On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump accused technology monopolist Google of manipulating search results to suppress right-wing news sources.
“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media,” Trump wrote in a Twitter post. “In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent.” Trump added, “Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see.”
Later in the day, Trump told reporters that by engaging in censorship, Facebook, Google and Twitter “are really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful.”
Trump was reacting to actions by the Internet giants to promote publications aligned with his opponents in the ruling class, like CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Facebook and Twitter have also taken action in recent weeks against the fascistic social media personality Alex Jones.
Contrary to Trump’s claims, however, the main target of the censorship measures adopted by the Internet companies is not right-wing, but rather left-wing, socialist and anti-war publications. In August 2017, the World Socialist Web Site revealed that changes to Google’s search algorithm announced in April sharply reduced search traffic to left-wing sites, with search traffic to the World Socialist Web Site falling by 75 percent.
On August 25, 2017, the World Socialist Web Site published an open letter to Google demanding that the company stop its censorship of the internet. Google never replied to the letter.
In response to Trump’s criticisms, Google said in a Tuesday statement that its search service was “not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology.”
The company added, “Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries… We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.”
These statements are false.
By the way, I see Google as doing what the IRS did -- attacking both sides if they happen to move away from the war consensus.
Last time, I wrote "Ridiculous Carl Bernstein and CNN ." The president's also noting Carl Bernstein.
Trump tears into CNN over reporting on Trump Tower story: Carl Bernstein "thinks like a degenerate fool" http://hill.cm/HGmsoIY
And Carl has responded to Trump.
.@realdonaIdtrump- I have spent my life as a journalist bringing the truth to light, through administrations of both parties. No taunt will diminish my commitment to that mission, which is the essential role of a free press. @CNN stands by its story, and I stand by my reporting.
No, you spent your life stuck in the sewer. You outed your own parents as Communists (when they were dead and couldn't reply) -- that book's always been seen as the political equivalent of B.D. Highman's work. You're a joke who tried to be an author but had to return to journalism. And you tried to bury the truth about you -- when your wife wrote her comic novel Heartburn, you did your best to bury that book and you then interfered on the movie.
CNN's reporting -- your reporting -- is wrong. That's reality too.
Glenn Greenwald Retweeted
This tweet in and of itself is a lie. CNN, and @jimsciutto specifically, claimed that Lanny Davis declined comment on the story when it turns out that he was an anonymous source for the story.
- For those suggesting the CNN scandal is insignificant - that CNN getting caught telling an outright lie to the world about its sourcing, and now refusing to acknowledge it, is trivial - watch how they described the importance this story when they first unveiled it:
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Wednesday:
Wednesday, August 29, 2018.
Four days later and John McCain is still dead. The homophobic racist responsible for the deaths of so many is also still being celebrated in the corporate press as someone worthy of admiration. Betty demonstrates this in "US media embraces racism."
Four days later and John McCain is still dead. The homophobic racist responsible for the deaths of so many is also still being celebrated in the corporate press as someone worthy of admiration. Betty demonstrates this in "US media embraces racism."
WTF? UNPARALLED EXAMPLE OF HUMAN DECENCY? Ask the people in Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. who have suffered from his warmaking. Even President Jimmy Carter called him a warmonger.
"He's dead and that's good. Good riddance," activist Dhoruba Bin Wahad declared yesterday on HARD KNOCK RADIO. "I don't see why we should grieve or have any sadness or melancholy over his passing. It's good riddance."
John McCain championed the wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Bosnia, Kosovo, Ukraine and many more. Millions of innocents have been killed, maimed and displaced.
But let’s just keep pretending he was all about “human rights” and “decency”.
Ann Garrison (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) observes:
I’ll be glad if I never hear John
McCain’s name again, but his death made me look back and try once more
to understand the US War with the Vietnamese People’s Army, whose
anti-aircraft gunners shot him out of the sky during his 23 bombing
raids over North Vietnam. On the “KPFA Radio "Sunday Sho w ,”
Kevin Alexander Gray said, “The national mourning for John McCain is
almost a referendum or a recasting of the Vietnam War, where every
soldier is a hero even though they were fighting in wars they had no
business fighting in. Everybody’s a hero.”
I don’t think “everybody’s a
hero,” least of all the son of Admiral John S. McCain, Sr., but I hugely
admire the soldiers who ended the Vietnam War by refusing to fight and
even fragging—shooting or throwing grenades at the commanders urging
them on. The antiwar movement at home supported those heroes, but they
were the ones who made it impossible to continue the war. They told
their story in the documentary film Sir, No Sir .
