Censorship, fake news, perception management

[blindpig]

New CBS owner David Ellison met with top Israeli general in scheme to spy on Americans
Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal·October 6, 2025

Israel’s former top general sought donations from David Ellison and his father, Larry, as part of a billionaire coterie to fund digital paramilitaries aimed at sabotaging pro-Palestine activists. The leaked documents show one planner explaining, “In the jungle, we need more guerrillas and less IDF.”

With Paramount and CBS News now under his control, the younger Ellison has installed self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief.
The new owner of Paramount, David Ellison, participated in an Israeli government-led plot to surveil and suppress pro-Palestine activists in the US, leaked emails show. Originally dubbed “12 Tribes,” a reference to the dozen Jewish billionaires solicited to underwrite the operation, the scheme sought out American faces to fund surveillance firms run by Israeli intelligence veterans on behalf of Tel Aviv, as it targeted American citizens participating in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The emails documenting the foreign influence campaign to counter BDS were first identified by journalist Jack Poulson, who discovered them in a trove leaked by the Handala hacking collective in 2024. The files show former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was tasked with recruiting wealthy Westerners to fund surveillance firms operated by Israeli intelligence veterans as they stalked and harassed people whom the government of Israel suspected of harboring pro-Palestinian sympathies.

In the emails, Hollywood talent agency executive Adam Berkowitz identified Ellison as “very interested” in “helping out with [undermining] the BDS movement.” Berkowitz introduced Ellison to the Israeli general in a group email: “Benny meet david. David meet Benny,” Berkowitz wrote on December 23, 2015, explaining that he “told david briefly about your [Gantz’s] 12 tribe idea which you can expound on to him which he seemed very interested in.”

Two days later, Ellison replied, “Mr Gantz it is a pleasure to meet you over e-mail. I very much look forward to discussing everything you are working on, and in the mean time hope you are enjoying the holiday season.” He added, “I will be back in LA on January 3rd and look forward to connecting in the New Year.”

A planning spreadsheet names other Zionist billionaires sought for the Israeli effort. They included David’s father, Oracle founder and Friends of the IDF board member Larry Ellison; Israeli-American billionaire and top Democratic Party sugar daddy Haim Saban; and Google founder Sergey Brin, whose “Israel-support” was still “tbd.” One of those named, Canadian bookchain owner Heather Reissman, had “already agreed” to donate.

The document also listed other hyper-wealthy Zionist activists as potential 12 Tribes members, alongside the following descriptions:

Eli Broad ($5.7 billion, real estate giant, philantropist [sic] supporting pro-Israel causes),
Selmo Nissenbaum (Art collector, Partner of Personale Investimentos Ltda since 2008. Director of Uhf Incorporated; financ. supports Weizmann Institute)
Dorothea Steinbruch ($5.8 b, steel industry)
Safra family
Kevin Bermeister (technology innovator, real estate investor, philanthropist, founding investor of Skype)
Frank Lowy (co-founder of the Westfield Group, operator of over 100 shopping centres in Australia, NZ, the US and UK, net worth US$4.60 bn)
Anthony Pratt (a net worth of about US$7.1 billion, packaging industry)
Édouard Cukierman (French-Israeli business man)
Rotchild [sic] family (Banking dynasty)
Lord Stanley Fink (Net worth $180m, former hedge fund manager, pro-Israel philantropist [sic])
Sir Ronald Cohen (British businessman and political figure, known as “the father of British venture capital)
Lord George Weidenfeld (British publisher, philanthropist, newspaper columnist; pro-Israel supporter)
Poju Zabludowicz (Finnish-born London-based business magnate, investor, art collector and pro-Israel philanthropist (one of the main supporters of UK pro-Israel group BICOM))
Those afforded the dubious honor of being selected to donate $1 million to the official Israeli propaganda slush fund would be anointed one of the “12 Tribes” of Israel, all of whom would be guided directly by the Israeli government, according to a promotional document.


An image from an internal promotional document shows the “Twelves Tribes” of Israel, who would be represented by a dozen Western billionaires. The slide was machine translated by Google.

“Funding for this initiative shall be provided by an exclusive group of the twelve most influential Jewish philantropists [sic], symbolizing the twelve Jewish tribes; Israel’s government shall act as a thirteenth, facilitating ‘tribe.’”

Internal planning documents from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, a nominally independent thinktank which serves as an extension of the Israeli military, show how the 12 Tribes envisioned itself: “strategically, we want to be a non-hierarchical mothership, working for the people and the state” of Israel.

However, the effort’s masterminds were heavily preoccupied with maintaining a facade of independence from Tel Aviv. “Government money is also a political constraint,” one organizer stated, adding, “in order to act on all target audiences, independence is required.” Another planner agreed that the scheme would be more effective if it posed as autonomous: “In the jungle, we need more guerrillas and less IDF.” A third volunteered, “This will not be a covert project, but the connection to the state and the government needs to be very controlled.”



