly presumptuous, that any single person or organisation can set itself up as the arbiter of truth. The only people remotely qualified to determine the truth about historical events are historians themselves, but even then their determinations, even if unanimous, must not be taken as gospel.
    These so-called fact checkers are the least qualified to determine truth, misinformation and disinformation.
    History has always been written, and re-written, to suit the needs of the establishment, and it is rarely objective and balanced. There is always an underlying narrative that favours one side or another.

    1. Napoleon said: “History is a pack of lies on which we all agree” and governments have been trying to perpetuate this tradition since Gilgamesh. The ubiquity of informative technology just makes it more difficult these days. The question is: will the West balk at the tactics used by Pol Pot, the Kim Jong dynasty, Pinochet, Operation Condor, especially in its Argentinian garden variety, and a whole bunch of African dictators (Mobutu, Idi Amin, Bokassa, Hissene Habre, Sekou Touré, Mugabe, Charles Taylor, Eyadema – in a long list) as well as the oft-quoted Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Mao quadriga? Or are we in for the whole orwello-kafkaesque enchilada like in Ettore Scola’s movie Una giornata particolare, when the gay tenant of the 6th floor, played by Marcello Mastroianni and accused of being against fascism, replies to Mussolini’s carabinieri come to arrest him: “It’s not the tenant of the 6th floor who’s against fascism! It’s fascism that’s against the tenant of the 6th floor!”

      1. Magnificent actor. Powerful film.
        https://youtu.be/0_x7xytqv-o
        ~
        From the tragic to the sublime:
        https://youtu.be/7_hfZoe9FHE

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