I felt for the wounded foot
soldiers writhing in agony in the final moments of Emile de Antonio’s
brilliant Vietnam War documentary In the Year of the Pig,and I felt angry at the politicians and anti-communist ruling class who sent them off to suffer and die. I hadn’t watched In the Year of the Pigfor
nearly 20 years, but it’s one of the most profound films I’ve seen
about the USA’s Vietnam War, so I watched it again, and I recommend it
to anyone reading this. Emile de Antonio doesn’t narrate the film; it’s
simply his composition of documentary footage. It’s also one of the few
documentaries made while the war was still going on.
In the Year of the Pigwas
released in 1968, though the 20thCentury “Years of the Pig” in the
Zodiac Calendar were 1935, 1959, 1971, 1983, and 1995, so there’s no
doubt that the pig in the film is the US in Vietnam.
Most of the footage exposes the
presidents, military officers and congressmen—and they were all men—who
championed the war until the foot soldiers refused to fight. Its other
subjects are the Vietnamese they knew next to nothing about.
If only the lust for empire could be buried with John McCain. Instead it continues though, from time to time, it does suffer setbacks.
Despite US
@brett_mcgurk's push to delay #Iraq's 
#Kurdistan elections & after a meeting w various #Kurdish parties, PM Nechirvan Barzani @PMBarzani just announced that it will happen on time & as planned
Brett McGurk has been defeated for now. The desert rat first carried out the orders of Bully Boy Bush, then Barack Obama and today Donald Trump. Most Iraqis learned not to trust him before Bully Boy Bush left the White House.
He helped start the Iraq War and it continues to this day. ALJAZEERA reports, "At least eight people have been killed and 12 wounded in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint near the Iraq-Syria border."
The war is not ending. Americans have been allowed to turn away in part due to a corrupt media that ignores the war and in part due to the apathy that can set in when something -- even an injustice -- continues for years and years.
The costs of the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now estimated to run as high as $4.4 trillion - a major victory for Osama bin Laden, whose announced goal was to bankrupt America by drawing it into a... facebook.com/NoamChomskyF/p…
The corrupt media distracts and covers for the exploitation of the American people, for the robbery carried out by the US government. The huge debt will be passed on to the future generations. Their future has been sold.
What did the US government buy with all this money? Grains of shifting sand. They keep trying to set up a puppet government and the Iraqi people keep rejecting it. To ensure that the puppet government in the Green Zone is propped up, US troops remain in Iraq. It's why John McCain was willing to allow them to be stationed there for 100 years or more -- to take control of Iraq with the puppet government and keep control out of the Iraqi people's hands.
A new spin on foreign interference in Iraq: There is a desperate attempt to help @HaiderAlAbadi stay in office. Those aiding him are attributing outrage against Abadi’s failures to Iranian influence on Iraqi public. #FAKENEWS Iraqis want BOTH Iran and Abadi out of Iraqi politics.
Whenever the Green Zone is in trouble, the US government panics. It's the seat of the puppet government, usually walled off from the rest of Iraq, filled with various puppets and corrupt officials.
This go round, the US government is still stomping its feet. May 12th, the winner was supposed to be Hayder al-Abadi. He did not win. He came in third. First place when to the group headed by Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr. Second place went to the militias. Third place went to Hayder.
Third place. For the sitting prime minister. The term for that is "rebuke."
The rebuke continues with the protests that have been going on since the start of July.
These protests are already intense but, Friday, they will get a lot more intense.
Iraqi election winner & influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr @Mu_AlSadr calls for a “peaceful protest” in what he described as “a call to build a new #Iraq
” in a million-man mass prayer in Al-Kufa Mosque in Najaf, this coming Friday. facebook.com/salihMAliraqii…
In Basra, where the protests kicked off, the people are without so much. They do, however, have water -- contaminated water, possibly deadly water.
CC: @IraqiGovt, A man from #Basra has a message for you. He stated that many have warned against water pollution in Basra for years, describing those who ignored the warnings as “murderers.” He added, while politicians fight over power, people are dying.#IraqProtests #البصرة_تباد
CC: @HaiderAlAbadi; @AdelaAlaboudi, These people standing in front of Al-Joumhouri Hospital in #Basra stated that there are more than 15 thousand poison cases caused by toxic water, describing the situation as “genocide.” #IraqProtests #انقذوا_البصرة #البصرة_تستغيث #البصرة_تموت
Confirmed chemical analysis from #Basra shows the water of ShatalArab is contaminated with cyanide compounds. Cyanide concentration is 0.03 mg/l which exceeds the recommended level.After preliminary treatment, this water is pumped to the locals for daily consumption.#Save_Basra
The following community sites -- plus DISSIDENT VOICE and PACIFICA EVENING NEWS -- updated:
Carly and Mick
6 hours ago
Aaron Mate
6 hours ago
That disgusting Rachel Maddow
8 hours ago
Ridiculous Carl Bernstein and CNN
8 hours ago
It was worse than Watergate
10 hours ago