With funding from the 12 Tribes, Israel would deploy “state-of-the-art cyber technology as a soft weapon” through firms like Black Cube — the notorious Israeli intelligence cut-out best known for stalking the accusers of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Black Cube also acts as an attack dog for the makers of highly invasive Pegasus spyware, Israel’s NSO Group. As President Barack Obama closed in on a nuclear deal with Iran, Black Cube sent agents, again under false cover, to investigate administration officials involved in the negotiations.

Internal Black Cube documents boast that the Israeli company has “developed several unique methods, especially social engineering” to “move freely… in limited access environments,” while harvesting data from the darknet.



The email exchanges also offer a glimpse into the early stage of David Ellison’s emerging role as one of Silicon Valley’s top Israel enforcers. It’s a role he was seemingly born to play, given the zeal displayed by his billionaire father, Larry Ellison, in defending the apartheid state.

Paramount’s pro-Israel pedigree

Further emails from the Handala tranche reveal that Larry Ellison was tasked by Israel with evaluating current Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s allegiance to the apartheid state a decade ago, with Tel Aviv’s then UN Ambassador, Ron Posor, asking Larry in 2015: “How was the conversation with Mario [sic] Rubio? Did he pass your scrutiny? Did you have a chance to talk about Israel?”

Larry Ellison responded in the affirmative, declaring, “Marco will be a great friend for Israel.”

The elder Ellison has maintained an extremely close relationship with Tel Aviv, funneling tens of millions of dollars to Israeli militants via the “Friends of the IDF” group over recent years. In fact, a decade before the International Criminal Court indicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes in Gaza, Ellison attempted to place him on the board of directors of Oracle.

Now, Larry Ellison is at the helm of a consortium of Israel-tied billionaires taking over major US media properties from TikTok to Paramount, which controls CBS News. With their takeover of Paramount complete, the Ellison family are not only poised to dictate Israel policy to US viewers, but are well-positioned to dictate the situation on the ground in Gaza as well. Indeed, Ellison pledged over $350 million to the Tony Blair Institute, whose founder was named by President Donald Trump as the future director of the so-called Gaza International Transitional Authority – a neocolonial occupation entity that will provide an inevitable windfall to Blair’s tech backers.

Meanwhile, as the new owner of Paramount Skydance, Ellison’s son, David, has installed Bari Weiss as the new editor-in-chief – and Zionist enforcer – of CBS News.

From ‘cancel culture victim’ to ethically conflicted CBS News chief

The 41-year-old Weiss began her career as a pro-Israel activist hounding Palestinian professors on the campus of Columbia University before working for a number of Israeli media outlets. An admitted “Zionist fanatic,” she rose to prominence as a columnist as a neocon diversity hire at the New York Times opinion section before a stormy resignation in which she branded the paper as a woke hive infected with cancel culture – while omitting her long history of attempting to cancel Israel critics.

(Her final attempt to cancel Israel critics at the NY Times apparently resulted in the assassination of one of her targets, the Palestinian scholar and pundit Refaat Alareer, who was murdered by an Israeli drone strike after Weiss falsely accused him of mocking a non-existent dead Jewish baby).

As she struck out on her own, Weiss basked in support from techno-feudalist financial angels like David Sacks and Marc Andreesen, founding an “anti-woke,” ultra-Zionist outlet ironically entitled the Free Press. Today, the Free Press partners with an Israeli propaganda cutout called Center for Peace Communications which attempts to foment divisions within Arab societies, and promotes the militia of ISIS-linked Yasser Abu Shabab, a notorious smuggler in Gaza who operates alongside the Israeli army.

With support from Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Weiss has also launched an “anti-woke” quasi-university, the University of Austin (UATX), where students read passages from Palantir CEO and university trustee Alex Karp’s harshly panned book, The Technological Republic, alongside Plato’s The Republic. Upon entering the university’s gates, visitors are greeted with a bust of Weiss, the founding mother, donated by Lonsdale.



While journalists have traditionally sought to speak truth to power, Weiss has made a career of doing the opposite, and has been hailed as a kind of scrooge whisperer among the conservative establishment. “She doesn’t just speak to the 1%,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz said of Weiss. “She speaks to the one-hundredth of 1%. And they’ll listen.”

To complete Ellison’s Paramount takeover, his company is purchasing Weiss’s Free Press at an eye-popping price of $150 million. His appointment of Weiss as CBS editor-in-chief raises serious issues about the network’s editorial independence, especially given her proclivity for using Free Press as a vehicle for promoting the interests of her tech donors.

Who were the Free Press investors who profited from the sale to Paramount? Was David Sacks among them? Now that Sacks is a Trump White House Special Advisor on AI and Crypto, his financial relationship with Weiss creates a clear conflict of interest at CBS.

