Category: McCarthyism

Twitter’s ‘ban’ on political ads has a gaping, legacy media-shaped loophole

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Trying to stay ahead of spurious allegations of enabling ‘Russian meddling’ into US elections, Twitter has outlawed all political advertising – but left an exemption most US legacy media, though partisan, will easily sail through.

“Twitter globally prohibits the promotion of political content. We have made this decision based on our belief that political message reach should be earned, not bought,” the company announced Friday, sharing the details of its ad ban.

See the source image

Elaborating on the decision in a thread, Twitter’s head of legal, policy and Trust & Safety Vijaya Gadde effectively admitted that the ban was driven by concerns over digital advertising “driving political outcomes” – even though the effects of micro-targeted ads “are not yet fully understood.”

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The ban is scheduled to go into effect on November 22. In addition to banning candidates, parties, and affiliated groups like political action committees (PACs) from advertising, Twitter is also ruling out ads that are about influencing votes, parties, ballot initiatives or elections. “Cause-based ads” will be allowed with certain restrictions, but again not when coming from candidates, parties or politicians.

If this sounds convoluted, banning both people and content, that’s because it is. However, the policy has a sizeable exemption for “news publishers” who can run ads referencing “political content and/or prohibited advertisers,” so long as there is no advocacy for or against.

To qualify, a publication’s website must have “a minimum of 200,000 monthly unique visitors in the US,” the ability to contact its editors and reporters online, have a searchable archive, and not be a user-generated platform or aggregator. Nor can the publication be dedicated to advocating on a single issue.

These parameters clearly skew the playing field in favor of US legacy media – despite its open partisanship over the past several years. Not only have the legacy media and Democrats blamed the social media for enabling the election of President Donald Trump, they have also led the charge in pressuring Twitter, Facebook and others to “deplatform” any alternative voices they might find unsavory.

As voice after voice gets purged from social media, still think there’s no censorship?

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Most recently, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) actually demanded Twitter suspend Trump’s account as part of her pitch for the 2020 presidential nomination – so far, without effect.

In August, Twitter rolled out a ban on ads from “state-controlled news media entities,” using a convoluted definition that also carves out exemptions for well-established legacy outlets in the West.

(Full disclosure: Twitter banned RT ads long before that, without explanation or process, following the initial 2017 congressional hearings into social media platforms, and the revelation that it proposed a multi-million dollar deal to RT during the 2016 election, which was declined.)

The vast majority – about 86 percent – of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising, with data licensing and other sources accounting for the rest. The company turned an annual profit for the first time in 2018, five years after going public.

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Rand Paul Drops The ‘C’-Word: Names Whistleblower, Demands Testimony

by Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/13/2019 – 11:11

A week ago, Senator Rand Paul said that he might release the whistleblower’s name.

Over the weekend, Senator Paul said the whistleblower’s name should be released.

And today, Senator Paul has named the whistleblower publicly…Eric Ciamerella

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During a Wednesday interview on Washington, D.C.-based WMAL, Paul named Ciaramella himself and said he should be brought in testify to clarify whether he is indeed the whistleblower.

“I think Eric Ciaramella needs to be pulled in for testimony, and then I think it will be ultimately determined at that point,” said Paul.

“But I think he is a person of interest in the sense that he was at the Ukraine desk when Joe Biden was there when Hunter Biden was working for the Ukrainian oligarch. So simply for that alone, I think he’s a material witness who needs to be brought in.”

“I think the whistleblower needs to come in because he needs to be asked about, did he know about the conflict of interest?” said Paul.

“He was there during the time of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden working for $50,000 a month for a Ukrainian oligarch, so he needs to be asked about that.”

As The Washington Examiner reports, Paul also said he wants answers about Ciaramella’s ties to the Democratic Party and Rep. Adam Schiff, whose staff knew about the whistleblower’s report before it was filed.

Now the name is out there in the public (as if it wasn’t earlier), will Mark Zuckerberg allow it to be mentioned on his platform?

All of which is worth noting since Rep. Schiff told Congress this morning that “I do not know the identity of the whistleblower.” – Seemingly a total lie, given what we know about their pre-hearing meetings…

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TRANSPARENT? C-SPAN DISABLES CHAT DURING PUBLIC IMPEACHMENT HEARING

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Americans now mere spectators instead of participants in their own government

11/13/2019

C-Span has blocked viewers from chatting on its YouTube livestream of the public impeachment hearings, a move which crystallizes the age-old complaint that Americans don’t have much voice in their government:

While the move was ostensibly intended to stop trolls, that’s what moderators are for, and frankly speaking something as big as the attempted removal of a US president who was duly-elected by millions of Americans should be in public discourse.

By being blocked from chatting about the ongoing impeachment process, Americans are now mere spectators of their government instead of active participants, something that would probably make Edward Bernays proud, but not the Founding Fathers who drafted the impeachment process.

Case in point, Facebook has been banning people for stating the name of the alleged “whistleblower” even though, per federal law, only the intel inspector general is required to not reveal who he is.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,” Bernays believed. “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.”

Matt Bracken breaks down the whistleblower Eric Ciaramella as the key to understanding the coup against Trump.
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Republicans Laugh at Schiff’s Outrageous Claim He Doesn’t Know Name of “Whistleblower”

by Kristinn Taylor November 13, 2019

Republicans House Members in the room for Wednesday’s Intelligence Committee public impeachment inquiry hearing laughed when committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) claimed he does not know the name of the whistleblower whose anonymous second-hand claim of misconduct by President Trump with regard to Ukraine instigated the partisan impeachment process by Democrats.

