Google Bans Press TV, Hispan TV

Google Bans Press TV


What's Next?

by J. Michael Springmann and Edward C. Corrigan / May 5th, 2019

What?
On April 19, 2019 (the date of the original Patriots’ Day in New England), American tech giant Google disabled the accounts of Press TV, an Iranian news service, and its sister channel Hispan TV, an outlet in Spain.

Google denied their access to all its services, including its popular video streaming platform YouTube and its E-mail service Gmail. The company’s move took place without prior notice or subsequent explanation.

The action’s date is particularly significant to Americans. That day marked the beginning of the American Revolution. It saw the first armed engagement between British soldiers and colonial militiamen at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts on April 19, 1775. Patriots’ Day was intended to commemorate the colonists’ fight to win freedom from British rule.

But, nearly 250 years later, it observes the loss of that freedom to invisible, uncontrollable organizations.

Google and Facebook, and other social media giants, have been accused of altering search algorithms to slant or even hide information that departs from the government or corporate agenda. Independent media sources on the right and on the left have complained that searched results are tainted and being secretly manipulated on a grand scale. Now the censorship is being imposed openly in the name of political correctness and social harmony.

There is a clear campaign to de-legitimize critics of US Government policy.

Target: Iran.
According to the April 22, 2019 edition of MintPress, “Iran has been on the receiving end of more than its share of censorship. Facebook has repeatedly banned “networks” it believes are “tied to Iran.” Meanwhile, both Press TVand HispanTV have faced prior crackdowns from Google.

Recently, Instagram banned a number of Iranian officials following the U.S. designation of Iran’s military as a foreign terrorist organization. In some cases, Facebook has even worked with CIA-funded cybersecurity firms to target accounts. The State Department later trumpeted those findings in a report on Iran’s cybersecurity threat to the U.S., but opted to omit the source of the evidence.”

Additionally, MintPress noted: “Google’s crackdown on Iran is multifaceted, not just singling out its media for censorship, but also shutting down the accounts of its officials. Indeed, Google is on a path to destroy Iran’s ability to independently communicate its message to the world.”

What’s the issue?
Quoting Yasha Levine, journalist and author of Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet… “American Internet companies,” such as Google and Facebook, “are not abstract global platforms, but privatized instruments of American geopolitical power.”

And that’s the real issue.

And it’s not only Press TV, the “Voice of the Voiceless” that’s censored. The American Herald Tribune has been under attack, it says, by Zionist gatekeepers. In August 2018, it wrote one of the authors: “Dear Michael, Google has disabled all of the services we were using.” Then, the next month, it wrote: “Dear Friends/Colleagues: We were unable to retrieve our Facebook page after it was taken down without any prior notice. We have created a new Facebook page.”

Protection from bigots?
The attacks on Press TV, American Herald Tribune, and others are always couched in terms of suppressing the malign influence of the “far-right” and/or “anti-Semitic figures and organizations.” On May 3, 2019, the Washington Post used those words to headline an article celebrating Facebook’s action in permanently banning “several far-right and anti-Semitic figures and organizations, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos [a former Breitbart editor] and Laura Loomer [a right-wing American political activist] , for being ‘dangerous’…” The paper saw this as “a sign that the social network is more aggressively enforcing its hate-speech policies at a moment when bigoted violence is on the rise around the world.”

While the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…,” it seems that “The People” can do as they please, as long as they have large Internet organizations behind them and lots of money. And if there is pressure from supposedly liberal governments influencing them.

The Post went on to say, “Governments around the world are pushing Facebook to take town [sic] bigoted and other harmful content more quickly–or risk being banned themselves.” Germany heavily fines social media if they run afoul of “The Enforcement on Social Networks Act” (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz). Although it came into force October 1, 2017, social networks were given a three-month grace period to change their policies. If criminal content, which can include hate speech, defamation, and fake news, isn’t removed within 24 hours of its being reported, social networks can face fines reaching €50 million (US$60 million).

Like in the United States, “hate speech” is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, especially if it deals with illegal aliens, a sore subject in some countries. This concept is probably the reason why Facebook and Twitter refused to advertise J. Michael Springmann’s book, Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb, an analysis of forced migration into Europe from American wars in the Middle East.

Conclusion
This all boils down to “political correctness” and lack of common sense. And governmental power. Allegedly liberal societies now engage in censorship–in the name of freedom of speech and political correctness. But it’s really censorship and control of information that is the real objective.

The Encyclopedia Britannica notes “our perception of reality is determined by our thought processes, which are influenced by the language we use. In this way language shapes our reality and tells us how to think about and respond to that reality. Language also reveals and promotes our biases. Therefore, according to the [Sapir-Whorf] hypothesis, using sexist language promotes sexism and using racial language promotes racism.”

Clever people in well-placed governmental positions and their cats-paws in large corporations evidently have taken note of this linguistic mind control and are now implementing it on a grand scale.

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Michael Springmann is a lawyer, author, political commentator, and former diplomat based in Washington, D.C. While abroad with the U.S. Department of State, he served in Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia. He can be contacted at attorney@springmannslaw.net or at 202-256-3878. Edward C. Corrigan is certified as a specialist by the Law Society of Ontario (formerly the Law Society of Upper Canada) in Citizenship, Immigration and Immigration and Refugee Law. He is an author and political commentator based in London, Ontario, Canada and can be contacted at corriganlaw@edcorrigan.ca or at 519-439-4015. Read other articles by J. Michael.
This article was posted on Sunday, May 5th, 2019 at 9:00pm and is filed under Censorship, Iran, Language, Media.

https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/05/g...bans-press-tv/