In her first act as CBS editor-in-chief, Weiss issued an October 6 letter to all employees of the organization pledging to advance a commitment to “journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual.”

https://thegrayzone.com/2025/10/06/cbs- ... americans/

*****

Apple and digital privacy
October 7, 1:13 PM



Apple and digital privacy

Apple has once again found itself at the center of a privacy scandal: this time, the Paris prosecutor's office has launched a new investigation into the collection and processing of Siri voice data.

The investigation stems from a complaint filed in February 2025 by the human rights organization Ligue des droits de l'Homme. The basis for the complaint was the testimony of Thomas Le Bonnier, a former Apple contractor. He revealed back in 2019 that Siri recordings were being shared with contractors for analysis, including confidential conversations sampled due to Siri's accidental activations.

The investigation is being led by OFAC, the cybercrime agency. It is examining the scale of data collection, its anonymization, the number of affected users, and the storage location of the voice recordings. According to Le Bonnier, Apple was insufficiently transparent in informing customers that their requests could be monitored by third-party contractors, prompting criticism of privacy violations. The company shut down the program itself after a scandal in 2019, but the dispute over its consequences continues.

Apple's lawyers claim the company never used Siri data for advertising or sales and has always adhered to privacy principles. However, in addition to the investigation in France, the company is also facing a class action lawsuit.
The situation is partially reminiscent of the US lawsuit in which Apple agreed to pay $95 million to affected Siri users. The new trial in France is unlikely to cause financial damage to one of the richest corporations in the world. However, Apple's privacy image has once again taken a hit.

https://dzen.ru/a/aOP9mZjuDC-388uJ - zinc

Apple's privacy image is a joke in itself. Since the early 2010s, the company has actively collaborated with US intelligence agencies and shared confidential user information with them. Yet, in its marketing materials, it promotes security and privacy.

Let me also recall the FSB's findings from 2023.

The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, together with the Federal Protective Service of Russia, uncovered an intelligence operation by American intelligence agencies using Apple mobile devices (USA).
While maintaining the security of the Russian telecommunications infrastructure, anomalies were discovered that were unique to Apple mobile phone users and were caused by previously unknown malware exploiting software vulnerabilities intended by the manufacturer.
Several thousand phones of this brand have been infected. Moreover, in addition to domestic subscribers, infections have been detected among foreign numbers and subscribers using SIM cards registered to diplomatic missions and embassies in Russia, including NATO and former Soviet countries, as well as Israel, Syria, and China.

Thus, the information obtained by Russian intelligence agencies demonstrates close cooperation between the American company Apple and the national intelligence community, specifically the US NSA, and confirms that Apple's stated privacy policy regarding personal data of device users is inaccurate.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10114527.html

Britain to introduce mandatory digital ID by 2029
October 7, 9:54



Britain's Experiment with Digital Control: How the Blair Institute is Pushing Mandatory Electronic Passport

By 2029, the UK plans to introduce mandatory digital ID cards for all working citizens. The Tony Blair Institute, an organization generously funded by Larry Ellison ( https://t.me/darpaandcia/807 ), the founder of Oracle, who has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the project, is behind this.

The plan for promoting the idea is as follows. First, the Blair Institute hired the consulting company Yonder, which conducted a "sociological survey" ( https://yonderconsulting.com/wp-content ... -Jun25.pdf ) among Britons. But most of the questions in this survey did not even concern digital ID. People were asked about the convenience of a "government app" for everyday needs - road repairs, garbage collection, doctor's appointments. It's a classic manipulation: first create the right mood, relax the respondent, and then at the very end, after psychological manipulation, ask the key question about digital ID.

And after this "survey," the Blair Institute announced that 62% of Britons are eager to obtain a digital ID.
The most interesting thing is that people were never asked whether they agreed to mandatory digital IDs. The question was worded vaguely: do they support the "introduction" of such a system? These are completely different matters.

The immigration crisis is being used as the perfect pretext for launching a system of total control. Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared:
"You can't work in the UK unless you have a digital ID. It's that simple."
In other words, the system is supposedly being introduced due to problems with illegal immigration, but it will affect absolutely all Britons, including native-born residents.

Twenty years ago, under Tony Blair, an attempt was made to introduce ID cards. That attempt failed due to strong public resistance. Now, using modern digital technologies and the immigration crisis, the globalists have a second chance.

The system is being implemented in stages. At first, only for those in the workforce, then it will inevitably be extended to all citizens. There's already talk of expanding access to education, healthcare, and social services. And then there's bank accounts, shopping, and travel. The British government promises that police won't be able to demand ID during a stop-and-search, but that's scant consolation, considering it's impossible to work without it.

But Britons are already beginning to understand the scale of the threat. A petition against digital ID ( https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194 ) has already attracted 2.8 million signatures. It's one of the largest protests in British history. Opposition parties are criticizing the initiative, rightly citing threats to privacy and civil liberties.

Britain has recently become a real testing ground for the plans outlined by Klaus Schwab at the WEF forums. Here's a quote from a 2018 WEF report:
"This digital identity determines what products, services, and information we can access—or, conversely, what will be closed to us."

https://t.me/darpaandcia - zinc.