The reaction by Republicans was reported by Alex Miller of Newsy, “Schiff says he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower, entire front row of republicans laugh.”

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Axios reporter Alayna Treene reported Republicans laughed and sneered, “Republican members of Congress in the audience laughed & sneered to each other when Schiff said this”

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Schiff’s dubious claim (falsely reported as a “fact check”) was also challenged online by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), “In response to @Jim_Jordan, Adam Schiff claims he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower. If he doesn’t know their identity, how will he prevent them from being named?”

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Daily Mail reporter David Martosko, “Adam Schiff claims he doesn’t know the identity of the Ukraine whistle-blower. How is this possible? His staff met with the person.”

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Trump War Room co-host Raheem Kassam noted problems with Schiff’s denial, “Schiff says he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower, despite his staff being in contact with the whistleblower. Ok, but if he doesn’t know the identity, how can he as the Intel Chairman stop the whistleblower being named? And how is the name being redacted in docs?”

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Presumably Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) was one of those laughing at Schiff from his front row seat.

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Unfortunately, Gohmert and his fellow Congressmen were placed by Schiff in “Bob Uecker” front row seats in the back of the room behind the media.

Intel Committee Republicans set up a sign on their side of the dais that said, “93 days since Adam Schiff learned the identity of the whistleblower.

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Chairman Mao Tse Schiff is not amused.

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“Whistleblower” Eric Ciaramalla Hosted Jan 19, 2016 WH Mtg. w/Soros Lackey – Same Day Ukraine Told in WH Mtg. to Fire Prosecutor Investigating Hunter Biden

by Jim Hoft

This is a newly discovered photo of the anti-Trump CIA whistleblower–

 

Eric Ciaramella with Ukrainian official Yurii Stets in the Obama White House in 2015

So The New York Times reported that Joe Biden’s own staff thought the Ukrainian gas company Burisma paying Hunter Biden $83,333/month while his father was Vice President was “unseemly” or “worse” — and they made State Department officials help them do damage control.

Joe Biden said he first learned of his son’t activities in Ukraine when the story broke in 2014 according to Hunter Biden’s recollection in a New Yorker piece earlier this year

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John Solomon at The Hill also reported on the January 19, 2016 meeting between Ukrainian officials and Obama officials at the White House.

The other case raised at the January 2016 meeting, Telizhenko said, involved Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company under investigation in Ukraine for improper foreign transfers of money. At the time, Burisma allegedly was paying then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter as both a board member and a consultant. More than $3 million flowed from Ukraine to an American firm tied to Hunter Biden in 2014-15, bank records show.

According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU, then shut down.

According to Stephen McIntyre the demand that Ukrainian top prosecutor Viktor Shokin be fired as a condition for IMF loan almost certainly originated with Biden staff. The demand was first announced to Ukrainian prosecutors at a January 19, 2016 meeting with US officials hosted by Eric Ciaramella.

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Obviously, this is a very bold and shocking statement.

Sure enough — If you run a search on the White House visitor logs during the final year (2016) of the Obama administration you find that Eric Ciaramella is listed over 200 times.
Ciaramella hosted a meeting with Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko on January 19, 2016 in the Obama White House.

And we also discovered that Artem Sytnyk, the director of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), a Soros group, who leaked documents on kickbacks to Manafort during the 2016 election was also at the meeting.

Fool Nelson first reported this on October 12 before the Ciaramella was alleged publicly to be the whistleblower.

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There may have been a series of meetings held that day with Ukrainian officials in the Obama White House.
It is clear that Eric Ciaramella hosted one large meeting with several Ukrainian officials.

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It is also clear that this is the day the US told Ukrainian officials in the White House to fire Viktor Shokin.

This is why Eric Ciaramella MUST TESTIFY.
He may have filed his phony second-hand “whistleblower” report because he was definitely in on the plot fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden.

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DEPLORABLE – SUC Berkeley Instructor: Rural Americans “Bad People” Who’ve Made “Bad Life Decisions”

The coastal academic was fiercely hostile to rural Americans.

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A University of California-Berkeley instructor and graduate student attacked rural Americans in seemingly contemptuous terms in a now-deleted tweetstorm posted on Wednesday night.

Jackson Kernion is a graduate student at UC-Berkeley who teaches philosophy courses to undergrads. He made himself a target for criticism, some of which came from other left-leaning academics, when he came out with his surprisingly bigoted views against rural Americans.

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Perhaps most shockingly, the elite-university philosophy academic went on to actually call for increased health care costs for rural Americans.

“Rural Healthcare Should be expensive! And that expense should be borne by those who choose rural America!”

It’s unclear what the young punk thinks that eroding rural healthcare programs is going to accomplish, but it’s more than likely that his desire to do so is more firmly rooted in prejudiced rancor than a real, coherent worldview.

Rural Americans are often left with a lack of decent health insurance options under the current American system. Some on the left, such as Bernie Sanders, have sought to offer policy solutions to this problem, but it appears that at least some coastal elitists such as Kernion actually don’t think rural Americans should even have healthcare.

Kernion ended up deleting his Twitter shortly after his tweetstorm, being widely rebuked for his prejudice. However, he did apologize shortly before for his remarks, admitting that his remarks came across as “crass and mean,” leaving open a chance that he could possibly learn and grow from the incident that revealed his starkly bigoted views. It does go without saying that an entire geographic demographic of Americans don’t even deserve healthcare is a bit more than “crass and mean,” though.

Ironically, many of the rural Americans who Kernion has voiced his dislike of would be quick to forgive the elite university student for his slighting of them. The men and women who he speaks of are instrumental in growing the food of urban America, and extracting the natural gas and oil used to power their cars, buses, trains and planes.

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