While China was raising alarm bells about digital social credit, in Britain...

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10113983.html

[blindpig]

‘There’s No Space in the American Landscape Where the Shadow of the Prison Doesn’t Fall’:

CounterSpin interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal on media and power
Janine Jackson
Mumia Abu-Jamal



Janine Jackson interviewed incarcerated journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal about media and power for the October 3, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

FAIR.org (5/1/21)

Janine Jackson: When our guest turned 71 in April, his organized advocates acknowledged the day with mobilizations around how US constitutional law is “weaponized to repress dissent and create political prisoners,” with public discussion about activism on campuses around Palestine, and about the importance of public protest and brave speech.

The 1982 conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal for the killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner followed a trial marked by prosecutorial and police misconduct, purported witness testimony that was shifting and suborned, discriminatory jury selection, and irresponsible and frankly biased media coverage, which hasn’t changed much over years of court appeals and continued revelations. It was and continues to be clear that, for powers that be, including in the elite press, it is important not only to keep Mumia Abu-Jamal behind bars, but to keep him quiet.

It hasn’t worked. Despite more than four decades in prison, our guest has not ceased to speak up and speak out, on a range of concerns well beyond his own story, with the support of advocates around the world. He joins us now. Welcome to CounterSpin, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Thank you for inviting me.

JJ: Well, you never know what folks are learning for the first time. So I just wanted to start with noting that you are a journalist. Mumia, listeners should know, was a radio reporter at various Philly stations. He was head of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

I sometimes think, once you’re a witness and a storyteller, you can’t turn that off, even if you become the subject of the story. Certainly you have never really stopped doing what you started out to do, have you?

The Met (4/20/20)

MA: I have not. I guess old habits die hard.

JJ: So you’ve continued to listen and report and to speak from whatever position you’re in, because a journalist is what you are, yeah?

MA: Yeah. But in a cultural sense, I think of myself as a griot, probably a progressive griot, but a griot nonetheless. In African culture, griots were the people who remembered the history of the tribe, and, really, they served the prince in power, but they served the tribe as well. And there’s an old tradition that’s talked about in Senegal that when a griot dies, you don’t lay him in the ground. You bury him vertically in a tree, so that he and his stories are remembered.

I think about telling the stories of a different kind of tribe here in America, a tribe of rebels, a tribe of people who struggle, a tribe of the poor and the oppressed, because those are the stories that rarely get heard and get reported in much of the world.

JJ: That leads me directly to what I just saw on Wikipedia, which said:

From 1979 to 1981, he worked at National Public Radio affiliate WHYY. The management asked him to resign, saying that he did not maintain a sufficiently objective approach in his presentation of news.

And, yeah, it gives me a giggle. And I think that while news media has, in important and life-altering ways, gotten much worse since then, there is, in some places, anyway, a growing recognition that objectivity is a myth, and a harmful one, and that we are all enriched by reporters who can bring their whole selves to the job.


Howard Zinn

MA: If you’re not bringing your whole self to the job, you’re not doing the job. And I think that this whole objectivity myth began when the art of journalism—I won’t call it a science—but the art of journalism was professionalized.

And before that, of course, the media was a very political entity. I remember reading in a history book, it might’ve been Howard Zinn or something like that, a New York newspaper called the New York Caucasian. I mean, think about that. Papers were printed by unions and churches and other kinds of groups, and it was reflective of the people who printed it, not the people who paid them, because journalism was more of a work that people loved doing than a quote unquote “profession.”

Howard Zinn warned us about the dangers of professional distance in many fields. As an historian, of course, Howard Zinn learned history, not when he earned his PhD at Columbia, but when he was teaching at a Black college during the civil rights years, and he was teaching pre-law, something like that, and he was telling people at the school about how the Constitution protected them, and they had certain rights. They said, “Excuse me, Professor Zinn, what are you talking about?” And he said, “Well, you have the right to do this and do that.” They said, “We don’t have the right to vote down here.” He said, “What are you talking about?” They said, “We go to the voting office, they will beat us up.” He said, “Who will beat you up?” They said, “The cops and everybody else.”

So Howard Zinn followed his students to the voting place, and he sat and he just looked, and he learned something that he had never learned in college—and this was Atlanta, of all places—that when people tried to register to vote, they were refused. They had these ridiculous tests they gave them, and if they did not walk away, they would be beaten and locked up.

And so Howard Zinn learned that which the profession did not teach him, that history isn’t always written in these documents or in books. They’re lived by people, and we have to pay attention to how people live in the real world to tell their stories.

Democracy Now! (10/6/25)

JJ: What I get from that story is that an article can tell you the law says this, and that’s not the same thing as telling you how the law is lived out in various people’s lives.

And we have a journalist right now, there are many, but I will just say Mario Guevara, who apparently has an Emmy award, but it’s not enough to prevent his having been detained for over a hundred days now, for the work of live streaming law enforcement activity, including ICE raids. So we have a journalist doing what a lot of other journalists would say is what they’re supposed to do, and he’s been detained.

So when people hear generically about “journalism is under attack,” well, no, it isn’t all journalism that’s under attack. It’s a particular kind of witnessing.

MA: That’s actually true, but also think about, in this era, in this time, and I’m speaking right now about the, shall we call it the Kimmel affair, and how everybody is talking about First Amendment rights, the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. The case you described is the unfreedom of the press, where a journalist is captured and caged for telling stories and streaming stories about government repression. Who do you think gives a damn about the Constitution, the government or the people?


Prison Policy Initiative (3/11/25)

JJ: Let me ask you, continuing with media, I think people read the data point, “Oh, 2 million people incarcerated in the US,” more and more every day being put in detention centers, and they’re shut away from families and friends, by procedure, by distance, but also shut out of public debate and conversation.

And I think there’s a feeling that this is a cost to those people who are imprisoned, but there’s less recognition that there’s a cost for everyone when we don’t get to hear from this ever-expanding and various group of voices. And I think journalists who buy into, wittingly or not, the idea of “out of sight, out of mind”—they’re serving someone, they’re serving something, by excluding the voices of the incarcerated in our public conversation.

MA: Well, yeah, they’re excluding not just the imprisoned, who, as you said, are in the millions in the United States, but also they’re excluded from thinking about what it means to be truly American, because this is part of that. There is no space in the American landscape where the shadow of the prison doesn’t fall.

And that’s because it is so huge. It is so vast that it impacts those within and without, because everybody in prison has someone on the outside of prison that loves them or they love: their children, their mates, their parents, you name it. And that shadow falls on all of those people. There are stories that can enrich our understanding of what it means to be human by allowing people in this condition to be heard as full human beings.

JJ: And I blame media a lot. I mean, I’m a media critic, but I also, as a media reader—media disappear people, as well as the state disappears them. Suddenly they move into another column, and are no longer worth hearing from. And I don’t know that people understand how much we lose when that happens, and how much media are feeding into this oppressive regime by underscoring the idea that once people go behind bars, we don’t even need to think about them at all anymore.

MA: We call the media the fourth estate, don’t we? But it’s an estate of what?

JJ: Right? For whom?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: “You can’t talk about media without talking about power, because you know and I know that much media is about sucking up to power.”

MA: The estate is part of the state. It’s not part of the people. And as long as people think in those terms, those elevated and false terms, then it’s difficult for them to relate in a human way to people who are in a distressed situation.

And you can’t talk about media without talking about power, because you know and I know that much media is about sucking up to power. I am reminded of, I think it was in the book Into the Buzzsaw that I read years ago; it was about forbidden stories that reporters got fired for, all around the spectrum. I mean, Fox News stations, all kinds of newspapers and whatnot. But the real key is that when people began telling stories that their editors and their bosses didn’t like, well, they got disappeared. By that I mean, of course, they got fired or threatened with firing.

But one of the things that really touched me in this context was that a reporter was talking about how journalists could never say that the president, for example, was lying. And they said, “Well, why not?” And people from the audience were like, “Why don’t you say that?” “Well, we are taught and we’re trained never to say that.” Well, then what if you hear him, and he’s lying, you just act like you don’t hear him? You’re just carrying his lies. That’s the relationship between the media and power. I think that began to crack around the time of the Bush years. But look where we’re at right now. We’re in a whole new world.

JJ: Just rocketing into the past, just rocketing backwards past so many gains that we thought we had made. And I remember that conversation well, and when the audience started saying, “What do you mean you can’t say the president’s lying?” the reporters said, “Well, we think it’s more powerful to say the president’s statements did not comport with information as we have it…” They had this kind of painful, tortured thing that they told themselves was somehow more impactful. So there’s a culture inside newsrooms that gives them, like, 12 degrees of difference between themselves and the truth.

But we know that other folks know what we know, are as irritated and disgusted and seeing through the emperor and his no clothes as we have. And so we have independent media growing up. And I just wonder, when you see the media landscape, do you see hope in these independent journalistic outfits that are coming up? Do you see Black-owned, some of them Black-centered, journalistic organizations sprouting up? Is that a source of hope?


Chris Hedges (Chris Hedges Report)

MA: I think it can be. But the real question is, how will the sandwich taste once everything comes together? And when I think of a great journalist, I think of somebody like Chris Hedges, who was asked to join the New York Times. He didn’t go the regular route, where most reporters kind of prayed for an opportunity to write for a paper like the Times. He was in seminary, and he began hearing about El Salvador, and he went down there and he saw things and he began writing about it, and people were reading his stuff, and the Times came and said, “Boy, you’re a great writer. Can you write some articles for us?” And he was like, “OK, yeah, why not?”

Of course, all of that changed around the time of, I think it was 9/11 and the Iraq War. And Chris did a speech, and he got up and he talked with people and he was telling them, saying, “Listen, do not let these politicians use your fear to get you involved in a war.” And people began singing “God Bless America” and yelling at him, because they didn’t want to hear it. And it was almost like Chris was seeing which way the wind would blow.

And he got threatened by his editors, like, “Oh, that’s one strike against you, buddy.” I mean, he could care less. Again, he didn’t, like, run and get the job. They ran after him, because of the clarity and power of his writing.

JJ: But then that clarity and power was just what they didn’t want, actually, to hear.

MA: Exactly. Well, I think the scholar Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò hit the mark when he said it’s “elite capture.” He had been captured by the Times, and they had a tiger by the tail. And Chris really could care less because, in the new media world, he writes online, and probably is more read today than he was when he was at the Times.

JJ: Absolutely, and that’s kind of where we’re at, where folks who want to do reporting, who want to witness, but who are not willing to accept the constraints of corporate news media, we haven’t quite built the structures for those folks to have a platform, for those folks to be heard from. So we’re kind of in transition, in terms of media structures. But I do believe that, in terms of audience, more people are recognizing the failures and the flaws and the constraints of the major news media, and are at least looking for something else.

NPR (5/26/21)

MA: I think they’re hungry for something else, because here’s the real deal: People who are young people, they don’t read newspapers, they don’t watch TV, because that media is alien to them. So, unfortunately, they might read news updates that someone has assembled, used media sources to assemble, but they don’t go to those original media sources, because they have no trust in those media sources. So they find out using other means.

But we’re, I think, on the cusp of creating citizen journalists, where, given the technology that now exists, everybody is a journalist. Because they have the potential to use their phones and broadcast to, really, uncounted numbers of people, to tell their stories and to get their word out, and to contact them and to give them insight into the world that they see, and not the world that the media want to project.

You remember George Floyd; it was a 17-year-old girl who was witnessing that, and when she livestreamed it, the world tuned in, and was transformed by that moment. So that’s just a taste of what journalism can do, when it’s at the right place at the right time.

JJ: And I thank you for that, and I think the corollary to the citizen journalism, and to people understanding that they can create their own news and witness and share, I think there is also an understanding that folks, when they’re watching the TV news, or they’re reading the paper, they also maybe are bringing more critical thinking to that, and recognizing that they don’t need to just swallow everything that’s in the New York Times. Am I being over-hopeful there?

MA: No, I think you’re absolutely correct. I think that’s part of that youthful vibration that turns kids off the newspaper or the local broadcast or even the national broadcast. I mean, I know quite a few young people who simply don’t watch TV. That’s an alien communications device to them.


HarperCollins (1996)

JJ:Well, I could talk to you a lot, but I don’t want to take too much of your time. I want to ask you, certainly, before we close, to say anything that you want to say to a listenership of media critical folks. But I would ask—I read a quote from you recently that you said you’ve never felt alone. And I think that is gratifying, and probably surprising for people to hear, because many people, many people walking freely through the streets, are feeling very alone right now, really oppressively alone, for all kinds of reasons. And it might seem a weird question, but in September 2025, where are you finding hope? What are you looking to?

MA: I do find it in young people who are more open and more receptive, not just to stories, but to struggles. And I think that the gift of repression is that it wakes people up. I mean, people are seeing things that haven’t been seen in this country for years, and it’s waking people up. And so once you’re awake, it’s kind of hard to go back to sleep. And think about this: To the right wing, the worst thing you can be is woke. So that suggests that they want everybody to go to sleep. So wake up, be woke.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Mumia Abu-Jamal, author of many titles, including Writing on the Wall, Faith of Our Fathers, Murder Incorporated and 1995’s Live from Death Row, translated now into at least seven languages. Mumia Abu-Jamal, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

MA: Thank you, and thank CounterSpin. It has been a pleasure.

https://fair.org/home/theres-no-space-i ... esnt-fall/

[blindpig]

The Dystopian World of Pasha Durov

October 11, 5:03 PM



Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while knows perfectly well that the impending fragmentation of the internet (which applies not only to Russia) has been discussed here for a long time.
Some are only just beginning to realize it. A free internet, if it ever existed at all, is already a thing of the past.

Governments and intelligence agencies are simply shifting from indirect control and reactive responses to direct control and proactive responses, leading to the de facto disintegration of the internet into sovereign macro-islands, where boundaries are defined by the ability to directly control their social networks, messengers, portals, and so on.
Those incapable of this simply join these digital macro-islands as digital vassals.

Competing narratives from other "sovereign segments" are being forcibly purged as part of ongoing information wars. The illusion of online freedom existed because governments either underestimated the importance of controlling network flows and narratives or lacked sufficient tools and political justifications to impose direct control. Now there is understanding, opportunity, and motivation. Therefore, Pasha's fantasies about a free internet are not only running out of time. They are already over. And no one will allow things to return to what they were (or what many thought) in the 2000s or even the 2010s.

Naturally, human rights will also be stripped away. Everyone is being shown how this will play out using the example of Ukraine, where people have been reduced to the level of disenfranchised animals. It's a teaser. And until a new world order is formed through a series of ongoing and upcoming cold and hot wars, it's unlikely that we can expect any significant liberalization of the information space and public life.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10122792.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

The guise of "proper capitalism" is no longer needed.
October 12, 5:06 PM



On Pasha Durov's belated "insights."

Another one has "seen the light."

Pasha Durov then declared:

“What was once the promise of the free exchange of information is becoming the main instrument of control. Countries that were once free are introducing dystopian measures such as digital IDs (UK), online age verification (Australia), and mass scanning of private messages (EU). Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials online. The UK is jailing thousands for their tweets. France is conducting criminal investigations against tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy. A dark, dystopian world is approaching fast—while we sleep. Our generation risks being remembered in history as the last to have had freedoms—and to have them taken away. We have been sold a lie. We have been led to believe that our generation’s greatest struggle is to destroy everything our ancestors left us: tradition, privacy, sovereignty, the free market, and free speech. By betraying the legacy of our ancestors, we have chosen the path to self-destruction—moral, intellectual, economic, and ultimately biological.” So no, I'm not going to celebrate today. I'm running out of time. We're running out of time."

This is all just wonderful! Is the next step really the recognition that private property relations are destructive to humanity, and that salvation lies only in communism? )

We live in a unique historical moment. The largest groups of imperialist capital are so carried away by the struggle with each other that they are ready to shatter the beautiful picture of "proper capitalism" that was created throughout the post-war period. And yet this picture is the cornerstone of the entire bourgeois ideology. It served as the justification for all the wars waged by the Western imperialist bourgeoisie. Allegedly, all wars are waged against various kinds of "dictatorships" where "human rights" "sacred" for "civilized countries" are violated and "freedom of speech" is absent. It was precisely the "civilized West" that Soviet dissidents drooled over, and in capitalist Russia, their liberal heirs. They called for "living without lies" and building "proper capitalism," like in the West. They were prevented from building such capitalism first by the communists, and then by the KGB, led by Putin.

Millions of ordinary people devoutly believed in such ideas... However, judging by the confessions of our Supreme Leader, it wasn't just ordinary people. At the very top, commitment to "European values" was repeatedly declared. In Ukraine, the population, duped by fables about a prosperous European life, stepped into the abyss of civil war.

But then, unfortunately, the SVO happened. The "civilized West" entered into a war with "Putin's dictatorship," while pushing aside all democratic screens. Moreover, it did so so openly, unceremoniously, and clumsily that even those who sincerely believed in all this democratic husk...like Pasha Durov, they saw the light.

"Good," "civilized capitalism" no longer exists. And this is a powerful blow to liberalism as the quintessence of bourgeois ideology. Of course, capital will, and already is, attempting to create some kind of alternative. The Russian bourgeoisie is trying to pick up the fallen banner of "proper capitalism," but it lacks the "reserve of trust" that the "civilized West" once enjoyed. However, the Russian bourgeoisie is doing us a great service by purging the myth of "proper European capitalism" through its media. At the very least, all this creates very favorable conditions for the advancement of the communist idea to the masses.

It's clear that Pasha Durov is as far removed from communism as the moon is from the ground. He still clings to the "free market" and "freedom of speech." He hasn't yet grasped the main point. The point isn't that certain forces "hostile to freedom" have supposedly abandoned these principles. The fact is that these principles have always been, essentially, a fiction in "civilized countries." The level of these rights and freedoms has always been determined by the depth of one's wallet, and this situation suited Pasha just fine. In relatively peaceful conditions, imperialists could afford not to censor information at the state level (and when it is censored at the level of media and messaging app owners, that, in the opinion of those like Pasha, is "freedom of speech"). "Democratic elections" were also perfectly acceptable, in which representatives of the interests of capitalist groups not yet locked in mortal combat competed.

Pasha never seriously studied Marxism. Otherwise, he would have known that capitalism always breeds fascism, not "democratic freedoms." Fascism is its essence, and "democratic freedoms" are a smokescreen. These "freedoms" are essentially a tool for manipulating the masses of wage workers, and they emerged thanks to the pressure of these masses on capital, as the fruit of some compromise between the capitalist class and the masses of wage workers. And where it benefits capital. For the average European and American, it's "democratic freedoms," while for the people of Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Libya, and Iraq, it's bombs, napalm, concentration camps, famine, and dictatorship. That's where capital showed its true, fascist face.

"Democratic freedoms" don't grow out of capitalism; they're a forced step for capital. Pasha was mistaken here. Capitalism is returning to what's natural, curtailing what it despises. The masses have lost the facade capital built for them. But calling for a fight to restore that facade, lamenting its collapse, is the height of political infantilism. It's akin to the behavior of a drug addict demanding a new dose of hallucinogen. Capital has removed its mask of beauty and revealed its brutal face to the masses. Wonderful. All the more useful for the masses.

Pasha long projected the image of a champion of freedom of information, a kind of ideological liberal who wasn't afraid to give Russian law enforcement a hard time, even mockingly. Now, however, capital has rudely put him in his place, and in one of the most "democratic" countries at that. It turns out that the "freedom of information" he championed is nowhere to be found.

It will be interesting to see how his views will evolve... Perhaps, one day, he'll even realize something simple. Namely, that "freedom of information" cannot exist in principle in a class society, since information is always class-based, serving the interests of certain classes and therefore a field of class struggle. For example, the existence of a multitude of media outlets competing with one another is a reflection of the competitive relationship between different capitalist factions, and in no way proof of "freedom of speech." Each of these media outlets is subject to strict censorship. As soon as new means of disseminating information appear, the bourgeoisie inevitably gets its hands on them, if not in the form of direct control over everything, then using them for its own purposes. Everyone remembers the role these instant messengers played in various Maidan protests. Moreover, under capitalism, information is a commodity, and commodities have owners. Disseminating information for profit is a serious business, requiring significant capital investment. So freedom exists, perhaps, only for small talk, either in person or online. And even then, within certain limits, which shrink as imperialist contradictions intensify.

Complete freedom to disseminate information will only come under communism. Of course, this freedom will have nothing in common with Pasha's illusions, according to which every bourgeois citizen should be able to disseminate any nonsense and have access to any nonsense. No, freedom of information under communism will mean that everyone is guaranteed full access to all information of scientific value, and that only scientifically verified information that promotes human development will be disseminated. Subordinating information and information technology to the goals of social development is true freedom of information. Conversely, there can be no talk of any freedom under the informational dictates of the surplus-value maniacs.

(c) Nikita Bystrov

https://t.me/prorivists/6384 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10124555.html

Meta's censorship is run by a career CIA employee.
October 13, 5:05 PM



This has never happened before, and here it is again. Retired intelligence and Pentagon officials are managing social media policy.

Social media spies exposed: profiles disappear after MintPress report

This story highlights how social media isn't a neutral global arena, but rather a silently contested battleground. Over the past decade, the US national security agency has infiltrated major social media platforms, successfully attempting to manipulate public debate and influence what the world sees and doesn't see. This influence operation dwarfs any schemes allegedly perpetrated by official hostile countries.

A series of investigations by MintPress News has uncovered a network of hundreds of former agents of the CIA, FBI, and other agencies with three-letter names, as well as high-ranking State Department and NATO officials, working for social media giants like Facebook*, Google, TikTok, and Twitter* (banned in Russia). These individuals overwhelmingly work in politically sensitive departments like Trust and Safety, Security, and Content Moderation, meaning these former spies and intelligence officers help influence what billions of people around the world see, read, and hear (and decide who to promote and who to suppress).

Many of the individuals MintPress reported on have deleted the accounts and pages we used to expose their pasts. Others have simply removed incriminating evidence from their biographies.

Aaron Berman is a prime example. Berman holds the position of Global Head of Content Policy at Meta, the parent company of Facebook*, Instagram*, and WhatsApp. In his own words, this position makes him the head of "the team that writes the rules for Facebook," determining "what is and isn't acceptable" for the platform's 3.1 billion users. He appears in numerous official Meta videos presenting its global content moderation policy.

Aaron Berman is a CIA agent. Or at least he was until July 2019, when he left his position as a senior analytics manager at the agency to become a senior product policy manager for disinformation at Meta. After 15 years at the CIA, Berman rose through the ranks to become one of the agency's most senior employees, being chosen to write the presidential daily briefings for both Obama and Trump.

After MintPress published this information, Berman deleted his LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

Berman is far from the only example of a former deep state official turned social media manager deleting his profile. Others who have deleted their accounts include:

- Dawn Burton, who left her position as senior adviser for innovation to the FBI director in 2019 to become senior director of strategy and operations for law, public policy, trust, and safety at Twitter.

- Jeff Carlton, a 14-year Marine Corps commandant and longtime CIA and FBI intelligence analyst, left government in May 2021 to join Twitter as senior manager of the Trust and Safety Program.

- Haley Chang, former deputy general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security and Homeland Security and deputy assistant director of the FBI, who left the bureau to become director and deputy general counsel of Meta, a cybersecurity and investigative firm.

- Joey Chan, who left his post as commanding general of the U.S. Army in 2021 to become manager of the Trust and Safety Program at Meta*.

- Ellen Nixon, a former FBI agent who became a threat investigations manager at Facebook.

- Cherrelle Y., another former FBI agent who works as a policy specialist at Twitter.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/social-me ... ed/290506/ - original in English
https://t.me/rtechnocom/3831 - zinc

Big Brother is watching.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10126825.html

Google Translator